Posts for June 3, 2023 (page 12)

you could call me translucent

will say hello if spoken to
will share notebooks if you’re curious
mostly just utter
                            yes
                                   another beer
                                                         please
                                                                      thank you

mostly just watch

       people shooting pool
       people karaokeing
       people drinking shots
       people coming in
                    with other people

i almost invited a friend
       kinda didn’t want
to risk what solitude offers

I love pens, poetry

collecting ideas from laughter
                             from eavesdropping stories
                             from the words of others
                                            read from the phone

     still

to share these hours with another special other
could be my eluding fulfillment
paper is longevity
               you could be escape
                                                               or more
       than anything else in my world

or so I dream
        from statue station
amid the bliss
        of stardom strangers

this night is everything it needs to be
      if not everything it could be

contentment is a state of mind
      of existence
i will appreciate all that life gives
      even as i clamor for more

rejection
is easy
for you

it skips off
your tongue
like a child

it brings me
to my knees
where I stop

I stop to
gather my
talent shards

they make
my mosaic
complete

I was born into a home

So full of hatred

That it’s embedded itself into my

Roots.

I want to tell you how the latest
writer’s weekend went, and get
snarky about the people 
who annoy us. 

I want to hear you complain
about how they misspelled your name
on your gravestone, leaving out
the ‘e’ on your Anne

which you insisted on as much
as a young redhead from Green Gables.
I want to meet you for dinner
at our favorite Mexican or Middle Eastern

restaurant, hear your stories about work, 
cousins, your long ago Scottie, travel
plans, and memories of Paris and Assisi.
I just want to hear you laugh again,

make plans to hear our favorite
Irish band in Dayton, talk about what
we’re reading. Mostly, I just want you 
not to be dead. 

Five shots for seven days
I feel lost
at heavens gate.
I could do so much
if I only put it down,
and walked away. 

I was a weed girlie. 
She was a speed girlie.
long enough
that her heart beat
became 
irregular. Still the same
text alert for her.

Will I be her
for you,
If I speed up and
slip away,
I hope there’s 
another fish. 

(with gratitude for frank)

wear it.

your will worry
that your belly
will look bad,

but your middle
soft and spherical,
will be magic,
like the full moon
over Louisville tonight.

with the laying on
of your forgiving hands,
trace the circle
you once loathed
and love it.

love your belly.

you are a beautiful woman.

you,

once welcomer
of lives,

you,

now beckoner
of lovers,

wear that dress.

you look like a woman
who has made love.

tonight

you look like a woman

who is a natural wonder.

6/2/23

I’ve become so accustomed to

just being

That I’m unsure I even know

what it’s like to be happy.

I fucking love humanity 
So why can’t I take that love and press it into your cupped hands

I want to house your pain and be a buoy in an ocean
If that’s the most I can be
In a selfish way, or rather mutualist
Until it’s hurting us both and we realize that it wasn’t about our souls
It was about the dependance we could give to one another

I hate inherency
If I can be anything I want to be,

Why can’t I be love

for John Stone, 72
for Wilfred Michels, 43
for Sharon Ann Michels, 14

a line of murders and suicides stretches back
to before the ice melted away. the ice is still
melting away: this is a fact. this is a family tree,
a history written in black ink and blood. I found
the truth of it while searching for a past I did not have
through birthright: before I could even speak
I was banished from my father’s house. or abducted
if that is how you want the story told. that is the story
as I had it from my father, years later, a man
I never really knew, but whose face haunts my mirror,
a pale ghost in the night, hovering upon the glass.

I came upon the first story of that old grandfather
in the hardware store, killed for what was not even his
in the till, by my grandfather at 25 and some other
thug who never cared for human life. guilt became
my sole inheritance in an instant, but not the one
wanted for me. I was supposed to bear the name
shared by generations of men in a long, unbroken
line like some odd cross. it was that name that led
down the path towards the second story, the story:

his name was Gerald, a great-uncle whose grave
I visited before I ever knew about how he preyed
upon a little girl, or died by suicide after his last act.
the newspapers from December 8th, 1959 all
called it forbidden romance, but now we must call
it what it was. I think of her father, what he thought
while struggling to stay alive in his driveway. I think
of Sharon Ann: her face is etched in my mind like a river
crafted by glaciers, washing away the earth. how
she never knew true love, and only a little life. yes,
it is Sharon Ann I think of most, Sharon Ann who haunts me.