Posts for June 4, 2019 (page 6)

who lives behind the doors in the hillside. It’s a wee house, compared to being outside, but it suits me well enough. I’ve seen you under the oak that’s older than everything, reading your books and watching me work. I’m shy around other people, but I learned to not hide. Can’t have a greenhouse underground, can you? That would be stranger than any medicine woman’s arts. And that’s all I am, you see. No curses, no poisons, no poof! you’re-a-toad spells. Just a healer of other folks’ maladies. Almost no crazier than anyone else, except that I wear my hair a different color sometimes, so I’ll have someone new to talk to.  

A mockingbird haunts our yard –
I smile when she steals a strawberry.  

She flits here to there
flicks her tail
cocks her head
perched in the Garden of Eden
singing everyone’s song

Sometimes
Life hits you like
A bat to a ball
A fist to a jaw
A truck to a deer
A meteor to the atmosphere
A car to a pole
A bullet to the soul
Get back up.

Some days I feel like my body is dying
I guess it always is, technically
Must it be so emphatic though?
Leave me a trace of doubt, an illusion
That this isn’t my life from now on
Some say it’s in my head
I must be more powerful than I thought
A mad sceientist could harness this freakish ability
To harvest imaginary pain, nurture it into reality
A Bond villain with the perfect conduit for
Dastardly plans, keeping the simpletons sedate
and distracted
Okay, forget the movies
My talents belong in the government
Sowing discontent, deceit and pain
Just please don’t make me work nine to five
That’s the real killer

Yellow flower bursting
Through consciousness
Lost in morning light.

I like the term
“curated imperfection”
a precision cut
missing the vital organs
of self

in group prayer you might say
brothers,
I was impatient with my wife and kids
or
I’m really struggling with depression

what you mean is
five nights this week I indulged porn,
and fantasized leaving
or
I filled my garage with more
watched hours of television   
laid awake at night
asking the Lord to take me home

we curate like a dead man
convincing you he is just alive
to mask the stench of decay   
to mask the means
to lift a friend from the grave   
in grace, to say
“Me too.”

i keep telling myself
all i want is a fling
when even the squirrels know
i’m lying

For the last three nights

Doing these things

That someday might be codified

Into Ritual

I set down the book

Turn out the light

Unfold my pillow

Thoughts and images tumble up

Revealing one word

“Bombs”

Thus is the nature of Prophecy and

Why most stand on street corners in other people’s clothes

Yelling at everyone, reaching no one.

How easy it would be

When shrapnel flies and people scream

To gloat and say “See? See, See!”

Catastrophe happens continuously

Job security

Defining what your death might mean

But this is cheating

If I used a hand
to cover every part of my body
that I didn’t like,
I’d need a lot more hands.

But if I had that many hands,
I’d want to use them
better: more clapping and writing
and brushing hair out of eyes
and cooking meals together.

I want my hands to care,
even for myself 
(even if that comes slowly).

Let my charred ribcage be a fireproof cathedral for you.
Let my canary lungs sing the choir,
Looking always through stained glass and Rose tint.
Let the magic be the memory where misery can’t reach,
A beachhead barred where the beasts can’t breach.
Barely breathing, whispered prayers bow before the altar, neither here nor there.
Let me lift you, as you have lifted me.

If I plant you a flowerbed, will you sleep well and have sweet dreams?
Will you wake up with aching brain resolved and impish grin adorned?
Will you remember every day what it is to be adored?