Posts for June 12, 2017

To my wild woman,

i feel you and i hear you.

the older i get, the louder your voice speaks to me,

drowning out the sounds of all I’ve been told to bend to like bamboo.

the older i get, the more of your bones I am pulling together,

the more of your limbs i am trying to flesh out with knowledge and risk;

“But to follow your leaning is wildness. To follow your mind’s definition of wildness is tameness.“

To my wild woman, i am reaching for you like i am reaching for the hands of god,

like an infant reaches for the breast of its mother,

like the river reaches for the swell of the sea. 

Yesterday I learned 
That ’emptiness and plentiness 
Are tides of the same sea’
Today it seemed
There were no longer
Any sparks between us
I left to write
You set the kitchen on fire
To prove me wrong

walking out of my therapist’s office
after an unexpected rainshower
the pavement was temporarily infused
with shadow, the petrichor
sweet and somber
resonated in the not-yet-liquid in the air
and oppressed my hair,
and clothing, too, 
in a way most southerners are accustomed
as if nature herself felt need to state
“bless your heart” upon her silence
interrupted by my self-conscious musings
as if she knew nothing
of true sorrow

or maybe, just
maybe
she resolved her own systems herself
on her time
and cared not that I
had left my windows cracked

Dawns I dislike.
They’re much too rudely early.
Dusk’s my time of day.
There’s still light enough
to do things, but night
is sprinting down the way.

Dusk’s not this or that.
Layers of color,
blue upon purple upon pink upon orange.
A sun sinking low, balancing out the moon.
Darkness creeping up by degrees.

I think I’m like dusk.
I’m wrapped tight in layers
of obfuscation.
Don’t look here or there,
hiding the secrets at the center.
Dark and light balanced
on a swinging pendulum. 

Like dusk, I am 
becoming
something else every day.

He didn’t recognize me,

the little boy with the basketball

on Seventh Street.

Didn’t know that it was me

who ran into West Sixth Brewery

wielding his second grade picture and panicked eyes.

Have you seen this boy?

Maybe he got away.

Tis flesh of my flesh
And sweeter than I can know
Her smile completes me.

neither chairs nor bowls of porriage
but burgers on the grill
attracted this mother and her cubs
Goldilocks nowhere to be found

I love you,
you silky Swedish lip balm from beeswax
you three dollar binge
you hell-frozen breeze 
on pickled lips 

       Empty spaces embrace those gone…
       Holding on to what they knew
       Their shadows playing as they did
       Familiar patterns keep them in line

       A faint wind of Tabu perfume
       Opened necktied shirts worn by officed men
       Brightly patterned cotton skirts swaying from waists                                                 of lightly inebriated housewives.
       
       Summer charcoaled  backyard evenings
       cigarette smoke, ice clinking get togethers

       A box lid tightly covers played tiles of mahjong
       A jangeled drawer of tangeled keys – letting no one in or out.
       lives lived