Posts for June 4, 2022 (page 10)

you didn’t want to meet my new cats maybe cause my dog always barked when you walked through the door
and my cat scratched you
people say animals always know
you didn’t want to meet my new cats maybe because they opened a new chapter in my life
and you stopped answering the month after,two weeks after my two cats died
i left some crystals with them i left a crystal with you and i don’t know if you ever cared if you don’t care even now
maybe you don’t like that my childhood bedroom is my adult bedroom and maybe you should have thought of that when i was 18
you don’t want me to meet your parents and i don’t want to meet them either
but it’s thanksgiving every time. do you have a girl you switch me out for? a girl they would prefer?
i’m never gonna see the tattoo you’ve said you’re “gonna get soon” for the last three years. maybe you’ll never get it or maybe it’s your “new cats”
i’m 50% sure you keep the things that remind you of me and i hope you do
and my favorite netflix show reminds me of You
i always try to cut the chord to set me free
but i don’t know if i can shake you sometimes i’m afraid you’re the only one for me

Why do mosquitoes love me so much?

They eat me alive –

while leaving others alone.

Is it because I am plump and juicy?

Are the attracted to the vitiligo on my hands?

      the psoriasis on my scalp?

They are  probably after my rich, strong, A+ blood to pass on to their brood.

“I’m so glad you were able to come.
I hope we get to do this more often.”

“It’s 10:30, and I have a special treat for you.
Now would be the perfect time
To do a reading of my most recent poetry.”

“What, you have to get up early?
Well, maybe next time. I’ll get your coats.”

I found a muddled area in my unplanted garden.
My eyes drawn then to the forelegs, still connected,
to each other, of a small rabbit. Clearly, little meat
on the fur covered bones. Little rabbit caught,
no doubt, in the jaws of an athletic cat, claimed,
carried over the rabbit fence, into the garden, eaten.
All other bones, sinew, fur, disappeared, some entrails
scattered to the right near my transplanted tomatoes.
Little rabbit not there this morning. Not there now–
I buried legs, togather, between the first two 
tomatoe plants, the entrails between the second 
and third plants. Animal through animal; fur to dust. 

I think of all the time I spent
At baseball fields
From all turf to all dust
From frozen mornings to blistering afternoons
From New York to Florida
Mostly Bluegrass in between.  

Two sons and twenty-odd teams
We won as many as we lost
And note the “we.”  

A parent’s heart is in each at-bat
A father’s nerves field every grounder
And pity the parent of a pitcher
I was.  

They’re grown up now
And off the field
But after all that time
Baseball never leaves me.

We are of an age
when most friends have fallen away
through marriage or moving,
divorce or growth.

We are work friends
until one of us quits
and then another
and another.

So, when we gather to celebrate new positions
and summer,
to sip margaritas by a pool,
letting the last few years’ traumas melt away in the sun,
one of us shouts:
Hey, y’all know what this means?
Since none of us will work together anymore,
we aren’t just work friends–
we’re real friends!

And we laugh,
and we hope this time
these will last.

in the morning, he would walk East,
to feel the sun on his face and arms–
edging slightly closer to the star
from which all natural light came

the trees, too, greeted the day, capturing 
each hint of a breeze with their leaves,
as if a thousand small green hands
yearned to dance for the pleasure for the sun

Evan hummed when he walked, but
not loud enough to disturb the birds
who often shared their morning songs
with him–songs that bowed before the
majesty of this brightening bowl

his soft footfalls kept steady rhythm
as his heart pu-pummed its
syncopated dance and his lungs
filled like an organ bellows

Evan liked to read from the Bible
on his walks, especially the Psalms–
the sound of each page turn
a reminder that life kept moving
forward, that each step was further from home

his story would reach its final page one day
–perhaps this day, perhaps another–
but under a distant, unconstructed sky–
pale and empty of eye and ear
and touch and form

the                 

      dear

            blue sky               a    well             

        a             bridge
                                           wind                    
                  beginning to flower everywhere      
     I                 
           see                      splendour                      
                                       just now                 
               
                                   this idea of     

my body               
                 as     
   pasture.           

~ Erasure of Van Gogh’s Letters from Provence, to Theo, March 14, 1888