My words don’t have arms big enough to hold these great and growing feelings.
They stay in my insides
Crowding out
Grinding down the subtleties
That reside near the edges in the used to be,
that cushiony soft berm.

It was comfortable in here once

The Room for Interpretation,

now lost,
now over-full,
balloon-bright and tumbling one voice and many into and out of supremacy.

These great and growing feelings
and my insufficient words
that fall from me one-by-one into place,
the thudding truth in basic blue.

Sixty degrees on solstice day.
An incubator.

If we go to the beach we can find all the bones of the dead animals
that are supposed to be buried in the snow
and throw them in the lake.
We can dip our heads in the cold water
to wash away these nasty thoughts
growing on our brains like bacteria in the warm weather,
send them into the lake with the bones and the souls of the dead animals
that are supposed to be buried in the snow.

The supercharged atmosphere
zaps my fingers when I open the car door.
Static electricity.

If I collect all that ecstatic magic
I'll let you hold it in your hands
in a jar
and we can watch it dance.
A hundred million fireflies
that should have died on the lips of
December.

It’s the early morning that does it for me

I don’t mean to seek it
But I am sought in these quiet empty-full hours -
All or nothing out-with-the-bath-water seclusion.

(Delusions of liqueur
cocksure
Every flavor of azure)

Oh god what I would give to extend the great expanse of 4am, ribbon slick and taut as a ******

And me, warm and creative.

It’s the early morning that does it for me

I’m staying up with a song.

-Call-

Respond

Eyes and lips and abandoned ships
Mirages of **** below long, fluted throats
Gliding between notes
and me too

Ready to drown you.

(It’s the early morning that does it for me)

As you give yourself over to the caresses of the mistress
and dream of flying over perfect fields of wheat

and then land

and then wake

≈furrowed≈

disappointed to find
a cold pillow where a head should be asleep

I release my held breath and meet you
Half way

I was singing
I say
And collapse in a heap

Wet hair
Bare feet
It’s dawning and day

Closing my eyes
Sunset at sunrise
Holding onto a secret key

I dream of the sea

There's a horse who is primed for battle. She's been broken and saddled, muscles hard and keen, her frame is lean, she's got all the necessary means to carry destruction into the heart of the fray.

But. She's afraid. She dreads the day.

There's a child who is primed in playground. She's been beaten and shoved down, she's been left to bleed, the teachers are too late to intervene. And she waits for the day for them all to pay.

But she's afraid. How couldn't she be?

There's a leader who is primed in sovereignty. She's been brought up high society with a sharpened gleam, smart and mean, quietly she gathers steam. With the tools to rule, she waits for the day to carry the horse to heart of the fray, to make them pay, to make them all pay.

But she knows the game, knows how to wait.

And still the world will twirl in its hate.
Until it needs a leader who's great.

She'll rise like the cream to the top of the pack, and pick up the slack, and possess what they lack.

And finally grasp the ultimate power!

To rule. To instruct. To provide the anchor for the ones who were broken and beaten, afraid.

And she'll heal their wounds, for she knows their pain.

“I think there’s something wrong with you and that’s okay,” she sings with all her heart
and strums the guitar with my pick.
I’m in charge of the chords,
holding the guitar so
she can reach it where she sits.
We dream it up together, but
I phone it in
I admit.

A, D, E - 1, 4, 5 -
arbitrarily chose.
She keeps it alive with her prose
Just 5 years old
A poet with her eyes closed.

You can be anything you want to be, and that’s okay as long as you’re happy.

Like she knows
The greatest longings of the whole of humanity,

Like she’s peered into the depths of the vast ocean of broken hearts,
And know this is the best place to start…

Like it’s easy.

“It’s okay”, she sings with closed eyes,
and strums the guitar in musical bliss.

And it is. For that moment. For a heartbeat.

It is.

An Old Soul, you said. What does that mean? My Soul's not old, it's gently used, like that song that was a hit a couple years ago, you heard it on the radio and you can't remember the title but you can hum the tune. That's me, a hummable tune with no title cruising the electric air for a million miles right to your ears.

An Old Soul, you said, like it was a compliment that my Soul has yet to succumb to the withering humbleness of that great equalizer, The End.

