We used to gather,
wrapped in humidity
and stale air, watch
distant controlled
explosions bloom
(Climbing Hydrangea
tendrils ever reaching
for the unclaimed)
and overtake the inky blanket
of night, rorschach
thunderheads looming
in the distance.
When the pyrotechnic
percussive roar drew
its last breath, we offered
a standing ovation,
surrounded by sulfur
and fireflies.
I can’t risk cuddles or take time to play
a clean smock per room
bundled into sanitized carriers
cages scrubbed with bleach
food is measured, conditions are noted
willing survival
hoping for kind hands and the tender care
I can’t give you here
a home with so much room for each of you
no more kitties lost.
Fragile is the land on which we live
under the broken sky;
cursed is the coal we gather in greed,
killing the land – and the people.
Today we celebrate the Indian Wars,
hating the witches so righteously burned,
each time to save our native land.
Far have we journeyed to gather the slaves,
lynchings mark the trees like broken limbs,
all of the bodies burned in the endless war,
good God. Will you damn America?
July 4, 2013
Verse 1
All I ever wanted to be
Was a pop song, for you to sing
The one that you’d like to play
As the day slips away, and you need to swing
Bridge 1
My melodies are nothing if they’re not stuck in your head
My rhythms are lost if they’re not rattling your bed
Verse 2
All I ever knew how to do
Was tell a lie, but sing it true
Somewhere between middle and high brow
I’m singing it now, sticky like glue
Instrumental Break
Bridge 2
I feel left behind and sooner or later you’ll find
That this song fails to exist anywhere but inside your mind
Verse 3
All I ever wanted to be
Was a pop song, to make your heart soar
The one you play when you feel good
Or when you’re misunderstood, too warm to ignore
for Kristi, 39 lines on the illustrious occasion of her 39th journey around the sun
Sold what the line
divides, how each person has a singular shape, straight down the page, how these
lines are used to create our borders
to box in what we write,
who we are, to keep like with like, keep us from each other, or ourselves. We’ve
been told too many lies. So with our own stubby yellow
pencils clutched in shaking hands, we draw box box box around each other, bigger
and bigger, what a friend
the incased words then become, this pencil growing more powerful with each
swoop, what I mean
is that we’ve proved how every new boarder
can become someone we now know and love, friend
pulled through to the present by hands yellowed
with dandelion rubbings; what used to be the hard mean
lines
the world wrote
with its ice pick, words that had one meaning:
only “we are in competition” and the reality is “there’s one spot”, whispers in subtext
“we can’t be friends”
only strangers, bears rearing up in defence, with border
wall built of rejection slips, prizes listing others’ names, our blades for slicing each
other down. In our yellowing
dreams it’s hard to admit it, but what we swallowed rote
can be spun into better fabric, a stranger, stronger coat big enough to keep all
warm, strands & lines
woven together, box us closer, zipped in with our hands open catching snowflakes,
and raised to greet each other as friends.
Once I wrote
a hundred poems filled with lines
examining the borders
in myself, all the mean
and friendly ways I intersect and cross yellow
stretches of the world, the way my own writing
hungers for home, for whatever friend
can see through “but i’m not from here” and then say “that’s mean
to yourself, come in, come in, I don’t know you but here’s my yellow
sheets, something cold to drink, here’s a page that’s empty waiting for you to fill it,
boards
for you to stomp on when you are angry, listen, I’m not lying,
you are welcome here.” A box is only what you place in it. Can be sharpied over
again and again. Hold fruit, candy, all our fresh and fiery flags. Friend,
we’ve build new boxes out of whatever we could gather under this yellow
consistent sun, filled the house with poems, lines
playful, important, new. We don’t want to leave anyone behind, the world is mean
and you know we know this already. All the borders
are shot to hell and anyway, we cross them all the time inside of ourselves. Let’s
write
a new poem together, we say, within safe borders, we say, one filled with lines
of compassion, a soft yellow light left on all night above the stairs. Where friend
pulls friend in, right leaves foe outside the door, where we forget what mean, means.
…Speckled on their backs like fawns…
Right here is where my picture was taken (to promote my gallery opening, -was it 7 years ago? I forgot to even ask myself)
With a powder blue Mercedes
I am holding a taped box, gifted moments ago in the turning lane of Richmond Rd, which contains a piece of art made from that photo.
Both made and given by a man about to move to Atlanta, dressed in the same powder blue as the other friend’s Mercedes (the one who used his car in the photo)
You are like Luke Skywalker, I yell in encouragement, off to Degabar!
He replies..”That’s really strange
I was just listening to an interview with him not 20 minutes ago” and trails off
And we talk for a moment as if we weren’t standing in the middle of the turning lane between the medians of Richmond Rd, but it’s Sunday evening, and it’s slow moving, though the man is quick to pull away, jumping quickly into his car and whirling off like a startled rabbit.
There is something about love that binds everything together, all of these ins and outs, the stage directions placing choreographed steps in time
There is a very young rabbit, his tiny ears just visible above the grass towards the peony fields, I suppress the urge to run and attempt to grab it,
Here
Some young robins, two that I spot first in the low branch of a walled garden tree, another one running along the ground outside the lichened brick walls.
They are speckled when they’re young, like fawns
And I think of the sprawling ears of fawns, catching the slight movements in the surrounding space
And I know there is something magical whispering here
The Blue Ash spotlighted with violet greens, waiting for it’s soon to be portraits,
The fairie tree nearly torn apart
–it’s been less than a year-
less than a year and it’s wide walls moved apart by eager, exploring little hands, its impossibly large branch removed beside it, only a day after I had painted it, and it hundreds of years old-
And here-
by an old Spruce’s multitude of dangling sleeves,
the impression of a Thursday session, painting with an apprentice,
still marked in the grass,
the memory of gazing towards the south east still
stirring my limbs
When I struggle to stretch my way out of a sweaty dream
where your presence shocks the breath out of me,
standing there with burly arms crossed across your chest,
glaring a hole through me and furrowing your forehead
as I cower across the room, the worst of our moments relived,
I can’t help but wonder if I could only erase bits of you
from my memory—your brother’s date of birth,
your dad’s middle name and favorite golf club,
the way your grandma taught you to make spaghetti—
maybe a month might pass by without me fighting
the ghost of you, resurfacing as dawn meets the day.
