Posts for June 26, 2021 (page 5)

While places like ours wear on the nation’s nerves                          
We hit the hairpin curves.
We show our daughters strip-                       
Mined mountains, rail beds, boarded- Up UMWA buildings.
We want them to learn from what we’ve lost.
Want the confederate flag
Curtains and car decals to take
On greater meaning.  

Oh how they long to vote.
They want to leave,
Go anywhere big.
They’ve learned what it is to hate.  

Look at the pretty birds they say
And wave middle fingers out the car windows.
Even in their dreams they cuss
And rail No effing way.

Four elements threaded
through the core world
in seeming harmony:
Water drowns
                     Fire eats
                                 Air suffocates               
                                                   Earth inhales                              
                                                                    Water.

But no perfect circle,
no balanced & blind justice
because Fire takes and gives back nothing.
Desire/Love/Greed/Power—
everything born in Fire ends in ashes.  

And me,
oxygen inhaling little mud monkey,
still gazes, still reaches
for the flames.

Will I try?  Will I do?
Will I post every one
for y’all to read?

Yes, I will try.
Yes, I will get it done.
No, I will not post
each and every one.

I will post
the ones that choose
your eyes to wash
over my words.

The poems that pick
this blog, see fit
to please my peers
with poignancy
or laughter
or the depth
wells are dug.

The poems
who choose
to be among
all the rest
won’t hold
offense,
won’t ask
or ponder
debatable
subjects.

The poem who
picks this place as its space
won’t talk about how ironic
my beautiful purple beans cook
to look and taste the same
as the green or waxy members
of their very large family.

It’s after midnight again, 
and I’m playing out yet another
imaginary conversation with you
that’ll never happen.
This time we are choosing to laugh
about the day we met by the water,
when you wore the mirrored
sunglasses and I joked about the CIA.
This time, we made plans to see each other
the next weekend and then the one after,
you catching me up on your little sister’s
dreams of building a life in SoCal,
me filling you in on my best friend’s new album.

It’s after midnight again for the third time this week,
and I’m keeping the memory of us alive,
playing out these seemingly ordinary exchanges 
until sleep manages to creep into my mind
for a few hours, when I wake with a start, 
clutching the blankets close to my face,
overcome with what might have been.

I guess this is goodbye
Fallen days
And fallen memories 
That just can’t be rebuilt or taped over
Band-Aids and Neosporin
Cannot mend these cuts and bruises
I keep making u-turns
With the hopes of
A fresh start
I keep going back
With the hopes of no complications
But I keep making the same mistakes
With good intentions
And
I’m tired
Family is self-made, I’m a firm believer
So I can’t keep going back to strangers just because
Blood is mentioned

Only the Amish drive slower
than me on this county’s roads
that loop and curve and wind
until I lose all sense of direction–
here the sun’s in front of me
yet here it’s clearly behind.

And, here there’s a hollow roundness–
a gargling of a large marble–
behind their I, so they say ah. 
I get lost in conversation 
with my inner translation–when
they say: I like, I hear: A lock…

Alack! Then, in my brain, Bottom chokes back:
O night! O night! Alack, alack, alack!

A third of America unfriends
a third of America. The third third
buys popcorn and ringside seats.  

The Bible needs another book?
We’re writing it now, revealing
secrets we didn’t know we had.  

came          
         one        
         right          
         after         
         another
 
learned me
          new hardship         
          new words        
          new sounds        
          new meanings  

carved        
          blue-red bruised, scored landscape:
 
microdochectomy                                lumpectomy                                                                                 
                                lymphadenectomy                       

bilateral salpingo oophorectomy (is that a flower?)
                             
                                total hysterectomy  

and appendectomy (just had to get on the bandwagon!)  

stemmed          
slow-drip          
tumor-shedding          
death

Mop the world’s floor, eliminating germs and dust. Once dry, wax with a protective coat
of intention and innovation. Step carefully.  

Yet they come with muddy boots to track blight and blather across the pristine surface. Words will contaminate the purest intention.