haiku 22
the bus door clangs shut
the old man steps into the yard
it’s different this time
Tomorrow
look, Life–You can keep going,
and i will too–but i feel like
Youve got the upper hand.
i lie inside and recognize
the sound of a cardinal
taking seeds.
it is a sound only made
by cardinals taking seeds.
it is a click
like none you hear otherwise.
i blink and theres empty
squares of light on the only
wall i look at, nights.
they tell me my lungs are bad and
i have snowpants, rain suits, tested
and tried waterproof boots that
stand the creek, alright. but it is
pajamas, if that is what you might
call this outfit ive worn 60 hours.
i saw buttercups in January.
also, native cheeries bloomed.
i wondered if theyd bloom
again come spring, but i
wont know, now will i?
i open a window, a dog barks
by City Hall. something in my
gullet tells me, Tomorrow.
One mom drops her kids at camp today.
Her hair is up in two space buns.
Her lulu lemon leggings have cutouts down the thigh.
She says she’ll be back after yoga.
I try to hold back my judgement
when I check her ID at pickup
and her wallet spills open.
Countless credit cards
and three different
yoga studio memberships.
This camp costs her
$500 this week.
I’m wearing a shirt that says,
“best summer ever,”
and it feels like a lie.
This week’s theme is space.
We’ll have our star wars
space army any day now.
All the brown children
are in cages one the border,
without clean drinking water,
or sprawled out in front of the cops
with bullets in their bodies
and hands
perpetually in free fall
from above their heads.
Almost as if gravity too,
has failed them.
The white kids are coloring
pictures of aliens,
reading about astronauts,
and trying all the flavors
of space food
until their mom’s finish yoga
and shopping
and get out of their salon
appointments
a few minutes past
closing time,
but they’ll pay the overage charge…
“It’s only $1 a minute
and then we can all go home.”
I want to quit my job.
I want to rip my shirt off.
I cry my whole drive to therapy.
I am sitting
in the waiting room.
I see a lady spill her lunch
on her pencil skirt
and stilettos.
I help her clean it up
with my second-hand
embarrassment.
I feel so alone here.
In this scratchy blue chair
with the red swirly pattern.
I stare at the painting
on the wall and try to decide
what it is even a picture of.
I hate the weird off-white walls
for looking almost yellow
with age.
I watch the door
waiting for my therapist.
She is running three minutes late.
I am so lucky.
I forget
how temporary this discomfort is.
I forget that after I pay
for my hour to discuss
this painful life,
I can walk right out.
I can even ride the elevator
down alone.
I can walk out to my car
call my family for updates,
even pick up my favorite
Starbucks drink
on my way back
to the job that pays
me well.
Anxiety like this
is something
dreamers can only
dream of.
How sad
that I forget,
sometimes.
Rickety shipsink,
All broken brotherhoods are
Wreckage and driftwood.
Half a prayer on varnished beads,
The rest lost to seasalt.
Like that killerbee, and usurper prince prior,
The pugilist found his way to the waters;
Seatombed with a scripture on bonds,
And a depthswallowed army of marble.
Holding you in my memory,
I think about you,
and women,
younger like you, writing
to them as did Michael Hartnett,
the Irish poet who
wrote to younger women
when he came back to writing
poems in English after he let
the language go.
He decided it was only fit
for writing “pigs for sale”
and little more.
I wish you could go
with me to Ireland and visit
Hartnett’s home town. He drank ale
to toast romance outdoors.
Even though poetry is
not your thing,
it is mine, for it
is but a part of my wild side.
The memory I hold of you is
poetry, the light in your eyes, nothing
more, except it
was a glance you tried to hide.
I imagine you and I
could walk the streets he
loved and stand by his statue
while I read his poem,
one that rhymes like poems I
write, but he
never read. I will read and you
will hear his words, but my poem
I write today
must shine within my eyes
as full moons held
within dark skies.
Pittsburgh, I love you, but you don’t treat your roads well:
you’re turning them into cemeteries.
No, what I mean is – you don’t treat your kids well:
you’re turning them into obituaries.
A Rose by another name
would sound less Black,
would look less Black,
would walk away without 3 holes in his back –
but this is how he bloomed
and didn’t have a chance to wilt.
His blood-red petals
on the pavement were spilt.
A day later it rained.
Is this how Heaven grieves?
Wash the road where it happened,
but the stain never leaves.
They say to let it slide
like water on a duck’s back
rolling off, ignored.
I say that’s great and all,
but throw that fucker into the occasional waterfall,
then see how its back holds up.
We write, then revise.
We ponder over the option
of words, trying to make
the picture perfect choice.
Most importantly, we edit.
We can fix all errors easily
enough. In the real world,
mistakes are not mended
that effortlessly. A shame.
It’s mid-June in my seventieth year, and I’m trying to write about fifty, sixty years ago, about the old lady who lived down the street in a tiny Cape Cod almost screened from the road by ancient elms, and suddenly realizing I know almost nothing. She was the Old Widow to us, Mrs. Freiczek to our parents, no first name, and I might be spelling it wrong. Now, guessing, she was a war widow who came from some anywhere in Europe, or not. We never saw visitors come and go, never saw her at church or in the butcher’s. I know we were all scared of her, hated when a bad swing lofted a ball into her yard, ending the game unless a bigger kid retrieved it, and yet I don’t recall her ever coming out to yell at us, cast the evil eye, or turn us into donkeys. With time the dirt road was paved, the ditches filled with concrete pipe and covered. The prairies we’d played in became fenced lots with houses while we were growing up and moving away with our lives. One time I came back to visit my folks and her house was gone, she was gone, nobody even sure what happened to her, and she faded away into an old man’s struggle to recall, like every era’s end.
