Trashing, violent,
roiling beneath.
I am the ocean in that way.
Unforgiving of the wants
of men,
home to a ruthless rage.
But you are the rock against
which I break.
Sending me back into myself
with a quietness,
stark against
my nature.
Subdued gentleness,
though we both know that
lurks below.
You are unwavering anyway.
what happens
when a dry, quiet mouth
spits sawdust into decaying air?
words struggle: tangled, ensnared in dysfunctioning larynx
scared stiff & stifling screams for salivation
parched, never quenched when thirsty smiths whet blades
to cut thin and thinner slices of storied selves lulled to sleep in hushed harmonies lost
who will rescue those lips
when they are drowning
in seas of sand that couldn’t hold on to passing time?
the arid, muted tongue
unfurled to taste rotting truth
on scattered wood shavings swirling in brackish breeze
I heard them laughing
How fast she pulls the blinds down
when our butts give glow
Today, I have decided,
I will lift my arms
and give thanks.
I woke up with words
on my tongue
written across the sky
of my imagination
beckoning me
to live in the space
of giving and receiving love,
so I might share with you how
vibrant my world appears this morning.
How the dawn feels as if the church
within my soul has stood
to sing an offering
shaped by the notes
I learned as a child
In a church whose congregation
looked different from me
but together
the children
the adults
let our lights shine
brighter than a fresh, new lamp
scanning an old, worn path.
Today, as I stretch
my arms
my toes
my only need
is to bear down
evenly
on the balls of my feet
so I may step with the intention
of being human,
a statistic,
who has earned her freedom
to sing
to clap
to begin
you loved me and so,
taught me to love myself.
may we live in bliss.
Years ago, I scavanged bricks from the neighborhood to border a walking path circling our black gum tree. Planning for the time I would plant the flowers, I started uprooting bloodroot and wood poppies from the courtyard of a building to be demolished and transplanting them into our yard.
In the decade since, the poppy and fellow wildflowers have taken over the space mapped on graph paper by our sometime gardener, reaching three feet, and the yard is strewn with dead branches. Our forty-foot white oak fell victim to the utility line clearance crew. Vines are choking the chimney. The inkberry hollies framing our entrance have nearly reached each other, hindering comings and goings.
Ambitious guests have intruded. Spiders have made themselves at home on the ceilings. Ants, June bugs, and crickets have become our familiars, the latter observing my yoga practice. A racoon broke the birdfeeder. A squirrel gnawed its way through the metal screen of the porch looking for birdseed.
The garage has become a storehouse and half-way house for cats and critters looking for shelter in the night. The nails on the back stoop have become undone. Even the visiting cat looking for a meal knows better than to climb the steps.
Still, I love how the pink dogwood, red Japanese maple, honey locust, and swamp oak wrap around the front of the house, keeping our mornings cool, and how out back we are canopied by the magnolia, wild cherry, and walnut tree, the nuts whose thump I love to hear as they drop to the roof of the porch.
I love the dawn chorus of birds that flit through these trees and bathe in the makeshift birdbath. And I miss the groundhog that ate the sunflowers our son planted and the one with three chucklings we looked for every day.
you used to play
music together
mostly original
with a few covers
that would hook
the bar crowd
our name should be
free beer no cover
you joked
that would bring em in
the music hooked
shag into a rug
rag into a shrug
scott joplin’s weird kin
now there are many
who spend their time
and wild talent
occupying the lives
of other bands:
u2 can be lemon chile
these smiths mournful
mimics of morrissey
and when you reunite
with your bandmates
after all these years
and play your songs
do you feel like a
cover band of yourselves?
None too rich & none too proud,
I’ll take what you give me,
a dollar, a handshake, a shroud.
If it seems to you I’m bent & bowed,
you know me so well. Please forgive me,
hoping for a dollar, asking aloud.
I stand here, friend, waiting, cowed,
while you decide how to shiv me,
none too rich & none too proud.
I hate doing this, for crying out loud.
But I know you’ll outlive me,
oh so rich & oh so proud.
To you I’m just a face in the crowd.
Never once will you relive me,
none too rich & none too proud,
a dollar, a handshake, a shroud.
I will remember his hands,
an Arctic wasteland of the soul.
Behind his forehead,
traumas lurked of beatings
when brain and body disconnected,
language locked
in abandoned closets of the mind,
the code of reading,
writing, driven out. And more:
no state would claim him,
only the state of grace
we share at this parting.
I spread the holy oil
on his forehead,
on his hands, a plea
that he would find a way home.
my hands prayer-pressed on head,
above the eyes that spoke
to ours in more than lost language,
the vocabulary of hope.
