Be Am
Is Are
Was Were Been

Have Has Had

Do Does Did

Can Could
Will Would
Shall Should

May Might Must

My blood is thin today
It steams in the chilly humid air as it
Streams like water from a small cut on my toe.
Its red is shocking,
like paint on the black tar back patio.

"Sleep is for the weak"
They say.

And while sleeping is, I admit, my weakness
Today is still yesterday and my blood is streaming like water from this little painful cut.

And in my gut I know that it's not sleep nor pain that makes a person weak

But the ability to admit to both

again

and again

and again

Without the ability to know when it's time to admit defeat.

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

I don’t know what you want,
What you like.
Write and write
To the tune of my own insight
Little praise,
Wish I might.

For a validation addict,
Pouring out my heart
To crickets
Is a nifty trick.

It’s always basements
Or attics
Whichever puts the most air
Between the dreamer and the sleeper
Always utility space

Accommodate

Moving so slowly
Eventually the music will absorb
The slow tide low tide rhythms of the night time

The negative of the blueprint is the true intention of the dreamer
Living in a palace built by the sleeper

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

It's floating and falling at once. There's no footing, but still a softness that eases the passing hours. If tomorrow is a problem, it's tomorrow's problem as I sink into a perfect nowness that extends beyond the reach of time.

It's dark out here under the cloudy half moon. We sit comfortably in silence serenaded by the popping drops of leftover rainwater careening to their next place of rest. They'll surely be gobbled up by the cracks or the ******* air or the perfect flow of water right down the drain and out to the rivers and the lakes of the many.

Alone with the smokey dark, so unlike the music of the forest songs in the old home that now belongs to some other child who might be wondering at my initials in the long dried concrete. What ever became of the small strange hands that cast their delicacy immortal on that casual day one summer, one year, so far away from the tiny reach of these brand new fingers?

Don't stand on the big fan, child, or try to fly by lifting your long skirt just enough to feel the hot billows underneath. Wait (oh the waiting!) for the hand of god to fill your body with balloons, and only then will you rise straight up and up and up till the farthest star is a blaring blot behind you on the white black sky.

Sit  there with the moon then and ask your secret questions. The answers in your swollen heart will sing like the cicadas clinging the trees and the jungle air will float you home on a cloud in the breeze.

God.

God.

God ******

*******

I never asked for fair.
never.

I never once asked for care.
never.

And yet.
AND YET.

It's there.

The lever.

Yes,
as common as a spare tire in my trunk.

As brazen as a soldier, pacing his bunk.

The persecuted party was drunk as ****.

WAS DRUNK WAS DRUNK WAS DRUNK

AS ****

If the weak and the quiet
suddenly stop
to face the consequence
does it much
matter to the JUDGE and the JURY, the JUDGEMENT and Such?

Has the world run amok?

Has the world run amok?

“Why don’t you try lying down, love?”

It’s 2:09 in the morning and I am wide awake.

“I’m having a hard time falling asleep without you.”

If I had one wish,
it would be that the nighttime was as acceptable as the day.
That late night or early morning trysts into the creative landscape
Was as valued and understood as daytime exploration of software development.

“I’ll finish my wine and be right there.”

Mentally patting your hand

And quietly hoping to lull you back into your contentment
That I may stay in mine.

Look around and tell me, who’s happy?
Isn’t happiness the goal above all?
Or rather to avoid feeling sorry
For ******* away the springtime in spite of the fall?

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’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

Stay the blinds.
The closeness of the flat and gray
Press ever forward,
Yes,
Forward and down,
the tidal wave of day
A promise delivered,
the threat of suggestion
An unbarring of the way.

Stay the blinds.
Speak to the shadows
Unhurried in their fleeting,
lingering upon the fragile lace
sighs and forget-me-nots
Caught in the corner just there,
Unmolested in the graze of a wallpaper seam,
Beneath the scattered fluff
Of yesterday’s brushed away minutes.

Stay the blinds,
If only for another moment,
Before the roaring morning
with its advancing demands
Breaks the surface of this dark, pooled reverie.

