(after Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death)
the forest is rampant, a pathless
place of beating hearts and blinking
eyes, secret life beneath every leaf,
bark warm to the touch even in deep
shadow, a green sea of leaves that leap
and sway with the air’s unseen tide
everyday the lord gives me a new test,
and everyday i take the deepest breath i can manage,
point my red face up towards the sky,
and scream back to give me a fucking break.
let god hear this over and over and over again.
let him know that i am shameless.
that i will continue to roll up my sleeves
and reach down my throat into my own gut
to scrape more and more poison from it.
let god talk at the water cooler about the way my voice cracked,
tell em that my mascara ran,
that i tripped on my way out the back door
to scream at you again.
let them know that i am fucking shameless.
Smooches
I don’t want to pursue a significant relationship
I love you
No marriage, living together, lovers, etc.
Sweet young thing to take care of me
I am fond of you
Sweetie
Our house near Santa Anita
I’m a loner
Hon
I really don’t want anything more than a casual friendship with you
Love, (Name Deleted)
This is not a response to a bad day
I couldn’t have made it through this year without you
You’ve saved me
This is me
I love you, baby
I am very fond of you
It’s me; you can tell me anything
I don’t want to talk about this
Tell me more
I don’t want to examine it
What are your wildest fantasies?
It’s not a negotiation and not a debate
You’re my sexy little girl
Please don’t call me for a while.
In this pandemic
with feelings worn,
disheveled like the bed
from which I rise each morning,
words evade my mask
these nights and days
as though dead,
chilled,
they are
to my touch
not heeding
my tears,
my mourning.
In a red sky,
from the southwest,
red sand drifts,
with words ahead.
I will gather the best
of them
like heirloom seeds
saved
for spring planting.
I will dig them
into a blank page,
running horizontal
like furrows
across a garden.
I am pulled like a tide
under this crescent moon.
My thoughts gravitate to you,
a resolute rhythm.
I wax and wane with
longing, I wash up
on the shore of moments
half-faded by memory
but held fast in my heart,
less detail now, more
raw feeling, I
ebb and flow
with your pulse
in my veins,
your cool light reflecting
off my surface
like gratitude.
visited the roadhouse on days after
a brawl to pay for damage to the premises
fought on the battlefields of France in WW I
held a classified position at home three decades later
writhed and moaned during a recurring nightmare
about a kitten, coat and railroad station
drank whiskey, shot craps on Saturdays
taught Bible class on Sunday mornings
tried to live according to the teachings of Christ
yet rejected the concept, Son of God
ran his thumb through a power saw right after
he finished teaching a class on safety
read philosophy, history, Shakespeare, the Psalms
delighted in Peanuts, Pogo and musical theatre
When my children’s
lives depend
on the fate of a
world that feels
too much
like a dystopian novel,
and humanity
is failing
the simplest tests of
compassion and empathy –
it is too much.
I take them
into the woods
often to learn
the plants
and mushrooms
and berries,
to learn to build shelter
and track animals,
to soak in the
life-sustaining
beauty of our world and
to understand how we fit
with these trees
and cliffs
and squirrels
despite our
educations and
technologies;
despite the ugly sides of
ourselves we see paraded
across the news, and
to know we can blaze
our own path
when we need to.
I never had that signature rebel phase as a teenager,
so I’m surprised when it bubbles up in my thirties:
dark purple lipstick here; a bottle of half-drunk moscato
in my closet since Christmas; vivid orchid hair paint
in my Amazon cart for a few days just to mull it over.
If you’d asked me at seventeen what I’d be like
at thirty, all I’d have been able to conjure up
was the pitch-black vortex of unforgiving space.
Never could imagine myself past my twenties,
but if I had, I’d have told future-me to finish the wine.
My hydrangea are all pink
pale pink, rosey pink, pretty pink.
I want them blue
violet blue, sky blue, purple-black blue.
When did Barbie arrive here in her high heels?
waving her pink purse around,
giggling in my garden,
even the pink roses are not amused—
she is taking over—
her blossoms big and bossy,
I have never seen pink this sassy—
the dianthus are fading fast!
,
