Posts for June 15, 2019 (page 3)

Ethereal scene
molecular landscape haunts
grotesque genetics

Distorted forests
disintegration lichen
spreading as man’s fire

We hoe and harvest 
hurried by the rain 
promised for tomorrow. 
My son dresses furrows  
with our goats’ gift 
of manure 
places popcorn seed 
into its womb 
so the treat 
that will lighten 
winter evenings 
can sprout to life. 
I pick the last currants 
bid tschüss 
to the tart red berries 
from bushes that branch 
under Kentucky’s sun 
but are rooted 
in Swabian soil. 
This June’s ruby gems 
already bejewel Torten 
rote Grütze 
and morning oatmeal. 
 
These holy moments cinch 
the loop of our story –  
I warmed him from his beginning 
he will tend me till my end. 

I’ve started to paint
the intense experience
of only painful things
the wounds that I open to see
everything that chains you
transformed into the green miracle
to take off the first layer
of the fence that separates us,
to think about collapse,
and if it’s possible
to transfer something that heavy
into a tangible form:
wind, silk, girl,
leaves, blades,
cupboards, sparrow.

I will heal better,
learn how to swim through
this bloody tiredness
to breathe through the mirror
the round porthole you can find
everything there is in.
I am the embryo, the germ, the first cell
of an aquatic animal
enveloped in the embrace
of extraordinary beauty
which runs in the vessels of air,
the tawny throat
of an immense tide—
mud, mother
from which will emerge
a new me.

~ Cento of lines/phrases found in Frida Kahlo’s diary and her letters.

Caught a glimpse of you
 riding a comet’s tail
 in a galaxy 
 beyond the  
 Milky Way

My naked eye
tricks me
humbles me
frustrates me

because
20/20 times three
isn’t enough
to see

and
   
I
lose sight
of you
leaning
laughing
lusting
for what lies 
in uncharted skies

And then I’m
steadying myself
in an unexpected
celestial breeze

When we kissed, I imagined I
shaped you, filled you with my own breath and
spun you. When we parted, I cut you free
before you collapsed. I never
thought I’d leave this piece unfinished.
But you were never
my project – never incomplete-

Glenn, also known as “Low drama Glenn,” I mean Epipremnum aureum

AKA Neon Pothos
Also known as blazing, radiant, shining

in the aspect
to yearn, to covet, to ache, to pine

perched? rested … perched?
a vibrant, yellow green piling and unfurling of goldengreen

he gets two or three new leaves a week, you know
now that he’s let everyone know exactly what he needs

these victories are so rare
and never less
than hard-won

he is heart-shaped leaves in a pot, painted as a rainbow ending

in Portugal.

If you ask Glenn what kind of animal he wants to be, he will tell you.
–he’s the only one who tells where you can hear it.
–he’s so used to telling lies, but here, the honest truth.

“A firefly. Lit up and undeniable.”

Glenn has never heard the fado.

to pine, to covet, to yearn, to ache
but he feels it

How brave must it be, he thinks, to look fate in the eye and say, “Your eyes are mine, because with your beauty, you’ve left me blind.”

Leadfoot to riverbottom,
I’ve always been a tangled up twist of thoughts,
Some hazyfaced incomprehensible knot.
I’ve built this labyrinth of concepts and doubts,
And only gotten more at home among the mess and masterpiece.
But I’ve found the gordian solution.
I have come open in the presence of the bladed edge,
A queen of loosenings.

I wish I had an ounce of what you’ve got

that keeps your feet on the ground 

even though your head is not.

should that be the time
personally bad news hits
who do you trust
to answer your call?

They are the one
who knows everything about you
to the point you can say a word
or a name. And they know

tonight is a bad night.
Worst of the week, the month,
almost impossible to get through
alone.

If you can think of someone
consider yourself blessed.
If you go home to them
consider yourself saved.

If they’ve been there
from the beginning
consider yourself invincible.
You we’re never in danger

because you’ve never known loneliness
like when your world is breaking
while you’re sitting at the bar
or at home in the dark

staring at your phone like
where the he’ll can I go with this,
like
this is the end

and not one person is around
to stitch up the wounds in your soul
and convince you that
somehow this is a beginning.

I’m sorry…
I’m just trying to swallow
so much regret,
so many words unsaid.

Tonight is just marked by silence
and the end of a story
that never had
anyone to tell it to.

The storm began to brew
gigantic thunderheads filled the early evening sky
flashes of lighting illuminated trees
as they began to bend from the force of the storm.  

You were watching out the screen door
with growing anticipation
as the hot winds blew our cares away. 

Standing with your arms braced in the doorway
as if the whole world could be torn to the ground
I softly kissed your neck. 

If not decades before
I knew in that moment
that I wanted to spend the rest of my life
in your embrace.