Posts for June 20, 2018 (page 3)

Dear You,

It’s me again, how are you doing?
Last night there was a gas leak and we sat for an hour
in the car parked outside our building
all three cats trussed up in harnesses
staring out the windows
we smuggled them out clutched to our chest past the rental company guy
claiming we only own two

My mom is done wearing her plastic neck collar!
It’s strange and good to see her unhinged
She’s been loading the bottom drawer of the dishwasher
and planting impatiens
and it’s the best news I’ve gotten all week

I got laid off last week and it’s funny
I couldn’t be more relieved.
That kind of thing is supposed to be bad news, right?
I’ll let you know if it starts to feel that way
but right now I own all of my time 
and nothing hurts

What is seen?
My dream or what the collective agrees to?

Something else, no imagining or hybrid vigor,
pounding out an intimation of meaning
onto rough tin sheets and shingles
tilted over pine seconds of poor
quality lumber to start with, looks like.

Lambent lake water lapping on
a cinder block
foundation from the fifties,
when George Hughes owned it.

Bioglobin is what I’ll call it.
I don’t know why. Don’t ask me.
It has no meaning. 
How freedom makes humility human.
At the 9:00 A. M. meeting a member said
“Today is a gift. That’s why they
call it the present.”

I, who will surely 
die yet practice Phenomenology,
endure this hysterical woman,
these static states of pain and vision,
red eyes squinched, weakly closed,
pounding sun blood, green veins marbled in jaundice.
Her potato chip skin, its dampened flacidity.
A crying jag  springs a leak,
creates a gasolene rainbow
spreads smooth, in spots globular,
on the water in reprisal.
Your children splash, your cigarettes and vodka,
which the more tired cheap
disaster?

How we all loved this camp
before your brother
took a hot shot
of heroin last summer
and burned it down
around him.

Now we’ve found an outrage that will sell some soap!
Now we can scream and scream and scream
Now we can be thankful our memories don’t keep
anything we wish we hadn’t seen

Now we can determine what’s true 
Just by knowing who said it
Now never have to bother with logic or reason or math
Or anything that happened in the past

Even when I look more shallowly I see
The concentration camp guard demanding a no-kill animal shelter
The man who bought his rainbow flag from Bangladesh ’cause it was cheaper

our country
overrun
by all of the things that we don’t stand for
and we stand here
doing nothing

Erasure from https://www.npr.org/2018/06/20/621798823/speaker-ryan-plans-immigration-votes-amid-doubts-that-bills-can-pass

The sky is angry and I am too 

I left all my sanity between a lake and a refinery 

And do you remember standing in the rain and screaming at God with me? 

I miss the smell of parliaments 

I miss the twenty minute walk to the thirty five scent drink machine 

I miss my family 

Say your prayers, and think of yourselves.
The things you need are not yours to take.
Keep your eyes fixed  on the future, and when you can sleep.
Sling your heavy feet forward, or crawl along the ground.
Every door out leads in.
I can’t escape yesterday.
The world witholds mercy, and time moves along.
I can dream, and I can hope for sunshine; but I’ve yet to see reason for keeping my hopes up.
I have memories, and they remind me of better days.
No one can escape yesterday, it follows you to today.
When I sleep I find brief mercy, and I live out my desires.
When I wake I medicate, and find false hope to move forward.

a reporter holds back tears
before a “tender age” shelter
she’s not allowed to enter

You do not flee from your home
if there’s not
something burning inside.
Try hard to gather
your family photos
if you can,
maybe some jewelry
you got from your grandmother.
Only the most important things,
when you know
you must go.
We never leave home
when it is safe.
Once we leave
it is not without fear.
Their bodies shook
and trembled
past the border.
I am not one to pretend
I could endure
the same.
I would never have
to imagine.
In the end it is all swept away like ashes and dust.
All that’s left is wondering
when we can wake up
from the American dream.

Three young dead skunks in the ditch
like mile markers. All week long,
I’ve seen carrion dip out of blue 
and onto their carcasses like night.

For hours I’ve been trying to write this poem
and talk about something. Every day
the universe turns itself into a fractal. 

Skunks torn by buzzards’ beak,
skunks in the ditchline. Everything is fragment 
and highway.

                         It’s easier to name it all
than it is to see it, easier to name it 
than to carry it home.

Magnolia bloom smiled at me
Through the glass and curtain.
Saved on that transplant tree
From dreams and songs I’m certain.  

Southern Belle I’ll never be, 
But loving things left dreamy
With flower scent and cotton rows
Fueled young hopes of handsome beaus.  

Years have cured me of such fancy,
But nature’s gift of that grafted tree
With her blooms, fall softly on a wistful
Eye watching the magnolia and the bee.