We hid today
In the close cocoon
Of your living room.
You, taking meetings,
And me doing **** all,

Consuming your food.

32 hours is just 4 8 hour drives,
I tell you.
It’s really not that far.

Trying to soak up all of these moments
Murphy curled up in my lap
Under a blanket per usual.

As I fight,
And lose,
To hold my eyes open.
We almost made it to our goal,
2am.

When we lived together,
We drank so much Cook’s -
I was still smoking then,
Blue sunrise snapshots on the back porch
Burned into my memory like hot ash.

I want to stay awake
And pour my heart right out,
To write about the time we took home that comedian
and abandoned him at poor Mark’s house
Or when your cousin died
And we got so blasted on champagne
That we fell asleep spooning in your bed.
Or when you brought me a silk rose
In the hospital
No flowers allowed (I still have it).

How can any words
Surround and capture
All of that?
And all of the moments between the moments?
The safety?

Oh Caitlin,
San Diego.

Just 4 8 hour drives
Gas stations and fields.
I’ve gone to look for America.

It is calm
It is sour on the tongue
And then sweet
A green apple
Rainwater
Just a capful.
Petrichor
In my living room
Behind the eyes
In my living room.

I am calm.
I am sour on the tongue
And then sweet.
A secret. In my living room.
Just a capful of rainwater
On the tongue.

It is calm.
A green apple.

It is calm.
Just a capful.

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.

Got pills, I’ll swallow them
Take the chills that follow them
I don’t want to wallow
I’ve got a heart that needs hollowing

The gobs I’ve been gobbling
Don’t help with the wobbling
The legs are still hobbling
But the heart’s no longer
throbbing,
This bottling,
needs a full on throttling.

So the maudlin
Is phoned in
But the tones are all
honed in this turkey with the bone in.

The drumming keeps droning.

This strumming keeps zoning.

And this mouth keeps on foaming.

I get sleepy, but

if I let sleep greet me, the

giant will eat me.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Vocabulary
is, yes, rather impressive.
No one gives a ****.

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.

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.

I hugged you after the show
My phone hadn’t been working, you were supposed to bring your drums.
It worked out okay, though - a ***, a music stand, some chopsticks.
You’ve been so distant and it was a relief to feel the beat held in your hands
as I played and sang and Karah sang the harmonies and played the tambourine.
A perfect closer.

When it was time to say goodbye, you wished me safe travels and I realized exactly how close we are to the end of this chapter.
I’m not finished reading you, I thought, feeling insane,
And hugged you so tightly it was a little embarrassing.

I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable in that moment.
You’re a difficult person to understand sometimes, I wonder if you know.

What was it like to hear the songs on their own,
Without a band?
I hope you liked them.
I wrote them all for you.

Irrevegant scapegoat with uncooked beliefs sheaths his knife when he finds the doubts he worked so hard to bury.

The words don't carry that weight anymore, he mused, and laughing aloud at the faces of the brandy-plied crowd he turns on his heel and vanishes into the rain.

We watch this, silent as only a stunned mass can be when faced with eternity, then turn to each other to mutter low-murmered threats about the night and the sight we'd just beheld.

A special time for all, as we sink back into hell.

What’s your problem?
Is it so bad you have to run
Run away
Run away as fast as you can?
You’re already so gone
Gone
A stranger’s eyes have found a home inside your weary head

Deep inside you
The city burns
I don’t know what it is about this place
That everybody
Seems to be fine just killing time until the end of days

Sleep to forget
Sleep to dream about anything
Anything at all
Sleep will save you
From all the monsters that await your waking like the executioner awaits the gavel’s fall

What’s your problem?
Is it so bad you have to
Lock
Lock yourself away in your dreams?

Count your heartbeats
As long as you’re inside this cage
You will never know what it is to be free

In the gas station mirror I look frayed and stringy
The word that comes to mind is “threadbare”
Which I quite like as a descriptive term, but not as an accurate appraisal of my own appearance.
Pale and too thin, wrung out, stretched, and hung up to dry.
****, I always wanted to be thin and now that I am
Turns out, I’m still me,
just thinner.

