Posts for June 26, 2023 (page 6)

Be still fur-baby, tomorrow awaits
Tho lightning flashes and thunder does howl
Midnight rabid emerald whirlwinds growl
And barking cerulean blue tears fall
Be still fur-baby, tomorrow awaits.  

Turn from night cry roars, loud as o’l screech owl
From anxiety swirling ov’r cheek jowl
Claim star eclipsed exemption, now I call
Be still fur-baby, tomorrow awaits.  

Come cuddle with warm hope, no longer prowl
Shroud scent of twilight rose teasing afoul
Safe now with me remain in these walls
Be still fur-baby, tomorrow awaits.  

When skies stop weeping, wet covered by towel
Dark vulnerability disavowal
Promised morning will dawn – once and for all
Be still fur-baby, tomorrow awaits.

When

sleep

won’t come,

I read verse

from my poet friends—

kneel by scarlet spoons and lilies.

a friend dies,
you don’t know
for months
until checking for
maybe a new number
or change of address 
his obit pops
up

your direct line direct
to a stoney path
of presence & absence
then his backward flow
to kick all the dope
even beer & cigs

dancing in and out of view
in the heads and tails
of your mind since he came
rolling into 1968 Backwater U.
to get your holy self unholy
& all the way into his backseat
with the Chicago girl of your dreams
until foreplay passed out
in her lap & you woke still holy,
he laughed when you flushed
his pot after a false alarm

motorcycles jobs familes
managed like fine-print contracts
with the usual sorrow  
in all our ages
Mount Loss climbed over 
until you bumped and restuck
when returning to BU
for a “fucking poetry reading”

music his calling card
bringing his band 200 miles
to play your anniversary,
sleepovers here and there,
calls over coffee with little
space between like astronauts
meeting in different orbits

for 200 days
(several missed calls,
messages not returned)
he is still alive to you
vivid and vibrating across
the same sound waves until 
this stunned morning obit:
he was most proud to be his friends’ friend

When my mind is softened by
lack of sleep, oversteeped tea,
I wish my forehead read “please
handle with care,” cause, often,
I forget to pause, to breathe,
forge forth, not fall back, receive
quiet moments as secrets
with the cosmos, a release
from smiles gilded by honey,
see the beautiful, heedless
refuge of breath beyond plea,
akin, instead, to a tree
growing, till, all at once, it
stands and speaks. “I am the key,”
it says. “I am what I seek.” 

Share self explosion. 
Brothers abuse injures hearts;
Sisters fall apart. 

I’m not sure if it did, I did not hear cracks.

As my head is pressed into the chest of a

brother I have not known love from,

pulling me into him as he cries a cry

I did not know

could come out of him.

“Bell, I am so sorry.

Fuck, I am so sorry.”

The only words that can come from my mouth are an all-encasing

“I know.”

I cry in his arms as mascara paints his pale chest.

A mural, a dance of our life-long hatred.

this moment, preserved in a jam jar.

McKenna says the world will end at 1:50

I wake up at 1:51.

you cast an eldritch shadow
in your father’s light
so he brings you to an island where
you live in a mansion of stone

in your father’s light
 you were never bright enough to matter so
you live in a mansion of stone
to hide your Heart from men

you were never bright enough to matter so
your Love was scorned
to hide your Heart from men
you turned them to swine

your Love was scorned
until Odysseus sent his men to your home
you turned them to swine
but you changed them back for him

until Odysseus sent his men to your home
you had never known kindness from a man
but you changed them back for him
he stayed with you for a year

you had never known kindness from a man
you had never known Love returned
he stayed with you for a year
on that last night you watched his ship recede from shore

you had never known Love returned
after Odysseus you never would again
on that last night you watched his ship recede from shore, where
you cast an eldritch shadow  

Bitter-to-the-bone
cold grasped my toes
and held on.
Hot soaks, two pairs
of socks, and a space heater
won a few battles,
not the war.
In time
the cold owned my toes
and held them
prisoner,
casualties of prolonged
sub-zero temps.
It became a winter
of incarceration,
the only hope
a spring parole.

Act I

The presumption of glaciers
                                            diminish our own existence
Growing and moving under
                                            the influence of gravity
Fateful contrarian women
                                            sensitive to the climate

Act II

River, well-known fickle bitch
                                            giving, taking life without word
Placate her with space to stretch
                                            her fierce arms and bountiful thighs
Raging womb open for brio
                                            sometimes defying her will

Act III

You interpret the shadow
                                            on Grandmother Turtle’s broad back
First woman, mother of all
                                            living and dead of Babylon
Translating from earth to heaven
                                            on the wings of a vain crane