Posts for June 6, 2023 (page 7)

After Kevin Nance’s Doomscroll    

The world is crashing    even the alligator quivers in its burrow      a lone egret chokes in the yellowed marsh     somewhere a child questions the sky     and the ant stores deep into its season    always someone’s finger itchy with hate     shattering the stained glass of our illusions    our shopping carts rudderless     abandoned     classes spewing survival instead of history     as we face walls       their shadowed reality      clouds find it hard to spark our daily pleasure    sweet grass lost beneath bare feet    instead  eyes shift and startle at random sounds       a woman wilding in the park       the  driver feared quick to anger  

In such tides of uncertainty     what is left       to those who carry sandbags in the fume of storms        who sow kindness in the gardens of strangers     who wield pens as lanterns through the dark        who stand before tanks in moral stillness        nothing      but to rise like a green blade through concrete       an unruly cinder from ash     the siren of song in dying air      nothing      but to reach a hand       to be the one who answers       hope

Spine by spine
a finger trail meandering
down bookcase alley
each stiff lettered bone
a grave of good words.
The tomes are piled
top to bottom so necks
don’t get twisted and disordered.
No system but time & treasure—
each word, every letter
a barrier against order
to be individually regarded.
My eyes
an automatic detective
my grasp
a trembled reach
my need
an addict’s escape.

1/15 Bitter Cold

I lost the precious sugar maple in the Spring of 2020.
Nothing has been the same since.

The hostas and ferns yearn for his shade
and the juvenile cardinals desire his protection.
As for me, I miss the color he brought to my world.

Who will soften the harsh rain?
Who will quiet the cold winds?
What about the void in the soil?

Of course, here’s a limerick for you:

There once was a cat from Peru,
Who danced in a shiny red shoe.
With a twirl and a spin,
A cheshire-like grin,
And a step that was nimble and true.

I escaped my desk
well into the afternoon-
A poem awaits!

All of my groggy
early morning musings
have evaporated.

I cast about, eat my soup
The placemat! A wordsearch!
Is “poot” a word? or “gaior?”

Better check the list,
must be simpler choices.
Here we are!

The cool side of the pillow
has been harder to find.
My body steams like a radiator,
my bed a heat lamp that no fan
can quench.

True story, and…back to work.

i read a teenage romance about love and sex and
i wanted to shake all the partners i’ve had before and say
just be nice just be gentle,
and maybe i would’ve had some pleasant memories about teenage romance

My belligerent belly
boils and bubbles
burbling up bile
like a bullfrog coughing up a blowfly,
a cacophonous melange
of filth and phlegm.

But holy hell y’all,
not even a rollicking romp
through teeming fields
of vocabulary can vanquish
these stones, imagined or otherwise,
which have burrowed their way

into my bowels, my bones,
my blank space,
which is crucial for the production
of properly formed word dumps,
much less sanity.

open
open with ease
remove your shoes, download our new favorite show
move closer to me, don’t forget to take out the trash
would you get me a glass of water? inform my anxieties, peace lives here
rename my last
compress “summer saturdays.PNG”
duplicate week after week
make alias, your name and mine
quick, look… time is swimming past us
do you copy? share your thoughts
the content tag sticks for months
quick actions make a fool of us both

What is it about things?
Keepsakes placed in drawers,
randomly, about the house–
shells, rocks, old buttons–
that you can hold
in your hand and feel:
the smoothness
the ridges
the thinness
the thickness
the edge
of things–

What is it?

That rock found at a creek
near Fuller Lake
when you lived in Pennsylvania
a lifetime ago,
the shell you found in South Carolina,
on a beach with your second husband,
another one–pink abalone on the inside,
darkest blue on the outside, a delicate mussel
from Star Island, pale green and cobalt
beach glass, a chip of heavy China from a ship.

And, that large brown button
that fell off your great aunt’s coat
as she boarded the train from Chicago
to Buffalo–you were ten.  It was cold.

Before she tucked you into bed,
the night before,
she described what it was like
to board the Maid of the Mist, 
buckling up in big yellow raincoats, 
hearing the roar of the falls,
the great spray of Niagara, 
clouding your eyes.

Wake up on this fish barrel morning
the fuzzy smell of wet socks and soda cans
sour the sunshine. Singing off key,
the robins’ lilting song is like seven dwarfs
whistling while they work, and I
treading water in duck bottom boots,
can barely reach the edge,
can barely cling tight
to what’s left of my head,
holding the shotgun just high enough
to aim …