Posts for June 27, 2023 (page 9)

                                You’re so bad for me.  Or good.   
                                But one of the two…

the last text, from a dream, drifting—
waking to viscous ink-stained bedroom,
sweat-laced pillow cool at your back,
glaucous sky through slats, & then
the phone comes to life

I’m just what you need.

                         ***

It would be easy for you to reduce
exchange of energy & physicality
to only this
                        need & desire,
                        feeding the fire

                        left cold, in the downpour
                        of spring

but
she is
shield maiden to the dawn
vouchsafing night & gone
before light breaks.  I am the one
breaking under
          pink-tipped nails, escaping
through the cracks
                                         of puritan                             
                                         & patriarchal
                                         mold.

                         ***

When you come,
                                 you beg
I come                 
                   home to the me
no one’s bothered
                                  to see
or release.

You tease,
I’m trying to pull it out of you

                         ***

I thought
recent months
had revealed
I was
less.                         I am
                       becoming
                       More.

                         ***

                                    I did.  Dream about you, I mean.

I thought so.
                                   Why do you say that?

I felt it.

“False weights and unequal measures— the Lord detests double standards of every kind.” Proverbs 20:10 (NLT)

Consider proportionality.
Golden rule and mean alike.

(Do this all the time, pastor:
if you’d read the words in red,
gauged their scale and ratio.
you’d rebuke gluttony,
find no time to censure
what is patient and kind
what endures all things.
Yes, even your clanging.)

When our dead lie in repose,
now’s not the time to proselytize.
Spare us, this day, the real estate pitch:
open concept mansions–great location.

Preacher, conjure and animate
summon their voice, their laughter
invoke their footfall in this room
bewitch their fingers in our palms.

In the vapor haze of window light, eyes shine.

I’m working the preacher curl
at the High Street Y
to tone my arms
for my daughter’s
formal country wedding

Mozart’s Jupiter on the radio
the idea to take the tree out
of the planter that sits
on the patio outside 
the sliding glass door
that faces the sunrise occurs

he turns the classical station
off and steps out to overcast,
Jupiter hidden from him
like a previous life
exubrant with affair,
pulls the single strand
of white lights from the withered
cedar, yanks the prickly bark
to carry over to the compost
…remembers those days
when he always slept naked
with all the lights off
in the dark, so dark even
Venus was enough of a night-lite

now age, circulation, bad eyes
conjugates into a subjunctive mood
where even in June he needs
a sweater for his cold bones
and the patio Christmas lights
to see his way for his nightly
trips to the toilet

he used to say Christmas lights
left on 
were the reason for strip mines
in Harlan County

The geckos come out at night,
desert brown with bulging eyes and labial mouths,
adhering to the stucco with splayed toes,
drawn by moths and other winged insects — 
comically large mosquitos and endless varieties of beetle — 
that perch in the glow of the porch light.
Alien in appearance, with voracious appetites,
they cling frozen in place, patient as beggars, 
before striking.

When you move out, you take the shower curtain.
Our faux antler handle kitchen knives.
The bleached cow skull we bought down in Nogales.
Half of the set of Mexican blue glassware,
the incense burner and good CDs.
A decade of laughter and a few tears, 
increasingly tears.

That first night alone, I sit on the porch 
drinking tepid Tecate, wondering how things might go 
now that I’ve been unstuck from love.

My life might get better, I say aloud
to the high silver moon.

Coyote laughs. The saguaro remain silent.
The geckos begin to feast.

plan to
slip back
into certain places

most will 
outlast- longer
on the page

your body 
and blood
control the day

your heart 
make take
it away

for a long while I thought life was about finding your purpose
then I’d slot into a rail meant for me and all would flow beautifully
from there
in it’s own right
in retrospect
it’s happened twice
children
book published
yet clearly-
or clearer anyway-
now
from my over-half-way-there perspective
I can see that it’s never been about slotting into a rail
it’s been about sensing the joy in one direction
and following that.
another word for this is passionate persistence.
that’s enough to live by.

Past bedtime, I tell my sons to put on their shoes,
and we walk to the dark beach in search of sea turtles.
The special red flashlight casts an eerie orb
on the white sand.

We do not find any turtles, a nest full of eggs,
or even a set of tracks. A ghost crab is all we catch
under the crimson beam.

But it doesn’t matter. I only want to give them this
memory – warm hug of wind, dry dustings
of sand thrown against their backs, night
song of blackened waves, the smell of mud and sea.

From across the sound comes a distant flash — 
heat lighting. They both gasp, mouths round
as the letter O, sleepy eyes thrilled wide with wonder.

i am shrill
slick
in the dream they follow
sand-trails, scorched
orange/ochre
muscle
fusion

long dresses of the fleeing
catch and stick in fluid
i am one
who flees