we are not unaware
there is a war

we have never known
a world without one

we choose to sit right here
side by side on this porch

we cherish the sound
of  laughter captured only

by the shape of rain drops
landed atop tiny ghost
lilies. 

Hushed breaths, all of us waiting,
no one wanted to say those damned words.
“See you next year… maybe!
Maybe I’ll be invited to come back?”
It’s not the uncertainty in our silly question
that thrums in the back of our throats.
It’s the memories of the people we’ve repeated that to
that disappeared somewhere between there and here.
And now the here moves to another there,
and a thousand possibilities scurry out from under the rocks.
We wonder if our desperation will align with our employer’s
to align with the desperation to see our friends once again.
We realize these places where we meet only once a year
are not magical but impossible.
They do not exist in any form
outside of our annual attachment.
Even though I blame the tears on the Green Elixir from earlier,
I know these tears come from elsewhere.
They come from that embrace on the street corner
where my breath will remain…
Until I see those faces again
in a new place and time.

i’ve always had music on even when sound triggers me

i think for so long i wanted people to understand me

there’s to much darkness to be spring

maybe i’m remembering who i once was 

I want to think of something
besides you. I want my dreams
to be delusive, not serving
as a reminder of the inevitable 
disgust I’ll see in your eyes,
the eyes that separate us. Mine
are our father’s blue. Yours,
damp-oak brown. They’re warm.
I’m not ready for them to turn. 

Please love me like our sister. 
I know I will never be her, and
I will never try to be, but
when you tilt your head and squint
your eyes, our laughs blend.
And when you close them completely,
you hear his, too. How do you laugh?
I hope I get to hear it at least once. 

Cathartic Carousal
Drinking in the wet grass and approaching storm
Leaves swirling in plump juicy air
Magnolia leaves plopping like ripe fruits or cartons,
packages of indulgent pleasure

I had teased her all the day, you’re obsessed with this thunder…

the jack rabbit, the frog princess,

I said within the walls of my own head, There’s nothing to fear in a sound 

But the gunshot had come at that very moment 
when I felt certain it wouldn’t sound at all, 
As I reached my hand to encircle the aluminum door handle

The noise was an electric shock 
…my heart restarted and my clothes left in a pool
there at Athenian Grill

After a day of being barefoot in the park.

We brought him home in a bag
From our local K-mart 
Back when we still had those
A real blue-light special
That, he was 

You wanted to put him in a bowl
I agreed fearing his fate

Later we bought him a bigger bowl
Then you used your tooth fairy money 
To buy him a neon pink tree 

The months rolled into years
You grew, he grew 
Finally you named him 
Mr. Gold
Pulled a lot of teeth 
From fishbowl to upgraded tank

When we moved
He moved with us 

He lived to be 9 years old
We buried him
In a bubblegum box
In the flower bed 
Out by the Morning Glories

The finest goldfish funeral
“For the most dapper Mr. Gold
In all of K-Mart.”

He was your first pet
And the first one that you ever lost
A true heartbreak for us all.

Men sold their souls to the mines
Gave their lives for a dollar that
Went into someone elses pocket
Some are still in those pits deep
Beneath the ground; buried there
Instead of their ancestral lands
Wives without husbands; children
Hungry and without understanding

Sometimes men go beneath the dirt
Alive, and never come out again
Worse still, some came out only to
Succumb to a fate nobody knew of
At least not at first, not right away
Then to a fate that was known by
Those who owned those mines; 
Whose greed knew no boundaries
Black lung was only a consequence
That the poor were left to burden

I used to dream of floating. 
A jump and gravity disappeared. 
I hung over trees, over cities, 
floated over all the places I know,
with all the thrill of a roller coaster
on the way back down. 

Around here, someone says
“I’m going for a float,” and
conjures up images of inner tubes, 
sunglasses and a bottle of beer at the lake.

When I say I’m going for a float, 
I mean earplugs and a thousand pounds
of Epsom salts in a pool.
No lights, but I like music. 
I can feel it vibrate in my toes.

There’s a hundred shades of dark
I don’t see until I’m floating.
Gravity suspended, my thoughts
suspended, my body suspended.
Everything comes to a halt.
All the noise fades away.

Just let me float.

And the bricks aren’t grief
and the hammers aren’t either but
Maybe they could be
maybe they 
were or
are

Probably were
And never will be        (not again)
                     (not in the same way)

The little house with a little wall around
    the little garden
Where did those bricks come from? and the
    holes in that wall?

I thought you were there
but I guess you won’t be

And maybe I’ve never wondered about bricks
    at all

The sky is cracked open—
A jagged mirror spilling light.
They call it an omen,
But I am already dreaming.

(In my dream, the rivers run backwards,
Carrying lost names to the sea.
A girl stands on the shore, waiting—
Her hands cupped, her eyes closed.
“It is not too late”, she whispers.)
“But you must learn to listen.”

I wake to silence,
But the rivers still hum beneath my skin.