How do you know? You don't know my Soul. Souls have shapes, and shapes don't get old. Mine's shaped like a ******, kind of like an open flower, like that last hour before bedtime when you sneak that sliced orange even though your dad told you NO, but your mama gently scolds, "just one more" as she (soft as the comforter she tucks in around you all
singing that song that drips like molasses in the gathering dew), and she winks at Dad, who's pretending to be mad like the rain that's pouring and flooding the gutter.

It's a kid who stutters who has mastered Bach and has moved straight onto Brahms, while across town it's beer and people singing along.

No one these days to wants to sing to Brahms, but that's okay; she loses herself alone in its sparkling and prefers it that way.

My Soul (well not just mine, it's in heart of the hum, the mirror firmly reflecting our collective soap ****), is a kind of Boo Radley in his broke down joint and his sad soap dolls in the tree, in the knoll. Shut in an old house uncertain of who he was or where he belonged or what he might even one day become, he built a world for those kids the only way he knew how.

Drowning in a lonesome sea, where the only moments of freedom behind the pecan tree were a broken stopwatch full of frozen moments and some hand whittled soap and some gum. Boo Radley, no he was the shut-in son. Better than that inside-out drainage ditch who still walks the streets with the air of a rabid ***** who was shot at and missed by The One and Only One-Shot Finch. In the dusty 30s, in that vast, hot expanse, Poor Old Tom never even had a chance.

Now Scout, that kid is my kind of gal, all smart within and smart without. THOSE are the ones with the curious minds who stay young forever and laugh at time, who find gum in a tree and call it sublime, who worry about freedom and all it implies. Yeah, man. Jean Louise. And she'll never get old.

So don't you dare talk about what you don't know.

I've spent my short life knowing that god isn't the goal.

It's the dead dog in the street, and the man walking free, and a dying old lady who can't help but be mean. It's the girl with her ears and the kid with his orange and his mom singing softly as she closes the door.

It's the song that you heard, you don't know the words, but you sing in the car to the telephone poles.

There are so many roads to the idea of "whole." I have so far to travel, such long way to go, there isn't any certain number for the rest of my days. My Soul is eternity.

I'm still making my way.

If you are seeking
May you find what you’re looking for
And if you don’t find what you’re looking for
May you be found by what is seeking you

The monsters don't hide in the closet, or under the bed, or in your head all full of juice. They roost. It's not their fault, following through with some innate longing they're called to.

It's a simple, impish existence, these monsters, who might prefer to be doctors or lawyers or sound designers for Alice Cooper or Rob Zombie or Blondie; alas they burrow and nest inside my ***** laundry.

A wise person might have said, "Take care, kiddo, and guard your head against the evil that so easily nestles there." I reflect on this through the cloudy density of my beer an wonder, could he have been right? Might I fallen intrigued, ensnared, by the casual taunt of an apple's dare?  

We climb the beanstalk for the giant only; the goose is second hand. The giant's defeat is the glory. It doesn't matter what the stakes contain, live or die, princess or mother or cow or land, as long as a marching band greets us at the end of the ride.

The monsters don't hide in the closet, or under the bed or in you head full of juice. They roost, and they can't help us themselves in a world full of books gathering dust on shelves overlooked where their hardcovers guard against  stray shells unloosed.

From the beginning:

It’s a new year and I quit my job
**** it, I’ll never be good at serving
Directionless in 2013
January.
It’s unusually warm.

Your presence in the room is a rock in my shoe
You’re so cool
And I’m a mess.
Remember, you called me Heather in bed?
And I made you go home?
Well.
I forget.

Now we’re crossing the street
For your birthday, it’s your birthday,
Makers Mark, count ‘em, 2 ounces at a time.
Stacked up like unread texts and why don’t you like me’s
I don’t remember
But I’m probably crying

Flash in to outside
God it’s like 60
Deciding to go with you
Asking you to kiss me

(I had a long term boyfriend in my 20s
And his mother would buy me toilet paper for Christmas
The gift of hindsight is kind of like that:
Practical and helpful and a ****** of a gift)

Today is 9 years to the day
My parents know and they’re on their way
The nurse thinks I might be paralyzed
11 broken bones and two black eyes

This is the end of the beginning
Which is the easy part
I’ve never been able to write it all down
Spin it into art

Be warned, I can’t guarantee poetry
From a patched-but-still-leaking heart.

