Posts for June 26, 2018 (page 2)

you foolish too. think that only the ears hear? 
the heart wails through fingers dancing. on pedals 
leaning way back to slide. brass red extensions
massage oxygen leaving. the luggage of lungs 
soundtracks the block parties on golden streets
seraphim be throwing. on the eve of the apocalypse 
or the next morning or mourning. when the quiet comes
back home, those saints keep marching.
even when stars are falling on and on
from the sky

is it still called porcelain if it starts to bleed

I find a common loon beached,
huffing, meters from the tide,

feathers nettled,
backward feet buried,
head wing-tucked,
like a tumbleweed
lingering by a root.

I toss her grapes, bits of canned tuna
whatever I can muster
to nurture her back
to the water toward flight,
away from my panicked,
flapping heart, 
but she squawks, lunges,
digs in like a glacier.

“This bird. It looks injured.
I need help
removing it.” I beg
the wildlife rescue.

“Leave it alone. It knows
where it is, put itself there
on purpose,
needs more time
to rest. It will
recover, will drag itself
through the sand and take off
from the water

when it’s ready.”

I rightly leap from boats
whose fast fish make toothpicks
of the planks and I’m a coward

I float behind in the wake
alone in your promise to leave
that I ignored and I’m a castaway

I dared to stare into the sun
I saw God’s foot on the great loom
parted the temple curtain
of the great whale’s brow
read the hieroglyphics there
understood his face
I spoke his name

My favorite scent is the one we make together.
In the morning after you leave, I breathe deep these dirty sheets.
They need to be washed, but just one more day.
I wrap myself up and warm thoughts fill my head.
Remembering our night together, our limbs entwined.
Fourteen years later, we’re still my favorite scent.

My Hair
My fondest friend on good days and most stubborn on others
She dances in circles.
Twists her body until she feels complete
And when she’s that happy you can’t tell her a damn thing.

My hair has freedom in its follicles.
She has no time to be hearing your complaints
Or suggestions
Or testimonies
All she wants to hear is the sound of her own laughter.

My hair has a big attitude
She will trap your prying fingers in her tangled locks
She will take anything that dares to touch her
She is not afraid of silly things like humidity, rain, or wind
(As far as she’s concerned that’s my problem)

She laughs at expectations.
She scoffs at your volumizing shampoos
She cackles at your thin combs
She’s disappointed,
but not surprised,
When you think a quarter size of product will be sufficient for all of her.
She knows when something wasn’t made with her in mind
But if you think she cares then you don’t have it twisted enough.

She no longer has a sense of what she should or should not be
She no longer thinks about what she can and cannot do
All she knows is what she wants to do and what she doesn’t
And what she’s not gonna do is lay down
Play dead
Act like something she’s not
Will herself into submission.
She says if God wanted her to be straight and compliant and “polite”
Then God would have made her that way.

And I used to be fooled into thinking being civil resulted in acceptance.
I used to ask her to quiet down
Tell her that laughing so loud was making others uncomfortable
And she stood on the dinner table
Looked me dead in the eyes
Gently caressed my face and told me
“If I barely listen to you,
what makes you think I care about what they have to say”

So now we both won’t apologise for Our disobedience
Our distraction
Our display
Or our dance.
We’ve decided that it is not our fault
If you can’t find the rhythm.

maybe you were the calm before the storm
and I was the rain making love to the pavement,
leaving your feet sticky

It is on a strand of the Ohio
that these hydrangeas grow more beautifully
blue than I have ever seen.

Explosive flower heads full, sway
as the wind sways everything.  Blue,
spectacular ~ watery, soft, cyan.

We sit in white rocking chairs
at door’s threshold as time passes
like the barges on the river.

New Dawn roses climb
and drape the fence,
wrought iron against
a placid sky.

We share family stories and laugh,
laugh and catch ourselves.

Talking of our past, past talking.

Inside my mother lies motionless, silent,
her hands, her forehead, her lips, still.
She receives relief from pain,
                  life,
                      drop by drop by drop.

Of You
after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In your heart are the snows and the Sawtooth,
in your thoughts the Ponderosa spreads;

by your mouth a bee locates pollen,
by your hands a garden plots;

through your eyes more tunnels illuminate,
through your voice more embers glow.

. . . . . . .

A Teacher’s Haiku

Reading Nabokov,
you skip parenthetical –
but at your own risk.

The ancient Egyptians culled animals
from the wild, then they farmed them,
much like we once farmed and culled–will always
cull and farm. Now archeologiest study

their nature: the dry mummies, the valuable
frame of a chariot. These artifacts are studied
by our American scholars, each funded 
to their dollar amount: the cats, wise

-eyed, still; wildface dogs; wild-snouted
and weak-jawed crocodiles;
the more exotic pet, the ibis:
so delicate (an MRI showed one, its eight babies

in one irregular but tiny sarcophagus. 
you can see their baby ibis feathers,
well-preserved). Each one
represented a prayer.

I means, there’s a beauty
in what’s hidden. I mean,
history is important:
Glittering silica sandstone walls

in lantern light, explorers saw
opulent catacombs. Dreamed
of them. But in the end, I think over this:
how the rich came to Egypt

and took it home, how some would rather have left it all
underground.