Posts for June 5, 2023 (page 7)

I can’t wait to run.
When it’s all too much
just go and discover something
a freedom all my own.

Keys in hand
start the car let’s go
swinging sighing
an adventure is calling.

Even if the adventure is just
studying alone in a cafe
maybe the barista will learn my name.
I have a dream and it’s to fly.

To go lay out
where the water meets the rocks
to eat takeout
legs swinging out the back of the trunk.

Anticipation is just nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened yet
So take your keys
and meet me where a name becomes an identity
the cusp of adolescence.

Saturday was doused in
sweet chili oil, whispers in
ears to feed the
moaning, hungry fire.

Sunday was a citronella
candle tickled
playfully by the
welcome breeze carrying
music from a mile and half
away as the crow flies. We named
the songs we knew, talked of
mystical mathematics,
foretold endings.

How I envy crows.
It is taking us years to
travel our distance; we
have never known
a straight line.

i have loved you
every moment of
my life since i was
15 years 121 days old

oops

there went another
make that
24,177,632

A memory of dancing
open palms, free 
and joyous, just the 
essence of herself
effortless, without  doubt.

LHM2023

               tin roof rain starts slow
     tat tat tat   Tat Tat     bing BANG
               SPlosh  ends  tat tat dropppp

along with several
other men of the
family He
recognized
His cousin’s brother in
law Saeed who stood
in the scorching
parking lot of
Abe’s Funeral Home
with a coke &
beam saying it
was just the way
he wanted to go,
in his backyard 
at a cookout for
his children &
grandchildren,
then bam out of
nowhere a stroke
and he was gone
no fuss no muss
no long suffering
no nursing home

after Saeed’s big hug
He went in to view
the remains of His
younger cousin with
whom He shared a
name plus a set of
grandparents and 
found
not a tear in sight
but His cousin’s
sister (Saeed’s wife)
guarding her brother
saying she was mad at
god just mad at him
for striking down her
brother in his prime
right there at his own
picnic oh god why.
He couldn’t get this
image of His cousin out
of His head: putting
hot dogs on the grill
while children played
horseshoes and
suddenly falling over
checked out of this life
a miracle or 
a disaster

after lingering
with the two
surviving uncles
and several other
cousins from the
ten families
that make up
their tribe He
spotted 
His cousin’s wife
with a protective
gaggle of women
who parted like
the Dead Sea to
let Him deliver
His condolence,
so calm she
seemed to greet her
husband’s weird cousin
who had come so far
just to tell her
how sorry He was

I awoke to an inquisitorial incandescence
flooding my apartment in the first hours
of a Saturday morning;
earliest I’ve been up on a weekend
in quite a long time.

I thought Damn!
Fell asleep with the kitchen light on,
so I dragged my groggy ass out of bed
to go flip the switch,
save some electricity.

But what I found were inert, greyed-out bulbs
and a window made celestial
by the sun rising gold.
Guess I’d forgotten what that looked like,
so I set up a chair and awestruckedly stared outside.

There were twenty-seven oceans in my life,
each one accounted for until I moved to dry land.
And then I moved beside myself
an adult, jelly made firm.
But love was the trick
and the ocean was inside.

Not inside my heart, that
was pulp, and no water
forgives the messy blood within,
trying to find exactly
a pin. The ocean was
blue and soapy white, and the
roar inside my ears was supposed 
to be enough.

In my heart
the ocean could be now, I think 
it might
be twenty-seven, just folded under.

The green liturgy

summer delivered,
belongs to everyone and no one.

We belong to summer.

Sometimes, I startle