Posts for June 6, 2019 (page 7)

We would have never won the war
Nor stormed the beach we honor today
Never even listened to the stories
of the witnesses of those damned on earth

Because we’re too busy fucking around on our phones

There’s more than enough horror going on today
To mount such an effort

We might want to liberate all the new concentration camps
Or save the rain forests
Stop the trafficking of kids
Or usurp an evil tyrant….

One day certainly we’ll be surprised
That it takes more effort to succeed
Than thumbing #support

(Inspired by and partially 
sourced by Bianca Spriggs’
urban legend fan fiction)

Her eyes looked like they held
the answer to anywhere.

Hungry for the tattoo star– her star —
occasionally I’d lift women’s hair aside while
they stood in line. Women change their
hair so often— hungry star. Diner on the corner star.

But maybe there is no star.
No last meal star. No greasy spoon star,
no mama’s home cooking star, no five-star
restaurant on the river star and no
blinking neon eyes that answer “Open” anywhere.

Women change their hair so often.
Maybe she said my name so softly
because she already knew it was written
high in the anywhere above.

We belonged. It haunted my name
in her voice. She had to leave town
that night. That night, she felt me at her neck.
She was already my ghost.

Turn the tides with tithings  
Eruption for us all.
Increase hate with hiding
Exposed to them all
Brain bashing invasion
Clear that things have changed
I know your every evasion

The mind police patrol again.

I want to hide in a box of paints
live there with a lonely painter

Scuff my feet along worn tiles of a craft store
breathing inspiration that smells like
wood shavings and tempera

Run my fingers over fabrics hanging in a row
dream of elegant dinner parties with handmade cloth napkins

Anything but read the news.

Staring at the bottom of a frosted glass
Her reflection flew past
Twirling solo, she always does
Regulars never knew what her name was

(Long-timers call her)
Sally Stack O’Dimes
Three shots with two limes
No ring and no hand
She dances for herself, no man
That’s Sally Stack O’Dimes

Pete cashes out her dirty dollars
And the regulars holler
A dance never comes their way
She runs after a day

(Whose sun’s already set for)
Sally Stack O’Dimes
Three shots with two limes
No ring and no hand
She dances for herself, no man
That’s Sally Stack O’Dimes

I hate you more than I have hated just about
anything.
You are loud.
Overly so,
like to the point that sometimes I can’t even hear myself.
I hate myself for having to rely on you 
to do the most basic of tasks,
and that half the time
you
cannot even be bothered to do it all the way.
You scream out,
like the slightest movement
pains you.
Is it for attention?
I literally could not give you more of that.
I spend so much of my time thinking of
you,
listening for the slightest change
in pitch or volume
so I know exactly when I have to jump in
and coddle you
into doing the only thing you are supposed to do.
I know your rhythms
better than my own.
I push and shove you until my arms ache,
your bulking frame fighting me back the entire time.
This is dance is not healthy.
This is not a relationship,
this is co-dependency.
This is the only cycle
you are capable of carrying through with. 

Minutes Hours Days

Measure It With Sand

All In A Small Forgotten Land

The heart is where all your 
love comes from.

It makes you want 
to do something that you 
are too shy to do.

The heart is the thing that gives 
you the most powerfullest
thing in the world.

Romance & love.

My old friend has collapsed
in on herself.

Her power shrunk, diminished her
to dependency.  She moves

in pain.  She’s disappearing
before my eyes.

The arc of our lives in sync
from class mates

to young parents. to joint travels
around the world.

At the peak of her power,
her mate orbited her sun.

Now he pushes her wheelchair,
brings her food.

If I could, I would bite into you.
Bite down, sink my teeth into the story.

I would listen and question and wonder
why the sun never rises in my bedroom,
why the morning never comes.
I’m sorry

This isn’t my feeling;
you are someone else’s sunrise.
I don’t know how to tell you that I don’t know what to do.

I fell into you
as a million paper planes crash into the sea and are,
if only for a moment,
afloat.

Then the waves come
and I drown in the sleeplessness,
drown in you.

My dreams change every night, yet I know
I want to swim.
I don’t want to die.
I want to see the amber reflection of sunlight
caught in the gravity of your tears
falling into orbit around me.
A constellation of worry
in a solar system stuck in perpetual darkness.