Posts for June 19, 2022

There are moments

When I look at you

From across the room

Or when we’re in the car

I wish I had all the answers

For all those questions

You’ve spent years asking

To the person in the mirror

Although I’m certain

All the answers in the world

Will never justify why

Will never undo the damage

Unbreak your heart

Or make you feel

The way you always

Make others feel

You pour all the love

You never got

In every shoe you tie

Story you read

Practice you wait for

Recital you go to

For every birthday cake

You never got

Is another wish

You give to us

And always keep

our candles burning

In every line you write

Every story you tell

Vision you create

Dream you make a reality.
Thank you.

This is my anti poem. 

The one that says you can’t make me. 
I’ve seen all the cowboy movies. 
and the Indians never win. 
even though they used war paint,
like I do, painting their faces
With long lashes and bright lips

I’ve seen the pirate movies
where the hero is lashed to the mast 
just before the storm waves
break over the side of the ship. 
the pirates always drown
or at least they never 
get the treasure. 

Sometimes I think I hear the children cry
And I listen for them to shout
“you can’t make me”
but I’ve seen that movie too. 

If you can see us
you know he hasn’t
forgotten you               look at me
I love your crystal ball, finger cymbals
belly dancing music
I love growing food chopping, simmering
grinding my spices mortar-and pestle-fresh too
clove-like nails in thick ham shoulder
cinnamon sticks, smoked paprika, zaatar on toast
jasmine rice enthralled him then         does still
still you hover

I know you’re here and you know
I was the one who sifted through
your art portfolio           gazed at swift sketches
of the artist lover who left you
saved the phi delta theta pin         opened dozens
of tissue-wrapped purses where you hid coins
leafed your journal fragments accusing the one who
married you, my one now, with thick lies,
certain he sensed you only settled because your clock ticked
he had no clue, but your sour sorrows waxed, waned over his verdant tries
until you scorched it all

l smell sweat from your thighs
feet tangled in his long legs, an October blood moon
exactly like this night          taste the heat you etched
fading in the furnace now that roars within him and me

Once in a dream down a ruddy, dirt road
Alabama, where you caught him,  you hurtle toward me
body aimed straight into mine       your feet don’t touch ground
I sprint so fleet and sure to my front door, slam
it behind, but not locked           I leap into my overstuffed bed
sink deep, seeking solace        hear your steps

Now when the bed dips on one side
and you thump            I don’t turn      know it’s you
come to rustle me, shake our mattress
let me know you were here first         it’s no dream
I’m always alone             I smile
not going anywhere     you know

I just want to heal
I want to put my broken
inner child to rest

Dead bees greet me on the landing
Their bodies neatly preserved
Kick them out of the way
I have appointments to catch

Over time, the lifeless multiply
They must live somewhere close
A web in the porch light
Tells the tale of their demise

Workers out after dark
Head to the nearest bright light
Intoxified, they fall to gossamer’s death
(Back in the hive, the headline reads, Spider’s Gluttony Kills Ten)

Springtime, the church roofer cross the street
Found their hive, did them all in
(Headline: Victims of an Apparent Armageddon)

Midsummer, cross the landing
Fallen bees, dead again
The web remains, so does the hive
(New headline: Spider Revives Wanton Slaughter)

Walk past the church
Worker bees hard at work in the next drain north
Must build a fortress for their queen
Sweeten with honey, salvation at all costs

looking for a cleidoic thought, 
a protoplasm encased in indecision
and regret, hiding in the most obvious of places, the one 
you’ve yet to search—existing like the space between
the em-dash right above and that e,
holding nothingness next to the blackness by simply being
there, resting in an expanse so vast it could only be contained
in between your ears, fervently immobile until you try to
grasp it, stochastically fragile in its own imperfectly impervious way,
waiting for your silence, your disinterest, your obsession, your you
to simply disappear so that, in spite of you,
it will hatch to show itself to the lack of you,
the place where you
were

When I drove into
Liberal, Kansas I got out,
said Is this a joke?

Got a chicken joke,
but you’re gonna have to calm
the flock right down first.

They cross every road,
dot each T, always Puckish–
Dad jokes forever!

He knew it was time to stay at the farm
when leaving it began to feel
like he was in alien in a rocket ship
instead of a man. From his view
of Route 3108 from the height
of his beat-down Chevy truck, once-
familiar places had this uncanny
newness to them.

“Ida,” he said to his wife,
“It feels like everything
has
shrunk almost.”

Madame Light tells time
Sir Darkness is a hard dude to befriend
I’ve seen glorious sunrise explosions orange, magenta, purple/pink and saffron
Pacific Ocean swirled and alchemized into a shimmering turquoise morn

Danced with darkness
Sided with dubious deceptions
Hid out in the cavities of my heavy chest
Been massaged into submission by fatiguing habits posing as friends 

I can speak sharp-tongued lingo when shoved and squeezed into tight compromising corners
I can bark when saturated in unclear expectations
I can humbly crawl to Ho’oponpono Prayer washing the wrath of a too hothead

Miss Nature home of river rocks scorpions orchids cacti and Redwoods
Calmer of spirits soothsayer of dark days and light nights
Sorcerer of oracle wisdom poured generously in silence

Meditation walks gently from unreal dis-traction to vibrating truth
Constantly humming Oneness to calm a rabid heart’s need to prove 

Awareness of sounds heighten
A train’s warning blare shakes sleepy locals as it barrels through town
Faintly receding as it heads north to San Francisco

Yet breath’s oneness, abandoned too many times during a wakeful day
Automatically pilots a tired body lying in the midst of a dream filled night

I remember once
sitting outside by a lilac tree,
hearing a voice say
my life is like white lace curtains,
trying to shade an open sunny window,
floating, swaying, whispering.

White lace curtains