Posts for June 17, 2022 (page 8)

Some have died off 
or are confined to memory care,
while the youngest, my daughter, 
is already eight and growing faster 
than summer clover. Looking back, 
there were only a few good years,
a blink of the eye in the scheme of things, 
when that grouping I think of as family,
six of us — my parents, sister, brothers and I — 
were together: brief winter evenings at the kitchen table 
playing poker for pennies, short summers out on the deck 
overlooking the long back lawn, me, my daughter’s age, 
chasing fireflies in the deep shadows, 
before dutch elm disease came along,

my dad battling flare ups at the grill, 
mom pouring herself a glass of beer — 
she shouldn’t, but it’s the weekend — my two brothers 
playing catch in the diminishing twilight,
my sister before she goes off to college, on the chaise, 
snapping her cigarette case closed.
I stood at the back of the yard, pickle jar aglow, 
among mole hills and the vegetable garden, 
pea blossoms as the moon rises, 
I could not see my family at all. But I could hear them, 
I hear them still, their laughter, bouncing 
off the back of the house. I feel it blow past me, 
hurrying away, like the wind seeking some place new to favor.

ceramic ladybug
may it bring luck
like the real thing

The world’s weep-worthy
I’m weeping now  

Most people I know
keep a stiff upper lip  

or wring hands and suppress
visions of unhappy endings  

where the house burns
with the children in it  

let me tell you how history class was held
in my day, grandson–we didn’t have
those fancy greentooth implants you young people enjoy
we wore sensory caps over eyes, nose, ears, and scalp
and sensory tips on our fingers
we would blink twice in quick succession to 
activate, and the Earth would appear before us

the teachbot would direct us through
the ear piece which area to choose, and
we would find that place on the globe and
touch it to begin descent and
we would spin the globe
backwards to the date and time we were going
to absorb–all the sights and sounds and
smells of the time,
as generated by AI

by that time, humans had abandoned
objective records and embraced constructs

still, it was much better than what
your great-grandfather had in his school–
they used books–they called them “textbooks”–
but, yes, they were physical books with pages
and a cover–can you imagine?

so you see, grandson, humanity has certainly
advanced over the years
I wish we could talk about it, but you
cannot speak, so long as you remain
entwined with that Antares polymid.
I hope you’ll be fully bodyside in time for dinner.

a calendula bloom days old in the vase
a great consolation
the hint at which it was suggesting
time to slough off a skin that had
worn too thin
begun to curl away from the
bones.

She believes her ancestors
can see her Facebook page

so she riddles it with flashbacks
and gratitude

hoping to appease 
the watching spirits, hoping

to quell the dreams 
that overpower her

in the middle of the night
she wakes

sweating out memories.
“He was a good man,” she types

above a picture of him
behind the pulpit.

“He was a good man,”
don’t haunt me 

“Everybody said so.”

I had one hummingbird feeder,

now I have two.

I thought one was enough

to feed the few.

Each spring I fill the feeder

and place it on the staff.

Every four days I repeat,

only filling to the half.

One day I began observing

and mentally taking note.

Two hummingbirds  were fighting,

for one there was no hope.

Dueling with their beaks,

and clicking away.

Fluttering and bumping

until the one flew away.

I did not understand

since there were six holes.

They had plenty of space

but, one wanted control.

I went to the garden center

and purchased another feeder.

Cleaned it and looked around

and placed it on a cedar.

The aggressive hummingbird

still hovers around.

But the others don’t care

there’s a better feeder up town.

I don’t want anybody I just want everybody to want me
like intertwining branches on a tree
I wrap around myself so narcissistically
trapped in these tendencies 
I tend to depend on constancies of drop and then amend
leaves fall without stop and I pretend,
there not gone but then again,
I find myself swept away by my own wind

and I drift ever so slowly to lay underneath the area of an old wisteria tree
as I ineptly inspect burdens I can only obscurely see 
its perspicacious purple whispers wisdom to me 
and the efficacious therapy averts a vexatious plea

but I continue to meander until I lay in exhaust, 
on the soft forest floor moss
adoring how the branches of the deciduous tree crossed,
I soared the amiss advances and remained lost…
tranquility and its cost?
my mild mindset mixed with tea brewed from an alecost
in my favorite canvas I became tossed

In 1976, the day after
the Bicentennial Parade,
my mother gives me a 
stamp collecting kit
and a pack of plastic dolls.
I sit and lick.
Ride my bike. Split.
Around the corner
a familiar face on the block,
lately matriculates,
drives green muscle car,
says, Hey baby, wanna buy some coke?

I don’t hate you for it
or the way my father finds you
and tells your mother.
My father doesn’t hate anything either
until I say, No big deal.
Then, there, back against the wall,
the anatomy of a bike tire inner tube,
the position to get in when falling,
how to whip a taunt with a word.
Mother’s hands had to smooth
down the chips,
There, there, on my shoulders.

Up from the horizon line waves the body oblique 

to a buoyed cadence with a vermillion-soaked sun.

Fever ripples salt along our tongues and I want 

to taste a warmth brimming with the sapor of brine.

A collection of favorite words can’t make a poem

be anymore than I can be a poem myself. 

I write on my arm the torrid air a salve

for the wounds any pleasure soothes

and makes known again.

Why is it important that we remember

the metrics of marking time? All I ever am 

haunted by the naming of things, 

the finality of definition 

of anything being anything

more than what is known. 

Fascinated by turning toward, becoming

light haloed from a moving silhouette— 

I write nonsense, vague and unspecific,

defensive mechanisms from being known.

Next to me, someone is talking (to me?)

of love. They say we make it

specific to our language of need.