Be Am
Is Are
Was Were Been

Have Has Had

Do Does Did

Can Could
Will Would
Shall Should

May Might Must

He fancies himself a cowboy
In line at the corner store
Concealed carry snug on his hip
(He secretly hopes someone gives him some lip)
The cashier hands him his change without meeting his gaze
He’s surprised and aroused.
She knows her place.

Selling your soul’s not a deal with the devil
Selling your soul is a deal with yourself
Make the choice over and over
To shake your own hand
And pretend that it’s somebody else

He fancies himself a nonconformist.
A free thinker
The sheep will all do what they’re told
And he’ll be ****** before he goes peacefully to slaughter.
It was easy, he figured it out
Demanding proof is just an excuse to hide behind doubt
A warrior,
he wields the flaming sword of truth
His wife asks a question; he breaks her front tooth.

Selling your soul’s not a deal with the devil
Selling your soul is a deal with yourself
Make the choice over and over
To shake your own hand
And pretend that it’s somebody else

Somewhere a fat man is checking the math as he’s being served lunch
Picking through numbers, looking for nibbles
He dribbles drool onto his chin,
as he dials his guy in The Caymans
His stomach is rumbling, it’s never enough!
To deepen ones pockets, one first must make cuts.

The determinant cause for the silver mine fire
Will read “Accident: faulty electrical wire; Company denies liability
per signed agreement at hire.”
And the cowboy free thinker won’t laugh at the joke,
he’ll just choke
There will be no survivors

But today, The Cowboy nurses his hate,
while Somewhere a fat man is writing the fate of the cowboy in pen,
pleased to be Great Again.

Selling your soul’s not a deal with the devil
Selling your soul is a deal with yourself
Make the choice over and over
To shake your own hand
And pretend that it’s somebody else

There were some roses, once, a long time ago.

They grew out of nothing, out of a tiny seed that burst and ****** its contents out into the new and terrifying air, and even then they didn't exist but for the idea that one day they might.

There were some roses, once:

the product of a process that included water and light and the removal of weeds and the implementation sharp protection from predators: deer and birds and squirrels and the like.

There were some roses once:

great surges of crimson fruit that bloomed so fiercely in their rebellion against the surrounding thorns
dedicated to the protection of the home of the finely spun veined silk that blossomed almost overnight.

There were some roses once:

Never has such beauty been guarded so staunchly;

and with good reason, for the rose in its radiance has but one short season to stretch its arms and breathe its perfume to which all lovers beg and swoon.

There were some roses once:

They faded,
green
then red
then crimson
then purple and umber.

But in their slumber we see the bloom we once beheld on that summer day.

We fondled their petals, hastened their decay.

There were some roses once, a long time ago.

They had to die, as if on cue, as living things tend to do,
and oh, they dried so elegantly!
Plainly meant for royalty.

And even in their most brittle form, they're somehow warm
Somehow still new.

So you plant some more, you cut the weeds, you draw blood on their thorny guards,
knowing that it's not for you, but for the birds in their back porch churchyard.

And the moment the first rose peers around from inside the womb, well
there's your reward,

to forward the growth of something so fragile and sweet.

So ruthless if you aren't aware of its teeth.

Is there anything more pure
Than a dog who curls up at your side
And leans her sweet meaty head against you
And falls asleep,
Dreaming her dreams as she snores?

A studied and precise move,
(the snoring is key for peak adorableness) clinically proven to woo your human into giving you a bite of her dinner.

I’m an imposter.

I’m an imposter and no one can know.

I may end up on the street in rags that once were my clothes.

Money isn’t everything,
But being poor blows

And I’m facing the clock.

What then felt like freedom now feels like a box;

Like a long leash
in a big yard
Where the gate’s always locked.

The drunk at the bar found Aristotle at the bottom of his bottle.

But there's an important phone call coming from his shoe so he quits the pop stand, shoe in hand, and runs outside to take the call but it's only God saying nevermind, I can tell you're busy and it wasn't important anyway.

