Posts for June 21, 2023

Maybe being here 
We’re really just 
Passing through 
Someone else’s lineage 
On our way 
To a timeline 
Created by our ancestors 
All those years back 
From days and months 
Passed and past 
Maybe it’s just linear 
Yet parallel all at once 
Like a dimensional prism 
Maybe that’s why
We can’t ever seem 
To complete our side 
Of the Rubik’s cube 
Perhaphs this is why 
All my feels have feelings 
That run deeper
Than I can’t handle some days
When words are hard 
Or time spins on edge 
Or when we wake up 
Looking in the mirror 
Not recognizing the reflection 
Its our ancestors staring back 
Having a visit with us 
In the present 
While we’ve aged ten years 

We may never know that part. 
All I can hope for 
All my heart knows
For absolutely certain 
Is that I will find you 
In every single lifetime
That I may wake up in
This force in my chest 
Knows no limits for you, 
For each of them. 
We’ll get there, and back to here
I am sure of it.

today is the longest day

and here we are sitting

around the coffee table

eating fast food

watching the Goonies

the week stretches out

like one of our cats

in a patch of sun

and though it can be

loud and wild

chaos of humans

there’s nothing like

those moments

where the outside world

ceases to exist

Imagine today I am bird-like,
a flap, flap, glide
freedom lifting spirit

I laugh through my beak
ha! Ha! ha! Ha!

Below on the ground, grass,
cars,
humans doing human things

Above, my escape route
around the sassafras, 
mitten leaf waving good day,
through the May town neighborhood
I fly

Across the river
I see home
feel feathers fluttering joy,
going forth profusely.

When I woke from my deep slumber
I saw the door open
Heard a foot scrape the stair
I yelled out
“Are you leaving?”
Thinking somehow it was morning
The air hazy, bright and cool
Seemed to confirm the time
And my dreams and mouth feeling so thick
And you were hurriedly walking to work
After having coffee
Instead of having an 8pm cigarette
As I woke from my two hour nap

Dr. Hue sits beside
the sole bench at Alligator Lake,
word around the condo
is that the great lonely beast
has returned to our modest
body of swamp water
and is hiding out
just blow the branches
of the lake’s only tree, a low
slung willow that seems depressed

My view from the second story
window is singular:
one bench
one man
one tree
small pond
somewhere a bird screeches
no reptile

Without turning around
and looking up
how does he know 
about my watchful eye:
ZZ is watching
waiting and watching
thinking the creature’s presence
a mere fiction,
then in a flash like lightning 
Dr. Hue jumps over the bench
just out of reach
of the monstrous lunge

A door opens in my mind
Dr. Hue has entered my body
his presence 
like the presence of Buddha 

Do this, do that

Oh how I worry I’ll lose every memory I once held

Change this, change that

I wonder what the date is because I can’t seem to keep up

She hates you, and you annoy him

It is not my own death I fear, it is everyone else’s before me

Where did I put my phone?

I shouldn’t have said that

I can’t survive another winter, everything I built will fall with the snow

I need money

When did I eat last

The trees are very green today,

It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow

My dreams will never become real

You’re lazy

I fear I’m not where I’m supposed to be,

Or doing what I should be

This is tiring

I’ll just go to sleep so I can stop thinking for a little while

I forgot to brush my teeth

 Astronomer         
            (liked to look at the stars; proud that I could spell the word)
Teacher            
            (maybe, maybe not; like Mrs. K. but not Miss S.)
Ballet Dancer            
            (admired their strong legs; loved my birthday pink tutu)
Taster in a candy factory            
            (who wouldn’t?)
Poet            
            (eye roll)

My attention isn’t long enough
for poems of more than one page.

Give me the pithy wisdom
of haiku or a triolet.

Sonnets are a stretch
but still doable.

Sun stretches

I pick black raspberries
and wander through the yard

wind blows hilltops
trees dance

I pause to watch clouds crack open
letting light escape in broken angles

right at the edge of dark.

In another life you were London and I was Paris.
Enemies from the beginning, connected in secret.
Only united to face a common threat.
We threw down our swords and did what we could.
The broken heart was sleeping and we let it rest for a few more hours.
In the end we parted, the greatest of our name, but not the same.
City of Dreams, City of Lights, night and day, cloud and sun.
I say I hate you but darling we both know I don’t mean it.