They say, “The bones of your hip,
the back. You can’t help but see.”
Then they fluster, directing me
to the elevator.
Earlier, quiet and surely, they mapped
my fifth lumbar with cautious fingertips.
Earlier, they lowered the heavy machine
with methodical tenderness.
In the parking lot, all I’m left with
is the poetry of bones.
where there “isn’t no
Coyotes, like in them hills,
no copperheads, rattlers, and no ticks.”
just gentle slopes rolling up to subdivision fences,
and the essence of wild flowers heated up by summer.
I think I smell the countryside
I hardly know, the clusters of Oak and Ash, the famed Bluegrass
I have yet to see.
If I could just find a clean piece of dirt to curl up in,
a patch of forest leaves
visited by beetles, and moss, and mysterious undergrowth
to dig my hands in,
I think I could begin to see
why people love it so.
when you make me feel guilty for who i am
adiós
is the only word i remember
from 7th grade spanish class
If we need the world to be kind
we can look at it with right mind
and seek what we want to find
and see, though once we were blind.
Look skyward—
trip. Gaze down —
stumble. Note the peripheral—
graze a streetlamp.
Off-beat, half-step
late can’t drink
it all in today.
Laughter lives in me daily
Like the playful breeze
That guides the squirrels
To and from the splash pines
Dotting the neighborhood.
I receive a fresh and constant
Infusion of love on the daily
Circulating through my spirit
Elevating and moving me to charity.
It is the grief that takes my breath.
It hides in the notes of a lost song
Twenty years forgotten.
It’s in the images of shared moments
Between myself and friends that death
Will never give back.
It’s in the sting of that last rejection,
And the last gasp of faith in companionship.
A cumulative force, an infectious silent killer,
There comes the day when the squeeze tightens,
Arteries closing upon themselves until, at last,
The throbbing muscle moves no life force to the mind.
The mind instructs the body to self destruct.
The Grief has done it’s job.
There is an ache sometimes when something beautiful finds your heart.
This ache (the final sound in a word as a poem crumples to ash inside your mouth,
the color the clouds wrinkle in the vast-drowning sky,
a story where sadness is embroidered in each note of its speakers voice)
is to remind you that
you were born somewhere else,
faraway,
where that same beauty hangs on every wall, on every limb, on every eyelash.
Now it aches because
you’ve forgotten where it is and
how to get there.
But your homeland keeps reflecting itself here, searching
for you, and whenever you hear it, your
heart will long for where it’s been.
i’ve got to quit buying those bics.
the dirt cheap, pastel, single blade brand
that never cost much more than a dollar.
the bargain seems to make sense
with my hillbilly budget and all,
but i been cutting myself
to scarlet ribbons,
leaving bright red blood streaks
trailing down the pale curve of my calf.
knicking big hunks out of both knees.
and i just got around to liking my legs!
there’s no sense in it, saving a buck
and ending up with razor burn
and sacrificing silk skin
on account of burlap sensibilities.
