I dress in rags
held together with golden pins.
I dance with drifters to keep my feet from knowing solid ground.
I’ll meet you on a balcony
or buy you a drink at the bar.
I’ll write you a poem
or call your name with fervor (not forever) .
But please don’t cry deceit
when my pockets spill your riches
I still haven’t found what I came here for
and I haven’t talked to anyone in
ages. My watch shows not the time but
rather increments that guide how we
decide to split up moments between the
sun rising and setting. A way to decipher
an order to this world and add purpose
to our actions. To give us a sense of
urgency. The illusion that time is
always running out. It seems the words would
only fall out of my mouth rather than
be spoken. From a distance I knew we
had something in common, something mind
altering to the core. Every blink of
my eye reveals a new face to recognize.
Among the bustle with each passing moment,
a new accent can be heard, a new
language to be learned. A layered synth
covered in chords. If I listen close enough,
I can hear a new song among them. And
listening even closer reveals their
true melodies, the tempo in which they
live their lives. The tree limbs bend from the wind,
but I can’t be too certain about that
since they aren’t the only thing that has come
alive. The grass, a vivid green. The type
of green only seen in cartoons
accompanied by a bright baby blue
sky, soft as lotion. My vision tunnels
to green and blue, green and blue, green and blue.
Green and blue with a touch of brown from the
bases of trees that stretch up to
overgrown pieces of broccoli. Painted
dots of yellow from sporadic sunflowers
poke from the ground, a polka-dotted dress
dancing in the wind. Dandelion fuzz
floats through the air with hand-blown bubbles, like
snow flurries mixed with giant rain drops. Each
bubble catches the sun behind it,
a rainbow of colors bounce from the top
of the sky and back down to the ground as
the wind carries each laugh and conversation off
like a lost balloon. My only solitude
comes from the music in the distance.
A place like this has a tendency to
encourage my urge to feel like I play
a role in this world. As if there is a
certain order to the chaos around us.
Days here can seem like weeks or months, but
only with the right influence.
We named him Noah
Never dreaming his growth would
Concur with plague and pestilence
Streets running with blood and tears
While edifices trembled on their pedestals
Mother’s arms ache to hold back
A son unleashed upon this terrible world
That grants white male flesh magical powers
Mother’s heart bleeds for those others
Whose children are not issued such protection
Spread across the white coverlet
her bony length, the melds
she’s teaching us to make,
our knees stained knobs, skin
stretched on growing bone,
never still. Lowering light
moves among the heavy leaves,
shadowed. She’s fifty-nine
teaching us pinochle. The house
shelters a quiet of ticking clocks,
respite set like a rose in the glass,
the Peace she picked that morning.
I can’t help but remember
you, though you’ve been
gone for decades.
Thoughts of yesterday
run through my mind like
an old black & white rerun
on television. I see the past,
though fuzzy, but pray
for a brighter future.
You were never there
for the important things
in my life: band contests,
high school graduation,
the birth of your first
grandchild. On this day,
I’ll have to say, “I learned
from you.” I chose
a better path.
This umpteenth Juneteenth
passes for a celebration,
but we as a nation know
we are not free. These chains
of slavery still weigh like human
freight upon our furrowed brow.
An era so grotesque we know not how
to comprehend the vestige
of that sin against our common soul.
All I know to do is go from door
to door, hand out fliers to support
Booker for senator. A man
I’ve never met, but surely he
can bring a better future
than we’ve seen, surely he
must be a silver lining
in this year of quarantine.
That out of west Louisville,
just like the great Ali,
he could be the hero
in our desperate time of need.
That our nation’s angst
might boil, and this blood-
stained soil we call the USA
might for once and all be
cleansed of our intrinsic hatred,
that each door slammed on me
today might send a repercussion
through this nation, and that wave
will rise and Booker on the senate
floor will enact long overdue
and necessary
reparations.
a video call
in a nonexistent language.
does everything mean something?
wanton disregard for strunk.
drivel drivel drivel,
strunk strunk strunk.
words are cheap, dreams are free –
perhaps that’s why so many of them are ugly.
When words don’t fall like gentle drops of rain
to make the perfect sound on roofs of tin
then I must yearn instead until sun wanes
for just a glimpse of words that soar and sing.
Above the sheds, the barns, the roofs of tin,
they circle near, then veer in haste away
just like the flirting birds that soar and sing
that weave the sky with song, then stitch and braid.
In circling near they taunt, then veer away
these words whose sweetness never seems to wane —
words I so want to weave and stitch and braid
but in my hands they fade like drops of rain.
My transition in worlds going home
is like the turning of a great ship at sea
a realignment of the solar system,
the tilting of a planet
but I’m just going home.
