an unfortunately regular event (haiku)
just now, almost fell
down the stairs again–scary
do not recommend
just now, almost fell
Tuesday’s high
kept me going through Wednesday.
But Thurseday
was a whole other story.
The anxieties came crawling back,
which was to be excpected.
But that complimentary combo
I didn’t ask for
decided to make it’s prescence known
in the form of a low,
the dip in the roller coaster,
also known as a depression.
This has happened before,
but I always forget
that after the highs,
come the lows.
If we are star stuff,
if we are the building blocks of old gods and
chocolate chip muffins, and
automated spam call bots and
running water and breakups and glitter and
rubber and glue and
shaded glens and that moment when
you crest a hill and there are birds flying and for a moment
you feel like you’ve finally remembered
how
to fly,
then …
or maybe … Do You remember, once, when our son said,
“Everything is everywhere.”?
or another!
Do You remember how you implored him,
“You have to think of other people!” and in his newly-minted voice he said, “Other people?”
I keep shouting so the echoes bounce off me, so
(hopefully) I can
come back to You
“I am here. I
am here. I am
here.”
I love you and had to put it in writing
on a scrap torn from a brown paper bag
I keep in my wallet
to recall
a looking away
so I trip unseen
a renaming:
I purr in my sleep
a being tall
when my reaching fell short
a request to read your story
before the editor
an insistence I not go look for the damn dog
it knows its way home (it did)
a pretense in morning
my rage did not ruin the night (it did)
an unmooring of our pasts
when we met
I keep your note in my wallet
to make real
that you tore a scrap from a brown paper bag
to write that you loved me
Shine, brine, waterline.
Tenderness. Gentleness. Loch Ness.
Dive, sunlight.
Make no splash,
shards of light like dimes spilled
on a sidewalk.
The sea’s not a painting,
and drowning’s no game.
Poem, ark where two by two everyone’s parents enter,
then separate like waves,
dads in the bow, moms in the stern,
divided by sex like kids on a school bus,
get better soon.
Little seasick poem, un-nation yourself.
Bring words like spices across the sea,
wind in the purpled air,
bridge improvised out of birdsong and the rhythm of waves.
How else do we return to one another
but by listening to what the sea has to say?
If I’d titled this “Self Portrait as Sea”
rain wouldn’t pose such a problem.
As if titles are the problem.
As if Ars Poetica with Bacon.
As if Dr.
As if Ars Poetica (cocoons).
As if Assistant to the…
The sky a lecture that never ends.
The sea a boneyard of murky, buried memories.
Flash, yearn, don’t crash, turn.
How else do we survive our own desires and drives
but by floating on words that travel far to rescue us?
Since I can’t say ‘I love you’
without a fuss,
a fake sob session,
an immortalizing recording,
a string of teasing,
I’m saying ‘I like you every other Sunday.’
Right now,
I’m having a fight
with God.
He doesn’t seem to understand
that I could be
His greatest disciple
if He would just
throw me a bone
every now and then.
But there are two people
at least,
in the Bible who
situationally weren’t going to church:
the beaten traveller
whom the Samaritan saved
and Jesus Himself
when He retreated
to the wilderness
for forty days.
I don’t know
if I can really say
if I’m one or the other,
both,
or neither at all.
I just know
that the only piece of advice
you can think to give
is the slightly condescending,
walking away from the Church
is never the answer,
which dresses none of my wounds
and further convinces me
to remain
in this soul-searching retreat.
