Posts for June 26, 2026 (page 8)

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

Dying has never really been an option for me

As much as my younger self wished it be true

I couldn’t ever do it

Not with the way that life chooses me every morning

My breath – gasping, chasing fulfillment

My heart racing even before my morning coffee

Steaks of sunshine peering through my blinds

Nor the way that life shows up for me

Surrounded by community and love and safety, floating

Joy filling my gut to the brim, my head fuzzy and soft

Laughter bubbling out of my mouth, a warm light

Nor the way life lifts me like a balloon

Singing at the top of my lungs

With my arm out the window of my car

Hair tossed and flapping in the cool wind

How could I ever not be here?

How could I ever not experience this?

How could I ever deny life from experiencing itself in me?

How glad I am to stand here now and be able to say

I made it

Iran speaks through musaddas,
six-line poems in Farsi script writ
                                         
                                       right
                        to
      left

giant postage stamps pasted
in a tableau, two to a row,
laid out like tarot stone
tablets from Mt. Sinai, each
nearly identical to the other                        
                                                    to my eye   
                                                    but                                                 
I can’t read the language &
Englishmen don’t understand

Musaddas writ in black on white
hard as Hammurabi’s diorite
held, by faith, impervious to bombs

Bargaining not transactional
more revelation or judgment
how the Prophet did back in the day  

Get your damn car
out of my driveway.
I don’t even know you.

Why do you think
I should tolerate you
claiming my space
as your own?

You speak like
I owe you something.
Demanding I wait
until it is convenient
for you to get out of my way.

I called for backup
and relocated your Tesla.
Good times with friends,
beats arguing with
you over texts.

The car has now entered
an enjoyable citywide edition
of “Where’s Waldo”
scheduled for tomorrow morning.

I’ll be sound asleep.