You’ve grown up in the land of the free.
That’s how you want it to be.
Free to make choices
free of dictator voices.
It’s the way you love how to be
in the land of the free.
Now you hear the dictator’s voice
of the President intending control of your choice.
The way to respond, join up with like voices
to keep our free choices
and never be ruled by the wannabe king
who wants to control everything.
Grab a neighbor and start taking action.
Stop this from happening.
We watched the hogs feasting fast
As May yawned with its rain,
I sat in the final chemistry lecture
of my undergraduate career,
three years of the subject—
general, organic, and biochemistry—
the nerves of picking a seat always in the second row
the claws of each grade reviewing notes until my eyes throbbed
naming our lab group Humerus inking faces onto test tubes
our eyes meeting when a professor said a diagram was simplified
the weekly labs and reports troubleshooting spectrophotometers
waiting during Western blots penning polyatomic ions
sketching the arrows of mechanisms writing out pathways
when I said it’d take forever to understand
the math and logic of chemistry
to appreciate its courses
ending with a fifty minute lecture.
Yet as June stretches with its gray skies,
the few days in my extracurricular
chemistry lab seem too slight
to encompass the subject’s importance
but also too much to heal the callouses
it took to climb this far up.
Please do not carve on the yucca, do not give
it your name, which you yourself might need.
Please do not please too readily. May your pleas
never come out of desperation, but merely
want. A smear of desire, a schmear—you had
thought to bring in the boiled dough but
it can only withstand so much, fast-spoiled.
You are sometimes a bagel yourself, ruined
before touch, not by it. Please don’t be bought.
Don’t be a bot, though probably you should
find ways of processing, of answering. It will
help to remember your ancient ancestor, the fern.
“Thyme crept into the cracks in the terrace floor, silently and imperceptibly crumbling the stone into dust.” – Dorothy Sucher, The Invisible Garden
time creeps
into every crack
widens, pushes
everything
apart
to make room
for all the dust
it leaves
i am listening to the poetry talk
my mind drifts to your kiss marked at my neck
i am walking through the creek’s strong currents
my legs are bare and intertwined with yours
i am sunbathing by the pool
warmth like your breath kisses between my thighs
i am clasping at my sheets
they are your hands, tender and fluttery
i am letting my fingers drift amongst rocks
they are your ears, moldable and kissable
i am talking to my friends: the oaks, maples and pines
but i wish they were you, for you’re quite nice to talk to
i am writing this note, might you send one back?
I’ve been around a lot of people
Who don’t know how to say I love you
I offer up my step dad dead and gone
Bruised and brutalized by his own indulgences
Among his vices he included me
I wreck his car he goes my bail
Pays me mind, speaks the word that holds the line
Holds his tongue, spares the rod
Stays the hand, the boot, the prod
Grease the rail for me; but say “love”?
Maybe if you think of love as loose change
Or if the puddle of used crank case oil
At the end of the rail looks like love then he said it
Now, do I thank him for his love
Or kick myself for taking it
Tiptoe softly here
to peek, see
gathered angels
seemingly suspended, afloat
opasescence shimmering translucence
— unearthly — as their Divinely
created beings traversed dimensions
for God’s glory, God’s will
God’s grace Almighty to intervene
Love for soul’s peace
permeating be
known
