flowerchildren
every time you teach
your kid
with love
you give them a flower
for the garden
of their life
your kid grows
different
flowers on their
own
accept your kid’s
gifts
every time you teach
your kid
with love
you give them a flower
for the garden
of their life
your kid grows
different
flowers on their
own
accept your kid’s
gifts
we begin at zero.
You man the graph of trails.
Mushrooms litter the forest floor
like cast-off ears.
Tamped pine needles make a springy mat.
Like struck matches, twigs crack.
A web sticks to my arm.
Visible in blinks, the blue
sky wheels above us.
We unpack gray skin, broken bones,
mushy shipwrecks, twin wishes.
Our voices catch in tree crooks.
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Sandra Meek’s poem “Chronographia”
My prison died
September 4th, 2015
at home in his bed–
not completely alone,
but in another room.
October 18th, 2015,
I am still asking myself
“how do you mourn chains?”
without mourning yourself.
Now, I write to the accompaniment of cardinals
cardinals chasing
sex partners and competitors alike
through the trees just outside my apartment window
tree branches bending
to the wind’s advances
like passionate lovers thinking themselves unseen
I know now, what I will do
since mi madre lent me two cents
and her cordura
before loosening the net
coaxing me out of the nest
to pick up some grandchildren for her in the marketplace
for I am hijo de madre naturaleza, mother nature’s son
and as of late, she’s been not-so-subtle
about wanting grandchildren to spoil
I am only as human
as human’s come
as the wind comes and the day birds sing
so after I have writtten what I must
spent the small loan of two cents and sanity
gotten all the doing and saying out of the way
I will come to you
like a bright red cardinal courting his mate
I will dance and sing
from all the corners of your compass
and frighten all those who come near you
with similar things in mind
Like a gust of wind
I will embrace you
with just enough force
to bend you
push and pin you against yourself
until our dance is more than just a dance
State fair road trip
Look at all the things to do
One ride speaks to me
Centripetal force
Only way we can get close
Let’s only ride this
My Everest peak
There’d be nothing greater than
Saying I love you
But desire comes short
Of reciprocation here
Your eye slides away
Two very dear friends
Come together like scissors
Joined they cut me out
Though it hurts like hell
I choose to hold them blameless
Malice cannot be
Heartfelt matters trump
Care, when discovered misplaced
It’s a human thing
I will know their joy
Someday soon, in its own time
Love will be revealed
So I travel on
To other lands to find my
Kilimanjaro.
Bees are drunk in the red bud
and god pretends she doesn’t see
us watching. She blushes, like the sun
after cloudy days, and rushes to see
more than we can: colors not meant for our eyes,
cells too small for our magnifying abilities,
insects deep in some wooded slope, systems
in our human body and neighborhood
galaxies undiscovered yet. She blushes
even more pleased, like a child finding
her feet. And her feet—the creator’s feet—
stretch all the way to our core.
“when god prays to himself/ using the fog’s opaque cushion, we know god is a child/ who pretends to pray” from “Fog” by Vi Khi Nao.
For J. in Idaho
i wanted to tell my lifestory. i would write it on a rock, for surely
it would fit, snug between the mosses growing. a higher glyphic
like found on mountaintops by unwitting prophets.
a guidebook to the damned; them who gave a great damn
all the time, against their own best instincts,
given over, nonetheless, to being true,
forthright, and yet ill-equipped as well
as daring as all wherewithal.
peacock feather buried at sea, shucked oysters down the mouths of government leaders. it was going to be some story. but i was cooking in restaurants. i was visiting the dr’s. i was playing yahtzee
with other yahtzee players. i was buying longjohns forlong winters and short skirts for even shorter summers. i grew old with my prince charming, and before i knew what to think i thot differently.
i knew i had succeeded at so many things.
i wiped the mirror with a damp towel. i shut the front door.
i polished the tea kettle and blew out its whistle when i went to bed nights, and daytimes, days like green embroidery on a pink clothesline grew mosses, like the rock had grown when id wanted
to back-when write me.
it started with a rubix cube. an onion unraveled. the real puzzle was how id got on at all but for love. at that point i set out to write love, but this didn’t happen, exactly. i wrote with love. i wrote to people that i loved. i wrote lovely things about people i loved. i loved people and i kept writing. but i have not written love.
i have met sad people. i have met miserable people. i have met the bleaker than bleak, those that gave up so completely that they had given up on giving up, in fact their gig was up. their gig had been being someone that gives up.
i have met people who love. i would much love writing my lifestory.
i wld write it with a penny scratched on cardboard chits, thrown into
the rubbish on the way out, having not won this time. i wld write it with three xes going down the middle, and draw a line through the x-es, pass the paper, wait for my opponent to draw a new board.
i wld write it with a long line drawn perpendicular to a much shorter line one letter at a time building a stickman. i wld always have
different opponents, and they all wld love and each of them would want to read my story.
“Your shoes are untied.”
He looked down
He was wearing loafers
He chuckled
He knew it was a silly joke.
I once called him “Booger-Face,” and he caught himself starting to check to see if he indeed had boogers under his nose.
But he knew he didn’t.
I was thinking, what if someone–not me, of course–called the highest elected official in the land–someone with a bit of an ego–“Booger-Face”?
Would he tweet, “I am NOT a booger-face–fake news! Apologize!”
What if someone–again, not me–posted every day that the chief executive was a “Booger-Face”?
What if groups of protestors marched holding signs that read, “IMPEACH BOOGER-FACE!”
What if talk-show hosts referred to him as “Booger-Face-in-Chief?”
What if reporters addressed him as “Mr. Booger-Face?”
Would they be arrested?
What if someone–not me, ever–posted and shared pictures of said leader with boogers dangling from his nostrils?
Would he introduce a bill making it a felony to call him that name?
So, don’t do it.
Don’t call him “Booger-Face.”
the china cup
And plate
Printed with a weeping willow
And a lady
That survived the house fire
In Kentucky
Sat proudly in my hutch
For six weeks
Until Los Angeles
Earthquakes opened
The little glass doors
And threw them out
Never tell your age again!
Each drop
of this potent serum
will release millions of rejuvenating
molecules to your skin.
The more you live the younger
you will look.
Self aggrandizement
accounts for only 8% of habitual liars.
(BTW we are all habitual liars)
Past transgression
is a much meatier phenomenon
motivating 22% of all liars.
Their stories about the past
ensure they have been, and will remain,
the ultimate hero of their own narrative
Of course I smoked pot in college,
everybody did.
Me though, I didn’t inhale,
and I didn’t have sexual relations
with that woman in the Oval Office.
My son tells a story
where I insult his girlfriend,
unpleasantries are exchanged,
and I tell them to get out of my house.
Fabrication, whole cloth from fragments
and thin air, now woven so tight,
repeated so many times,
that his brain has changed the synapses.
When he accesses that memory engram
he recalls the scene vividly.
He tells the whole truth
and nothing but the truth.
Egregious, brazen, deceit.
Hero and habitual liar.
Just like me.
