Posts for June 27, 2022 (page 6)

We’re allowed to bear witness to the impossible & walk away,
             unfazed. Just as we’re allowed to collapse in a heap,

rumpled & tear-torn over a bad dream that means nothing,
             conceived of in heat frenzy.

But, I’d rather feel the heat than shelter in the eye of the storm.
             I’d rather laugh with dust in my throat &

love with the fiercest fronts of me than
             catalogue this history of extraordinary events with

decimaled precision. No library for me.
             I want to wear it. I’ll forego the apron for a

second helping. I’ll even help you to yours,
             if you let me.

Here, I’ll throw up the map after I eat these words,
             tasting each flavor along the pin ball game

of my tongue. On the way down and the way back up.
             Because life ought to be lived in the first person.

Kiss me if you don’t believe me.
             Believe me now?

Go ahead and stick your own flesh & blood
             hand in the cavity of your creation.

Wild, isn’t it?
             To feel it moving.

I scrub my hands raw against the sanded paper the
Pastels smooth the surface rough to catch The color 
and the pigment gets
Everywhere I am
So mad at art right now 

We drew down the endless days of Your last summer in our
Sketchbooks. Your hands were always steadier
Than mine
Your heart was always steadier

We showed each other our pages and we laughed and smiled and said,

“Wow babe, I love it.”

You fell down and scrubbed your knees and hands raw against the pavement and the Headline was BRAIN DEATH but
Your Right Hand Looked Broken And
It didn’t matter how I asked
Or how many times I asked
They wouldn’t check because
(And they didn’t say it, but)

Who puts a cast on a dead man?

So no more pictures.

And what of art, that it gave me comfort?
What of art, that it gave me answers during every other time before?
Now? There aren’t any fucking answers anymore.

I am still painting, because some stupid part of me won’t stop.
I am still painting, because for some reason that most of me can’t seem to remember, 
Some part of me still thinks it means something, but 
These pieces of pigment are just wisps
Outstretched, beseeching, somehow 
Hoping
In this fog 
to find 
your hand. 

My mother is a maker

My mother makes ceramics
Old hands cracked with clay
Candles, mugs, ornaments
People want to pay for their beauty
But she gives them freely
Because she makes light and shares it

My mother makes people well
Day shift, night shift, call
She is the kind eyes 
And maker of jokes
Who wakes the sick
From the sleep of anesthesia

My mother makes a difference
She is independent and strong
Funny and kind
Honest and giving
And she taught us to be these things too

My mother is a maker
And she makes me proud to be her daughter

Enveloped in green hills, soft
and lush, cedar plank walls
and hanging quilts–multi-colored
in their complicated simplicity,
more quiet than I’m used to,
I’m battened here in a fabric of silence,
my ears alert for whatever’s
out there.  But I hear only
the faint click of an overhead
fan.  Great stretches of unoccupied
time.  My soul can breathe here,
nothing to do but be.

As I’m awaiting my burritos
Enjoying the lime bite of an ice cold Victoria
I overheard this from a nearby table

“She was smart, she got tattoos”

Yes, that’s beer exploding out my nose….

Dear MS Word:

Please stop correct-
ing me.
This page is mine.

June’s calendar,
a wire-grid window
with its diminishing squares
of Kentucky landscape,
my clouded eyes 
able to discern the miniscule
geometry of the life I have
left here. On Friday I fly
to Tampa’s Temple Terrace
and my sister’s condo 
on fucking Alligator Lake
 – I rarely use profanity

Penelope, who seems daughter
more than great granddaughter,
and Narayan. her fabulously
dark and handsome boyfriend,
are driving me to Shakertown
today. A kind of last hurrah 
for Old ZZ & his sacred spaces,
tomorrow it’s High Bridge and
my reveal of what “ZZ” means

In 2010 I came to the peace
of this place, P’s parents’ houseboat.
After my beloved Dr. Tom’s death,
and several severe affairs of mental
collapse, here I finally rested and
found a friend in fellow sailor, 
Jack Teal. We were as chaste as
Shakers but Jack acted more W.C.
Fields than W.C. himself. His humor.
the art of his quirky photography,
he knew how to crack me open.

After all the packing 
& the Shaker Shed Storage Unit,
I’m enjoying morning coolness
on the lake with a mimosa. 
As a Brooklyn born hellraiser,
never thought Kentucky could
get inside me this way

….ah, here’s those two youth
of the world to pick me up
in their Prius

Her eyes were lemon peonies

Late June and here I am, contemplating cycles
on a different deck, a different yard, with a different
outlook.  

Timehop and Lexington Poetry Month caress hands (again),
writing love letters of reminder:  No matter how much changes, much
stays the same.  It is only these eyes (and this heart)
revealing disparity. 

Purchasing seeds is something of a risk:  You know
what could happen.  You pay the price for hope. 

What makes one grow while others do not?
Goldilocks breaks the silence. 

Too much sun.  Too little.
Too much water.  Not enough. 
Fancy food.  Simply space.

The plants I bought (my mother placed in pots) sit around me,
some vibrant (even giddy), stretching and yawning–coming awake.
Others despondent (already wilting), husks of former nature.

Dying. 

I play cup games with placement.  Shuffle them like cards
across this elevated surface.  Attend to apparent needs,
casting dice and prognosticating the potentiality
of futures.  That is what you can do.  And be content.

Because sometimes things fall apart.  Entropy, eventually, has his say.
I wonder if it is my fault (again).  I wonder if some of us are not
meant to see things grow (in our own yards), only appreciate the ones that do,
mourn the ones that do not.  And learn to keep our fingers
out of the soil, away from hungry ghosts. 

Late June and here I am, contemplating cycles,
feeling the heat of the day rekindling.  Knowing

much more will come and stay
the same, but I have grown

and need a new pot.

loves the canyon
it carved. 

Love me like the word
igneous loves the g
just below the surface of its name. 

Yes love the layers of only 
sand and silt. And yes the cold 
stone. And yes you will break

again and again but you won’t 
stop even though all that’s left
of you is the man your love made.