Release the need to
Understand or explain to
Others. Just admire.
Become one with awe.
The world overflows with joy,
Beauty, friends, and love.
Creation is ours
To appreciate if eyes
And hearts are open.
Receive mystery
Flowing through a jaded mind,
Freeing the true self.
Perfection is not
The ideal goal for your life.
Live life filled with joy.
Imagine a wound
you fold
into understanding
You reach a place of knowing
darkness
privilege
representation
A convoluted space
the winding
of a labyrinth
My father had a beautiful baritone singing voice.
He wrote poetry after Wordsworth and Shelley,
nursery rhymes and songs for his three little girls.
He wore thick coke bottle glasses all of his life.
As a boy he was bullied and teased for his love of
music and reading. At 15, he left school and went
to work on the railroad. He once said at least
his weak eyes bestowed him a strong eye for detail.
My father was 4F in World War II because of his eyes,
boyhood shame his foremost homefront companion.
He was drafted just after the war ended, the US
by then running short on national treasure.
He was not trained for combat and instead was sent
to the occupation army in Japan. Three weeks and
a hometown boy reaches a Tokyo fire-stormed to ash.
His brother once said at least it was not Hiroshima.
My father came home from the war and took a wife.
He took his chance with the GI Bill to buy a shotgun
house built by the L&N, who he’d worked for before
as 4F and to whom he returned as never the same.
When us three girls started coming along, he took a
good union job as a welder at a Whilrpool plant.
On weekends he tinkered and collected Craftsman tools.
He built us girls a playhouse and an airplane jungle gym.
My father over his haunted years grew ravenous,
furious, and gentle again once he forgot the war.
I remember him best like this, old in his coke bottle
glasses, singing in his beautiful baritone voice.
The light crackles against the sky,
fighting for dominance over the strawberry moon.
The gentle sway of leaves
echo the clutch of your tiny hand
against my finger.
You snuggle into your mother’s breast
as you are rocked to sleep.
Echoing the gentle sway of the leaves
Your big bright eyes, wide, even in the darkness.
Searching for your mother’s face.
Her anger over trivial daily annoyances melts away
and leaves just the damp sweat of the day
As she rocks you, to the gentle sway and the calming heart
Waiting for you to drift away.
opposed to June’s down-slant of light
her smooth arms stretch
to the endless blue of sky
in her studied stillness
she’s a philosopher of air,
moored loose from the dark matter
of her miraculous roots
she joins the wind’s stir
with her ephemeral breath
with her prolonged exhalation
this tiny island in the creek
is exactly as she wishes
no one hears her daily voice
no one feels her nocturnal skin
To him, the bathroom is the most important room in the house.
His first gift to her, sodium hydroxide, he pours down the drain,
it practically rains on the head of a great brown bear
made of her hair of dead dreams, split, spilt, stuck.
He dissolves her devil into a sleepy soapy water
that growls, murmurs like luck through copper pipes.
Saint Swift poses the question:
Are you a secret or an oath?
Lopsided lovers balancing out of balance lives, we tiptoe around sleeping landmines.
I deserve so much more than the 5% madness left like crumbs; trusting your promises will find and hold me.
Blind faith makes no sense.
You have the privilege of all that you know of me
And all I want is your 100%
she says, more like a cloudless August afternoon than late in a full moon evening in May. Windows up and the fans blowing and not a leaf moving in the breezeless dark. I think I’ll bathe, throw a towel or two on the bed and fall asleep still damp. Maybe that can help bring sleep.
It’s about 55 degrees here, he replies, typical roller coaster weather for this point in spring. Enjoy your bath; I hope it helps. Me, I confess I’m jealous of your tub, the water, a cloak of scented bubbles. I’m guessing I’ll be up for a while now.
“I know that life is hard
But I promise you that it gets better”
I hate when people tell me that
It’s always
“Keep your head up”
“There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel”
“It gets better”
“Things will get better”
“I promise it gets better”
“It gets better”
It gets better
But it didn’t
People love you but they leave you
They give up on you
There’s always more to a story than you think
You gave up on me
I feel like I’m not good enough
You’re making me feel like I’m not good enough
You told me goodbye and I thought that it was just for now
You meant forever
I feel like you’re giving up
Are you giving up?
I never thought that I would see you again
I never knew that you didn’t want me to
Sure, maybe you did deep down in your heart
But you looked me in the eyes and I knew
You were conflicted
I understand- I went through the same thing
I thought about you everyday
I think about you everyday
I don’t understand
What did I do?
I’m tired of things being taken from me
I want you
I’ve been yearning for so long
I want to be with you
I just want me and you
I’m ready
But are you?
-we were supposed to be a love story but now I’m not so sure anymore
They say
Write something bright, Write something hopeful
No. Already every day
I give way
To sharing the last light I have within
To all those whose light is dim
So. When I find myself on this blank page
I’ll confess that what may
make you uncomfortable
So that I may exist another day
So that when the pen finds this page
It produces authentic words
Though, often it’s a purge
Maybe they’ll find light in my darkness
Maybe not, but this is where my heart is
Who I am has often dwelled in shadows
Not where I chose to be
But I have fiercely battled
Can I be tired of the fight?
Can I please rest my wariness in the light?
Apparently that’s not up to me
Because “what will be will be”
I don’t want to believe I’m doomed
Amongst the free
But this is where I appear to be
So.
Here I sit
Here I exist
I beg for the light just as you
Sorry to disappoint again
But I’m through
My pages will not cover
They’ll not present as I’ve had to hover
They’ll instead hold the truth
The truth that exposes abuse
The truth that doesn’t water down
The truth where I drown
The truths that hold darkness
The truths that expose the heartless
And Despite my darkness that inflicts discomfort,
I can sit with knowing I am real
Even though I hate it
I find peace in these pages