“And older. No one tells you that when you finally lose the weight, you trade in that fullness for some freshly minted crows feet, smile lines, forehead creases.”

My reflection smirks at me.

“36 and no baby, never even a scare. You know what they say, better get to it, if your insides aren’t already dust.”

Ouch. *******. I pout at my own face and the crease between my eyebrows thanks me for the job security.

A knock on the door, ah! How long have I been in here?? Feeling like an alien, I run the water for a few seconds and hastily exit,
narrowly avoiding a collision with the huffy brown parka waiting for her self evaluation.

- - -

I wonder where it states in the Gas Station Code of Interior Decoration
That all gas station bathrooms must douse each user in the inevitability of their own mortality,
cast in green from the regulation fluorescents.

The air is heavy with a million million souls
Parts of wholes that escaped in the breaths of prayers
Whispered at windows of the desperate and the faithful
In the apple-core-rot towns and cities of America.

I’m standing in my driveway
And I can feel them all,
Bearing down like storm clouds in the heat.
Another offering could bring the heavens crashing to my feet.

My forehead is sweating, standing there in my driveway,
And I wipe it with the back of my hand,
Squinting into the haze.
The waves of energy
Their ecstatic mass vibrating, buzzing, clicking
A dog’s toenails on linoleum  
A tiny ear pressed to a mother’s chest as she hums. A heartbeat.

I feel dizzy
and wonder if the entirety of the universe
is made of the hopeful, wasted energy of unanswered prayers

I will dig a deep well inside myself to deposit the seeds of doubt, I say to myself and no one and the universe,
and despairing for the orphaned dreams surrounding me,
I give in to the indulgence of wishing.

The sky sags under the weight of a new plea
As I prepare to forget

I’ve been unsupported lately.
Not a leg to stand on.
Some would call it untethered.

Floating.

A kinder soul might liken it to flying,
But they would be wrong.

Flying starts and ends with both feet on the ground.

It’s been a prolific day
David Berman and I spent it together:

Me on his Wikipedia page,
Wondering at his language
Broken hearted over his final great collection of art,
A self-titled album released under the moniker Purple Mountains;

Him a genius
And dead
Tortured by his inability to change the world
Self loathing and addicted,
The son of a gun and liquor lobbyist who is quoted as saying, “I will miss him more than he was able to realize.”

It’s the ultra absorbent ones who make the best artists
Walking around in a store somewhere and wanting to die for the brutality of it all
Nothing brings the raw desperate animalism out from where it’s buried in the Stone Age like good old fashioned American capitalism.

(Last week I ate a gummy before going Christmas shopping and had a panic attack in a cute little boutique while buying a puzzle for my niece.
My sister-in-law told me I looked like I was seeing things
But it was the loosening of the barriers,
the flood of conflict and dissonance,
every person a song and all the songs playing at once,
tidal wave,
a cacophony of primary and secondary emotions.
This is why I don’t eat gummies).

It isn’t fair
I guess
That the ability to be so penetrated by truth isn’t beautiful
It should be beautiful
Like that shrimp, right? That can see a whole universe of colors unreachable by any other animal in existence.
An elevated understanding of truth should be like that shrimp
-The mantis shrimp, I remember now-
Truth cones like with sight…every texture and flavor of enlightenment.

In David Berman’s case, he piled substances onto the fire of his brain to ***** it out
And haven’t we all lain in a dark room on a sunny day
Haven’t we all found our habits

Instead of lamenting the curse of the truth addicted artist, as I have done most of the day,
I will tell a story
(this is true)
of my 17 year old niece Sophie
Who, when she was 9, demanded to know the Real Truth about Santa Claus.
Her friends were insistent, and she didn’t want to be left behind.

My sister, not one to mince words, told her directly and plainly,
and when Sophie asked, who then? Do you buy all of our Christmas presents every year?
again my sister gave it to her straight.

