Right now,
it smells like old, crumbling stories
from the bookshelves out in the hall
there's a Barbie cup on the desk where I sit
cradling pens that for years have gone unnoticed and unused
I'm surrounded by photos
of young people now old and old people now dead,
and across from me is that faulty router
that brought me up here in the first place

Sometimes there is nothing to write beyond the ordinary
no beauty to behold, no story to be told
and all that is left to capture is
life as it is
before it fades a  w   a    y

What happens when the certainties
are ripped from our hands,
and we stand,
clutching remnants, mere scraps,
winding them around our fingers?

As if to make permanent
that which was fleeting,
in spite of the prayers we uttered,
the sacrifices made, in hopes of
some gods propitiated--
so we thought.

The universe tilts,
all certainties end,
and we find ourselves in space,
clutching our remnants,
unsure of what agonies even
a single step, a toe forward,
can mean
when there was all meaning and now
none?

They say that
nature abhors a vacuum,
stillness not in our nature.
Restless, angry, grieving **** sapiens,
drifting across some landscape or other--
does it matter?--
when all around are signposts
back to what we lost?

Plod, plod, plod.
One foot in front of the other,
until we reach another place,
other scraps blowing against our feet;
we pick them up;
weave something else
weave ourselves
back into the fabric of
a place, a space,
our own selves

Old poems dead and buried
In death the words deteriorated
Into things I no longer recognized
Strange arcane relics
Gateways to past minds
Awaiting to be excavated
By wandering eyes

My mother was a writer.
I remember her,
papers spread out upon a bed sheet in the sand,
stacked pebbles protecting her work from the wind
as I made drip-castles at the water's edge
and braided crowns from wild poppies.
I would run to her so she could
rub grape sunscreen into my sandy shoulders
and I asked her once,
“Mama,
is that poetry?”
and she said “No little one,
you are poetry,
this only tries to be.”
and I thanked her,
and ran back to the water
to search for flat stones to skip,
and thought no more of poetry.