Posts for June 28, 2021 (page 6)

Remembrance strikes a shiver
Air transforms into a river
A school of chubby, remarkable fish
fly past with a tail swish
complete with snake heads, no doubt
terrific fangs curved about
The creatures pierce her stunned soul
through ominous eyes of green glow
in hot pursuit of school yard kids
One after another, scalloped pattern bids

and then…

A fresh new 2021 design
calls for Charmin’s perforated line
to undulate, up and down it goes
each square turned un-square as it flows
forward in order to be torn loose
to wipe a nose, a cheek, the caboose
but leaves jagged edges, ugly rips
in the hands of an innocent’s grips
This new fangled style is a super bust
Bring back straight lines, Charmin, you must
Free the mind to scatter nightmares you cause
(This is where the poet doth pause

thinking up the whole of two parts

Common OphidioPhobia
And Vermin AteloPhobia
meet in the psyche, fall in love, and marry
then birth a thing so stinkin’ scary
Inspired by crimeless trips to the loo
the fear of imperfection says I do
to the fear of snakes and together spawn
AtelophidioPhobia as a new day doth dawn)

Thanks, Charmin, for the tissue pattern debut
officiating a union—an unlikely pair, the two
within the chaotic yet guiltless brain of a mom
She sifts through fears and loses aplomb
but sorts disorder out anyway
finds a good laugh for much of the day
and the day after that

and the day after that
she continues to resolve
eventually does the woman absolve
ill-bred invention from Charmin’s lab
she lives to tell the story and take a stab
in a line or forty-eight the tale of insignificance
and still, it’s amazing, subconsciously influenced
by a visit to the toilet minding business of her own
Who knew? An under-celebrated creativity zone!

I.
His room smells like her youngest uncle’s room in her grandmother’s house where all her biological family lived crammed in three bedrooms, sharing a single bathroom.  Sweaty musk embedded in fibers of bedding, carpet, and worn clothes.  No female neutralization in his room.  No balance.  You could smell the maleness even in the clean clothes if you took in the air long and slow.  The smell of inattention to the outside and the kind of comfort that allows one to stagnate.

II.
His room is a sanctuary.  His sanctuary.  Not hers.  Records.  Books of art and music.  Star Wars toys.  Instruments. A desk, light table, and drawing supplies.  He has hijacked her grandmother’s petrified wood she had made into book ends.  Those are hers.  Used bath towels hang on his windows from curtainless rods.  She pulls them down to wash.  Strips crimson sheets from his bed that have been slept on too long.  She used to sleep on those sheets too.  Not now.  Not regularly.  Not anymore.  She takes the bundle from the room.  It isn’t her place to be.  Isn’t her bed.  She doesn’t have a bed.

III. 
Seven years ago, she found herself unable to kiss him.  Perhaps touching lips weren’t necessary anymore for love, for physical intimacy after eighteen years of kissing.  Needs met other ways.  The breathing of his deep sleep through the night reminding her that she was still awake and could not find rest.  The breathing grew as irritating as a fly buzzing her ear.  Then, her pain came.  She could no longer lie flat.  Her arms and hips weighted and throbbing.  Unable to stay in bed, she found herself drowning in routine and sleepless nights.  She left the bed.

IV.
Three years now, her bed has been the loveseat.  Her pillow and quilt a part of the living room decor.  Scratching house cats and the vibration of the fish tank filter keep her awake and resentful now.  And the pain.  The pain exhausts beyond muscle and bone to soul.  Makes her financially dependent, like a child.  She pulls weight for no paycheck.  Keeps house.  Cooks. Turns his dirty socks and underpants right side out to wash.  Writes in hope of one day publishing a book.  It wasn’t terrible.  None of her grandparents had shared a bed.  Her mother and stepfather don’t share a bed.

V. 
Desire, like fire, sometimes wells up where she feels dead.  Middle age allowing her to gradually own her body for what it is and not what it should be.  She channels it to fuel her words.  To pray with her whole body on a yoga mat, rooting and growing.  Impulse cannot always be transformed.  Sometimes it rests as sadness in her heart, her stomach… her pelvis.  After twenty-five years, children, she’s grown up without ever being a child.  Open and vulnerable.  Desire doesn’t burn situational.  Not now.  Not regularly.  Not anymore.

VI.
Her room is an office.  Her personal yoga studio.  A sanctuary.  Hers.  Incense burns on an altar to nothing in particular, but everything that is Source.  Scribbles clutter her desk in loose pages, notebooks, and bound journals.  Her books arranged by subject matter and canons of literature.  Sun pours through curtainless windows facing east.  And there, she moves and writes to alchemize the pain.  To neutralize the yearning of a youth not experienced.  Youth found in middle age brings discomfort.  There in her office and discipline, the slosh of laundry, his laundry, in the next room, she wishes herself worthy, or for the body and heart of an ascetic.

