Labyrinth
Inside and outside.
Follow a destiny path;
Walk under the sun.
My former wife, as well,
had this gaping hole in her,
a giant sucking chest wound,
this hole so big in her heart
that everything I felt,
everything I ever was,
everything I borrowed
from my future self,
was never going to fill it.
No one I know
is interested
in goat yoga.
Perhaps
it merely
the assonance
calling my name.
Strappy, strapless, and sleeveless
I really need spring to arrive, my one and only Valentine
redemptions on my mind of regaining all of the lost time, I just can’t seem to find
I lay alone underneath the tall pine, everyone is falling in love while I’m falling behind
living on many levels of rhythm and they’re asynchronous and rarely align
I think about my life in circles instead of lines
I’m addicted to deep breaths and convincing myself it’s fine
meditations provoked by the suns shine,
my spine becomes comfortably aligned in the bend of a hammock where my bone and the fabric intertwine and I daydream about serene scenes that seem to soften my self-esteem to bring me out of the decline
Perhaps DD tease me,
they taunt me. They want my soul
but I cling to Rosy Glow.
Your father was captain of the drink
A sinking ship in a whiskey sea
He once tried teaching you to drive
Showed up with a flask and a pillow
The liquor gone before you left the driveway
He passed out on the pillow
You drove carefully around the block
Then left him snoring in the car
Someone drew soap faces on his window
He was your Halloween all year round
Your mother tunneled a cave so deep
You never saw her except
When the moon hunted her down
At times she looked like root
Or maybe granite
Sometimes she crept out
To watch Queen for a Day
Seeing herself in that robe and tears
A garbage disposal or new vacuum
Her just reward
Step softly now through days
That teeter the fluid and the frozen
The hand that lusts danger
The heart that envies stone
bones in the sand
soul fragments
skull crushed beneath
a dream
tattered cloth
turquoise as the sky
each tiny death
diminishes us
grasshopper shattered
on a windshield
butterfly among
the bones
Yesterday I wrote a poem, then I threw it out
my fingers shook and trembled, my head was full of doubt
A poet I am not I say, I scream, I shout, I cry
my heart says I should write it, my head says you’re a lie
And so I sit and stare at a screen so blank and white
I fret, I sweat, I cry, I shout, and then I sit and write
I write and write and write and write and then erase it all
I fear a poet I am not and now I’ve hit a wall
But try I might, try I must
I’ll keep on trying until I’m dust
