Posts for June 3, 2021

We’re playing a silly get-to-know-you card game in my room,
like you do on rainy first dates during a pandemic.

We take turns asking each other its personal questions, 
until one I read twists my voice with a forgotten fear. 

“Do you think I fall in love easily?”

The words leap from the card and swirl through the air,
an ironic accusation from the universe.

I laugh lightly and agree with him that
“I don’t seem like the kind of person who can easily open up.”

I drown the butterflies in my stomach with memories
of being intoxicated with the misleading charm of feeling wanted.

Thinking about you feels like drinking red wine alone
from an uncorked bottle left over from the night before.

A bittersweet reminder of a more romantic time.

Sad sap
dew drop
Catch a roo
Boo bop
Dance pants
Piddley poo
Smiling smoo
achoo
Slide glide
Sock ride
Can I goo
With you?

The door is sealed shut by shadow-
leaves rustling against the light
that seeps through the slats. The blue
frame patiently holds the hoarded web
marking time — dawn and dusk. flow
and ebb that seeps through
the slats, the blue frame,
leaves. Rustling against the ligiht,
the door, sealed shut by shadows.

Honey in my nose
Bubbles in my mouth
The bell tolls 
At the red light

I suck on peaches
Written in words I recognize 
But can’t read

I look over
to the drivers seat
And watch pop punk
drip out your ears 
and spill out your mouth

I know I love you

the sands will shift,
and the currents will change
erroding away what once was–
forming something new. 

will you do your part
to stop the erosion,
to restore the dunes —
or
will you stand silent watching —
what once was natural,
untouched– 
Completely slip away. 

 and when they had finally arrived
the hierophants rejoiced,
the sorrowful crones hung their hair
in shame, the whore shuttered
her door, and the birds
were silent.

My grandmother was recalling her life to me over the past several months,
and she told me again that her daddy was killed in the Blue Jay Mine at the age of 26, 
but elaborated that a “hanging kettle bottom” tore loose and crushed him. 

We looked up the death certificate and it indeed stated:
“killed by fall of kettle bottoms, ” and mercilessly went on to detail:
“Manner of injury: Slate Fall”
“Nature of injury: Crushed Head”

A petrified tree stump through some complex geologic and glacial maneuvering can be trapped in the roof of the mine, studded in between the layers. When the coal is mined out around the larger “root” end, it can suddenly drop through as the smooth trunk has nothing to grip. I am not sure how this looks like the bottom of a kettle, but looked up pictures of same, and that is indeed what it looks like, a rounded shape in the roof of the mine.

A young  father in 1935 was killed by the remains of a tree that may have lived millions of years ago, but that seems preferable to an actual cast iron cauldron dropping down from no-where, which is what I had envisioned. 

I never sweat so much
As when putting together
Furniture

Allen, let’s talk about this wrench
Is that really the best you could do?

Dehydrated 
And slightly embarrassed
I concede the evening’s defeat

And try again tomorrow

I believe you

love me.  I believe

you do.  But

I believe it

is and always

will be

different

than the way

I would

I do 

settle under your heart of gold
in the quake of crimson beyond
a dull moon. approach, but do not
haunt the autrocities trangressed
in reviving the new world asunder.

You are here now
prepare to begin again
for the challenges before
were peddles to this mountain
and you are the sun at dusk.