Posts for June 30, 2023 (page 7)

I wish I could write about things that make me happy

But it seems that all I’m able to write about is pain and suffering

So, all I ever write about is you

Two nights ago, I had a dream again

Well, more of a nightmare

Just as I thought I was getting better

You barge back into my psyche

Like a dog, returning to its vomit

Disgusting, but predictable

In my dream, we were on a date

Something I never got to do with you

Something I wanted so badly to do with you

Something I knew I never could do

Even in my dreamworld, something was off

Your caring touch caused my stomach to turn

Your gentle gaze ran a chill of fear down my spine

Your sweet words made my skin crawl

I mean, go figure

All I’ve ever known of you is my fear of you

Of what you could do to me

Or worse

What I would let you do

Take the 29 up through Lovingston.
Water breaks at the ridge.
Deep breaths as they near, clear, and pass
the raccoon. No time to go back.

Such is a life left roadside and blinded.
I weigh what it’s worth again every
end June. Thirty-nine lines under eyes
now defending.

Dark circles from where I’ve narrowed
my gaze. Hands clutch the day like
a trinket I fought for. And, yes, I suppose
I’d rather tiptoe right past

this life that’s been stolen. I’m just the
bandit of what slipped through that night.
But, if you press me, I’ll growl “of course
it’s been worth it!”

Although, I’m not the raccoon,
in hindsight.

Judgment,
upon words I’d
not penned but thought, ripped out
each blooming June, supplanted
by some breath!

My mother is poetry
“Ut pictura poesis” – Horace
Like peeking in the paper stacks of poems in the ice chest
Kept with frozen peas, frozen fish are frozen words
Taken from love statuses
Joy flecked in life’s ore, but mostly modem that has fermented
Into critique.

Walking my spaniel
at twilight–
down the hill, in back of
the house, the day lilies’

last gasps dangle

over one neighbor’s
stone embankment.

Not even the dog notices
the two owls flying 
just a little above our heads–

only silence

on this slow humid evening,

I see their   w i n g s p a n
one on top of the other,
almost touching–
dodging pine tree
branches.

The owls disappear
     into a fog
          of smoky green mist.

While we traveled on our way,       
We heard the robin, wren, and jay.
I thought of many things to say
As we came to end of day
To find complete our work and play
And later learned to our dismay
A force of nature held at bay
Could not be dispatched away.
Oh, how I wished that you could stay,
But you were gone by end of May.

Before Alzheimers visited
her like a swarm

of bats, Jean Valentine
wrote Lucy,  a chain

of poems about the fossilized
skeleton of a hominid, half

my size.        Lucy
is part prayer, part

struggle.      Faceless
presence, a repository

of grief           & source
of the poet’s comfort. A black

& white shot of her looks
like broken

jewelry.     No table
of contents, few titles, many

repeating images —- spiders,
stars,            wildflowers.   Rilke,

Chekhov,                   Williams
Lucy,

one long poem of      bone
fragments    stubbornly

punctuated. Poetry of      open
doors, of possibilities, empathy,

emptiness.           Breadcrumbs
scattered        on a bare

kitchen counter,  flower
seeds, whispered          notes

of lullabies. Glimpses
of the lost

                & forgotten.
How do you translate

the unconscious & invisible?
When Jean Valentine’s memories

began to    unfasten
it was clear —-  she was floating      away

once & for all
from the book of fathers.

Jean & Lucy          now singing
from the marrow,       liberated

from     curse.        Jean & Lucy,
receivers of the dead

& unborn, wildflowers
that break rock.

Beyond the smell of moss and damp of Green River headwaters
Beyond the lavender breeze which lifts the feathered wing of Mockingbird flight over southern ring of the knobs
where blinding sun corners morning with the Pennyroyal Plateu
and where Miss Jane Baxter toiled with calloused hand, red, and dried as autumn kisses pinoak leave

Hungered and longing for the smell of turnip and mutton stew
that before filled the gapping holes and throbbing heart
All alone on Doctor Menifee’s tobacco plantation she softly strokes the aromatic strands that covered tender leaf underside – and touches the reaching shoots ordered along miles of trenched rows. 

In her dreams she still hears the burning calls of Bonny Scotland
where kidnapped she traveled to this solitary place- she was trafficked- merely eleven in that year of 1753.
violently torn from her slain mothers bloody clinched hand
then onward stored beneath darkened ship hull
like luggage processed through Carolina port –
a long ride in buggy bed to the far Southern side of O’ Pinacles 
a new life where the good Doctor’s erratic whims sternly force the commands. 

With hungry field coyote she did sacredly roam
until sweet scent of evening prim rose cautioned her back home
calming respice seldom but sometimes found in sunray heated Blue Lick waters
she fully emmersed – always returning before she was missed. 

You think it isn’t so, not brutally enslaved – it couldn’t happen that way
instead indentured servitude was the gift of her home. 
But try to believe – it sometimes happens today
My 6th great-grandmother’s inhumane story
is true, carefully passed down, witness was bore.
Her resilient strength I have been blessed. 

displaced solutions
arrive in cardboard  discount
multi layered costs

Bae, I’ll play my GREAT BLANK VODKA KAZOO
while you TOWEL off all that sweet GHOST FROST.
Don’t QUAIL – GRASP and TRACE the CRANE as you sit
in SHADE and WASTE my PASTE, TASTE my wicked  

PLAID. QUOTE, OFTEN, TOWER BOXER COMET,
that failed lover who should have picked COVET!
TODAY, this handsome DRAKE will BRAID GRAND tales
ABOUT his WORSE ROVER, his RODEO  

HORSE tireless in its QUEST to be your GUEST.
Dear, what is your IRATE TANGO ABOUT?
I TRUCK troth without lie’s TRACE, pen love’s TRACT.
My TRADE is RIDER, muff DIVER/DINER,  

a QUIET TOTAL STRAY, STRAP-STRAW-sucking
love from the milkshake of your Wordle heart.  

*June 19-30, 2023