A pack of wild dogs are following me home so I invite them in and give them gin but they snarl and quarrel till I've had enough and I huff and puff till they take the hint and go down to the corner store, and I lock the door because loose dogs on ***** is the best way to lose your rent.

It's all peace and quiet at 6am, the rain is falling with malintent but the world is sleeping and I am keeping these hours from leaking out into the homes of the children next door where they slumber without worry so I hurry to maintain their dreams of fairies and flying while my kind is dying in the glowing dawning of the day.

But Aristotle sleeps alone in his bottle at the bottom of the bin, and the dogs have their gin and the kids dream within their great happy innocence as I spin another sunrise from the maw of the sky and then die until tomorrow when I'll do it again.

The Body rejects it
And The Brain reflects it

Forbidden night, with your sheltered hours.
How I long to paint you in broad strokes, adding water to the brush,
That you may spread and extend your precious mercies beyond the borders of your designation,
up and out into the wicked day.

May the sun forgive me for bankrupting its grand offering in favor of the always-waning dark, when it’s easier to walk between worlds without touching.
Daylight brings out the conquerers and also the conquered,
creating a vacuum that devours the air between gaps in the dimensions,
the grind and squeeze of many lungs contracting at once.

And although every period of light and compression is followed by a period of darkness and grasping strangeness, I am never unsurprised by the strength of my enduring love nor less enchanted by the singularity of our shadowy and permissive embrace. I have traveled great lengths to con my own rhythms into abandoning  their posts.

Oh night, I hold on to you like a new bride at a military wedding,
resolute in the knowledge that you will only return once you’ve already gone.
No sooner do you pull from my arms do I finally rest, too early and too late for a gentle landing onto the unforgiving surface of the sunrise.  

the hourglass breaks and so appears Morpheus, great and ancient, to call down black night upon the wretched world.
For it was agreed that once per cycle, the world must lose itself in necessary madness, and thus rests the cosmic balance upon which fares the day

There’s something so comforting
In trading in everything
The taking and giving
Of motherhood

What does it mean to be whole?
Shifting your insides around an additional soul?
The pain and the toll
Of motherhood

How to express
The vastness of universes
Alongside the mundane  
Of getting dressed in the morning?

There’s something so absolute
Something so boundlessly true
In the brown of the root and the red of the fruit
In the green of the shoots
Of motherhood

Feeling the rain more than hearing it
6:24 dark and threatening
It’s so cold in this ******* basement

2 hours and 36 minutes away
Crouching in plain sight
The work day.

Delivering food for the food bank, which is punk as **** frankly,
It’s a wasteland out here
And people need to eat

(A human right, if I understand the constitution correctly. Happiness is a lost pursuit in a body that’s hungry. You say food is a privilege <yes, you said it and believed it>, I say it’s life and liberty.)

Two 15 pound bags at a time
In exchange for baggage a mile high
Stacking cred against labor to build tone in your thighs

My joints wonder how young I think I am
Remembering the time my leg seized up and that old man just stared until I saw him see me and I smiled, I’m so silly

Hurry before all this pain ripens to taste
Slug it down like tequila
Try not to make a face
Born at the finish line, running in place.

2 hours and 26 minutes to make the coffee and absorb the caffeine
While I’m still me
And there’s nothing else to be

I’ve been thinking a lot
Almost obsessively
About identity, how’s its tied to self worth
I self identify as an artist
It’s what I’ve always wanted,
A gift bestowed at birth

The very word was full of glamour and mystery
I couldnt possibly be chosen as a vessel
When in reality, it changes with each donning,
morphing size and shape to fit the figure of the dresser

We are all mothers
As we care for one another while going about business as usual
Our greatness in the guidance of the women whose scalloped hands stirrup our feet in the rooms and halls and roads of our lives
Who we notice only when we focus our eyes on our own faces, on our own working hands, on our own burdened hearts.

Cocooned.

Oh, the softness
presses itself into your very pores
releasing its spores.

Buffooned.

Now your mind
dissolves like sand
when cushioned apathy makes life bland.

The spinning hand
of fickle fate
Will rarely land
Square at the gate

So if it do,
Set fear aside.
With faith anew,
Push the gate wide.

