i got the moment
i lured you into taking with me;
we’re silent
cause there is nothing
we can say
that we are allowed
to tell each other.
but we are not still;
our movements
are not subtle.
and maybe that made
us realize
that we are not allowed
to be alone with each other.
Whole wheat toast with
dark roast coffee. Let the ills
of the world diminish
from my mind like the receding
tide. My input not required.
The day is mine to refresh,
renew, and replinish the drive
our world has drained from me.
Nothing heavy today. Just watching
Leslie Jordan videos on Facebook
and laughing away the day.
Well $#i+!
I reach for your hand and shake it.
I express my gratitude for your maturity,
but the juvenile peeks from behind your blank stare and extends a wry smile.
The acknowledgement startles him and he seeks makeshift cover in your dark elements;
he can’t hide.
I ease my kung fu grip to greet your weak nature
but the blade your cuff obscures pierces my wrist.
No surprise there.
I smile as my blood drains slow;
My heart can’t pound or rattle my chest in your presence.
I tilt my hand to stain you red.
The horror you express is enough to satisfy
but not enough to signal the rapture.
You can’t kill me.
I know you wish you could.
I live on your farm
I live in your house
Left my deck on Hwy 62
Left my furniture, left my horses
Moved in with you & your kids
Kid you not, something I said
I’d never do
I’m most useful
As a grisly scare crow
As an occasional Paul Revere
For city folk come to your shop
Or a hand in the garden
When my back’s not out
Too old to run away
I sit at the secretary and scratch
My shoulder blade with a butter knife.
I hear a great dragon
In the ceiling above, some creature
Whose stature is more than rodent,
Bring home his prey and
Making his bed. I pray to St. George,
Think of renting a flame thrower
In his nineties my grandfather,
dressed in a suit and tie,
would spend mornings on the veranda
of the house he had built brick by brick,
the newspaper spread before him,
prepared to confront anyone who dared
to reach through the wrought iron fence,
painted turquoise, to pick a rose.
Afternoons, still wearing his fedora,
he would stroll alone to the café for an espresso.
On one visit in my twenties,
he made me run to the store to replace
my brazen miniskirt. On my last visit, I asked
whether he had realized all his goals in life.
Nothing had been left undone, he claimed.
Only one wish lingered that I could fulfill.
He shared his grave desire with me–not
from the head of the table before his family
or during the uproar that followed dessert
the time my mother called him a dictator,
but after winning at cards on a Sunday afternoon.
He asked me whether, when the time came,
I would arrange, at his expense, for a brass band
to play at his funeral. I could honor him with a eulogy.
Under the Quilt
The morning sun
streaks across me and
warms my face
just enough
to rouse me from sleep.
My body still weary from restlessness
protests the waking…
But I stretch and yawn and
feel life begin to course through
my muscles and veins.
Age and life have worn on me
like my grandmother’s tatter quilt
the one that still warms me
on cold nights.
It, like me
is old and used but
still it serves its purpose.
My eyes focus
on the beams of sunshine
that fill the room
replacing the night cold
with warmth.
I throw back the quilt and
feel the mixture of
more cold than warm
against my body and
I am tempted
to pull it back and
let it cover me…
But I do not
I must rise up
face the day and
move on
like I have
all the days of my life.
Tony Sexton
Standing at the peak of my roof, hammer
and nails in hand, having secured
the ridge cap after months of freewheeling
hedonistic waving in the winds of storms,
rainwater pouring down where it does not
belong, soaking the bones that hold
the bones of my family, I look out over
the backyard and see a clear division
of earth and sky, the coffee tree canopy
making a smooth delineation against
the cloudless smoke-blue sky, like hanging
upside down over the endless ocean,
I could swim forever, up and up until
the blue goes black and then the black
goes blinding luminescence, I could
spread something like wings and never
stop spreading, I could snuggle
the earth into dream-filled sleep.
Billie, portly and paint-splattered
in his wheelchair,
holds court in his warehouse gallery with the flair
of New Orleans royalty. Ann Stewart
Anderson’s work
covers the walls. Too feminist
for his Old South taste but finally
her first stone collage
converted him with its clever wit.
He regales me with tales
of her last days when Parkinson’s destroyed
her painting but she could still wield scissors
like a surgeon. Billie was an actor
with his gesturing hands, aglow
in the memory of her.
On her death bed she continued
to clip and snip and arrange fabric.
Even at the very end
refusing to slow down saying
Matisse died with a paintbrush in his hand.
Funny how the most important thing for survival,
Can be the most deadly,
Funny how a source of calmness and delight,
Harbors so much fear,
Funny how something so close,
Is vastly unknown,
Water is needed to survive,
But can easily cause an untimely end,
Beaches are pristine and joyous locations,
But the depths of the ocean harbor frightening creatures,
Water surrounds our continents,
Yet we barely know about what lies at the bottom of that abyss,
Water is such a fascinating atomic mix,
Full of both wonder,
And fear
