Our little town was built
By clay and bricks mined
From men like my great-
Grandfathers who wore
Their fingers to the bone
They thrived for years
Until the need for fire
Brick was no longer a
Necessity as it once was
One by one the furnaces
And brickyards closed
Buildings left to rot and
Return again to nature
The past of this place is
Long forgotten, except
For the few of us who
Know that this place
Was built literally
Brick by brick
‘artist’
a title i have given a decade to
a badge i wear around my wrists and in my teeth
i can so easily taste the word
gotten so used to way its colors shine in my peripheral vision
like the way sonnets sound sloshed around another high schoolers mouth, so uninterested and so uninspired
‘art’
it’s the noun that so seamlessly transformed into a verb
it’s what can be created
or something that just grows and twists and develops on a page and in the air and all around
it’s what hits people in the face at one am and gives the early birds a reason to watch the sunrise
there’s some poetic justice
a convoluted oxymoron when artists create art and so easily disregard their God-given title
Do you remember the last time you made a wish upon the evening star?
Star light, Star bright, first star I see tonight.
Did you lose faith because wishes were granted in reverse
Or disguised behind a cloudy, lidded moon?
Wish I may
Did you wish for something better? For someone lost? For your own weary heart to mend?
Wish i might
Without fail, I wished for you. Certain the stars would light the way
Have the wish I wish tonight
Maybe it’s time to start again
what if i told you
that long after your phases
of fire and water end
after two summers spent
writing them into poetry
your lungs would un-freeze
and lift again in breath?
they say doing what was long
overdue is a weight
lifted off of you, but no,
you are the one lifted off the weight
of yourself from when you tied yourself down
roped in with the stockholm syndrome forgetting
when you lost yourself and found
something else.
i say you as inthe second person
you, entity separate
from the first person
singular me not we
but as in myself paused
at this moment in time and i
am no longer the same me i once was,
keep that one to yourself.
only you would understand so completely,
forgive me for the dissociation.
i promise i haven’t forgotten
you.
i would tell you what change is
what it is like to see a star die and resurrect
as you watch in time-lapse,
captivated for months
but you’d already know.
just like you’d understand
just like you’d forgive me now
as patiently i let go of you,
girl i was going on seventeen,
and let you fall as a sacrifice
to the sea that carried you away
and revealed me washed ashore,
breathing out your drowned lungs.
I was fifteen and full of energy
Time stood still on the outskirts of town
There was a kwikstop and a carpet store
That sat between the main road
And the hollow road that wound up the creek
Down where the lightening bugs came out early
There was little light or noise pollution
Nothing to disturb the thick heat of summer
You could lay out on the hood of your car
Watch the light show of the stars, hear the crickets
If you were lucky hear a whippoorwill
I saw myself in a much different way
From a whole different perspective
Angles were just angles
Degrees were wrong and in opposite directions
Polarized in a manner which blindsided me
In all the best ways, I know that now
While that end of town had a great nighttime view
I was never meant to be living out this life
Under that end of the Milky Way.
He nearly died one day
working for the U.S. Bureau of Mines
a engineer fresh from Carnegie Tech
checking gauges in a shed
while his bosses bled
liquid oxygen tanks
The explosion fattened the air
with chaos
and he ran from the shed to find
his bosses dead
save for one staggering around
all of which he probably said
at the inquiry
What a way to start a career
So he left it all behind
went to work in his brother’s
roofing business
The same brother
my mother accused
of grabbing her by the throat
in a shopping mall
choking her ’til a stranger pulled him off
He fell asleep on the couch most nights
wearing his fatigue
like his T-shirt and trousers
the TV telling stories
as his bald spot grew like a tumor
Here’s what I learned
Life is explosive
So stagger from the smoke
Don’t choke
I need to start telling myself
better stories about the future
because
I need reasons to wake up.
My time is spent sleeping
and watching movies,
stories played out in dark rooms,
living vicariously through others
or not living at all.
I need to challenge
the negative self-talk
in my head
because
it’s smothering me.
I want to breathe in hope
again
like a clean, clear, cleansing breath.
I clutch daisies and lilies from
My garden for you,
Surrounded by so many stones
Each proclaiming a family name –
Each a loss to someone who loved.
Flowers perch atop that require no care,
Need no water or sunlight
A rusted birdhouse
A morning dove coos
Dappled sunlight dances through the leaves.
Leaves rustle under the
Pink and blue checked fleece blanket.
The soft breeze a gentle hug
I close my eyes to feel its embrace.
I close my eyes and
Lean into the beauty.
