Posts for June 24, 2025 (page 11)

The straw-hollow coleus bones shot

I.
Sunlight threads through tulip cloth.
Felted door hums with welcome.
Purple glass bends over plates,
grape-leaf chairs hold dinner’s truth.
Steam and silver pass between—
hands that stirred and fed with grace.
Every meal a quiet rite.
Every laugh, a planted seed.

II.
Artichokes bow under palms.
Blooms emerge like sudden crowns.
Iris blinks from corner beds,
bottlebrush flames by the glass.
North wall rows of careful red—
grandpa warns of webs beneath.
We still steal the sweetest fruit.
We still heed the myth of fangs.

III.
Lipstick scrawled across new walls—
soft rebellion, brightly smeared.
Even saints must raise their voice.
Even peace can burn a while.
Firelogs wait in brown paper.
Matches long as hope strike gold.
Heat becomes a family hymn.
Even ashes hum of love.

IV.
He naps in the evening hum,
paper tented on his chest.
Game plays low, a second breath.
I become his steady tide.
In that hush I learn the shape
of a life that asks for rest.
Stillness drapes us both like wool.
Even silence pulls me close.

V.
Wet cement receives our hands.
Stone records the shape of joy.
Letters soften, moss will come,
but those prints will not be lost.
Small chairs scatter on the deck,
mustard smears on smiling lips.
Smoke from grills and summer grass—
a feast to remember us.

VI.
The canal held secret war.
We believed the ships could hide.
Fingers laced with someone’s hand
taught me trust before the tide.
Dust and dusk held every step.
Wind rehearsed our whispered games.
Some beliefs outlive their use—
some still bloom when we return.

VII.
Now I walk the edge of age,
still becoming who I am.
The house remains in the sun,
still, the tulips stitch me whole.
When I pass the garden beds,
I can smell her gentle thread.
Love survives in scent and soil.
The past remains, not behind.

With soft lines and hues

Gloria Thomas sketches my portrait

I look like a Polish revolutionary.

You are, Charles Whittington says.

vape pen, sunglasses
with broken stems, shopping bag
blown across the sand,
random wave-tossed bits of trash,
plastic presence of people

is Tuesday
I suspect this choice furrows your brow
let me explain

at 5am I hear the chunk  whinge  whir
this mechanical displacement of collections unneeded
giant claws mouthing these neighbored contents into its hang dog maw
in winter  the handlers  like dark skirting ants travel by foot darting alongside
summer sees  full neon splendor
this small touch of humanity  the structural reminder of systems  our intelligent world
outside my front door

It gets better when one can’t remember
the you that you were before dementia, 
winter fires set with diseased ash timber,
iced tea sipped while admiring the river,

the gardens you tended over the years,
the woman you carried one life to next,
tennis shoes flung onto telephone wires
hanging there like ghosts through the cold and wet 

seasons, bottles uncorked, balls kicked and thrown,
insect bites, high school heroes, jobs, and pets,
hydrangea bushes pruned, weeds whacked, yards mown, 
full-bellied moon, the Sonoran sunsets,

all the shallow wrongs you did to others,
lost in that dense fog, hope-starved, smothered.

I want to
eat the heart of you
and now I want to
cry myself to sleep

Because of you
I’m right,
and you are not
but perhaps it’s me

I want to 
eat your cat
what do you think
of that

she’s cute
and for a shaker 
of salt and catsup
a meal divine

Did you know 
I hunt at night?
Did you know
I’m feral?

I am wild 
imaginings slant
bent my black
apparel

I want to
run naked in
your arms 
feel every mystery

damp forest fatigues
your office clothes.
small desk, phone
and how we

screamed to know
more than
the times allowed
in a minute and three

feral, wild, and free
little creatures
praying for time
praying for rain

where water rests
my mind not quite 
sound, throw a line
plumb it down

then rolling 360
in my bad ass haul
ask me if
I really give a fuck

my darling take 
your devotional
take the Quran
type an answer 

and hit send
I want to cool you
and talk with you
and smooth you

into love again
no
not no not arrogant
but asking

It’s me!  It’s me!
manic and nasty
with 2 balls
in the net

stopping up
the plumb line
reaching to
my depth

           for Edwin Arlington Robinson

I never worked in a town
called Utopia, but I walked
the streets of a dying city

notepad in hand, reading
(believing) the press of its
past, which was printed

on the bricks of buildings
that gave up the souls of
their street-level stores.

I bathed in local stillness,
lamented the lost lust, yet
never earning a cent.

(Laid off reporters sometimes
write for nothing, poets
for even less.) But you wrote

dirges at the Library of Congress
compensated, eventually elevated
to knight template of pedestrian poets.