Posts for June 4, 2023 (page 5)

This heat hits me right in the gut
amplified by sun through windows
we block with curtains and
push away with fans flipped to blow
night air inside at dusk.

We sit out trays of ice the dog steals
and strip down to barely decent,
bodies melted right into
warm hardwood floors.

Fire curls inside my stomach
like sour milk soon as the dew burns off
up until we hear that lone
whippoorwill call from the next holler.

I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t even focus
on a book or a movie to distract me
because it really does feel like
the world is burning, and
flames lick at my heels.

A

Raindrop

Falls

To loneliness

From the sky

Against

My window pane

Glistening

Scattered

Furiously

Against

Flower petals

Eventually

Dropping

Down to the earth

Melting into grass

Invisible

To me

And everyone else

Even to

Other 

Raindrops

Never

To know each other

As

They become 

One

With the earth 

all that’s left of my desire is lust
& that’s all there ever was of yours

I started off energetic and happy
But here I am panting, catching my breath
My fresh, clean, white shoes are now caked in mud
I forgot it had just rained
I’m covered in mosquito bites
I neglected the repellent
On that thought I definitely forgot my sunscreen
My arms are now a vibrant vermillion 
The noon sun is relentless
So now I’m drenched in sweat
My legs ache and I wish to rest
But every bench has been taken by another weary walker
I envy the children on the slides and the swingsets
But I decided to walk in the park instead
I guess it isn’t so easy

He wakes in mid-night, alone although she sleeps in the same bed, so emotionally distant, disinterested, that she might be light years away, circling a different, barren sun. She dislikes herself, and so won’t let him love her.

He thinks he’d like to hold her astride his mouth, or bury his tongue and fingers between supine, spreading thighs. Memories of how she tasted on his tongue, felt around his fingers, are at once deep loss and rich treasure. Twenty years past the last time, the subject well beyond discussable, he cannot know if she remembers, still hopes she does, and that she remembers past as pleasant.

It’s hard to picture a world without dragons.

Of course, you don’t see them when you look out your window,

But you do see flames in your backyard grill that look like their breath.

The birds that fly through your skies have elegant wings,

That, in your dreams, grow as big as giants.

Sometimes, you can hear their songs,

And they sound like the cries of an elegant monster.

Your songs are always about the same things.

The sword in the stone, the treasure, the dragon.

If it hadn’t been a dragon, it would have been something else,

Because you know the fire, and the birds,

And you know that you’re a dreamer.

Every day you sing your song, and every day you add more words.

Sometimes you even sing yourself to sleep,

Beginning like this:

“When the day ends, we seem to dream of flight,

And we ride our dragons, so majestic, through the night.”  

https://www.bioexplorer.net/animals-with-best-senses.html/

I eat pizza twice a week, crispy crust and gooey cheese.
Catfish have twenty times more taste-cells.

I touch my newborn baby, soft and fragile.
Star-nosed moles have mechanoreceptors that give them six times more touch sensitivity.

I made pesto with the most aromatic basil.
Elephants have five times more scent receptors.

I love the rustle of leaves in the breeze.
Greater wax moths can hear fifteen times my frequency.

I once saw a rainbow over the Grand Canyon.
Eagles see eight times as far away and see a wider range of colors.

Bats have echolocation,
duck-billed platypuses have electroreception,
snakes have infrared radiation detection,
octopuses have polarized vision.

What makes me think I will understand this world?
Or the next? 

Silly cat, 
running as if being chased
darting in, out and under
you amuse me.

Grumpy cat,
perched on your throne
wanting to look down on the world
only I am taller than you.

Sleepy Cat,
tucked neatly in a ball
noise and chaos around
does not stir you.

Loving cat,
purring to the beat of my heart
rhythmically dancing
your touch soothes me.

Hungry cat,
2am is too early
I’ll see you around 4
here have a treat.

Cat,
my cat,  one cat,
multiple personalities,
still one in the same
I love you for who you are

Hummingbird hovers—
Red feeder, green bird, gray day—
A poem, sustenance—

When your eighteen-month-old child seizes,
you are alarmed. His pediatrician
sends him, by ambulance,
to a children’s hospital
downtown. You ride along. 

                            The sirens of ambulances
                            and police 
                            cars are not beyond
                            the parameters
                            of your experience.

Someone orders
a spinal tap.
You know what this means.

                              You have read in the local newspaper
                              a story about the sad parents
                              of a dead child. Meningitis.
                              They thought it the flu.
                              Once discovered it was too late.

You also know the danger 
of needles
near the spinal column. 

                                Your mother instilled
                                this fear in you
                                long before your brother
                                suffered a severed
                                spinal cord.

                                                     No epidural!
                                                     you insisted. Until
                                                     the pain 
                                                     was too great. 

                                                                                        Induced labor
                                                                                        equals labor
                                                                                        time five. 

Eventually you will read
that our common 
fear of needles
is due to the danger
of thorns
for our distant
ancestors.

                                   If only your brother
                                   had experienced
                                   this fear.
    
The brother of Henry
David Thoreau
died from in-
fection
caused by shaving.

Razor blades–
like thorns–
are more
dealdly than we know.