Posts for June 25, 2023 (page 8)

a sign beside the highway reads:

SAY THIS:
JESUS FORGIVE MY SINS
SAVE MY SOUL

and I am sad.
What good is regurgitation?
What bloom has ever opened
to shame instead of light?
Why can it not, instead, instruct us to:

BEHOLD

the miracle of pencil-thin pines
reaching skyward with straight backs,
arms raised, dropping
strange, wonderful seeds
to the grass below.

WATCH

the sun appear,
a bright fish between clouds
that bunch and roll, churning
like crests of waves in a stark sea
of heavenly blue.

LET YOUR SOUL BE MOVED

first, and maybe you will see
that love made all of this
and you, too. Even if you don’t
believe it, when the rain falls,
it still washes over you.

I wish I had a summer body.

A Beach Body.

One I didn’t want to shrink.

Cutting away at the fat.

Tuck this and Nip that.

Suck me dry.

I want to be swallowed by the body I was once in.

Smaller

Light

Compared to things like feathers and petals and tiny beautiful things

I am tired of being sturdy

Rock solid

I cry when someone says

“Wow you look amazing.”

Because how can something I despise be seen as anything that great. 

sweet in your mouth
            if you slip.
            if you get
right back
            in
           before doubt.

Think
he said
as in ‘listen to what you just said’
as in ‘seriously, you are wrong’
as in ‘can’t you see that I am right here’
so I thought.
And now I am here
remembering how I believe.

rival portraits
hang above the doorway
base orange
chromatics
blink
align to ressemblance,
teasing orderly
conduct

wind like every night
across the river
a fiesta
for the ages
accordions
miles long

a lone raven, hovers
in the rose sky
how much better
its view

          “.. 8-year-old Vladimir brought a butterfly to his cell as a gift.”
                                                                            New York Times, Jan. 25, 2011

Echoes dart off walls like lizards,
off snuff-colored floors—

It was a melody of sickening hues and a prison
guard’s pock-marked face. Mother brought larkspur

and chamomile. My gift was a white cabbage
butterfly, preserved. You praised

its proper labeling, the delicate pinning
of its water-white wings. Pale fire
 
of twig veins, those slender wonders! Your black
trousers droop. You are thinner since last

September’s visit. Belts and suspenders
forbidden, I thread my index fingers

through the loops, pulling your dark pants up
playfully. We recite Shakespeare in English,

Baudelaire in French. Our arrogance
is a hot delicious borsht! It enrages the squid-eyed

guard. He plods six-feet closer; his spittle
dripping on the long pine table. Father,

no time to talk about our Borzoi’s injured
paw. Nothing about her quiet whining, slow

licking. We are ousted from Kresly Prison. The sky
fills with industrial smoke, grey hardening of sleet.

                                                                after Rafael Alberti

Someone cries.
They are crying.
We are crying.
I am going to cry.
They climb my shores and cry.
Someone brooms.
Climbing they cry.
Waves crash, they boom.
Stop the sweeping of the tides.

       BUT WE MUST CRY FOR THE FISH

The open air a wonder
lasso the moon with silvery ropes, 
& throttle her past Mars to Jupiter 
with all of my hopes.
The port beaches around the world die, 
boats dig in on land as sculpture studies
     sailing in place,
halibut flop on wet sand to end her petulant crying,
the distance to shore shocks the casual bicyclist,
& the cold sharpness of lobster’s claws cut today
though nothing fair as perdition should ever upset,
since I am a God Omnipotent, 
& I can sling planets to far Neptune’s length.
The problem solved I want to cry for the fish.
The dame can stop crying, she got what she wished.

It’s rained for  many days 
Muggy and dismal at best 
Stormy and windy at worst
The summer heat is there
But no sunshine alongside

No swimming or cookouts
Inside watching rain run 
In rivets down the window
Wishing for a reprieve for
Just a little while, maybe 

All we want is summer
But this is what we got