Feeling not so pretty
in the middle of the night

I've got a glass of wine
and a fluorescent light.

I've got a fridge full of leftovers

of feelings

of spite

I've got a bottle to my left

and its contents to my right.

And there's a morning fast approaching
In which the real life lies

but my body isn't tired
and my brain is stirring fry

and my hands are typing nonsense
as my face becomes my eyes

there's a birdie in the corner
in the corner with the flies

I've got one more chance to make it
but my head's become my mind

I've got one more chance to shake it
but I just can't quite decide.

She wrote poems about sunflowers
and about the colors of each of the different flavors in her afternoon tea.

She wrote about the foot-worn path in the concrete floor of the history museum;
About a stranger’s dog who licked her hand at the park.

And to her future child,
And to the boundlessness of love she knew but could not fathom that existed in a forever-expanding space inside her,
And about that brave and resilient seed shared by all of science and art,
the interconnectedness of all things.

In radical joyful tones,
she documented the goodnesses of her Ordinary on scraps of paper and deposited them into a small chest,
her Memory Bank.

The people pointed at the lonely beergazer
The outraged wunderkind
The housebound widower
Each lost in the past or in the future.
Ah, misery.
The father of poetry.
They would shake their heads,
A shame, they would say.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town or maybe the world,
the mother of poetry, undeterred,
sat in her garden
singing to the souls of the vegetables.

It's hard to write poetry
When the world is so terrible
And people are suffering
And I am not.  

It seems selfish, uncaring, aloof.

If there's time for writing, then there's time for action!

I have to remind myself that writing is action, humble as it is
And creating a small piece of art to send out into that great collection of consciousness

- even if it's a blip on the screen, even if the universe doesn't notice, even if people continue to suffer and all seems so lost -

is a tiny tip of the scale toward light and beauty
and away from injustice and insanity.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
in Me and I.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the eye to eye.

(I try to see
the eye to eye)

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the desperate sigh.

I spend it all
I spend my time
on basking wounds
in deserts dry.

I like myself
I try to find
the common ground
the Me and I.

The statements made
the inner spy
I escape
the spinner's eye.

I like myself
And by the by
I make myself
the glowing I.

I hate it all.
I hate the cry.

I hate the Me.
I hate the I.

I like myself
I like the spy
I accept
The spinner's eye.

The air is magic
In the same way a human nervous system is divinely inspired by tree roots

As tree roots seek other tree roots to bind to, sharing nutrients and information underground in secret tongues lost to time (but not to trees),
So too does the nervous system talk to our various insides,
electricity and fat and water and blood,
mysterious even to us as we haphazardly propel ourselves through space,
a mess of actions and reactions.

Magic

In the same way that time exists only because death exists
And death exists both because of and in spite of time.

And I am alive.

(If you ever doubt yourself, remember the incredible odds you overcame just to become).

Months maybe, a year?
We were unmasked in your home or mine,
Or on a walk
Or texting our words into knitted ropes that became our strength and our life line
And you said
“I never realized how connected we all are. That every moment spent with others, I am breathing their breath. We’re sharing breath, all of us, all the time.”

Oh.
Oh. Yes.
Lashes of breath like lizard tongues
Forked and solid and hot
Plunging and coiling;
Ariel losing her song.

(I carry this with me still, like I carry the threat of the possibility of blood drying in the veins, crystallizing there.)

A sharing of totems, airborne on the exhale, between the vastness of humanity.
Maybe it’s a
Heart,
feather,
child,
guitar string,
equation,
pet,
sense memory

- a bit of mustard,
a crumb of cheese -

a shame,
a secret,
an illness,
a loss,
a hope,
a flame,
a diary entry,

a passage in a story that is so written on your DNA that your ancestors will possess its truth and sacredness,

Not ******, but nakedness.

The unknowable intricacies that terraform the gallery walls of every life ever lived,
Each of us a cavern sprawling brimming with a trail mix of escaped fragments of other souls, nestled among our own wreckage and music and roots of trees.

