Prisons of Wax
Controlling the swarm
keeps workers from revolting
promises of change
Prisons made of wax
melt in flames of dissident
voices in the streets
Far be it from me to say I understand your situation.
What fills up your time so completely
that I’m the one that ends up getting left in the dark?
How many hours of Netflix have you watched
that could be me sitting beside you in silence?
I’m not saying tell me every detail, just let me
play with your hair for a while.
Or maybe we can catch a movie and let fictional ordeals
become our primary distracting care?
Decompress over work with late night McDonald’s runs,
I’ll be your perfect puppy.
Or talk to me and discover how resistant I am
to anything with the word “inconvenience.”
Hours in the parking lot waiting for you to get off work are fine
and if they aren’t, I’ll know with enough time for a warning
lovingly given.
I’ll always make sure you get home.
But did those few times of selfish withholdings
stress you to the point of a nervous breakdown?
Have I looked at this wrong, and only now
as I write these words, understand your compassion?
Maybe you really did do the right thing,
just in the wrong way
and I’m too caught up in a being a human being
to recognize the caged love singing.
Do I write healing into my soul with every pen and keystroke?
If we could just talk and lay it all out,
maybe a magic word makes it all better?
That you were too afraid of my gut reaction
you tried a drive-by
and hit it dead center?
Maybe just the smallest effort
is all that’s needed to make the difference
between love and hate?
Spoon Rests from Dottie
Painted on the spoon rest: “Pat’s Kitchen,”
ironic since I’m not the cook,
gone the one that said, “Ellen’s Kitchen,”
too painful to gaze upon, though she had been the real cook,
both spoon rests proffered by our neighbor, Dottie,
a quiet, grey-haired woman, the one who smiled
and waved, crossed the street to take our big group picture
in our Derby finery.
Organge-brown ceramic in the shape of a teapot. Dottie
had painted the yellow daisies and our names to make them
special-personal. Penny-ordianry, they could be found in any garage sale.
One day Dottie knocked on our door, shattering the mold
of our expectations. She’d been arrested for shop-lifting
and came to us for what–advice, confession, consolation?
Now all that’s left is a lowly spoon rest and memories
of another time, distant, ordinary–
a time we thought would never end.
Under my Grandmother’s Stars
Darkness collects in the fields,
Spreads the distance that
No one wants to see.
The days vanish,
And in their place-
A Super Moon.
Remember to dream
In your native language.
It takes years to see something else,
Space that bends backward toward us,
It takes years to feel something else.
I forget what it means.
But what it means is
The only world I have,
Is the only thing I know.
My feet take root as you remember
how your brother-in-law would smile through
his last days of colon cancer, how your sister
would get angry with him for his happy death,
and he would ask her, “Why are you angry?”
How your niece and nephew screamed at you
for using ammonia to clean the room while
your sister was bringing him back from the hospital,
how these children accused you
of trying to poison their dog,
then ran away when you stood your ground,
how they found their mother,
told her their side of the story,
and she took their side.
I comment on the mind-heart split,
how what she was really angry about
was not his rational acceptance
but that he was not sharing his feelings about death,
trying to account for tragedy in an enchanted world.
The wren scolds the cat
who doesn’t care and continues
to explore our back yard,
stalking the unseen. I give
her a treat, encouragement
to hang around as deterrent
against rabbits and chipmunks
I battle for vegetables in the raised beds.
The wind rustles the oak leaves.
The cardinal, a bright ornament in the dogwood,
hops from branch to branch. The front page
of the newspaper has messages of hope
for once. I pray it will manifest where I breathe
as the wren twitches on a Serviceberry branch,
trilling to her mate. I fill a watering can
from the rain barrel, drench the tomato plant
in its clay pot, church bells ring
in the distance, a small plane flies
over it all, and the neighbor’s cat
naps in the chair beside me.
After Charles Bukowski’s “The Laughing Heart”
“Your life is your life”
I am reminded
and it’s akin to telling myself
I’m in charge
I can make decisions and
I deserve nice things
all of which I have to remember
to tell myself, finally
after thirty years of guilt
and believing otherwise.
I have to remember
to let the light in
even when I’m not standing
under the full moon
that the gods will offer chances
if only I learn to know them.
shifting under the weight
the time the moving spinning everythingness
the yearning that lights your burning heart
my mother’s face, orbiting above me
was my mind collapsing in on itself
of guessing where it all began
Depression and Anxiety
melt, one into another
hammering the skull, dimming reality
carrying bundles of bees
the mind a cage–a key awaits
takes a millisecond for everything to change forever
this body the wide indifferent ocean
drown is a verb
~ Cento from lines of various poems of Lexington Poetry Month 2017. Thank you to upfromsumdirt, T.M. Thomson, J. Wise, Rae Cobbs, Chuck Clenney, Amanda Corbin, Elizabeth Beck, K. Bruce Florence, Aaron Kerfoot, Edelweiss Meadows-Millstone, Melva Sue Priddy, Christopher McCurry for intriguing lines to work with.
