Polished and concrete
Groomed for eternity
Worshipped
The people who raped
Forced
Enslaved
Monuments of gray
I shake a can of spray paint
I drink a bunch of water, make sure I have to piss
I bring an axe
I bring some rope
If I could skate, I’d grind all around
I gladly pour my disrespect
Into these heartless bastards
They deserve no honor
They deserve
Held pee
Old spray paint
Wheels
Destruction
Build some statues that deserve respect
Not these dicks
I want you to trust
that time is magick,
that it’s ok to
fall in love with a place you found because you
fell for the person
you wanted your partner to be.
It’s ok if you fell for potential
a time too many.
It’s ok even if you married it.
Even if you left behind dreams
and loved ones, 35 years piled mile high.
It’s ok, because the lessons are many.
The lessons keep unfolding each time
you find someone to unfold yourself to.
And if their heart catches yours, darling,
always, always let them know. Even
if it was illusion. Even
if it was you who got carried away again.
Here:
I need you to believe
that as much as you may break,
crash down like a rockslide
that can block a continental divide,
keep reaching for your friends.
With a few strong allies you
can see the widest vistas.
The horizon reinvents itself twice every day,
more if you’re attentive. And when you hurt
and when you soar, you’re attentive.
Attend to reinvent.
Reinvent for you. Each day, write your
love letter to yourself.
Reinvent, infatuated
with the once strange, lonely place
that lives up to its potential every time you
remember to watch the skies and trust that
every change in season holds its magick.
After all this time, dearest,
don’t be afraid: remind yourself
how you know you know
the magick is you.
You can not
see my face
for once
behind sunglasses
and mask
I do not
have to smile
in just the right way
to appease
and avoid you
at once
You can not
see my face
You can not say
I encouraged
or provoked
or antagonozied you
My face is my own
behind sunglasses
and mask
for once
I am my own
At dusk, after a softening rain,
More than bitter dock bites the dust.
Yellow dock, curly dock and sorrel
Is cut by an expert hoe in an act
Of exacto against the weedy world.
The expert hoe, as if it is
On its own…a volition
Of wood and steel so trained
To rule this plot of green and so
Able to distinguish invader
From the real, drags its blade
Across the miniscule of air
Twixt dirt and stem
I think you’re asleep
Behind the wheel of your arm’s
Machine that propels itself
Like a barbarous guillotine
But your sudden twitch of eye
Catches me in a state of guilt
For my venial sin of sloth
In our okra bed has grown
To mortal level. You slow
Your hoe to watch me flail
Through my Garden of Morass:
An overwhelming wave
Of Johnson Grass
Cigarette drags are what this memory smells
like. Dancing with burger smoke to music
of youth nostalgia stealing bases, throwing
heaters; parents are fans filling bleachers.
One-hundred-degree days, a sunburnt
face and hands holding trophies gripped with
blisters that callus into off-speeds and sliding
two-seams that changeup into no-hitters.
Green gatorade was my first example
of replenish, I think those days are what
taught me how to finish. And practice made me
get used to repetition, failure, and commitment.
A twelve-year-old audition to learn to work
and earn every position. Cuts can hurt and
some never picked up a bat again. But others did learn
blood is only temporary, pain can’t last forever,
and scars are revenge.
yes.
i am fluent in the language of flowers
and know how to speak in numbers.
i have stalked game along with artemis-
and i did not bow before the beast.
i have won wars attributed to athena-
and i will fight for her again.
i have stared deep into the sullen eyes of medusa
and i did not turn to stone.
i am a purple-haired pandora-
their curses passed to me some time ago
sweetly, as a gift…
i’ll show my hard-won armor off in battle
while none of you thought to carry shields.
All day
I searched for poems.
They were not in my coffee cup,
nor in the early morning light,
where I often find poems
to write.
I checked the refrigerator,
just stale milk, some eggs.
I checked the sock drawer
and under the bed.
I asked the dog
and looked outside.
Where do poems go
when they want to hide?
you know, my friend says, these kinds of clovers are actually endangered. and here we are, standing in a field full of them.
he’s right. their stems are wide awake in the breeze, furling out into petals, like they don’t know any better. like it’s just that easy.
yesterday i learned that in an alabama prison, death row inmates rattle the bars of their cells, bang their metal cups and plates and scream, each time one of them is being strapped into the chair. i wonder when they decide their last words. how many choose to say nothing at all.
i see it more clearly now, how life is a fragile thing, and death in someone else’s hands. sometimes, even, in a child’s hopeful fingers, digging through entire fields for a stroke of luck.
Nothing ever comes
completely back together
and even what can be reconstructed
is never without weakness.
If pressed, the healing
will crumble and revert
because we’ve learned fear, cowering
at the slightest ill-born glance.
All I can ever ask of you
is be mindful of how small I am.
It doesn’t take much to derail me.
The journey is so long
when no one meets you in the middle
and the weight of being
the bigger person
acts more like ball and chain.
The only advice I receive
is that people just don’t care
but why does that mean
I have to give myself up for them?
Forgive me if I choose to hide
in the moments you make it hard.
My retreat will be as temporary
as your insensitivity, I pray.
