morning begins…
they say
morning begins with
your first cup of joe
but I woke with the robins
ran a forest trail
caught sunrise
in sidelong glances
there’s sweat on this brow
but it came before coffee
when the day was still mine
they say
morning begins with
your first cup of joe
but I woke with the robins
ran a forest trail
caught sunrise
in sidelong glances
there’s sweat on this brow
but it came before coffee
when the day was still mine
There’s a beast in my head
pounding at my skull,
stretching out my brain like taffee.
It’s begging to be fed.
I silently refuse,
it screeches louder.
It’s friend called stress crawls into my mind
and I make a deal with the black liquid devil.
One cream,
two sugars,
just please make it stop.
To her who is all of us.
Your defenseless body
before my eyes.
Eyes loaded with horror
but next to a silent mouth.
I do not stop the knee
of an oppressive regime
which wrenches your breath and your dreams
while sowing orphans
more still.
When I let them kill you
I die a death too.
I am left with few passings to live
and less life to resist.
that time (i) got confused
and walked (i)n the realty office
and thought it said real(i)ty
and you laughed at my gr(i)n
and thought (i) was sweet
and on our th(i)rd date confessed
and told me you’d cr(i)nged
and called it the we(i)rdest pickup line ever
and then at our wedding (i) confessed
and said (i)’d genuinely got confused
and you laughed at my gr(i)n, again
that’s the time l(i)fe got it right
Let this serve
As my official notice
That I have reached capacity
I will be bailing out the water
That is threatening to
Pull me under
Until
Further notice
Then
I will
Drift quietly
And aimlessly
For a bit
While
My course
Corrects
All
My
Best
Take me back to that field beyond town
where the meadow rush left us
breathless with attachment.
Pull me down in those tall grasses & help me know
the weight of our own weather,
the drag of the dust,
and the salty taste of necessity when it latches onto
a tongue too tired,
too hot with fire
to fight this feeling any longer.
When I was a kid,
my house went up in flames.
& I rescued you.
Let me explain.
1. The rattle & clash of bright plastic figurines,
rough cut edges,
country names for dance partners
coupled in history (Czechoslovakia, my favorite).
2. The storybook personalities of sea shells,
green foam homed –
those bone-crisp indentations.
Sand dollars, a conch, & several other mismarked miracles.
3. A team of tiny wooden boxes
stiff-lidded & adorned with
primary-splashed wooden lattice –
those musty secrets left for stronger hands.
4. Even tinier little people living inside
dressed with bold colored string
coiled to make nubby little outfits.
A family of bendable wire frames.
5. & glue-speckled carpet speckled carpet blue,
cream, rose pink, & rose leaf green
hard-crusted with the experiments of a Christmas
stuck in the past.
This imagined world painted like gauze on my eyes.
No goal, just play.
Squint & replace it.
How can I soften further?
I want to know our names.
I want to know when to plant the corn
& how to harvest the outcome.
Because it took me so long
to sew up my heart this way.
This outcropping of heat & how hard will you fight it?
Listen when I tell you no.
But listen harder when I tell you
Yes.
In the molasses slur of a beer-sodden craftsman,
minding a chain-smoked fire at dawn.
“We stain the glass
as teetering rieslings
rise or sclera sallows in sickening vintage.
It’s more than a fork in the road we ford
or a fork afforded mussel or millet.
Far more than a nod or a no
or a sunken shoulder turned from chillingly sterling
frames that feed at a breakneck pace
amid reeling spindles Moirai mind
and tease with a smoldering sprig or snee—
some darling dream
or the soured morass of milkwood
summoned to mule and mop and
mewl and mope and mull and
map an alacritous tragedy. Yet
the choice is trim as a silkworm,
thin as the pits beleaguering slippery
strips of slim and sensitive film:
An ant, be it black or red or orange,
who slipped as a tear of McKenna
(a dithering daub of dew that’d
groped about brazen biers that
bound and wound round moribund
growth unchecked or an ant cathected)
slipped through an eddy of orange juice,
fished with a balsa skewer from a tacit carafe,
must suckle its husk as a cat’s tongue polishes
toe beans pinker than flustered cheeks;
or the bleary-eyed lapper of gutrot reds
scrapes Ezra’s petals from wobbly costards,
punctures the freckling pith of a honey crisp
twice, to snuffle an odorous lotus and
whisper amidst the dissembling darts of
mosquitoes, venomous spittle of snipes
and snipers pitted in grimacing poplars—
Another costard bruised
still fit for a fritter or golden tart
fell fresh from the apple cart:
Whereas John-boy’s lethean fiend,
in a pearling glare of impeccable prowess,
sucked in prised and tenuous eyes
to ever observe his apse in a sparkling skull,
resplendent with blithering mirrors,
lithe as a disco ball unnerved and everted;
our ant upturned from orange juice
drums its spindly ears across glistening concrete,
ever reflecting the rhythms of rapturous stars
or maybe the rap of a raven,
maybe young Page’s graven flats that frenzied
flusher than children’s cheeks—
So I raise my glass to our sister star
(resigned to the borderlands blotting arboreal
kens) and dandle its blinding bands
in a shimmying playa of riesling,
pinning its pieces, pale as the pliant snow
or poplars pulped and pressed to impressionless paper,
(split on the hip of a wine flute)
into these scintillant scenes of starlings
squealing, pealing, reeling, bloody
malingering bright as a bloodletted pine
or a sugarfoot lapping the babka,
bogs of milk, and the honey-combed cataracts
yellow as jonquils, yellow as burst cocoons.”
You were not only
wet and cold, but said
nothing. I missed your scent, rose
body spray plain
and simple. You left my dream
the way you came into it,
without opening the door.
I showed up
simply elated you asked if I was free.
This month is chaotic
but our undeniable draw
to one another
is not.
So, I showed up
right after I saw your name
light up upon my screen
with a smile
cracking the skin of my lips
for this one hour
we had aligned flawlessly.
A cropped yellow T-shirt,
overly comfortable
black and blue shorts,
and my sandals
that you’re convinced look like
“dino-shoes”.
Hair greased flat to my scalp
coffee in hand
“Is this your girlfriend?”
I whip my head around only to see
a properly dressed,
hair with full volume, girl
you work with everyday
accompanied by two more
of your female coworkers
burning holes into my chest.
Blow gentle, mist-fog the cracks and broken edges, breathe another way.
(Note: An American sentence is a variation on the haiku invented by Allen Ginsburg.)
