Posts for June 6, 2023 (page 11)

I learned how to use a ruler in kindergarten–
to place an object near its edge, aligning one side of the object with the end
of the ruler and measuring how far it was to the opposite side  

This measurement, I was told, was called the “diameter” or the “length”
I was told this measurement was the best way to truly
understand how wide or long the thing was  

For a brief time, I was fascinated by rulers and protractors and tape measures

For a while, I thought I had learned something important and meaningful.  

But, you see, it was all lies
I was being conditioned to look at something real and pretend
I could define it in some way, with a made-up measurement scale,
created by humans who took great satisfaction
in pretending something real and complex
could be condensed into what their measurements
claimed the thing to be  

Humans love boxes,
especially the invisible ones,
in which they can obscure the actual reality
of a thing with made up words and numbers,
as if any of this was anything more
than a fraudulent attempt to
turn nature herself into
what man said she was

Yesterday I visited my grandparents
80 and 82
In their house with air conditioning
High speed internet
iPads and WiFi routers

It is 2023.
When they were children,
Neither of my grandparents
Had an indoor toilet.

They are not retirees.
They are time travelers.

She lets the cool breeze
Liberate her
Her heavy green gives way to
Gleaming gold
This is her grand crescendo
As she acquieces
To Design

In the coming days
She will be stripped
Of all she once held
Heavily

While we wrestle against
Nature and Man
Making choices
And demands
We throw on layer after layer
As the world grows cold
While she stands naked
Brave and bold

Without shame

you said you liked how i touched you
on the front steps
i was smoking with your roommate i shared my cigarettes

you talked to me when i was half asleep
don’t remember the words but i know what you mean

i wonder if i kissed you more than anyone else did
i think you know the words i traced on your skin

i think i heard you whisper them once but i didn’t ask
i saw how you looked at me because i was looking back

i kissed your back when you were wrong
you took running back up and said you’re gonna get strong

my uber driver drives me home like you used to
and i’m drunk in the backseat wishing i was up front with you

you talked to me when i was half asleep
maybe you knew that i was pretending

                 what is 
                                the next thing?
eat it up

dominate / press down / shake together
repurpose / upcycle

were years behind this woman
who saw banks in coffee tins
and toilet paper in phone books

the fastest on slow fashion
who saved ripped out zippers
for 4H skirts, old panty hose
tie up gladiolus, fallen

                  what is
                               the next thing?
wear it out

old boot given to the son,
then the son, then the daughter
then dipped in gold and placed
on the piano
to be worshiped

               what is
                                  the next thing?
do without

a sock without a match 
turned into a duster, a buffer,
a puppet. Lord no not a puppet,
we have to
                 what is
                            the next thing?

Tiny drops of tea
   spill quietly

from my healing mouth
     parched with drought

I try to sip carefully
       unsuccessfully
                after my frenectomy

A gallon sized container

nestled strong roots and fanning vines.

Planted, they’ll climb cedar

posts placed so.  Perhaps

they’ll bloom before climbing the peak.

Then call humming birds.

I pull the tatters
of myself up around me,
wear them like a cloak. 

Razed, dilipated, erased, GONE–
The old home place, grandpa’s–SILENT.

Hungering for a trace of him
Who taught me to hoe, tell stories
En sync to the rhythm of the hoe stickes, 
Only a deep, empty ache smothered my heart.

There She stood!

Tall, angler in the brilliant summer sun
Drooping with fresh pears to mellow
In autumn’s coolness–
.
She remembered–invited me to come
Taste of her coarse grainy fruit much like
Pa who planted her over a hundered years ago. 

A gregarious man
A big hearted man
A laid low man
A easy to love man

Lost it the day he was born
It?: brain cells all out of line
It?: acumen agility ability
Understanding being silly

But kept his stamina his love his senses
Twenty twenty pitch perfect articulate
Sings a song of sixpence, tells a dirty joke
Laughs out loud with a beer joint smile

He’s six two but wait, when he was four
Took a hit for a family of twelve
Was the only one to get polio
Nineteen and fifty seven

A gregarious man
A big hearted man
A laid low man
A easy man to love