When they came down from their disk
With their blinding lights
And their alloy ramps
It quickly became obvious
Unexpectedly, in our hubris,
That they wished only to
Gas up,
Take some pictures of squirrels
And stretch their limbs
Before setting out toward a finer frontier.
Aug 31, 2021
Aug 31, 2021 at 10:24 PM UTC
Sometimes it just strikes you in the gut,
A flash of a face smiling
Then dashed, red, fear –
An intrusive thought, a grief paralysis
At breakfast, in line at the store, waiting for that phone call
When he took just a little too long coming home,
When you send her on the bus,
When they kneel down for one moment of prayer.
Maybe you never see it you just feel it
Maybe one hundred and fifty times a year,
Maybe twenty-six times a day,
diffuse, like an throb radiating outwards,
like a ghost,
like a seven-year heartache.
Maybe you stopped feeling it, you just see it
In black and white
In colors that you know matter, but you
Choke on your own descriptions (what a privilege!),
And the world chokes on the words that would
Shake you up and wake you.
When you were given the right to bear something
it wasn't to bear witness to a waking nightmare.
But if you’re sleeping with earplugs
You’re never going to open your eyes.
May 11, 2021
May 11, 2021 at 10:39 PM UTC
I've gotten so used to blowing past
red flags like
green lights,
I've forgotten what to do
when it's the right way around.
Nov 9, 2019
Nov 9, 2019 at 4:17 PM UTC
Grasp and
Grasp and
Grasp desperate to interlace hands,
Fingers falling through like sand.
A gust, and gone.
So frail you were at the end,
And yet so free.
Nov 6, 2019
Nov 6, 2019 at 6:47 PM UTC
Oh how unjust and uncalled!
She wipes the muck from her mask.
Words fly fast from a gunnysack.
The challenge is not to sling back!
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 12:49 PM UTC
If I didn’t know any better,
I would say the light of the world
Pours out of the wide whites of your eyes,
And thunder is your belly-laugh bellow.
You are category five chaos
Giving me windfalls in my day.
If I didn’t know any better,
You just blow right on through
Just for you,
But it’s the seizure of my wrist into
Oh, this – ah here – oh that!
Door hinges revolt at the speed of this revolution,
The sidewalks remember our favorite tread.
You are a gale and a lee,
You force me to be me.
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 12:47 PM UTC
Pour another
Gin and T!
Soak in the din.
Sins sung phase into crescendo,
laughs leave our chests and wallets open.
It's just alcohol for dinner, tonight.
What? No lime!
God, I thought I was grown up.
Sep 13, 2019
Sep 13, 2019 at 12:46 AM UTC
Sister, eyes so blue,
Full to the brim with crying.
Sister, your mind’s true
To a heart always vying
To render it from lying.
Sep 11, 2019
Sep 11, 2019 at 7:07 PM UTC
If I had known that twenty-six
Would look so much like thirteen,
I would have kept at least one
Elastic training bra to
Remind me I’m better at
Working under the wire now.
Sep 3, 2019
Sep 3, 2019 at 9:46 PM UTC
A row of empty tables;
Tables set for two,
Two crystal cups, a candle,
Everything but you.
An almost vacant restaurant
An hour from the close
With gentle scraping cutlery
And everything but you -
Oh, what awareness that it brings
Of each person born alone
To live alone,
To die alone,
To wait, and sit and chew.
A row of empty tables,
But I’m filling in the view
And the waiter takes the rest away -
Everything but you.
Aug 18, 2019
Aug 18, 2019 at 11:10 PM UTC