There is no portent of illness.
the Almsgivers earmarked the palimpsest.
Raw limestone.
a canon of sour notes.
with deep grooves and bowing groves and hollows,
Without force.
ink runs down
the shapes of Aleph, Lamed, Teth
barreling towards misery.
There’s a lot to come to terms with,
a lot I tried to drown.
They linger like a myth
whispered, never penned down.
The floods have come,
waters have risen.
The river I emerge from
returns the ghosts I had hidden.
They follow in my shadow,
haunt my every dream,
and crowd to bestow
memories thought lost downstream.
With remembering comes pain:
all-consuming ache
that’ll wash away with rain;
water will never let me break.
summer
in the desert
searing sun, thirsty plans
water, sweat, shade cloth, plant pep talks
sizzle
Glowing, even in darkness,
Internally infinite,
So, conceivable logic
Declares it cannot be gone…
Right?
But, tell me, can it be lost?
Or was it simply borrowed?
Adapting to the habits;
Incessant dispense of self….
Or is the shadow too big,
Despite trying to be small?
Or from the suffocation
That comes with Deprecation…
****** COMPLETELY UNFINISHED*****
Cotton lands sticky against my neck…
Notice the muted powder-puff chaos? What is
the worth of blurred perfection?
If I were no bigger than a toothpick,
I would sink my fingers into the tender marrow
of the sunflower stem, push my face against
its petaled sterility without fear, and watch
the seeds mature…
what picnic blanket, cross-legged, socked foot ease
might settle into
the grain of my existence if
watching the sway of dancing flowers
was my only chore…my own blush may wilt in
the humidity of this
midday.
-in response to Sunflowers, a painting by Vincent Van Gogh
I fear aging not because I could
take it or leave it on these neck wrinkles
but because
Once a boy named Parker told me
that I would never be happy with what I have.
That I would always want more.
He was right, not about the woman, she is
calm and soft and I still want her but
I am always grasping for another fig branch to stuff under my arm
running like hell till I can get a breath and
stretch myself into tree pose reaching every fruit, write,
drunk on the fermentation and into the night.
All the while keeping the house vacuumed and
having as much sex as you’re supposed to for the
amount of days we’ve been together and our
relative ages.
My figs are alive, but I am tired.
My mother had me at this age and I wonder on
what I would have to impart.
Don’t marry your muse.
There are too many divorce albums by
husbands whose wives I fell in love with and
leaving mine was a great call.
Don’t smoke cigarettes.
You’ll never ever quit because
everyone in this family is constantly twisting their hair
like they need one, even the ones who never.
and don’t
throw things at people,
it is impossible to come out in the right after you’ve thrown something.
Do not adopt large dogs in your early twenties and
try not to go to law school if you can possibly help it.
Don’t worry about the sex thing too much.
Try to eat all your figs.
My thoughts of you were an electrical spark of desire
My emotion was the magnetic that pulled you in
The two combined creating an electrical magnetic field
Together they radiated from my body
My heart aligned its frequency to your same vibration
For Lisa
You’re not just some Grand Canyon between words
You’re an o p e n window when lilacs are blooming
The pause before lighting a cigarette in a dark alley
You’re the smell of dough r i s i n g
The inhale at the top before the roller coaster
plummets
You’re the fat comma
The snoozy cat stretching in the afternoon sun
Jason Momoa on the eyes
A poet’s broody bauble
The rainbow’s secret self
