Big screen
Big sound
Faces as big
As the moon
Tears fall
Fall like
A broken strand
Pearls bounce
Onto tile
In the bathroom
Eyes staring
Back in the mirror.
Mirror opens
A pill bottle
Falls open
Spilling into
The porcelain
Like pearls echo
Before the lights
come back up
And credits roll
To acknowledge what I am must be painful for some sludge brain
Who points and suggests that I be something other than an orchid.
No one here is meant to be that, it seems to whisper. Go be a violet say, or Queen Annes Lace or sometimes a bumblebee, horsefly, a shrew pup, a scrabbled and curled up leaf.
Thats part of why I want to leave sometimes
As if the inherent disrespect for some insignificant designation given to me on sight, can’t help but make certain people audacious with advice,
-and in the tone of an all knowing power proclaim what all the flowers ought to be or that they be beans. I’m ripping up my tracks with Oscar Peterson sized brilliance, blooming and blossoming, overflowing in cascades, bright. A rarity, a gift.
Later the rain takes me.
I stand in it for hours
Dancing, the firefly coming to speak to me of divine messages, grace, power, destruction, inspiration, will, the sun, the source
Feeling the chill, the wet that goes to my bones
I can’t stop thinking about the matriarchal society and so we do recitations of compliments, honesty, illumination, healing, inner light, guidance, the moon. Afterward I stand in the shower, feeling the gradual change to warm water. Earlier I caught a vulture, it’s wings raised to fly, resembling the horns of the ram or a faun.
The green and gold surrounding us and my thoughts scrubbed thoroughly in the rain,
Like so often as I grew up in the country, I would rise in the middle of the night or day and go out into the rain and play. I would lay down and feel myself, a person, alive.
My son, 42, says among his friends, they
call it tech-boomer-hell
he’s just spent hours trying to “Educate us “
Detour
Sidewalk interrupted
Homemade billboard proclaims huge yard sale today
Yellow light, green light
Choregraphed flock of white feathers
Empty train tracks, bereft
Ketchup and mustard sedan
Road work ahead
Haze shrouds the hill
Tunnel
I looked around the table of my chosen family
They’ve seen my lows and been proud of me at my highest
Maybe I can’t leave them
Maybe I’m where I’m meant to be finally
I’m doing the biggest thing in my career next week
I’m doing something I’d never thought possible next week
Isn’t this what being 22 is about
Doing things that scare you
Meeting people who change your perspective
And make you fall in love with the simple thingsI was thinking about taking the next step in more ways than one
The thought of my life changing in a matter of weeks overwhelms me
The thought of my life not being what it was a year ago relieves me
The thought of doing this for the person I love the most drives me
I’m finally in the age of becoming
I’m finally okay with the art of becoming
Is that what being 22 is about
after Hieronymus Bosch
God offers us a lover’s open palm,
a cat mouths a mouse, a bird swallows a frog.
We take sin for its pleasures,
unaware of the loss.
How foolishly we drool for forbidden fruit
dripping down our chins, sticky on our chests.
We mistake sin for home, crawl within a peach
to suckle the sweetness from one another’s breasts.
Our yearning mouths open wider
to eat from a feeding bird’s beak.
We sit with the duck, finch, and owl
as they mother us in all that pleasure seeks.
Craving more, we pick flowers and force
the bouquets inside one another,
dress ourselves in petals,
and pretend it’s innocence clothing us.
Our earthly delights rot and sour,
devour us within the hour.
We hide our sins beneath our skin,
and lie in the ruin we so welcomed in.
My parents used to say
fair only comes to town once a year.
Our county fair set up
in peak July Kentucky heat.
You bumped through a field
to park and walked from there.
The loudspeaker blared,
announcing horse shows, show cows,
even a greased pig for kids to chase.
Friday night’s attraction, the demolition derby.
Cars patched up, souped up
Only to be crushed again.
A bin of reject photos
from the local newspaper
set up to sort through,
to see if you could find yourself.
After dark, the rides lit up.
Grease hung in the air
from funnel cakes you wore
more than you ate.
Fair workers shouted
over the clacking of the rides.
Everyone took home at least
one mostly dead goldfish
won by bouncing ping pong balls
into tiny fish bowls.
I heard the county sold the fairgrounds.
I guess fair
doesn’t come to Boyle County any more.
at dawn a girl stood transfixed
listening for cadence
life’s rhythm
abuzz
Your heartbeat
like a drum in my ear,
keeping pace with the music
Thud, skip, skip, thud
or maybe it’s your breath
I hear
in rhythm with the songs
a slight crackle of the new vinyl
against the needle
playing in tandem with the rain
that splatters
the sidewalk outside
crossed legs with loose spines
watermelon, dripping from our chins
sticky fingers from purple ube stains
moments of whimsy
I don’t normally know,
but with you
each moment a glimmer
of magic,
though some days
I still have sadness from that lost in my past
lingering thoughts
that sometimes skip into my mind
If only a moment
does it make me lose the sparkle
in my eye
but a gentle sweetness fills my days
with you
Brooklyn looms between us
like some sort of paradise out of reach.
My imagery reminiscent of the Titanic;
yours probably akin to Atlantis
– mythology, whether or not you see it.
It was bubbly with potential and dizzyingly bright
back when we were
That dewy sheen is as evanescent
as any fledgling romance.
Something solid needs to form beneath
to support it.
If it can’t evolve, cradle a growing ecosystem,
it might as well sink into the sea
become a watery museum of sorts,
nostalgia shimmery and hard to bring into focus.
You’re remembering a fairy tale
Yearning for what never was
While I pitch lost treasures overboard
one
by
one
