Posts for June 1, 2018 (page 2)

Sweeten bitter pills
with business as usual
savor the story

Making medicine
is just like cutting onions
sometimes you’ll shed tears

As we begin this seventh LexPoMo,
we rev up pens and keypads, invite the muse,
and pledge to all a tempest of poetic energy.

Our words will shine through lines of image
and conceit, in sonnets, villanelles, haiku,
a fib or two, and free-verse free-for-alls.

We’ll shout and slam, proclaim, enjamb,
sing of love and death, of loneliness, frivolity,
one community sharing life in poetry.

LETTERS TO THE DEAD: ONE 

6/1/2018
Dearest Mike, aka Brother De Sales (1941-2015):
   When you became a tailor for the priests 
those lordly men called you “the seamstress”
for it was their flowing robes and silky vestments
you stitched and repaired.  After Father Gregor’s
mother bequeathed the old Singer to the order
the other brothers could not decipher its mysteries,
but you of uncanny mechanical ability made it hum.
I’d go to that room behind the seminary dorm,
a silent spacious place you’d found to sew,
and watch you thread the bobbin and tease
the holy cloth beneath the singing needle.
    I remember that each time a snag arose
or the spool was empty, you’d stay your hand
like the pope and say I’d rather smoke a camel
than light a candle or blessed is as blessed does
or when everybody kneels you be sure to stand.

envoi
Brother, collect your awards for all your ills
oh you father of the music-man and the poet
you bi-polar bear, you lover of those in jail
you maker of fusing storm and sudden calm
you dry drunk, you holy man

Be happy on your birthday,
we all have you within us
                                         Love
                                         Your remaining brother, Jim

open all my closet doors and let the skeletons dance. 
waltz Flesh against Enamel 
    and press Pink against Darkness.
let them shake hot wet language off onto the floor  
  and clack femurs 
  and bang elbows. 
invite my skeletons into the yard; 
stretch out in between them
and watch marrow turn yellow with Day. 

you’ve always wondered
what it would be like
to possess someone 
so wholly 
even god couldn’t exorcise
your soul from their body

Loving myself

is:

important

it is not:

easy

Day, dark as summer pudding,
air, heavy as the robes of a pope,
and the sun so chocolate,
we could not touch it.

Mismatched porch chairs
Litter the covered, L-shaped porch
Birds sing in the sturdy branches above and
Mountains line the horizon
Protecting and enveloping this town
Like a mother
Shielding her young from the world
The harsh realities that await them

It’s too easy to romanticize a place like this
That’s why I like to remember
The corner market next to the river
Next to the bridge that Molly would sleep under
Until the river washed her away
Or Tom
Who pushed his rusted grocery cart
Full of plastic
Until the wheels wobbled and fell into the current
One day it will claim the market as well
Its crumbling back end already teetering
Over the precipice
The water licking at the eroding bank
Demanding its next sacrifice

One day a giant wave
Will swallow this cute this little place
And no one will remember the decorations, the sevice
The french toast to die for ©
All that will remain is run-off
Dirty water pooling in a shallow ditch
Waiting for the next storm
To subsume and carry it
Toward the mountains beyond

The final pieces of that broken dock have their feet in the water
look straight ahead and you’re in the middle of the ocean.

We sit and get wet and talk about the color blue
the best thing about the sea is that everything tastes like salt when you get out
particularly each other.

I asked you what your first impression of me was because I always ask that
you liked my pink button down and I smile a lot
and that it seemed like I had my shit together but I’d proven you wrong. 

You asked me the same question and I said beautiful, obviously
among other things. 
But I’m only the second person to call you that in your life 
which is frankly, alarming.

A drinking game without the drinking
and never have you ever made out with anyone sober
two hours later I ask to kiss you and remedy the situation. 

A small fox steals an egg and
a goose stands honking
lifting her long neck and
flapping her wings in protest.  

The fox buries the egg.  

The governor’s children go
to the best private schools.  

The goose scrambles to protect all
her goslings as the fox steals
a downy yellow baby
its thin neck flopping in the his jaws.  

Its bill opens silently and the mother screams.  

The governor appoints six people to the board of education
who have no public school experience.  

The fox tosses the gosling to her fat pups
giving them the best possible start in life.  

The geese are forced to move on.