Those tinny fractures inside my soul…
they hurt like stepping on small pieces of glass with bare feet
they wont make us die by bleding…
but they hinder our steps
they make your advance painful
Even they are small…
Yes, they know how to hurt.

The aroma is hot, people heaped together like the pooling of the water fountain as it sprays on the grass
People have set up lawn chairs
Mostly elderly people who have time to sit in the park
Flies wiggling around them
As they listen to a rock band that sways like perplexed grass and sings like the words don't matter and only the guitar, the absolute intricacy of the guitar, is heard
I notice
Ahead of me
an elderly lady
Brown hair cut into a blob on her head
Lipstick, floral dress
Skin that is starting to fold
She feels hungry and opens the cooler
To display a pre-bought sandwich and a plastic bag
She unzips the bag carefully and gingerly takes out a
crisp, pressed white napkin
Which she doesn't end up needing anyway
I can't help thinking that there is irony to this
How something as trivial as napkins can point back to generations before
When the lady was younger
She sat in the glimmering sun in the tall, waving grass
A young man sat beside her
They laid on the gingham
Together
As watermelon juice trickled down his chin
"Poor you!" she laughed. "I forgot to bring the napkins!"
The reality is, she didn't forget
There was no mess to be cleaned up
There was only youth speckled with love and you would be a fool to miss the opportunity when watermelon stuck frozen to his chin so that when you kissed him you could taste the lingering fruit
Years later
She's bouncing in the living room with her little girl
Brown ringlets, just like her
They're eating spaghetti
The kind that is doused in a crimson sauce so that when the strands wiggle on her chin it leaves a trail of red
"Poor you!" she laughs. "I didn't give you a napkin."
The reality is, she didn't forget
There was no mess to be cleaned up
There were only children speckled with love and you would be a fool to miss the memory of crusted spaghetti sauce and that dimpled smile with holes in her mouth
Years later
She thinks about the times when she forgot the napkins
Thinking she'll be practical this time she swipes a few
But she forgets the plastic bag
One day she remembers it but she forgets to close it
The surprise is a family of ants
Now
With the music fading and the air electric
She knows there is no mess to be cleaned up
But she brings out the plastic bag of napkins anyway
She holds on to the velvety scrap and breathes
It is the one connection to her past life
Someone spills something
Finally
"Poor you!" she laughs. "I forgot the napkins."
The reality is, she didn't forget
She hides them in her purse - that Mary Poppins of a possession
And smiles
Because she would be a fool to miss it

Invalid curtains
Broken down houses
Mold is growing
Everywhere

Not many live here anymore
Used to be a boom town
babies born
Everyone was employed
Took coupons at
the company store
Milled that wood
Ground that red ore
they don't build
washing machines
around here anymore

Invalid curtains
blowing in a toxic wind
nuclear plant failed
but that wasn't
the end.

The wind is still blowing
down main street
twitching the
"For Lease" signs
If the mud doesn't getcha
The *** holes will,
Schools?
Salting the roads?
There isn't any more revenue

At least Rays is open
the general store
Thomas's, the hardware store
next door
Tony's One Stop Coffee Shop
Barney's Pharmacy
Sellin' out those Oxys
The gas station pulled out their tanks
The doctor's gone
The dentist closed
Got to go forty miles to go to Costco

Still catching trout
at Jackson Meadow
down the highway
Pulled out an 8 pound bass
Never knew it was there
Put it back
Old guy one more life to live.

Staying here is all we know
No one knows we're here
Just like that 8 pound bass
One more life to go?
even though
We keep hearing singing
in the sundown snow,
the dying song
of a dying town.

wooing/seducing: the where of the first kiss always

~for Robin Carretti, who loved it best~

‘tis true my battlefield tactical brought me  
many victories
when that was fool-desired

no chain mail, walled armaments, arms crossing,
all failed

to the single softest siege engine in my possession



and the passing passionately poems read
back ‘n forth, non-negotiable demands,
vicious but viscous
red lines,
day remainders of the contusions of night's angry passions
and the
disputed but muted disparities of both

nothing, no, never broke the spell of:

the first kiss, always upon the neck

human revelations in our sleep poses

she sleeps with both arms back, murmuring,
  flung over her hearing head,
as if she is surrendering

nightly

me slip away for a few, only to find  
her left hand ****** by her arm crook'd,
fit to her temple, as if to bear the weighty weight
of a heavy head plein des thoughts, dream-mares, tales and talks,
too dense to contemplate
without assistance,
armed support to hold on, hold up,
fighting/ accepting as a unwanted outcomes
or retrying old misdeeds
(no, no, oops, that’s me)

stirring,
she swift motions/crisscrosses her arms into an X,
a human parts tiara atop, on blond tresses, that fully messes
any remaining daytime efforts and her nighttime wild dancing^

no one reveals me,
none inform on me what positions
my containership adapts, adopts when my woke-guards
are dismissed/released and
lay unprepared to disguise my innermosts exposures

ow, early am resting comfortable with a six poem-pack of
slept hours on my tool belt,
so far this weekend one shot fired before the day officially
is belle rung and these poses thoughts
are upon what my eyes alight

can’t decide if knowing how I dance in the bed at night,
reflationary, deflationary, worth fact facing,
for this is no secret

my sleep hours are colored,
admixture of moving pictures,
punctuated with
stills of past and future,
the poses
of how to greet, were greeted,
withstood upheld ran from wept, murdered,
faced up, faced down, go unrecorded
and the
poems residuals
and the
poem prophesying-
both!

fearful confessions for acts
committed and foretold

Decision: I don’t want to know

And here we are,
surrounded by too many poems;
already too familiar
with what it's like to be a poet
that had his heart broken...

tell me,
I wanna know..
*what it's like to be a poet who has already been healed?

(10w x 5)


Through discipline
we see the results
of harshness
and moderation

in exercising,
we lift weights
defying heaviness,
body is toned

we sometimes
defy instinct,
magnify our
T R U S T,
B E L I E V E,
we'll survive!

yet, there're
gravitational pulls
on earth that cannot
be fought

what's fated
is undefiable,
we're silenced
when our time's up.

Sally


© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
    May 28, 2018