pilgrimage
for centuries they stumbled
making their slow ways to shrines
in search of relief
I can only turn to oil
the scent of frankincense
walks the miles for me
for centuries they stumbled
making their slow ways to shrines
in search of relief
I can only turn to oil
the scent of frankincense
walks the miles for me
She sits on my lap
singing some song with made-up words
gobble garbled sounds
there is so much joy in her musicking
I think
Once I was just like this
full of my entire self
and
I don’t want this to end for her
the engulfed, embodied self love
I want her to stay grounded in these moments of exquisite mundanity
She’s fallen asleep
worn down by hours of play and exploration
Why do we exchange this for the enslavement of adulthood?
I will fall asleep, too
but, from exhaustion of masking
my play pretend is a melancholic ostinato
that hums underneath the weariest smile
i walk
taking it step by step, remembering
how far it is into june for the third
year in a row. what is it about this
gathering of heat, this
headwaters of summer? my left hand
freezes against a gallon of milk, my right
holds the bottle of unbagged just-in-case surgery medicine
so that between the receipt and my body,
no one thinks i’m stealing drugs.
i really need to switch hands. i laugh
at the pure awkwardness: in the hottest week yet
my bones are chilled painful and i’m carrying
the two randomest things i could have thought of
and i never thought to get a cart.
i must be a poet or something
to find myself in all the situations like this, like how the other day
i threw out my recruitment letter from a pyramid scheme, or how
i needed something to write about and then somewhere,
wood turned to wildfire and its smoke shaded the sun away
while i looked through the store windows
trying to differentiate between tinted glass
and particles of once-tree in the sky.
something about june, about flame,
about two years ago i burned myself on a pot of rice
& that june something ignited inside of me
& the next june i followed it to enlightenment
& now i step outside with a plastic grocery bag,
wondering, remembering, ash hanging on the wind.
Three Normal Guys starring Nicholas Cage, James Woods & Christopher Walken,
Hunger Games the Musical starring Gal Gadot,
The Gentle Side of Donald Trump starring Donald Trump,
The Good Parent starring Woody Allen,
Drug-free Listening to Grateful Dead starring Franklin Graham,
I Slapped the Rock (Dwayne, not Chris) starring Will Smith,
And finally, The Smartass Poet Retires, because that will never happen.
You asked if this was a hill worth dying on
Not knowing that I’m dying on half a dozen hills already
Call it too much if you want
But I am sprinkled across the land
The views are spectacular
And my righteous indignation
is what makes the flowers grow
You said the other
day that your
teachers expect so
much of you but
treat you like
little kids and
monitor when you
can pee.
Today you wowed me with
your eclectic song choices- the
Jeff Buckley song I had never
heard was stunning.
On our drive, you
must have sneezed
seven times and I
offered you a
tissue after each
one, hearing you
sniff up liquid to
keep it from
ruining your
insta-worthy makeup.
You declined
logic and comfort
each time.
Because it
was my idea.
And this, my
darling 16, is why
you can’t be
trusted to make
your own
pee schedule
just yet.
Time to be strong
Don’t cry
Nights are dark and long
Time to be strong
Not knowing where I belong
It’s so hard, but I try
Time to be strong
Don’t cry
A noble quest,