Sophie’s eyes began to swim, just as my sister suspected they might,
But when she went to comfort her daughter,
to try to convince her that magic isn’t in the elusive but in the every day
She was met with simply,

“Oh, thank you, mommy. Thank you.”

It was unexpected
I can’t be expected to be right all the time
I said
And poured another glass of wine
It was reasonable
I reasoned
That I should have more

Are you feeling it are you feeling it?
It’s the ghost girl in the bathroom
It’s the dreams and screams and half moon
It’s the ghost girl in the tide pool
Are you feeling it?

Did you pass out
Or fall asleep in the deep end
Are you holding onto defense
Are you holding on at all?
So much blue in this ocean
They said it would be green
Its blue
I’m through with you
I’m through

Are you feeling it, are you?
It’s the ghost girl in the bathroom
It’s the meaning that escapes you
It’s the ghost girl in the tide pool
Are you feeling it?

I can cross my eyes
In the middle of the night
I can’t be expected to always be alright

There.

Are.

Horrible.

Things.



You.

Are.

Responsible.  

For.


No.

One.

Knows.


The.

True.

Meaning.

of

Regret.

Predawn is the most underrated time of day, if you ask me
Blurry lines and street signs
Cast in hazy yellows and oranges from the burning sodium vapor in the street lamps
That iconic suburban glow,
Stark against the impenetrable blueblack sky and all the mysterious silhouettes cut jaggedly against it.

(A staggering feat, to beat back the darkness. Humanity.)

The pavement shines bright gold - must have rained - fading to bronze,
rose,
purple,
finally disappearing into nothingness,
a question mark.

Pillbox houses,
neat rows in every direction,
squat mutely,
some with their own brief reach of a lamp in the window or the warm assurance of a porch light -
Even the occasional sharp cough of a security spot,
high beams razor white,
primed for each raccoon and every vague, faceless fear.

“We never thought it could happen here.”

Ah, but the unsalted dough of the middle class is a subject for the afternoon

This is the royal Morning’s expectant hour.
She wanders eternally,
accompanied only by her barefoot unrest, bathing the earth in her wealth of unspent moments,
untold riches of possibility streaming from the many secret folds concealed within the depths of her ermine cloak.

(Am I hopeful or fearful of the coming day? Are the paltry occupations of one electrified grain of stardust worth a thousand words?)

The flat sleepy windows of the sleepers and the risers,
grumbling caffeine addicts and early birds, night owls with their midnight oil long spent,
dreamer and seekers lost on the astral plane and the merry punching rumble of the bustling workforce’s well-rehearsed choreography hold court over this rarest domain,

while the Fates, ever watchful, hand select the paths to put before us.  
Each choice a thread.
Each decision a stitch.

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.

The first night we met
You showed me your guitar collection
- an impressive one -
And we played Get Together by The Youngbloods
-You on a gorgeous 12-string electric,
And me on some other guitar, I don’t remember-
for my parents and their friends and your wife Robin. Singing in harmony.
You were much better at guitar than me.

You offered me *** that night,
And I said no thanks
Not trying to be a *****.
I knew that your hips and back caused you pain and that Vicodin and red wine were a part of your diet.
But you got high anyway
And we talked about guitars.

When you came to see me play
You sang from the audience.
“A Little Help From My Friends,” I think, and
when I sang Hallelujah at the end of the night you cried, saying it was the most beautiful thing you’d every heard.
The next day, at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you wandered through the exhibits in reverent awe,
A cane lighting your way like a candle.

I know it hurt to walk that much
But you were determined to see all of it;
I left.
Having seen it before.
“I was on the HBO special in 2020” I told you, puffed like a rooster.
And you said that you would watch;
That I have what it takes.

“He was a big fan of yours,”
My father likes to say, like I don’t know.
A person always knows.
Your reworked Gibson a fresh addition to my own growing collection; who could pass up an SG?
Sold for nothing and only because I liked it that first night.

And now you’re gone and your wife is undone and I am so angry with you.
I wonder, would you have listened to me?
Had I reasoned with you about your health problems
The increased risk
The pros and cons?

