Posts for June 5, 2020 (page 4)

Find the riverbed, covered in long-forgotten and discarded metal.
Car doors, scraps, and unused steel below, waiting to grab onto a limb.
Do you dare float on your stomach?
Do you trust your legs to not seek out what lies underneath the water’s surface?

A rapid waits around the bend.
Do you dare leave the raft?
Do you ignore curiosity and hunger to stay afloat?

How do you know when you love something?
Is it when you toss and turn, nauseous, at the thought of having to give it up?

The water cools your hands, but is that really enough?

Tiny deer
flowers about her neck
stares at copper donkey,
dumbfounded.
How did I get here?
she wonders
  (she wanders)
Up on a table 
full of brushes, pens, pencils
pink, she blushes.
Get to work!
brays the ass.

I’m stuck with a slob
displaying filth upon us
killing everything

Never giving time
just asks “is dinner ready”
eating all we had

An autistic child
only I understand, Love
my purpose, protect

Child cant speak, wife eats
I go insane, nothing real
just flowers I see

the war is over, except it isn’t. The memories are still fresh, and so we rehash the cowardly enemy, his unconscionable atrocities, our brave men and their acts of heroism. We watch the documentaries, parades and propaganda, salute those who’ve returned and bow our heads for those who never can.  

the war is over, except for unfinished business. The time for plowshares is upon us, the labor of undoing the work of bombs and shells, bullets and rockets. Instead of exacting tribute, grinding lives beneath our heels, we feed recent enemies and allies alike, rebuild their cities, restore their fields, restart their industries.  

the war is over, except it never really is. The alliances shift, bonds deepen or break. We embrace those we recently vilified, vilify those we embraced. Waiting just over the horizon, patriotically being prepared for, the next iteration readies itself for the call we told ourselves would never come again.

if even once your love were true
the lies unfold the truth
were i up there in spirit now
release i would my youth

Mostly, I would tell you,
were I asked, as your
outgoing volunteer tutor
in math, to change nothing.
Not to add, subtract
multiply or divide
a single value.
To let the natural
trajectory of your spirit
chart its course,
without consideration
of great odds you cannot
comprehend yet stacked
against you. Now you can
solve most any math I put forth,
or if not, still you yearn for
understanding without fear
of uncertain theorems.
Your confidence in congruence
not yet calloused, equations
still are balanced, numbers
arranged neatly
on crisp pages;
but along the ray you cast
surely will arise some wrinkles
not explained by math.
Though you are sharp
as a leaded number two,
there will be whole
chapters without quantity
you must claw through
and only you can solve
this proof for you.
I pray the world
you meet is ready
to receive the gifts
you bring, but this world
is often caught in its own
quagmire of derivatives
and seldom can it see
past its own pain
to accept the gifts
we have to give.
Give them exponentially.
All of them, without concern,
and be generous, not to earn
respect or gratitude,
but to know who you are
and where you belong,
at peace with strangers
as in solitude.

One bad thing
about living alone is that
when you discover the itch on your shoulder blade
that you can’t reach
is a tick from the cemetery
where you went to weedwack your husband’s grave
you’ll need somebody
who can come over
right now
to pluck the little bloodsucker off
to dab the bite with alcohol
to laugh with
about the whole damned situation

When I was 27
I wrote poems,
bitched about
my night shift job
at the car factory.
My baby learned
to walk, 4 steps
from me to her aunt
and we cheered
so loud, the baby
started crying.
When I was 27
I went into
my father’s hospice
room and held
his hand, planned
his funeral
with my mother.
She did not
plan mine.
When I was 27,
cops did not
shoot me 8 times
in my bed.
I did not become
the current face
to humanize
institutionalized
racism and common
violations of justice.
When I was 27
I was allowed
to live.

By the hospital
Outside the window
A field of burnt grass
Young rabbits
Old rabbits gather.

The patient imparts
Sense to their movements,
Gentile decisions.

Imagines
Love in their eyes
And a social order.

One of the orderlies
Puts out food every morning.
Says I can come with him
Sometime. When?
Mabbe tomorrow.

The patient sees
 His reflection unsmiling
And a clock face unsmiling
Trapped in the window.

She wasn’t ready
The swelling of her belly 
The stretching of skin
Her body no longer a temple
But a vessel

The goddess of beauty
Can’t seem to see
The new vision that she is blooming

Motherhood isn’t always welcomed
Not until the blooms have blossomed
And the seasons have passed
And the vessel has became a time capsule

Nothing but a case for the memories she didn’t understand would one day be treasured moments

Sometimes we
Take for granted our fertility
Not realizing the beauty thats coming