Posts for June 14, 2023 (page 4)

If you were to peel back the layer of reality
And see what was really there
I’m embarrassed to say I’d look like Don Quixote
With a clank and a clatter of a Knight off to war
My generational trauma over my back
Metal with the rust of capitalism
I wear armor to protect but really hide what’s inside
As I play offence just reacting to life
I drag my heavy armor along
With expectations and worry another
voice asks if I am protected enough
My ancestors know only of this way
Survive the fight
Dare to dream of winning
But I will study war no more!

(a choir of trees decrying
old Christopher Farraday’s nettling
                          choice to exhume a
stump—
              some stump speech spat amongst sappy scree,
defending the West Texas desert from formally
fanning fungus, seamless successions of
quilt squares
                         pitched by a brambling firebrand
tickling stitches—

box homes scrunched like lichens
stretching the scowl of a scalped and yowling stump
to yawn as those thrawn escarpments
punched, Twin Falls contorted
to eighteen greening holes;

the colorado plateau imploding,
breath of Moran and Muir unbunged
                                         and munged
to the clip of an oil slick
burbling, pearly, purled, unpinned,

           some Cuyahoga craps boat
               bilging the Lethe clean

as a bison, speaking
in tongues,
                     slumped humming a rung of the boneless can-can,
quicker than any old man in the mountain
thrusts his tongue through a bloated and frozen beer can—

try saying, Nothing is true, with a tongue bent
           over and under a hundred sundry steps
                                                     to lap at a sunset spent 
        against cringing brick and exhausted sandstone)

tired and it seems like
the constants
never change
haha thus they’re just that
constant
           people make poor decisions
my mom would say
     she drove her ducks to a poor pond
a silly saying
oh, but the implications
the truth
like an old country song
is simple
the words ring and sting
he’s no good and you/we/I/she allowed
at some point or another
way more than she bargained for
so let’s show him to the door, shall we
and bid him farewell
the alternative is just not
worth anything in this world

Ever forget your body
in an ocean—blue as the wave
on a breeze, or in the blushing aura
of a sunset at the edges of this world and
night’s promise—a sky so black it shines
through the purple skin of stars,
or in a grove of white oaks breathing
against the drum in your chest, or in a song
not quite as red as the rhythm of fire
or as loud as a dancing flame collapsed
into the smoke of existence, or in a face
whose memory is a silent morning
with sallow eyes—fine as fog’s silk—
and hair tangled in silver. 

 I’m sorry  
    you have a headache.
    you missed your appointment.
    your dog died.
    somebody took your sandwich from the lunchroom fridge.
    
I’m sorry
    I have bad breath.
    your teenage son hates you.
    you’re going bald.
    I took your favorite pen and then lost it.
   
I’m sorry
    my presentation fell flat.
    my cake did too.
    she didn’t come to your party.
    she doesn’t love you.
    
I’m sorry the test came back positive.
I’m sorry I lived longer than you.

Neighborhood children blow bubbles while
ominous storm clouds crowd the sky 

Thin rays of sunlight squeeze through the growing darkness,
shining light through the soapy orbs
dancing frantically in the strengthening wind

The children’s carefree squeals echo in the pressing air,
floating higher than those bubbles will reach

“Pop!” 
“Pop!”
“Pop!”

Concentrated soap droplets splatter on the hot pavement
and I startle the fleeting beauty
of this moment
simultaneously imitating and creating a temporary bubble–

childhood

Proudly strutting your beautiful feathers
Puffing out your chest and flapping your wings
Raucously challenging all for your due
When you have no right to claim possession
Relentlessly demanding more rewards
When you no longer serve an useful purpose
Cock fighting obsolescence

For granted, this ocean.
The sum of so many minuscule worlds
coalesced into a power’s singularity.
Every movement moves the whole,
every movement touches me too.

From so many thousands of meters above,
she’ll swallow you whole if you let her.
She will not betray you with intentions,
lord knows her power runs like veins
through the wild blue, siphoning sky.

You never gave a damn
how the world now is small enough
to wrap your arms around.

How the turbulence is the rumble of a heart
blading the wind, rushing the blood,

my heart floods around me like water 
into every corner, soaks the walls
and drips where my shadow walks
on new glimmering continents.
I’m becoming more like her
in every breath, in every fallen quiet.

Riding the wings of a great insanity ,
infinity comes, shoves me out
into wild raspberry brambles 
and fossil stone beaches.

Her white-cold waters frothing,
hungry to dissolve more of you,
touch more of you,
become more of you.

The poet strums a stringless banjo, arpeggiating brokenness.

It’s all poetry.

I feel it when 

 we sway to music as it radiates from car speakers.

Then again when we fight, screaming, crying, begging. I feel the weight of it all. 

I see it 

when they play basketball in the streets

poetry in motion. Bodies moving, grace.

I hear it 

in the words of the greats 

Plath, Hemingway, Brando, Marilynn Monroe, Drake, Jack Harlow

Their words carrying weight that sinks deep within your own heart and head.

Thought provoking 
Heart  breaking 
Uplifting 

It’s all poetry