Posts for June 16, 2021 (page 6)

I’m a quiet killa 
Somethin like Kawaii Leonard 
Time been hittin different 
Somethin like Ty and SZA

kindness speaks of kindness

and catches your day raising you from the dust

oh how desolate the clouds remain

a witness to the

tender threaded through you

it is you wherever breath must lay

forever, you the sorrow of tomorrow

passengers dissolve into your arms

and your eyes seep in with care

it is clear i don’t like most

but i’m here to love you

through the simple and through the gravity

of it all

i am the sea weakened

and you are the tilted shore

i thank the sky that i am alive

and allowed to gaze

forevermore

tacos and beer
under the canopy
Steve and his greyhound

I got really liquored up

I felt sad

because you were quiet

and I didn’t know

what you would think of me

Why do I still wonder this

after 6 years

and a baby

and marriage

I just wanted you

when we got home

but you ate

and I got under covers

keeping it together

I sit on the swing on my front porch,
Watching light meander down through Mulberry,

It is too easy to let the ugliness take over my heart.

The cancer of wrong-doing threatens to eat away anything good that remains.

It clouds my every move, my every breath,

And I just want to be

free.

My pitchfork pierces the red clay
Churning up dense clods 
A squirm of earthworms
Startled by the light
Like ancient cave dwellers
Discovering fire or the sun  

It will take more
Than a family of worms
To soften this dense plot
The clay could be calculus
In its hardness
As difficult as describing a color
That does not exist in this world  

I switch to hoe and hand rake
Wrestling the earth into pieces
Blending buckets of dark rich compost
A pinch or two of coarse sand
A thousand droplets of sweat  

Working ground until shoulders wail
For relief and knees beg me
To just take up pottery instead
Gravity has its way with my exhaustion
As I ugly plop onto the grass to rest
My foot accidentally kicks up the hoe
Handle thumping my forehead
Barely missing my eye
As I scramble out of the way
My elbow whacks the metal bucket  

Head bowed in utter submission
Tears drowning the soil beneath me
I rub my head and arm in agony
Lie back in the grass and shut my eyes
My body screaming outrage to my brain 
Buy a bench!  it cries
Why a bench?   logic brain asks
Shorter distance to fall!  answers body
Heart already dreaming
The weathered wooden seat    
Soft colorful pillows   
A glassy tilt of iced tea

These staved and staid, impervious sayings
long hung like a mop of penumbrous tresses
troubling sparse and sunken rafters
donned among yeomen, rigid sententiae,
lore, or the plumb-perfect proverbs picked
amid sap-stiffened locks, the emollient withe
and ebullient osier, tresses a skeletal elder’d combed
among tortuous staffs of his termagant’s tedious
worksongs searing and tearfully taut along
platted pates, among dimpling simpers
children sleave from the wizened brows
or crow’s feet cramped upon preening prows
or the ebonied lanterns mildly sage-eyed sisters
stoked with a storybook’s sallowing,
dog-eared dictums fed and enlivened
with luminous frenzy, nerve, and whimsy;  

scourge among bottomless prophets pursed,
immuring in dry-rotted verses broken truths
contorted in tangling proofs, perfecting
the finicky flip of a pancake—  

Muse how the proofs of umplumbably perfect
truths fan flush against logics’ lenses
stricken, snuffed, effaced, fordone,
now thrust or threshed against contradiction’s
sullenly smoldering sternum.

i remember:
i wove a yellow ribbon 
through the parachute cord bracelet 
you gave me that valentine’s day.
the one where you had almost convinced me
to leave my abusive ex.
that you’d take me away from here–
sweep me off my feet–
never treat me like that.
but then you flew across the world
and left me alone in more ways than one.

when you were gone again,
this time at war
(like–for real),
i put a dumb ass yellow jojo siwa-style bow in my hair.

i cried at the air port.
happy people all around me,
staring at me like i had half of my body missing.
(it was.)
i stayed at the window and watched until i couldn’t see the plane anymore.
that was really goodbye.

i prayed EVERY DAY 
to a god i didn’t even believe in anymore,
hoping and begging and pleading 
that you’d come home in one piece–
or at the very least, safe.

i did my duty.
i kept myself busy.
i took on three jobs.
i had to get my professors to sign off
on the ridiculous amount of hours i was taking.
i drank myself to sleep at night.

and then i’d dream of you.
we were floating in a sea of sand.
but it was cold.
and so were you.

i didn’t know until you stepped off the bus
and back in my arms
that my prayers weren’t actually answered–
that my dreams were actually a vision–
that i’d have to wear this stupid ribbon forever;
still waiting for you to come home.

I am a writer
Because I must write to know
Myself and the world
Writing both lifeblood and itch
Just guiding light and anchor

I swear before Cadmus, Saraswati, Thoth, and Seshat

Primeval Cadmus
Heroic monster slayer
Bringer of letters

O Saraswati
Provider of eloquence
Goddess of learning

O Thoth and Seshat
Authors of hieroglyphs
Gods of book knowledge

To first do no harm and at last tolerate no malpractice
Devoted to the flourishing of writers in my care

Respect rhetors past
Remember art, science, heart
Teach the whole human
Center, safeguard the writer
Commune in creative joy