All In A Day’s Work
You sit beside me
we laugh
we sigh
we whisper
we eat lunch and watch netflix
we curse
we roll our eyes
we snicker
we huff and puff
we grunt.
All in a day’s work.
You sit beside me
we laugh
we sigh
we whisper
we eat lunch and watch netflix
we curse
we roll our eyes
we snicker
we huff and puff
we grunt.
All in a day’s work.
To be anywhere
but here,
in this moment
at this time.
To experience
any sensation
except this heaviness
in my chest.
My feet have begun
to move
without permission
from my
mind.
No time for packing.
My eyes search for
any view except
this ugliness
that faces me.
I can’t stay
I can’t sit here
with this
with you.
My heart,
my soul
have already left.
My body is
all that remains.
Hallowed is the Harlequin,
Sitting is stable,
but I’m unable to sit
by waysides: it stings,
the trapped breath lining
my insides because my mind
races as I rest.
I’d rather run at
my bedside than stop, unwind
till I’m twine without
knots, gasping as I
say it all, gulping poison
as cure, blindsided
by why the pain won’t
subside. Stagnant beats strangled,
but sickness spins ‘still’’
into a question —
it’s the aside: “Please, heart, be
the source, not the sink.”
They look askance.
This poetry attention.
(Well, except April.)
There is no damn conceivable reason
That rationalizes the irrational
There is no damn retrievable season
That could take us back…
Muscle tensed.
Ready at any moment to run,
Run to you
Who takes solace knowing, to you I succumb
The one.
The one I mull through every minute detail of life,
The one I can’t wait to share my poems to,
leaving out the words that may hurt you…
Because, no doubt they are pointed indeed,
Leaving no mercy for you or for me
This is why I simply can’t, and don’t,
Though, conscious says the word is “won’t”
Your approval could take me to the moon
And
Your burning eyes may take me there soon
Intertwined in every cell of my being
It seems.
Haunted in daylight and the darkness of dreams,
By your unmatchable and intentional placement of hands,
Haunted now knowing the same hands found new places to land
However brief,
For whatever why,
She brought you relief,
Each time I see it, I wish you’d just lied
There is no damn conceivable reason,
Bullied and broken all parts of me now
There is no damn retrievable season
That could mend what I’ve allowed
smirks at me in the late afternoon,
knows my years have not diminished her.
As dinner hour approaches she anticipates lamb
simmered in rosemary and red wine,
new potatoes, complemented by the tenderness
of green beans.
She’s always been a burden for me.
My father praised her: Look at how much
my youngest eats.
She summons a stufffed chicken
to dance for my delight.
Prods me to grate garlic and ginger,
to chop broccoli and bok choy.
She’s taught me pleasure found
in the smells and texture of prepping food.
Don’t forget, she reminds me, add sweet
Chinese sausage. She pleads
for plumb potstickers steamed for dipping
in soy sauce and vinegar,
red pepper flakes float just for her
in a small bowl.
A small deer’s rush of bright vitality crossing a country road
A blur of fawn and white from the passenger window
We clipped it’s haunch end because she slowed
but did not stop
I imagine she was singularly thinking of the baby in the carseat
anticipating a rear end or whiplash
Later she pulled fur from the grill and examined the unblemished black bumper
and marvelled at our good fortune
She died four months later almost to the day
And I marvel at the omens