Just Stay Home
They say don’t meet your heroes
but maybe don’t meet your friends either
because they can be assholes too.
They say don’t meet your heroes
but maybe don’t meet your friends either
because they can be assholes too.
Rows and rows, so many closets
Of assorted dresses, gowns
Women’s suits for every occasion
Drawers chocked full to the brim
Vintage love letters still stained
With yester year’s tears
That Stouffers candy box was the only thing
That held their love together
Long after both wars were over
One that raged within her mind
The other overseas
Her negliges lay discarded in the trunk
Remnants of the love they made
Frozen in time like the second hand
On a clock no one bothered to wind one day.
i am from new york
and kentucky
from fireman’s pond
and the kentucky river,
from long drives on
sunday after church
along a winding river road,
from long roadtrips
late at night in the back
seat of a pinto, or comet
or the camper of a ford truck
to averill park, new york.
i am from aunt nancy’s magic bag
and eleanor’s birthday cakes in
the middle of the night
upon arrival to grammy
and grampa’s house by the pond.
i am from fried catfish and
cornbread with thick slices
of tomatoes from opal’s garden
corn on the cob smothered
in homemade butter and
green beans fresh from breaking.
i am from motorcycle riding
uncle ken laughting with
my dad about navy stories
and jerry clower records
around the table with cups
of coffee and glowing
stained glass light.
i am from cousins catching
crawdads in the creek,
making mud pies in the
dirt driveway after summer rain
weaving cattails into placemats
and singing around the organ
while grampa plays happy birthday.
i am from fancy aunt betty
with stylish clothes and scarfed
hair high on her head,
scars up to her elbow from
the fire that burned her daughter,
the one i thought so beautiful
with long black hair and fake
eyelashes whose scars i never
saw until mom showed me
her school pictures and i
couldn’t imagine how strong
she must have been.
i am from north and south,
from river wading and ocean
playing, shell collecting and
rock skimming, barefoot
all summer, camping in maine.
i am from strength and weakness
sadness and joy, artists and fishermen,
teachers and writers, farmers
and dreamers,
so many came before me
i carry them always, all the stories.
6/17/24
KW
Once I was young
I felt a little bit like I had arrived
I’d felt like that before
But this was
as grown as I’d ever imagined
I enjoyed depression
and Radiohead
and The Cure
This must be what it’s like I thought
I’ll do things differently, I figured
And I won’t end up like that.
‘I am not my parents’ felt
like a hail mary
I imagine
For me,
like Beauty
But I’d see a person of that age today
and I’d think,
they still have their baby fat.
The velvetted deer are jumping in the meadow
what a dear, sweet child
I think this new crop
may still have that hope
-and so many
my age made
some decision against that-
incredibly naive, shapeless blobs
Perfectly Blobby
Some figure
I’m no good at the wheel
My shit is dry
I hit the floor too much
I know a way
You can become fresh clay
Because the thing about people is
they learn
just by blindly moving forward
It is called awakening
to realize that you are making
a crucial decision
and that the whole thing
isnt fucked
If you reduce it all to dust, pick the bits out and re work it
Well it’s true
A lot can go wrong
But there is always
a decision to try again
I think that thinking like that is
A TRUE WISDOM
and
when I listen to songs
from those years,
Francoise Hardy’s Je Ne Suis La Pour Personne
or wave of mutilation
I feel young
And lots of feelings
actually change your brain
So I can be young again
for longer anyway
and a bit more comfortable
Be a bit blobby and naive
Dream bigger
Well then
it’s okay to make mistakes
or at least be kind and encouraging
to that Self
Who thinks that probably
they will change, at least
into the being they want to be
It’s a practice of being centered
I actually gave up on the wheel
Or rather
Printmaking,
Video,
Not Living in Fear, was calling me
obviously about six zillion other things as well
But here we are again!
Back on the wheel!
We’re only
Mostly dead, not All dead
are things so awful
the fireflies glitter too early
flame hem horizon
isn’t that sew
we have the couch weft of sweat
for watching vampire-TV and melting out
what short life we are given
and unraveling anemic skeins
of disappointment
i am
without a seat
sitting down always
three fireflies like embers curse my way tonight
and fly fruitlessly on
you didn’t tell me
why today must
how did these things
who is to blame for
three tears like coolant salting over Fahrenheit
I want to sit in that window.
The one in the room above the brewery
overlooking downtown.
It has a nice, wide ledge,
even if it’s a little short to be very comfortable.
I think it’d feel like flying up here above the lights
and picnic tables and park where there’s a wall with
all the local war veterans’ names inscribed.
My daddy and both papaws are on it,
signifying so many wars in all these generations
changing lives worldwide,
even back here in this corner of Kentucky
where I grew up saying the pledge of allegiance
every morning without really knowing what it means,
watching my daddy retreat to the car
to get away from fireworks, and
it’d be adulthood before I knew why.
Worrying I’d witness something so awful
I’d be thrown back by booms and bangs.
But here I am looking out at my hometown
knowing across the world people have witnessed
horrors far worse than I can imagine this very day,
and all I want is to sit right here in this window and
pick out shapes in the clouds building walls up
over the hills with these coming storms.
I sat with a une sorcière
her cards drawn from dreams
braided in and out of time,
like a girl’s hair,
longues tresses de cheveux,
and one cord is yesterday
and one is tomorrow
and the third, maybe the coquette
who doesn’t know she is beautiful. Maybe the coquette
whose arms and breasts
sag just below where they should,
swinging her hips in half lit bars,
making promises she knows she will never keep.
we had ran barefoot
up our gravel road
to the top of the hill
where the everyone
dumped their trash
from my grandfather
because she told me
he was going to kill us
one get away car later
I was hunkered
behind my great aunt’s couch
worried he’d find us
while the orange sodium lights
cut through the blinds
orange and black lines
on a white wall
the room filled with
the smell of cigarettes
Windsong perfume
Potpourri cooking
in a ceramic pot
I waited
lying on her carpet
while they talked
about his schizophrenic fits
and wondered
how long before we died
we push seeds deep
we pause, wait on warmth
we water
we wait more
we watch
we guide tendrils
we watch still
we imagine
we make pickles
we share
we smile
we save seeds
we plan
we wait
we do it all over again
26
I no longer cringe when I state my age
smiling as the years pass
next year ill state another age
just as proudly
twenty six
Writing it is a celebration
I’m alive
I’m living
im aging
20+6
how is it possible
so much yet so little time has passed
and I feel so much older than I did
but still so young
