I am Chestnut Ridge churned out.
Someone asks me to casserole cabins;
someone pretends at Sunday school squabbles.
Dresses will muddy;
Jeeps will sing.
Tell me to stay gold, Ponytail.
I know you need Route 56 remarried.
Of course the blight claimed the trees,
but no one divorces for a name.
There was a flood, but we lived
at the top of a hill and picked apples
red as farmhouse wagoning.
I’ve accepted that
I am dropped-d Bedford.
sometimes dinner doesn’t turn out so well
a disappointment
yet there are worse things
much, much worse
but others are downplaying
offering good cheer as if it were Christmas time
hope, hope, there is so much hope
and I, quite honestly, do not accept that
because if all it took was a sprinkle of hope and a smile
well, the world would have changed more than a while ago
we are, in my opinion,
going to need a bit more than what we have come together and created
so pardon me if I am not one of those it’s going to be a good year after all types
lessons and change? at what cost is my question
I apparently utilize a different exchange rate when counting my blessings
sorry not sorry not sorry not sorry because I have nothing to be sorry about
some probably do yet don’t realize they are operating from a false dichotomy
what that means, I am uncertain but it sounds like an intelligent thing to say
therefore, I will invoke my reasoning
the world is completely on edge, teetering
between what, is dependent on your opinion
mine is that dinner didn’t turn out so well tonight
yet there are worse things
I am liquid.
I pour myself out for you.
But I am messy,
I spill over, splash out.
I was never meant
to be contained this way.
I am liquid
coming to a boil,
When I am told to
fill a mold I should have
known was not for me.
I am liquid.
My moods ebb and flow
with the tide of your love.
I am powerful and helpless, both.
A flood.
I star emails, headlines, articles. Lately I seldom
stop to plumb what’s there. These days I skim
the waves of news. Yes, it might be life
or death to make sense of what’s cached
in the unread mass of stuff rife behind
the link back of the link
in the next click. I’m sick
of knowing how much
I don’t know. I’m dying
to scroll the sky all day.
It doesn’t harbor lists,
makes no asterisks,
has no priority
except to be.
the world could be ending-
ash falling from a sulfurous sky,
colossal monsters clawing their way
through buildings and bodies,
every star exploding across the known universe-
and you would still ask me
to join you
on your back porch for
a sweating glass of tea
and a game of Rummy
Lately, I’ve been listening
to the Hamilton soundtrack
on my way home from worrk.
Even though the ending
makes me emotional.
His death and his legacy.
The idea of leaving something beautiful
and lasting behind.
I can’t listen to it
without thinking about
our trip to Chicago.
The call from the vet
telling us our dog
was in pain
and needed to be put down.
We would not get to say goodbye.
“The Unimaginable” is not a song
about the Hamiltons losing a son,
it’s a song about us coming home
to an empty house.
I don’t know how we made
the drive home
without stopping to cry
at every exit.
The car is so hot at five o’clock
that it reeks of other punishing summers.
Another scorching season when I was
staying late and working Saturdays,
God knows what for,
what the crisis was.
Listening to Dr. Demento’s punk album,
to Brak covering Suicidal Tendencies.
Fourth of July weekends spent alone,
my girlfriend on vacation,
me moving through the house
like a ghost.
Or driving to Frankfort alone,
sun in my eyes,
with intense headaches,
to visit Dad in the mental ward
several nights a week.
Listening to his ramblings
and wishing he wasn’t always
working some scheme.
He had been diagnosed as bipolar
late in life.
He would have a breakdown
every eighteen months.
But why did he have to have them
when it was so goddamn hot?
Why did the best hospital have to be
such a long drive?
With such early visiting hours
that my girlfriend couldn’t get off work
to drive me
and I had to white knuckle it
through the pain?
Coming home too exhausted
to write or create.
All I could do was eat and sleep.
When my sister and I finally
brought him home,
he wouldn’t even let us
take him out to eat.
He wanted his phone, his wallet, his car keys,
and nothing to do with us.
And now I’m in a pandemic,
facing an overwhelming work project
that threatens to devour me.
Debating when I’ll feel okay
to go back to the movie theaters
I love so much.
Watching a world on fire
and trying to find my place in it,
trying to be a better person
and educate myself
because black lives do matter.
It is another punishing summer.
George and Breonna have been murdered.
Protestors face violence from the police.
Reality is so loud, there is no more
fantasy for me to escape into.
–the awareness of the smallness of your perspective
Yesterday the astronomer told me
there are 250 billion stars
( + or – 150 billion) in the Milky Way.
Today the microbiologist told me
there are more bacteria in my gut
than stars in the Milky Way.
I stand between the two.
The clouds, stretching
across the horizon. Filtering
brilliant pink and fading
sunlight. Dimming
and giving the moon
sweet visibility. The stars,
such beauty,
what a reminder!
Like every drop on
the tulips coming into
bloom after bearing
the storm and the thunder,
like the maple catching
fire with the warmth
of spring and burning
a loud red, all of these
small and lovely things
show me
to the heartbeat of the Earth
once more. And distract me
from all the lifetimes
I wish were mine.