This invisible connection to each other,
so wrought now, warped and vivid
against the sky.  
Drawing breath as drawing sword,
building blocks as barriers built,  
We are withdrawing from each other in our sick rooms,
dosed on breath from birth,
suddenly forced into thickened singularity for an easier swallow, weighted heavy on the chest.
Oh I know, it’s the X-ray blanket at the dentist when you were a kid
It’s Ian’s sweaty shaking hand during that first detox, 20 bars deep, wanting to tell him that I ******* told you so, I TOLD you. Knowing that no one’s voice would ever be louder than his own.

You look at me,
And I’m losing you.
I see it like bitterness on your lips
But I don’t mind.
You’re right, I’m exhausted too.
I wish I was better at being frank.
How, though, to make sense of this new world if not to drag the old world into it?
How to point and name and say “this is”
When all you know is what it is not?

I had a dream today about a piano. There were people there, and they stood over me as I tried to play, but the keys were all seamed and crumbling through my fumbling fingers.

You'll figure it out, they said, in this perfectly round place where piano keys are divided by metal barriers and the music doesn't carry and the strangers just stand and stare at you as you curse your muse. I was finally pushed aside, for the love of god make room for someone else to try.  

We lined up against the wall, then, a reasonless jump in that swirling universe of dream logic. It was wooden, the wall, I remember because the color reminded me of the deep hooded metal stove in the old cedar house where I learned that a scraped knee isn't as much an ouch as a trophy. We stood there along the wall for a time that was neither day nor night, and no one spoke.

And then I awoke.

I kicked an ant today.

It was coming right for my bare foot, so I kicked it. The thought of its tiny feet tickling my giant feet made me feel ill.

Generally insects don't bother me, but ants. Ants, with their underground tunnels and their abilities to carry a zillion times their body weight, with their appearance in my kitchen every spring from seemingly nowhere even though my kitchen is clean and inhospitable to them - I hate ants.

I was outside, the ant's domain, on my back patio enjoying the beautiful weather and the newness of spring. It wasn't fair of me to kick him like that in his own domain, and yet.

I wonder what I would do if I was kicked by a giant. I would probably die, land in a heap and break all my bones and die. That ant almost certainly didn't die, but I wonder if it hurt. Do ants have very many nerve endings? A question for the ages.

Before I kicked that ant, I was reading some old poetry and letting the sun warm me and the light breeze riffle through my hair, avoiding work and thinking about my life and the big question marks that punctuate my waking moments with their soft severity. ******* this brain and it's forever worrying.

The worrying is the problem. I should spend more time doing.

But I don't. Instead I write poems and kick ants and daydream about finding a home where I can begin my Real Life.

Because this isn't it, is it?
Is it?

Kicking things out of my way that make me uncomfortable? Finding the sunshine and basking like a lizard? Reading poetry?

Actually, I think I can live with that.
That, and fewer ants.

The grass is dripping with chiffon, that old garment that somehow becomes new with every evening's donning.

What a shock! To feel that wet fabric between my toes, noticing the squish and the scrape of the grass and the gradual acceptance as my body warms to match the chill underfoot.

I wonder about the suburban night,
how despite our best efforts we can't permanently pave over that expanse of dandelions (you would wield your power over each as you popped off their heads) that used to live in the field next door.

Envied by a world of mates, they separate and procreate without a second thought as to where their seed lands as long as the soil or sand can root down far enough to support its wispy yellow tufts.

The days are shorter now, and the nights in Cleveland once again hold that bitter edge that makes this town our own personal triumph, our defeat over the elements as they wax and wane in their consumptive impulse. You can actually feel the winter on the wind, for the love, after a year of cold and cold and rain and cold.

But the grass, that gauzy tangle that grabs you before you topple into the cliff of whatever whatever, complaints about the weather. It's that chilly, beautiful, selfless dew that you wrap yourself in, that wraps itself in you, that helps you slow your aching self, and for now you can leave the future on the shelf.

- Don't wish you life away, that's what my mom used to say -

How, at that age, can you possibly gauge
that your mom is a holy person, a shaman, a sage,
That she knows that aging turns into to dying
And that growing up is worth less than a whole field of dandelions?

I'll write. All the time.

In notebooks.

Remember those?

But POETRY is tough.  

Guess I prefer prose.

And yet, here I am,
waiting to be hosed.
Just like that bunny, I followed my nose.

