nothing is ever exactly as it seems
which is perchance the cause of many complaints
dissatisfaction breeds contempt
as does familiarity
sometimes we hide from even ourselves
pretending all the while, we are well and adjusted and striving
except we are none of those
we are resentful and behind
clinging to an ideal
motioning ourselves to move
ever forward
all the while, politely declining
stymied and abashed
if you don’t stop crying, i’m going to call the police
stupid cow and cunt and vampire slut
some witch
cut a switch
you’re a terrible human
being, i hate you
i am so muchbetter than you
you are punching above
your weight i am
a handsome man
i could do so much
better than you
you are a retarded
adult, i can’t
afford you, i can’t
handle your weight
don’t try those waterworks on me sweetheart
you are getting
bags under your eyes your dark
circles have circles there’s a cream for that
do not defy me, insert variable adjective here bitch
you are lucky to have me, think of me
for once think of your son did you even stop and think don’t overthink it you’ve got to move
now you’ve got to plan ahead
i can talk to wolves you know
my wife is totally cool with it
you are only pretty when you smile
i love your accent my mother says you
are a siren and i want to drown
why do you walk so slow
why do you eat so slow
why can’t you let go
it’s just dick and you are
just a hole of holes
it is holy when we fuck
nothing matters i want to die
ayn rand was right; the eyebrow evolved from one bead
of sweat on a hot day a million random years ago; have you ever read chuck palahniuk?
your clitoris is deformed, is that
a wart, a beauty mark; i could be in a dark room with
fifty pairs of boobs and know yours by this mole
by this ring, i thee nothing
another lie i roll a dog in happy stink
tell him that he must obey his mother
tell him that his mother is a whore
they left a pile of trash
so high that the city
had to come and take it
but before then
every
single
middle
aged
woman
who lived around
in that ‘upscale neighborhood’
would casually walk by
picking out things
that they’d take
when we weren’t looking
ignoring our request
to leave the refuse alone
(after Jo Bell and Lauren Zuniga)
Are you comfortable?
Never mind.
Begin anyway.
What is poetry for?
Everything.
Every damn thing.
Give yourself an hour to write.
Every week.
Every damn week.
Give yourself an hour to read.
Every week.
Every damn week.
Everything is going to be amazing.
Everything.
Every. Damn. Thing.
And now it’s looking like the crises
are never going to end.
New cities are starting to bend
as the tsunamic pathogen
buckles the hospitals,
pressing politicians
to chase the people back inside
if they have the sense to listen.
Pockets of rebels
won’t lower their masks to scream
because they already aren’t wearing them.
Of course, they have rights to their opinions
but the logic of denial
is the very mud our country is currently stuck in.
(There, I said it.)
That’s denial of all issues, too
from disease to oppression to brutality and beyond.
Anything challenging a sense of comfort
is an enemy to be shut down and ignored,
the people saying,
Please, just leave me alone to live my normal life!
Parable of the sower, anyone?
Some people really are the seed fallen on the barren path.
But the rest of us must strive to simultaneously be
the seed falling into the good soil
and the sowers moving past (not trampling)
those people stuck on the path
to tend to the soils of rocks and thorns,
helping them be just as good.
We have to remain diligent, too.
So often we do just enough about a problem
that we don’t have to think about it anymore
and that’s why our problems
keep coming back!
It’s inspiring, the fight we have put on this time
but cops will eventually kill more innocent people
if we let our outrage die.
It’s a process repeated so many times,
life’s literally spelling it out for us
with the metaphor of a pandemic.
Our crises are as diverse
as the people who are suffering them.
We all long for a normal
but it can’t be the normal we just lost.
Those of us committed to finding the greater good,
this is our chance and our duty
to make sure the world comes out better.
I will be fighting right beside you
and I pray I have done some good
with the words that I write
and I deeply apologize
if there are any failures in what I say.
But I do see a people growing more powerful,
a people who by working together,
wearing our masks and loving each other,
will rise above every war that faces us,
who will place every crisis that plagues us
firmly in the past.
Though the solutions to all the individual issues
are wildly different
and incredibly complex to simultaneously pull off,
I have nothing but faith
we will conquer these, our greatest troubles.
for aimee n.
What is known is that the leaf released its poisoned juices, migrated, trapped under fingernail, spread from thigh to his face, ringing eye bright red, his ear bell, tickled around belly’s button, ribcage, buttock, the heart of it was the black point in the midst of the thigh, a thorn or dragon’s nail, tearing up, encased the boy in itchy fire. That the pond itself held that much in its clutches, that much in its hair, the green, viney, tangle too much for boyhood curiosity about the fishes, the logs like loaves floating. They stepped through ivy wanted human skin to cling to, human, the toad’s belch against the moss and scum. The toad-like sudden quiet when footsteps fall in mud, their surprised echo out beyond the human paused under honeysuckle, while the boys rummaged there at the pond’s edge. What leaves its prints that children then wonder belong to wolves, what grows next to the snake holes glowing in busted-up yellow light. And once the children left, what did they take that would continue to hurt them all night and for the better part of this week, make the slap of forehead a relief, cream spread on in a dark shower. What is released when the toad sound imbedded into their brain backs slowly into their dreams, when they lay all night without showering and nature’s fiery tongue licks from fingertip to fingertip and remembers a
bullfrog moon sliced up
in rippled pond scum splash, no
witness, thus unheard
Old
wind chimes
sway
in the
summer breeze
as
a little girl
draws
with chalk
on
the sidewalk.
A big ol’
sun,
a house,
and a
tree,
normal kid
things.
But something
has
changed
since school
started,
for the
first
time,
the little girl
thinks
her art
isnt good
enough.
So she
tries
to fix
it,
over
and
over
again.
When she
finally
realizes
she can’t,
she cries.
It’s not perfect,
she thinks.
She
never
stops
thinking.
