Posts for June 1, 2022

I found a piece of you
Reaching through time
The shape of the heart

The lilt of joy,
the considered life
in the fingers,
in the loops

I find a piece of you in the closet
I’ve neglected to organize
and for a moment it’s a jolt
as looking into your eyes

After 2 years,
looking back into your hopes and joys
when buying the laptop
knowing you would fill it with photographs

I haven’t looked into your laptop yet,
I’ve not had it in me
I hope that when I do,
that I can find the password
and I can use the laptop cord 
you wrote your name on

I, as a painter, You, as a pianist
The use of fingers to make vibrations palpable,
to make marks upon another’s soul

A CIA agent would know 
your state of mind
at the time of writing,
and I can feel it too,
a shock of your ISness,
your Beingness,
your brain.

Though I know your infinite self is still around,
your physical thoughts are palpable through my eyes
to my heart 
through your handwriting.

There’s a house in the field just outside the town.
People thought it was haunted and they told stories about the strange things that lie in its depths.
Nobody knows what’s really there, so they talk about the monsters and the ghosts,
But the people who really go there, they see it.
Not the house.
The decay, the emptiness, the holes in the walls that are framed by darkness,
Slowly creeping, spreading.
They feel it in the very air and they run from it.
This place, touched long ago by a dark power.
Slowly fading, wasting, haunted by the fears of those who run.
No, not haunted, cursed.
For these people all feared it.
They did not know.
The only thing that could stop it was someone who was brave enough,
Someone who would not run .
Someone who would not leave at all, but move closer, reach foward and with a hand,
Or maybe just a single finger, touch it
And it knows, one day, this will happen.
That is destined,
But now it sits forgotten, neglected,
Fading on this hill.
And it is healed, that day, because someone watches it, and they see:
This is the true curse.

Teachers carouse at a local bar

I am a sucker
Getting played by two middling hustlers
I was dealing generously
A little magnanimously
Too recklessly, obviously
And let them swindle me, separately
Hucksters entirely

I made it just for you, he says. 

He heated it on the stovetop, 
added the good, strong pepper-
Until the soup had character. 

Black pepper is good for sickness, he says. 

He stirred in purple basil
the last little leaves from last year’s garden-
zest from the rind of the sun.

So you can grow stronger too, he says. 

when he presses the mug into my shaky hands
nestles a kiss against my sweaty forehead,
he doesn’t have to say anything at all.

And he does so anyways. 

The onion resists my painstaking pressure,
The heavy steel blade makes only a crease in the papery skin.

It tries to roll away and my fingers fly up in surrender.

Careful, careful, I think to myself.

“You’re more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife than a sharp one.” I’ve heard it a hundred times.

I poke through with the tip and let the blade slip into the path of the puncture.
Once it gets a foothold I’m home free. 

“A good sharpening is all it needs.”
And the tears begin to flow.

The air in the house was suficating.
Outside she could grab grass,
pull weeds,
meet crawly creatures loose in the soil,
play in the dirt!
She hand drops seed specs
covering each gently with something like desire.
Inside the fence lines
the gardener garners the Mockingbird calls
turns her dripping face into the slight breeze,
breathes.

There’s one thing for certian
those small town
always die the same. 

Some tragic natural disaster
or another school lockdown
strikes in the middle of a Thursday 
when dinner was left cooking on the stove.

Shakes the whole damn world up
For the folks around those parts,
but rest assured it will be
business as usual
come Monday morning. 

Handbags laid away on the shelf
even a few overflowing paper gift bags
each a time capsule, or a landmine.
For today’s foray, 
I chose the colorful  cat-patterned bag:
hospital bracelet
various cards:
      appointments  
      roller rink  
      aquarium passes  
      discount cards
matchbox car
Burger King toy
several pens
handkerchief
Hike Ohio brochure
Thumb Drive
mirror 
a friend’s address (who has since moved again and I still haven’t written)
an almost blank journal:    
   scribbled cartoons of myself bald    
    list of tasks, including radiation and infusion dates

I set it back , contents intact, maybe for another 7 years.