Posts for June 18, 2024 (page 6)

(Yesterday’s Poem): June, 17, 2024
Four.
    Four months today.
It’s been almost 3,000 hours
since I’ve seen you…
        Found you.
            How…?

Four.
    I was 4 when you
were stuck with the cat my mom got me to
“help cope with the
            divorce,”
            Because…
    We couldn’t have cats
in our shitty apartment. You weren’t happy.
In fact you were
            angry.
            But…
You would not, could not, tell me “No.”

Four.
    The number of times
The “schedule” allowed me to see you each week,
IF it was your
           weekend.
            Swayed…

Fourth Grade.
    I pulled away
Conflicted, confused; looking to place blame.
Too easy to use
            your name.    
            Regret…

Fourteen.
    When you understood,
I needed more help than “just” therapy.
You gave every
            dime.
To ensure I 
            got “better.”
To ensure I
            healed.
To ensure I
    knew how deeply
you loved me; and I knew I was truly seen.

2004.
  Year you retired.
My fourth year of high school, because you knew,
I was broken,
        and needed
            you….
Four.
    The number of times
You bailed me out of “trouble,” we’ll call it.
Always hopeful,
            in me.
        Why…?

Four.
   The number of times
I was humbled and moved “back” in with you.
1. Kicked out of my mom’s senior year
2. Dropping out (then returning to) college
3. Going through my divorce
4. When I fearfully realized, I couldn’t afford (financially or emotionally) being a single mother, of a toddler, living “on my own.”
            And…
    You opened your
Arms, heart, wallet, and doors. Steadiness. 
            Every
                time…
Her “GrandBobby…”

Four.
    The predicted
number of hours you laid on the floor…
            Dead,
               Until…
I arrived with McDonald’s breakfast,
Tossed to the side.
Replaced with begging and pleading,
To go back and hold you all night.
                But
            Instead…
    Four long months in,
With every day wishes to just call you
                    again…

The Broadman Hymnal

Unlikely source of comfort

For a backslider

Penelope, I could never name
these feelings. How about morose?
I do fight sullenness at times.
Also a certain vagueness
that I fathered an unknown child
whose child with a baby in arms
(you) showed up at my front door.

My reaction was not jubilation 
but astonishment that spilled
over into bewilderment.
Now after all these years
of seeing you grow
into a woman about to be marrried
and having the unexpected you
in my life has been like
having ones eyesight restored
after a long blindness.

There can be no title for this.

I walk in from the bushes, gooseberry sweetness
lightening my tongue, content with the life

I have here. Soon enough, I am back outside
watering beans I planted late (again) this year,

water’s spray—first cool thing today— wills
the seeds their magic. Then onto my son’s

newest block of corn, returning a favor
and thinking of his grandfather, born almost

a century ago. He, too, loved growing corn—
Brooklyn boy transplanted to Pennsylvania

Piedmont. We grow where we can, roots
and shoots always seeking something,

this soil, this air become my fortune.

move in great tiny moments
   ocean rock ocean rock
lichens: sage sulphur saffron
   sleepy granite boulders
      a sparkle–a vein
some years ask questions 
some years     all     the answers

We move in great tiny moments.

Delicate grain
Made whole in in wonder

Soft solace of my childhood
Tan to golden loafs
Perfectly cut in portions
So easily smushed between fingers

White interior I related
If not in name than approach
I tried to compliment all those around
The base of a hot brown
Holding the heat and pressure
A background character

Now anointed in oil
With basil flecks and pepper
Cascade across your crisp shell
The warmth from the oven
Still seeps into my hand from your
Bun, i feel it radiate as my mouth
Prepares to break, to tear this common delicacy
again and again and again

Spent my last dollar on last night’s conversation.
Cost me far more than that buck to stand before you soul-baring
feeling naked despite many layers
asking you to see me
see me
spent

You stood arms crossed
cross
averting my gaze
backing away in form and function,
listening but not yet hearing,
bracing for the attacks you remember
the ways the loves before me turned meadows into battlefields

But I bring no sword, just a dollar’s worth of hope. 

Staunched with patience, unafraid,
didn’t even cry despite my empty pockets
didn’t strangle my own reality to let yours live broken,
calmly explained how I love you and I’ll die on this hill
of trying to convince you to let me in, to let joy in,
that hating yourself doesn’t make you a better man.

Owning my imperfections
while staunching my wounds
because you don’t see them
see them  

Spent my last dollar on this bet
that it’s not too late,
money where my mouth is
I still believe in us.

Darling, breath-breaking words,

Forgive me, but what does it mean to live? 
            consumed by a flickering fire tying the gray of smoke to ash
            with a song of crackling hisses and touch like dizzied wrath
Or burn? 
            firecracker laughter eroding smile lines onto the young face
            with the confidence of a perennial lover, caressing, holding
Or grieve? 
            welcomed into the pit of water, falling and fading, molasses
            dripping into itself, heavy and sweet and teethed and gone
Or drown? 
            memories lodged between the throat and world, a spinning
            reality taking its tax, the reminder of the old, indelible debt
Or think?
            a wild thing, hitting the clear window pane then the sponge
            of the skull, looping, a boar, crashing into glass and brain

Forgive me, but I think we’ve used you too liberally.
            metaphors employed like maids, stanzas split for aesthetics,
            and sentiments dashed to hurling, whirling desensitization
Oh, to live, to burn, to grieve, to drown!
            to think, magnificent, breathing in the weight of the written,
            ink against the blinking cursor, mechanical clatter, the rasp
You give so much with your every appendage.
            sans readers, writers, or dreamers, the beauty is sans eyes,
            shape over sound and the novel gleam above the gleaning

Forgive me.
            we, the discombobulated, will die as dust but you will endure,
            you, the facts, confessions, laws, lists, orders, stories, truth

Yours,
a Poet

Almost to the hours of the day
when the outside begins to disagree
with my enjoyment of fresh air.
The heat can be managed
but it’s the sun’s creeping beyond the eaves above
that starts to bake me in my tattered lawn chair.

The view is nothing spectacular;
a couple restaurants and the liquor store
that kept me well-imbibed during lockdown,
an intersection drivers can’t figure out,
the crossing road not perfectly aligned
sure to spark a road rage showdown.

When the light finally becomes too much
I’ll begrudgingly be chased back inside
and that’s when the rest of the day can begin.
Do I need to go to the store? Is it time for laundry?
Are friends gathering later for some pickleball
or do I just say fuck it and spend the whole day in?

A little bit of day-drinking may be in order
sipped slow to maintain an evened out buzz;
relaxed, but still able to venture out later.
Before that, though, is the sun’s continued crawl
now dropping below the tree line, the returning
of cool air, when the shadows are straighter.

Back out comes the chair, a book to read, a beer
or a glass of wine if I’m feeling fancy.
So begins the next set of hours.
And it will be hours unless social desires call-
the need to be around people tickling my restless-
or until it’s the dark of night that overpowers.

But regardless of where I spend the day’s end,
whether sitting at a bar or laying in bed,
the inching of the skies now belongs to the night.
I’ll soon awake in another rebellion for peace
with dreams of this routine for the rest of my days
content, setting out my chair at morning’s first light.

I see green
a prairie or plane
rising and raging
like a sea
The sky above
yellow with tints
of orange
perhaps dawn
perhaps dusk
sweeping
like the land below
sweeping
with no where
a hint of man
This is pure freedom
undisturbed
and disturbing
as freedom should be
as if everything
is a storm
about to strike
Pure freedom
which is why
it will never be
locked in a frame
It is as a stallion
racing across the range
Caging this canvas
would be a crime
 
                                     for Kami