Posts for June 30, 2018 (page 5)

I’m sitting on the floor of your bedroom and I’ve just rifled through all of your drawers looking for something to make you human
a vibrator, anything, I don’t care
but I hate that your things are still here without you
folded into neat rows by my grandmother

All I find is a pair of reading glasses 
I’m pretty sure you didn’t put them there they were probably just cluttering up the room
and I think about stealing a scarf with horses on it just to wear and think about you
but no I’ll let my grandmother offer

Missing your funeral is the first adult thing I’ve ever done. 
Fuck this.

There’s braggart in a soil plot
the politic of growing food stuff
when beans are .60 at the IGA
and it takes no pressure,
no exploding jars
no hot water bath 
and popping lids. 
One thing for granny
quite another for me

Asshole rabbits ate my
carrots, radish, beets
moths, my cabbage
birds, the blueberries
beetles, my beans
mush bugs, my squash
some smug 
little paw and smoky eye 
waits for the corn

what is this the end or something
june with so much lime and mulch 
all those poems I planned on harvesting

it’s the showing up, right
hand to the plow
attention and water 

hail, this one banana pepper

See you next June, my poet friends. 

I
Through a magnifying glass
Tiny white specks scatter
On long thin cherry pink petals.  

II
Last night’s moon dust
Speckles magenta petal-blades.
Dime-sized blooms startle
Meadow’s edge.  

III
Poet needs no magnifying glass.  

IV
Flower name came first,
Color “pink” later.  

V
No more meadows in Deptford,
Where London sprawls.  

VI
Could grant shade
To an ant or maybe two.  

VII
Pinks unfold in June,
Show me the harvest
Of summers at home,
Sown between those
Spent elsewhere.  

VIII
My son brought me news
Of the blooms this year,
Displaying
Devotion for our soil,
One measure of his soul.

(I have so enjoyed this month with all of you and your poetry. I’ve learned a lot and I appreciate deeply the kind words you’ve shared. Thanks also to the organizers, facilitators and donors. I’ll be in Germany next summer, but will find a way to participate. I wouldn’t miss it!)

2017: the year of blossoming flowers and finely painted porcelain 

Drawing green globes over my sleeping eyelids 

Turning backs on every smile that I once knew 

Praying to an alter of survival and self growth 

My voice was given to me in 2018

So reach in past my rib cage and plant seeds in my heart 

Bring this decaying body back to life 

After all this time
it feels you and I
have become
like two turtles
side by side
hidden in
safe little shells
whose hands would touch
if both of us
could just find
a sliver of courage
to reach.

I wish I could write a poem
on the last day of this time
But apparently I can’t
I just know to rhyme

I have been told several times
“You don’t always have to rhyme
 There are other ways to write”
But I don’t think that it’s a crime

Little Orphant Annie and
The ride of Paul Revere
Were the poems I grew up with
And I hold them very dear

So I’ll stay true to what I know
And try to stay upbeat
Writing rather silly poems 
While trying to fill a sheet

This has been my magic place
I go to every day
Unearthing all the treasures
That others have to say

I’ll miss everyone I met
And wish we had more time
You’re my hidden, secret world
And it’s been just sublime

one

”the people yes”
march chant sing resist
brown black pink
we are born to migrate 
the future glows with color

two

Jack lives 
under a bridge
wanders
up and down streets
shouting to the sky

never knows who
stalks his hideout leaving gifts
and stark graffiti 

three

old women gone
ghosts like crows surround
the moon
my mind roils and rants with
questions I never asked

It will come, the beauty of the leaves
with knowledge that, for beauty, all moisture
will have soaked to the ground, or the sun.
Colors, so many colors, and a turn—

but it is summer
and early morning sweats itself heavy
across shoulders. 

The grass is still damp—
a good eight inches of naked
growth.  I must mow, today,
in this heat.

Branches lay dead in a pile
at the corner of this enclosure.
Eight feet tall—in tribute
to the tree that broke for winter.
I must break them, again,
and again, to fit
into some measure
of disposal.

So much to do.  So many responsibilities
to tend.  To continue.  To keep
rolling on.  But

for now, I steal the sunrise.
Raise a red umbrella, to shield—

for coffee (from the pot you gave)
laced with vanilla sugar (from the batch you made)
and one last poem, while I wait

for the familiar message,
incoming and echoing

I love you too much, so I’m saying

goodbye.

She couldn’t wait to sneak inside
where everything was cool. But
soon enough she recognized
that none of it was real
and there was almost nothing
there for her to eat.

And so she wasted precious days
of her allotted twenty-eight
banging herself repeatedly against
the cold, hard promises of light.

The hand pursued her
a dozen times a day 
until finally she lay
exhausted on the sill.

The hand slowly pushed up 
the window and the real world
revived her with its warm, moist
breath. She jumped back into it.

She will, no doubt, forget all this
and fall for the air conditioning
a few more times in her short life.

There was a precocious little girl
She wasn’t just smart and well-read
She also knew right from wrong
She didn’t have a lot of power
But she knew how to use what resources she had
By being a little bit naughty
It worked.