Libra Sun
you shimmering socialite
always living between extremes
friend to all no matter the cost
don’r run so fast lest someone get close
you’re so much easier to love than you think
Prayer works. Just not in the
way expected. A real
Father-knows-best scenario,
the trust has to be there.
Kneeling in the dark, night
after night, voicing my
concerns, my doubt, my creeping
suspicions. I open myself
up to God and it is
up to God what happens.
I question every decision
until I’m proven wrong.
This becomes our normal,
a tete-a-tete where I cause
God to vet his plans through
me, I charge debts, saying
You owe me a good life!
ignoring that which I
already have: a good life.
I heard birds sing this morning
Nestled in the home of their branches
Among the dying tree outside my window
As the snow flurried down
Peeping through the slit in the curtains
I yell to the baby birds
To fly away as this is not their time
To hold space in their decaying nest
My breath a small cold cloud escaping my lips
Why do we stay longer than we should
Why do I hope it shall pass or all to be well
When we see the imminent destruction around us
Knowing that branches can only hold for so long
Beginning to break underneath the weight
Still clinging to the hope we can still fly away
At any point before it’s too late
Why must I cling to this
A continued sense of hope
That something else, or even someone else
Will save me when I am to save myself
I wish to rise out of my grave of twigs
My little nest I keep buried in
Lifting my tired head to be with the snow
And simply fly away
Before the tree branch snaps
Before it comes crashing down
Before I lose everything
Before I lose myself
An exhausted bee lit on my knee
and stared directly at me.
Then he said,
“I think it best
if I have a rest
before I take off again.
As you surely must know,
I help living things grow.”
Then, after a pause, he asked,
“What is it you do?”
I thought of my days
and the odd, random ways
I had spent them all.
Then I seemed to recall
a once earnest dream
and how true it might seem.
I replied to the bee,
“Oh, me? I’m a pediatrician.
So you see, friendly bee,
I, just like you,
help things grow up too.”
I don’t know why
I told that lie.
I just couldn’t admit
for employment I’m unfit
even though he seemed to me
a very understanding bee.
Campus at night smells like
brick sweat, walnut fruit
coal plant, Fabuloso
finding which doors
are still unlocked at 11 pm
men hiding in bushes
masked by the whisper
of irrigation sprinklers
across the coffee ground dirt
broken cement that sparkles wet
like adrenaline, 200 mg ibuprofen
200 years of dust left in the pan
after they tried to sweep it away
like woodgrain, like being afraid
like I’m here,
again,
again,
again.
A tale as old as time –
the kind every house keeps buried in the cellar.
A tale that smells of onion skins, soot, and stone.
(What if my tale should die
unspoken and untold…)
They say behind the water fountains,
beneath bridges, and in nooks at home,
the little ones curl up – grown cold, unbaptized.
Тhe nawie.
Frail, miscarried infants, not to blame.
(What if this inner stirring dies
unbaptized and unnamed…)
They say it startles you time and again,
for as long as you draw breath on this earth.
It will catch up with you in the dark –
this unholy cry,
the inconsolable cry.
(What if my feeling for you dies
unwritten, uninscribed…)
If my feeling for you dies, unwritten and unnamed,
its sleepless spirit will step out to meet me,
year after year.
I wall up its feral shadow into words.
What if my feeling dies like that –
never born, unstirred.
Dear Diary,
I cannot weep as long as I keep walking.
The pain of an open blister silences the
grief of missed opportunity on days with
or without clouds or rain.
Childhood, in the midst of falling thunder,
filled my mind with trees and rivers, dollbabies and
foldover sandwiches, ticklish feet and stories…
everywhere and everything histories…
called my name.
Behind garages, beneath beds, inside
kitchen cabinets, over by the petunias, the mailbox,
the lunch tray return window, the bookshelves, the
desks with their big drawers and small spaces…
inside the clothes rack at the local J. C. Penny’s…
and, And, AND under the cheese cap of a hot dog coney….
tell me, what happens while space waits….
and time passes.
Have you ever walked away from a character without
stopping to nod or extend a hand in greeting?
It isn’t pleasant or comfortable, sort of like
eating stale cake that looks delicious and
smells like cherry chapstick.
The weight of substitution for what was and
what needed to be could not be touched or carried, but
shoulder hoisted and leaned against the outlines of
a sometimes-brown reality. Pull twine from the earth
and spin a new kind of existence into the frame.
No one tells us how to pull the moss from
our dark waters. Alone, you and I must
reach down into the melting richness of
algae and scum and leeches to
untangle our feet, stoop to untie our expectations,
and keep walking.
Your Friend,
Me
Your new poet-self surprises
me, appears unexpected
not even 8:30 a.m. and you’re flitting
about in a loose bathrobe, while I finish
the laundry, spouting the ephemeral
nature of mayflies
years to develop, only one day as an adult
with no mouth, laying thousands of eggs
this seems the stuff of poetry
but as you go on about histogenesis, diaphase,
subimago, Occam’s Razor while I am
eating peanut butter toast
with apricot jam – and you, waving
your wide-winged arms – I try
to lock in, but the notions are fleeting,
last not even one day
í’m flying on the wings of desire
mouth full of feathers,
eyes itching
I surrender to desire’s
algebra of vertebrae
and the wind’s salty spine
i’m flying and it’s fine –
my brain can hitch a ride back home