AND HE RACED AND HE TRIED
AND HE WON BY GOD!!!

But the cereal market aint so easily awed.

The big wigs decided that
"Trix are for kids"

And relinquished the trophy from the bunny rabbit.

A child I was, it was so long ago.

BUT EVEN THEN I HAD THE SENSE TO KNOW
that the person (or rabbit) who had worked through and through was
entitled the prize, a world anew...

entitled the prize, just as foretold...

But *******, Trix Rabbit,
YOU DESERVED THE GOLD.

You worked, you trained, you made yourself speedy!
You were poor,  You were needy.

ONE DAY it will pass to a daughter so strong
while the brook runs deep and the dark vines wind long.

Another chance! It's what is deserved!
The players were cheaters, the judges absurd.

Injustice for all,
absorbed into my tiny child's brain
when the rabbit lost the race
and I felt his pain.

An oil spill
From a brain drain drill.

Whoops.

I didn't meant for my scoops of goop to fall in your soup.

So come on now, toss it all out.
Toss it out with the rest of that garbage,
that infected syringe.
We're better than this.

I prefer it chilled,
so would you mellow out?

There just isn't time for self-doubt.

Metallic pinging behind my right ear
Reminds me
That this
Is the first quiet moment
I’ve experienced all day

My then boyfriend
Now husband
Never forgave you for putting your hand on my thigh,
Casually mentioning the ******* beaches in the south of France.
Your daughter needed a chaperone on your family’s upcoming vacation.

You went and I stayed of course
The ******* beach all the poorer for my absence.

I am not the kind of girl who
Finds herself at Disney Paris at the end of the movie.
That’s not the way this movie ends, anyhow.

12 years later
One lung lighter
Tens of millions denser
and poised to send your daughter
to Dartmouth
Or Tulane
Or anywhere she’d rather.

She’ll have everything the world could offer her
In exchange for her father.

A parent shouldn’t have to know.

So I forgave you the hand thing
And the lewdness of a drunken survivor
Poised on the lip of an ever-widening hole.

If you asked to take me now,
I think I’d go.
I’ve always wanted to see the Louvre.
I can almost hear it:
The clicking heels and murmurs,
Your overwrought humanities professor explanations of this or that and me humoring you with appropriate reverence as always,
And the dead certain silence of the thing we will not speak about,
Pointedly conspicuous in its absence,
Filling the space between.

We are always waiting.

John Lennon or someone on Facebook or God said:

"Life is what happens when you're making other plans."

Life is what happens when you're waiting, and soon you'll be dead.
That's what that quote says to me.

So I'll just wait for eternity
Quietly.

And if I'm in line at the grocery
or synching my phone
or whatever it may be

maybe I'll use the time to write poetry.

Leave my little mark,
help the world remember
that while I was waiting I was still
me.

This night has fallen so must I into the sleep so dear only the the singing birds slinging their melodies hear the last dying crickets in the gray glow of the first hint of the sunrisen day.

Catlike and furtive, creeping toward the last of this or that odd prey, these words unwind till the thread runs out.

All heart within but stark without.

You must have been so lovely, Sylvie.
Your song sounds purple, like the underside of rose petals.
It shimmers and flickers in the water of the Seine, held together by a whispering, weaving thread, a voice in the softness.

I know you,
I've seen you.
You're me when I play, the piano keys conductors for all of your loveliness,
Pouring your essence into my heart as I begin to learn your curves and your lines.
I am you, Sylvie, a woman in love,
and I caress the keys and sing with your voice a song in which you are forever imprisoned, captured in a jar and preserved for eternity.

Sometimes it just feels like what you thought was your purpose in this life has been buried under the weight of the expectations of others

or leftover guilt

or a series of catastrophically poor decisions.

And you look around and see it all:  

the beauty
and horror
the good
and the awful

and you hate yourself for taking advantage of your peace and safety and relative health, complaining instead that you're lonely and lost.

But sometimes, man,
sometimes you just don't want to get out of bed because you know that it all:

the beauty
and horror
the good
and awful
the loneliness
and questioning
the self-disgust

is going to be there until the end of time, and your body is gathering rust, it's so heavy, pinned under all of that weight
(stupid brain so concerned with the micro and macro)
so you roll over and try to black it all out.

