Posts for June 21, 2022 (page 5)

gravity

                                             catches
        
            all of

                                        us

                                                               unaware

                         at some point

                                                                                  or

                                                                                                        other

my phone
                       slipped from my pocket
         on the ground
mere minutes
                                          long enough
                  for a scavenger

passerby says
                          let me call it
passerby says
                                     why take it                       (just turn it in
                                                                                  like, right away)

passerby says
                          can’t say I’m shocked
                          you know todays world

plenty of people willing to help
                                       (let me call it for you
                                         is the sound on)
                                                    my scream is barely contained

plenty of people willing to help
                                but one possibly
                                                               dishonest 

                   somebody

would like to hope in goodness
         not assume the worst
but still
         another letdown to keep me low

even if not picked up still gone
                                               vanished from sight

I return home empty

whose is blame
God or man
whats the difference

this newest trial
a potentially deadly blow
to already fractured man

Daybreak: early

Maundy Thursday service in the Refinery Church in the old Monarch Mill. Planting feet on polished boards once rough enough to catch the husks of grains ground on site to be shipped away via train tracks that no longer exist. Steadying myself on the rough brick walls after losing my balance because tears sting my eyes as we raise our voices to sing Amazing Grace. Communion found not in the bread and cup, but in this shared belief in the grace found in our collective. Where else but a ministerial association holy week service would I sing in harmony with my accountant, my friend’s brother, my former student, and my minister’s mother-in-law?

Melodic embellishment
Offering supple
Clemency prayer

My thoughts hurt much more than your words do.
They are the moment the nail punctures your shoe,
and the creeping feeling of never having enough time.

I don’t ask for reassurance because I don’t want to bother you more than I already have.
I know I am loved, my fear is that I’m only loved out of pity
like the doll you don’t have the heart to throw away.

I was asked to keep a journal of everything that stresses me out.
You really want to know?  This is what stresses me out!
The feeling of “No one actually likes you, they’re either using you or being nice.”

So please just tell me you love me
every single day
so these thoughts can’t come back.

The day the rains finally came
I let the record spin
in the background 
and it didn’t stir up 
anything
I stood on the back patio
watched monsoon nestle the mountains
under a touch of silver sky
and it didn’t remind me of anything
I promise 

To keep myself honest,
I answer “I don’t know” more and more often.
I tuck amazement
with the laundry detergent,
humility – with the knives.

Author: Marin Bodakov
Translator: Katerina Stoykova

I gather hundreds of leaves from time spent writing,
harvesting words on star-spun nights and early rise,
and find what served me best was not love-struck hunger,
that blind-sick demon, blood-sucking my own heart dry,
but insight of sea and land, its mythology and nature
of human perception, the curvature of how my body
is the body of soil, clay-built from star dust and my first taste
of sea salt, ambient tides leading back to the movement of place,
bone-shifting, root-grounding, migrating, returning home
to birth sands, finding heart-love in my own body of soil, all along.

One new poem per day?
This is a burnout, people.
Let’s all write haiku.

Intelligent creation?

You left instructions for
your home
your accounts
your collection of records
for where to place 
your life-exhausted body.

Where did you leave instructions for
taming the brutal silence?
How do I stop your absence 
from following me to every room?
How do we carry on
our conversation?