The sky ahead of her exploded with heat
An orange cut through the sun that was inching closer to the earth
The sound of thunder snapped through her heart
The further she moved forward, the darkness
Of tourmaline cascaded down through the clouds
Fast and intense
Just like tears from her eyes
A turn of the head
A gray almost so black
The unknown resonated
Just like a fear she has known all too well
Eyes to this new unknown horizon
She continued on
A guttural pull of this instinctual change to make
Through the hail that poured from above 
Through the hell she pulled herself out of
She marched on amongst the clammerimg
Of the sky saying she wasn’t able
To persist on
Forward she went
Stronger than the wind that carried her
Onward through the unknown
Fear behind her

The women in my family have always known things,
things we couldn’t know, but did. Never sure if it’s a
blessing or a curse to hold in our bones, our blood.

It’s made us an anxious lot, nail-biters, hand-wringers,
sign-watchers, pattern-seekers holding our breath in
threes, knowing the other shoe is about to drop.

That day we friends gathered on our screens, the cursed
pandemic finally on the run, you sat radiant in your new
house, wine glasses glinting in the lighted cabinet behind

you, and said you were settling in, had lots of mowing to
do, weeds to kill, had to get out the Roundup. We gasped,
your non-farm-raised friends, at the danger your words

sprayed into the fragile air. You saw our faces, heard our
tentative warnings and scoffed, “It doesn’t cause cancer!”
I felt the jolt then, the world sway, your certainty a

concentrated taunt, glove thrown down, a dare sent out
into the universe and I wanted to beg you to suck the words
back, rewind the smiling moment, but, of course what was

done was done. You have a port now, and though insurance
has caused inexplicable delays, you are on a road leading
to the coast where you will float in a new chemical stew.

I doubt there is sea glass there. The horizon cloudy.
It’s not the new life you imagined next to the tall white
lighthouse, your single kayak launching into blue waves.

Your friends gather around you again. There are flowers,
few weeds, and those only in our troubled thoughts, lumps
lodged in our throats rivaled only by the one planted

hard in your breast. The doctors get out their blades,
spades for digging it out. Surgery, radiation, chemicals: a
rounded, yet targeted, approach they say, one any farm girl

used to plows, and sun, and spray can appreciate, but that
wasn’t supposed to be your life now. Sometimes, what’s
in our bones and blood has a mind of its own, a plan too

vast or intricate for us to see. But I will watch for signs, my
friend, maps, clues for what’s to come. Does the lighthouse
still send out its homing beams? I pray you circle back,

round up the strength you need, uproot what grows
unintended within.

^{Gray dreams of my gray sleep,} 

^{mere fleas of thought.}

^{What’re you thinking about?}

^{Do you long to twist halfway through}

^{the lobes of our liver to regenerate?}

^{Do you long to gall my body for the word}

^{you yearn to press out?  Do you mean} 

^{to redeem yourself? Or just remain} 

^{sulky and gray and forlorn?}  

what sounds like bacon frying
is two brothers dueling, blurred feet
on the cathedral floor

Harvested by hand—
broomcorn plants—
stitched flat—for sweeping.

first you must retire
from the checking of calendars,
dates and weather  

stop fretting over
scatterings of sticky notes
meant to keep you in order  

you may find yourself
wandering back roads, feeling
the breeze, watching for cows   

lurking in deep ocean
swimming slow circles with sea turtles  

lost in holy hours
holding the hand of your dying friend  

lost in an 8 by 8 foot painting
of nothing but rain falling   

lost in a line of poetry, in a kiss
in the mindful eating of an avocado

Life is an unmade bed,
rumpled, messy, unkempt.

Life is cotton candy,
sticky, sweet, clinging.

Life is a diamond,
unbreakable, sharp, rare.

Life is a kitten,
playful, mischievous, cuddly.

Life is a heart-attack,
painful, unexpected, jarring. 

Life is a virus,
mutating, evolving, defense-evading.

Life is a miracle,
magical, impossible, delightful.

thankfulness comes in layers
reminders, sometimes subtle 
sometimes not
today I am in Brooklyn
yes, New York on my daughter’s patio
listening to morning sounds and typing
I could create a checklist
all the reasons to be grateful 
how far we have come and health
I choose instead to celebrate this day
this hot, humid, sunrise to moonrise expanse
in which we’ll visit the Guggenheim and cook dinner
share tiny victories, expound on fears
together is a blessing I do not blindly accept
I freely take what is mine to rejoice in