I mean, you have to keep going.
You have to.
Other people do.
People suffer every day and keep going.

There is nothing special or urgent or interesting or even particularly DESERVED when it comes to your silly problems.

But it doesn't mean that they're not there.

The whole world is suffering, and we don't know where the band aids are.

Reaching up but I don't know why.

It all was dark but now there's sky!

Tangled together with tendrils like fingers
Alive, I'm alive
And my body is new.

Where there once was a seed,
Now there's a view.

Do I even have eyes?
Can I see?
Is there someone taking care of me?

My purpose is clear and I climb
and when I do
The sugar courses through me and helps me burst through with leaves and seeds and pods of green.

Will it hurt when I harvest?
I have no voice to scream.

Just a need and a drive to create,
to be alive,
To drink water and sunlight
And to remain always green.

It's been getting worse.

6am was open for sinners but 10 was closed for repairs. Imagine the disappointed frowns drinking coffee reading regretful emails.

The afternoon sun hurt my head, I miss your cave.
In my bed, pillows over your ears and eyes.

12 pm was better but 2 was embarrassing.

I hate to leave like that. I never want us to be mad at each other.
Crying at the kitchen table, no it's not you.

Calling myself an idiot in the car for routinely missing turns.

The mall wasn't crowded but it felt like it was. No dresses fit for the wedding tomorrow. Staring at a red scarf listening to Burning Down the House over the loudspeaker at Dillards and feeling my eyes in my head and wondering if David Byrne ever dreamed he would have songs playing over the loudspeaker at Dillards.

You shouldn't have done that to yourself.  I'm sorry I suggested it.
It's ok, it's not you.

It must have been 50 or more dresses. Four hours.

This has been the worst day.
We've been talking about this for a long time. Sitting at the kitchen table, ugh, boys.

Smoking through the window.

My great grandmother made my *** my pants when I was eleven because she was cursing the door she couldn't unlock.
I once saw someone lose a prosthetic leg while riding a roller coaster.
TJ had a cat named Rodney.

We found burn holes in her mattress when we moved in. All her stuff was still there.

Reconfirming value, standing in front of the mirror in wedding clothes. Red heels. A white scarf to a wedding that doesn't belong to me.
It's ok, it's not you.

Nick started talking about what he's going to say for our wedding.
I told him not to worry about it, I don't have any idea what I'm going to say at his.

Cigarettes in the cold. Adderall and ZzzQuil and Dr. Who prints on Etsy printed on old dictionary pages. The world is falling away.

Write a poem.

3:17am is open for sinners.

It's been getting worse.

Polka dot trees
They're supposed to be cedars
A collage for my mother
For Christmas Day.

Asleep on the sofa
You wait for me
Quietly breathing
You give yourself away.

I could be painting
But it's four in the morning
The day that awaits me
Is silently dawning.

We'll drive to my parents
I finish this there
Sleep is impatient
In its persistent glare.

Goodnight to the bakers
Goodnight to the bells
Goodnight to the sleepers
In their comfortable cells.

It's
strange
to
me
to
write
one
word
at
a
time
on
each
line.

Who
speaks
like
that?

Poetry,
I
think,
should
be
a
conversation
between
you
and
your
soul.

Your
soul
may
not
understand
unnecessary
intermittent
pauses.

Well.

I
don't
understand
unnecessary
intermittent
pauses.

Case
in
point:

Writing
this
was
difficult.

(It's
probably
a
literary
weakness.)

I
imagine
that
a
soul
would
speak
in
at
least
partial
sentences
without
such
halting
spasmodic
twitches.

Unless it doesn't. I am not your soul. If you find wholeness and depth and truth by writing this way, then carry on.

*******.

(There's the rhyme. There's always a place and a time for convention.)

Mercury is in retrograde.

My poetry may be hard to rade

But at least I know I understade

What it's actually trying to say.

Exhaustion is a thousand starving mouths;
Insomnia, a single gnawing doubt.

If goblins are coming, they'll expect something.
Goblin tea.
I don't have the recipe.

Butts and stubs and the shrubs out front
but who knows what they'll want for lunch

It might be me
I don't have the recipe.