Posts for June 27, 2019 (page 2)

Sacred sustenance
It isn’t forthcoming, certainly not with the thirty minute delivery guarantee.

I have to tell you that everything I have to say has always been here, waiting for me to pluck

The words

From the air
From better minds
From the ground-vining fruit where the real knowledge ripens, because trees are too high for proper nerds to climb.
(Sorry.
Not sorry.
Take it up with management.)

From that look in your eyes that just says, “I can’t hear this shit again.”

This poem is clearance-aisle junk food past its sell-by date.

This poem is running into your best friend from grade four in the Pizza Hut parking lot and realizing they are just a boring stranger now.

This poem, despite all these stale popcorn words, is a blank page

Its

“I’m sorry, this box is full. Please try again at another time.”

The fireworks start, and she hides under the night stand.
She is a border collie mix.
Her name is Zara.

Some humans like fireworks.
Some keep the TV on all night while they sleep.
Some of us can’t stand silence.

When we are about to expire,
To evaporate, to discorporate,
Will it help to sing?

Swans don’t really sing before they die,
But there is a reason for the myth.
Humans need a reason for not crossing over in silence.

Will each of us be alone?
Do we already feel that,
Remembering times we felt deserted?

Maybe doing a standup comedy routine would make it more bearable,
We could laugh at our own jokes,
Even if no one else can hear them–except maybe for Zara.

My kids spent an
hour naming lightning
bugs. Catching them,
christening them,
setting them free to
fly away flashing with
their newfound identities.
I watched them running
around the yard, skipping,
singing; large animated
movements of joy calling
out to the hills with
fragments of songs. Not
caring about dew-soaked
feet or grass-stained toes.
Enraptured by the moment,
nothing on their minds but
the next bug they’d wrap
their little fingers around
and declare Fred or George,
Pie or Flashlight, no rhyme
or reason, just bliss. I
watched them, and
I wished for that kind of
all-encompassing glee,
but watching them is as
close as I’ll get.

I have known lust
                       too well
and love
                       not well enough.

19.6.27 (spoilage)

No matter —
      how green at first purchase,
      how many I get, 
      how I force myself
                  everyday to pack
                  it to work;

I’ll never eat the last
banana before it
has to be thrown
away.

This is the reason
I only eat fruit
when it is,
offered.

She tailored our plaid
culottes, pleated skirts, spangled
formals & every year one-of-a-kind
Easter frocks with intricate
applications that required hours
of craft – ruffles at the bodice, hand
embroidering at the cuffs and collar, silk
white charmeuse inside a box
jacket. It was small
town Tennessee, she wanted us
to look good & we did, but

she was losing the pink
tinge in her cheeks. She quit
polishing her toenails Hollywood
red & donned anklets instead
of sexy Cuban-heeled
stockings. She was handing
her sparkle to her daughters. It got
worse & worse & she shut
down the sewing abruptly & at 42
signed up for college. Her light
left on after we went
down for the night

while she wrote about Dickens,
Shakespeare, Emerson. She’d pull
all-nighters, refusing less than
an A’s. When I was 16
she started to sip Jack Daniels
& Coke when she suspected
we were down for the night she’d
drink more & more. She graduated –
magna cum laude – taught 7th
grade. So respectable,
but the search for beauty
& knowledge & the drive
to create ended. She slipped
into a slow indifference without
frill or written insight, one
wretched highball at a time.

I bought a bamboo back scratcher because
the door jamb couldn’t do the job
then found a noisy fan to mask the absence 
of your snoring. A stepladder lends me height.
A genie zips my dresses. The phone’s alarm
can wake me well enough, although your mouth 
upon my skin would rouse me somewhat gentler.
An app provides direction, another lists of songs.
Alexa reads the news and tells me jokes.
I’ve searched in shops in town and stores online,
but no one sells a gadget that will kiss
the nape of my neck unexpectedly or pinch
my ass as I wash and rinse the breakfast dishes
or spin me ’round to dance about the kitchen.

I want the ghosts on my side.
To pace worn stones
breathe vault airs
wrap myself child-like
in the willow tree
of spectral taint
that can shelter
me from deplorable
morns

I remember you gave me a peach for my twentieth birthday. You brought it back with you from Georgia. You reached it out to me and I told you I don’t like peaches, but I do love pears so we went to the market and you bought me a pear instead. You got me an artificial peach too–the kind made for a fruit bowl–and you told me when the peach went bad, so would your love for me. One night while I slept you left and I guess you put a real peach where the fake one had sat for so many years, because when I woke up, the peach had rotted.