And maybe it was your time
But maybe if you had fortified yourself against the devil you knew
By taking on the devil you didn’t
We would have had time
For one last duet.

I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the lord, but you don’t really care for music do you? It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift, the baffled king composing hallelujah.

Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.

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 am out of practice.
So many parts of my former self swirl around like the last catch of a half-remembered dream.
I am out of practice.

Having a baby will change you, they say.
and they’re right.
I am changed.

But tonight I am the same me of a thousand me’s ago, the whole me, the core.

It’s hope.
That’s the instigator,
and I hope my daughter can see that.

Your whole me is worth fighting for.

There’s a monster lurking
Jerking
Working at the chains fixed to the wall

It’s gnawing,
ever sawing
Ever sawing through the gristled gall

And here I am
A traitor
Telling tales
Upon the bristled ball

Oh treason, tongue of daggers, poison apple take the fall!

I stare into the maw.

- - -

I wander through the mists of mourning
Pearls adorning every limb
As tears.

They drop and drip,
they pour in
waves, cascades
they coat my lips as fears

And warnings, death and din
And here I am, a berth of sin
A deer,

the headlights imminent,
the rain downpouring,
glistening and raw;

I stare into the maw.

The wall
That boundary between just enough and too much
Slammed into me sometime yesterday.
The candle had burnt out and I was in the dark.
It caught me by surprise,  
And as I melted into a puddle of exhaustion
I cried out,
I’m sorry,
I swear I didn’t see this coming.

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.)

Ida!

What a name
From another world, you are.

It’s still your house, Ida.
Like all the **** I sold to manage this move,
All that **** is still
Mine…in a way…if you consider things to be infused with the life of the owner,
Which I do.
That Holy Grail, for instance,  gave me extended foot problems
From kicking the switch in the soft middle of my socked foot during every band practice at Karah’s house.
No shoes allowed.

So my foot injury now lives as a legacy in that pedal, even though my pipe fitter buddy bought it from me as his first pedal.
(He has money and real deal gear and I feel kind of sad for him that he’ll miss the experience of hacking away on a $300 setup with borrowed effects.)


So right we all get the metaphor, it’s one I use often, that we leave ourselves behind wherever we go.

And Ida, your pink appliances and your pink tile and your pink wallpaper
Well
It makes me
Glad
To know you.

We can share this home, this stake you drove into your own heart in 1960.
I’m glad you got to die here, Ida
Amidst your pink at 98.

I like pink too.
I do hope that if your spectral expression decides to reveal itself to me,
That it is to give me tips on how best to preserve the pink enamel sink
And not to box my ears for snapping the light switch
Instead of placing it.

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.

It is rare that I see me in you.

Oh my word, they all say,
She looks just like her daddy!

They’re right, of course.
The snub of your nose, the sleepy turn of your eyes,
The golden autumnal hue of your shining hair.

No, I rarely catch my reflection in your mirror.

This morning, though,
you didn’t know I was looking.
You were staring out the window, music playing in the background,
At some blissful something in the cloudy October sky
And I flashed to the moon chasing the car when I was six years old.
Nine.
Thirteen.
Listening to Paul Simon and Linda Ronstadt with dreamy ears in the dark backseat of my parents’ old GM conversion van:

“Joseph’s face was Black as night, and the pale yellow moon shone in his eyes.”

And suddenly I’m blinking back tears on the way to the babysitter on a pearlescent early-fall day,
Fearing as sharply as hoping,

Please god let her have inherited the moon.

Every job interview
Feels like fighting to prove that
I deserve to exist.

Sitting at the kitchen table in a towel
Eating strawberry yogurt,
I wonder if I’ll leave on time.

32 minutes and counting.

I should be asleep
Or playing the guitar.

I should be planning my next moves
Like the spider who lives in the screen door
Always weaving, weaving,
Catching her flies.


I should be asleep
Or playing the guitar
Or planning, weaving,
Catching flies.

Whoever heard of a person who just sits?

Yet here I sit.

Just.

Sitting.

“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.