No one can say otherwise.
Otherwise plants and animals wouldn’t exist.
Day and night, none. Time, none.
You and I, neither. Period. None.
No typeface, no words, no print nor sound.
From fruit to berries, from tree to book,
O sun, we worship you.
him like a crown of daises in her hair, lusts and sins begun in ancient times, forgone but not forgotten with the years apart and the promises of silence, vows almost overshadowed when the voices grow shrill in unexpected moments. So simple the yielding would be, how complex the inescapable aftermath reflected in the darkness of starless mid-nights far from common places. Wait while the call ebbs like any other urge to suicide.
I try to not look back.
There’s no changing it anyway.
It challenges me to find out
what went wrong , how I misjudged
that turn, why I kept going so fast.
I knew better. My only thought
in the moment was that it didn’t kill me
Now I simply try not to get hurt again.
Yet, the curves, the ups and downs seem
not so distant in my mind.
The issue is, “Will I die this time?”
What will be the ultimate cost?
How to learn while still moving forward
Fear cant drive my choices
The cost of living is having to hurt
But not dwelling on the hurt so much it ends you.
For Angela Davis
It was the rusty shovel in the ash bucket,
the over-jawed gum on our soles, a drone
of mind leeches swarming in unison,
our town just a mildewed past
we were desperately trying to shed.
Two Wonder Bread rebels so willing to trade
those land-locked notions for a free-thinking ocean.
We cruised our sass along Main Street,
scattered youthful mutinies like chicken feed,
shook a town where fear dwelled behind curtains
and closed minds rattled door knobs in the night.
We hung with a wild boy in a silver drag car
because his name was Huey,
fell asleep to Janis and Nina and Grace,
buried our bras where our mothers wouldn’t look,
echoed anti-war mantras at the dinner table.
We had yet to learn that cool also wore purpose,
sang to more than hair and high school.
We just wanted to be women bold
and brave and radical as a new idea,
as jazz,
as a hunger beyond.
In the South
manslaughter
has a different meaning
than it does
in the rest
of the modern world.
In the South,
manslaughter means
putting a mother on trial
for the death of her baby
when someone else
shot her in the stomach
because
she got into a fight.
If getting shot
because my fists
speak louder
than my words
results in a manslaughter charge
it is no longer a conversation
of life versus death
it is a conversation of
control
and power
and oppression.
Woman, I stand with you.
You fight until your last breath
for everything they have taken from you
and everything you
can never get back.
with fear, drift in the woods,
drench your body, breathe
blue smooth air, study sculpted rocks,
clods of iridescent moss,
patches of sun-flecked earth—
eyes or flames twitching.
Tongue the beauty.
~ Found poem composed/modified from words in Lucia Perillo’s poem, “Kilned.”
The day you arrived
The professor appears right around the time of Lord of the Flies.
First boyfriend walks across Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.
The Nature of the Judicial Process beside me in a bar booth with a good friend.
The candidate who steals my truck sleeps one floor down under Ohio Revised Code.
An angry poet relaxes when Selected Poems of Matsuo Bashō, is among us.
When I finally meet you, there are no new books on the book shelf.
Two years later, we are face to face with The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.
Pat the Bunny, Cat in the Hat, Madeline, these, all over the babies!
Comical thing about recollections
not being written in stone
but drawn with etch o sketch art
where shaking is not an option.
Rubik’s cube complexity
constantly twisting and turning
where the worst or best memories
can be dropped changing the averages.
The past lover
becomes the villain
when for five years
there was enough reason to stay
as love is spoken less
before you leave.
Somehow
memory draws me better than the original
kinder and compassionate
thanks to judgement on the curve.
If life continues long enough
I could have been a Jim Thorpe
a mismatched shoe nonpareil
or writer
with something worthwhile to say.
I was in a meeting
A corporate rah-rah affair
Felt like a church service
But I am not a believer
Speeches and sermons
Roll off my shoulders
No brag or dismissal
Often I want to adhere
To something
A cosmology, a canon
A simple goddamn schedule
A routine, a regimen
But too regularly
They seem regimes
Instead of stabilizing,
Sprout leaves that
Obscure full truth
Leaving twilight of knowing
And refutation of other
Ways of getting “there”
