Posts for June 3, 2019 (page 6)

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
– Henry Stanley Haskins

“What lies follow us and what lies
precede us are nothing
compared to the lies within us.”

Without qualm I misattribute
this misquote to Dr. Phil, who misread
a website dedicated to Henry

David Thoreau, misremembered
the source as Ralph Waldo
Emerson, and misreported

it thus: “What lies behind us
and what lies in front of us pales
in comparison to what lies within us.”

This is what you’ve been missing for almost a year a sore back and a sense of purpose a reason to walk around a retail store yes to put dollar bills in your pocket instead of wading them up and throwing them at cashiers this is godliness this is the holy spirit of capitalism filling you with fire forget the exhaustion forget the failure of your heart to pump in the way that best serves you this is it big guy this is the sweat you’ll mop up with a money order and hand to your wife for safe keeping welcome back to the material world welcome back to tangible tiles and box cutters welcome back to the chance to cut yourself for a reason you never belonged up there with us listening to the ramblings of dead stars while your wife held you aloft on her shoulders above a river of mud running downhill and juggled two sons and tap-danced on damp budgets in red ink you never should have looked directly over your head and asked question after question without earning a break without first reading the primary sources like the benefits of trying or the tranquility of settled debts without putting in the work to find some answers yourself try growing in the earth before you spread into the heavens try laying a foundation below your ladder before you start to climb

movement, how you lift yourself from reading, simultaneously cock your head and close your eyes, hearing a voice you half don’t want to, prompted by some chance happening on the page, or music in the background, or footsteps on the sidewalk beneath your window, someone you loved who’s gone now, dead or in Boulder, maybe even moved back and living two streets over but they use a different grocery store and never go to the post office. I catch myself doing that, too.

My fig-tree of imagination

That is waving his hands at me

Is he welcoming me, for a kiss

Or does my presence go amiss?

I cannot tell from the look of his veiny arms.

I cannot tell from the way he sways in the  rhythm of the wind

I cannot tell from the sparkling smile in his bud-eyes.

Is he looking at me, 

      Or a shadow behind me

            Or an apparition in front of me?

I do not know.

But I know that the last thing I would ever want,

Is to drown him in the over-flowing ocean of my love.

i write scenes of intimacy
lips pressing against lips
bodies, heat, love
and yet
the writer lies in bed,
alone
losing my virginity to myself

people in content relationships
tell me i must love myself,
first
but how do i know
when that’s accomplished

i find myself
craving things
i don’t even know
if i want

I don’t quite understand you
But you’re in everything I touch
My love for you feels real
But is truly artificial
Impossible to spot with the naked eye
You nevertheless influence so much of my life
Sweeten my day
Please don’t go, stay
I’ll keep taking out loans
Go on, congeal in my bones
Convince me you’re necessary
Without ever really knowing you’re there

Was it really just a year ago that
I took a handful of my grandmother and
then threw her from some dead girl’s mountain?

And
 
is it really okay
to do that to someone you’ve never met?

Beloved, sister of mine.

I miss you. You miss me, too.
We lie awake in some misty distant
house of missing each other.  

Who wrote this sorry romance
where none are complicit and
God is the unindicted
co-conspirator?

I am under the dog box for 2 months and 3 days now.
The scrape of wood against the lid kills my last fear of being found.
People are always looking in things not under them.
That old fountain pen is having another go at something:
a nasty poem, geometric doodle bits, some ragged grocery list.
Love letter from a coworker, ignored, I sits.