Posts for June 16, 2022 (page 5)

Since when did my apartment door become
the lid to my coffin?

A small studio apartment made sense
for a divorcee to reconstruct himself,
but eight years later, my lack of real progress
constricts hope, belief, faith.

Thing is, when I moved in,
I recognized this building as a place
where people got stuck
doing nothing meaningful with their time on earth;
a crack in society.
I swore I wouldn’t become one of them,
but then I looked up and couldn’t see the sun the same way.
I was getting buried by life.

The advice
don’t compare yourself to other people
or you’ll never be happy,
becomes impossible to follow
when everyone around you is finding love,
dating, getting married,
having kids, buying houses,
new cars, extravagant trips,
having every dream fulfilled.
I could be satisfied with just one of those things.

And I wish that God
would take care of the kind
the same way He coddles the wicked.
He never saves me from the fall;
just makes sure I don’t die from it.

When it comes to sins of omission,
our Man Upstairs is the greatest offender
(somebody has to judge Him)
and I wish Jesus would for once
practice what He preached.

I want somebody, just one person,
my Samaritan,
to look out for me in the same way
I look out for the world.
Or maybe I’m flawed for caring.

Problem is, life
is hard to love
when you’ve come to hate the place
you call home.
Can we do it over?

To be able to invite people into my space
without fearing what it looks like behind these walls.
To be vulnerable again.

After helping so many people catch fire with life again 
I just want, for once, for the phoenix-flame to touch me again.

But that’s what makes poetry so good
because it’s teaching me how to not hold back,
not just in the written word but daily life,
standing up for myself, asserting myself,
even when bleakness is the only inspiration I’m given.
I matter, what I am experiencing matters
because I’m not the only who feels this way.

In truth, I might still be slightly better off
because my words, written for myself,
can also be written to them.
Maybe I can still open my own dying spirit up
enough to save another’s life.
Therapy in some form.

Buffalo in June
Heat coupled with humidity
It’s making me swoon

The little cat sleeps like an autumn leaf cradled by wind.
Its breath keeps building low-grade hills for exhalation to raze.
Two whiskers play at antennae and a picture indeed comes into focus.

Yesterday, this trip wasn’t on the calendar.
Such things, happily, almost never are.  

Tonight, I’m sitting on the cool tile floor
of a still, small exam room at the vet’s,
petting you as she inserts the first needle,
the one with the heavy dose of sedative
that immobilizes you, leaves you snoring.
Sure that you’re deep in painless slumber,
she slides the second cold steel monorail
gently into your shaved right rear leg,
the shot you will ride to the afterlife.
Or oblivion. I don’t know and you won’t say.
I turn my gaze away as the syringe empties,
then watch my hand stroking your head.  

Tomorrow, as I drive to work, windows down,
a tuft of your fur will blow past my face.

Lying on my back, the thin mattress offering
little comfort after the long walk in the city

The memory of the heat, so heavy and thick as
we weaved our way through the crowded streets

I replay the last hours I had with my sister, straining
to remember all our conversation. Confident that
I would see her again, I let my mind wander, regretting
now every missed word

Her disease, vicious and fast, remains undefeated

The joy of meeting my new daughter-in-law. Our bond
instant and complete, her embrace helping me heal

Tears of loss and tears of joy are both pure

I stop at the curb for a red light, in front of me a brand-new,
pearl-white Lamborghini idles, a beautifully dressed
businessman held snuggly inside

Beside it, an ancient three-wheeled bicycle piled high with
corrugated cardboard, driven by an ancient man in a
sweat soaked white shirt

The drivers, worlds apart, both with great power

Startling contrasts. Small, dark shops on the street
with aproned men cooking over open flame, serving
dumplings and skewered meats to suited women
who will eat as they walk back to their jobs

My hotel is sketchy, but the air conditioning is as raw
as the heat, raising goosebumps on my arms

The city outside the window is endless as it stretches
to the smoggy horizon

I lie there watching the evening sun meander through
skyscrapers to find its way through my curved window

It throws the edges of the cheap furniture into shadow
and highlight that makes them look better

At last falling on my face and making me squint, letting me
know that it had come a long way to find me

So, there you are. Yesterday we were together in Ohio

And I become overwhelmed with the blare
of voices, the cacophony, sometimes. Imagine
a parade of faces in motion, exultation crowding
like I’m in the back of a busy elevator, pressed
between the wall and the tip of my nose. 

It wasn’t always this way–just another side-
effect of getting sick. The funny thing is that
this chronic illness I must have had since birth,
the doctor says. So no getting. So much
has happened in the last two years.

When I was ten, I said, I don’t want to live,
her caustic response, You chose this life,
and I imagined my soul flitting above body,
tiny babe, blue without breathing, without father,
brown girl dying before birth, and said, Her,
as an afterthought, I was gathered from the sea.  

I couldn’t imagine this,
or remember this.

My mother must have been wrong.

I knew my life about to change;

some things would be left behind.

I packed the suitcases of my brain,

and mused, my life’s about to change.

Girl, it’s time you thought long-range. 

No longer resigned and undermined.

I whispered, “My life will change.

It’s time my values and actions aligned.”

Roadside wildflowers swayed, unconfined.

I told him, “My life’s about to change. 

You catch up fast or be left behind.”

He was doomed.
Lacking the stripe
of backward growing hair
on his back
the Ridge.
Not meeting standards.
Breeder willing
to sacrifice him
for lack of perfection.
Grace from 
Rescue Rhodesians
saved him.

We humans are above
such rules of perfection 
for our own
or are we?

                          Cold stage.
                          Black box.

Marley taped in panels, rolled out left to right.
An expanse of horizonal possibility.

The Absence Of on full display, set against:
                          One Body.

Down center spot.
Light.
Up softly. Like an eye that opens after sleep.
The blur of sticky breath &

Nothing on between these sheets.
Ivory steeped satin across cool nipples;
A dropped cloth to reveal
A chiseled statue.

                          Inhale.

Ribs flare, chest rises, downy hairs cascade
On two arms tuned to the mere pin prick of movement.
So subtle to be revelatory.
A cut through of air in condensation around

This hot-blooded form.
We’re at a meeting of fronts. All this rumble & flash.
Less than minutes,
Less than miles away from freedom. And you:
                          Gesture.
                          Once.

Turn hand to palm.
A slender finger to cheekbone.
The concavity of shoulders in defense of folding this seam the other way.
The torque of:
                          The collarbones.
                          The heart space.
                          A softening.

The electricity rising from somewhere beneath
That Marley-covered floor.

Trust is in the simplicity:
                          A palm.
                          A cheekbone.
                          A finger.
                          A softening.

Tension in the lack of affectation:
                          A cool drink because you’re thirsty.
                          A cleared throat because you’re thirsty.
                          A devouring of space because you’re thirsty.                        
                          A voicing of Yes because you’re thirsty.

From my position – relative to yours – I am set, simply, in relief:
       One Clear Cord
                          Chord
                          Cored
                          Over & Over again.

& it is because of you that I am now:
                          Pulled taut
                          Listening
                          Centered.