Posts for June 26, 2026 (page 2)

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

straw haired girl
silent as thieves
done with struggle
removing bone and skin
hiding what is left
of someone else’s dream
in a room far away

cross threshold
enter poem     point of transition
poem changes you like a seed nurtured into sunflower
                  all it asks of you is to listen
                                     then live with it
                  for you are not the same person
                                     who stood outside the door

My oldest son is still analyzing,
turning over his recollections, colored by childlike understanding
          and blurred by all that is new
asking questions
that cut to the quick of my heart.
The tightrope dance of honesty and sanctuary
          is death-defying
but I owe it to him to find the balance.
Weighing
my perfect children
juxtaposed with
the imperfect marriage that created them
will be a lifelong fascination;
All he needs to know
          is that life is full of contradictions
          and that my love for him is the stuff of certainty
any way I look at it.

6/26/26

It started out so simple,
you and me against the world,
brother and sister, friends.
Chasing horned toads in alleys,
riding bicycles on sidewalks, dodging
traffic and people with rattling carts.
Twilight brought new games.
Red Rover in the street,
let Buddy come over, send Julie running.
Hands locked tight, a chain of thin wrists
and dare. We leaned back, laughing,
waiting for the break.
It came fast, not a body but a car,
headlights swallowing the line,
metal splitting us open.
Sirens replaced shouting.
Someone’s shoe in the gutter,
someone not getting up.
Police came. Names were taken.
Doors closed on quiet houses.
Some of us went home.
Some to the E.D. What I can’t place,
what I still turn over, is where you went
when the lights began to dance.
Red and blue crossing your face
like something trying to wake you.

Wind
Blows like a gentle secret
Combs like a lioness cleans her cubs
Rushes like a dancing emerald sea
Howls like a Wild West train

Water
Taps like an impatient finger
Trickles like a dream-weary ballad
Patters like a snare drum line
Crashes like two colliding rams

Lightning
Rumbles like a laughing sailcloth
Webs like a fractured pane of glass
Strikes like a dying bulb
Booms like the cannon cries

Fire
Crackles like discarded paper
Hisses like a hydraulic press
Pops like young hands on bubble wrap
Roars like a bright and raging forge

If we listen, we will hear
That Nature has a melody
But it’s what we do today
That preserves Her voice for
Tomorrow’s Song