The steam from a teakettle.
To be in love with one's own name!

Funny sort of locomotive!

You left nothing, only the Stevens book
That read:  There is not nothing, no, no never…

Nothing and a yellow bicycle:
Two tires on a rickety frame.

When I do pick up a poem,
It’s to hear the gravel cadence of you,

Softer, informed by everything that spins:
A world, a bicycle, a chestnut tumbling

Downhill the city’s painted a roadside path,
My collarbone’s begun to mend.

The house gets drafty late afternoons
So I learn to cook:

Turmeric, cayenne. Hing & coriander.  
cardamom. Cumin & mustard seeds.

Hing’s a pungent flower called asafetida
And corriander’s just cilantro.

Icy fingers spindle wheels on window panes.
I leave the teakettle to boil.

Spokes of trees shiver in the silverish dusk
Taking lessons from everything bare,

I let in the cold to hear
No stones turned in the drive.

I have an old farmhouse inside my chest,
wooden siding rotten in places and windows
fractured from too many winters,
the roof of which sags near the chimney--
faint smoke-clouds rising, and a light
glowing yellow inside the kitchen, a beckoning

invitation into the faded blue walls
full with portraits of four--my mother, father,
and little sister--brassy frames hung close
together above the wooden table,
nicks and scratches connecting each placemat
like dots of the coloring book page left
magnet-stuck to the refrigerator.

The countertops have grown dusty.
fruit-bowl collecting gnats and mold,
but the zinnias over the sink flourish, replaced
daily and blooming red as the teakettle
rusting on the only remaining stove-top burner,
the others broken, tossed into the garbage
beside the back door, which leads to a forest--

rib-like oaks bent and bowed
over the farmhouse, ivy vines coiled ‘round
each trunk, stretching limb to limb, weaving
webs tangled as the unruly branches from which
they hang, caressing the slumped rooftop
as if to remind the battered, tired building how,
despite everything, the hearth still smolders.

I hate the way her eyes scan me over with jealousy. She's so enviousm but what does she think I have that she doesn't? I'm the diluted image of my mother's beauty, yes, & she wants that. But she doesn't realize that full pouting lips, the large startled etes, the palest coffee-cream skin comes with strings attatched, a think contract she has no idea about, full of clauses & fees. the very last page reads 'Amelia', signed with my blood but written in my mother's decided, sure hand. She doesn't see all the chameleon shades in me, or how I need them just to get by. She has no idea of my longing, my yawning morning yearning for the way she's the same girl every day. I admire he belief in (the lie) that no one can **** with her, while every person I meet makes something in me panic, wondering if they'll be the next to discard me after taking me out & finding that I'm both too much to handle & not enough to stick around for. She can shrug off a punch & barrel through a crowd, moses to any sea, any shore she finds herself at the edge of, while the simple swat of an absent hand creates ripples & gusts that send me tumbling, toppling *** over teakettle. She scans aisles of people, tasting, testing any that are above her minimum standard, but I've never had that kind of freedom; I've always been a sample, appetizer, appease me, please me. babe. She knows as well as I do the desperation for approval, for being desired, but the difference between us is that she refuses to change for anyone but herself while I need people to give me someone to be.

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

-Elizabeth Bishop

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.” ------- Ecclesiastes 3: 19 King James version of the Bible

Today, I’ve tried thinking.

What that is to say:
Two words, the same, mean two different things. It is an anthropologic meltdown of madness, a twisting torrent of words tearing, a cacophony sweltering like a teakettle steaming. There is madness in the docile, and trees grow on both ends, flowering at the root often moreso than the leaves. I claim to have no wisdom, but in my abounding foolishness, perhaps, I will be wise. Two negatives when multiplied together, become a positive.

In a feeling of staying, I feel I should leave. In a tearing between body, mind, and spirit, one phrase looking as another, seeing two words as something else, saying much and meaning little.

1. Take index finger and extend it in front of lips, holding it parallel to lips.
2. Firmly place it into mouth.
3. Jar finger up and down while sputtering lips.

Much is revealed in obfuscation. Questions answer much more than answers, sometimes.
There are letters in algebra. We teach math with words. To teach is to learn. By learning, we’re teaching…others watch us learn and learn from how we learn…how to learn. Then, we learn from them, those who have learned from us.

One word is haunting in my own work.

“So?”  

Somewhere, this is written already. When it’s written, it’s written already. If somebody else copies it, writes it, then they know that they’ve written it already, and all that they’ve written has been written already.

It’s an implosion of my own thought, today.  I pray tomorrow, the joy of clarity of my own thoughts and writing will return, and regardless, I thank the Holy Lord God Almighty always for all things. I rejoice in Him and love Him deeply, more than all, fear Him, and praise Him, and worship Him, alone. All glory in all things to God Almighty.

I want to draw a sugar fish
Atop of your cheekbone
So it can swim along with tears
And land on your birthstone
I wish to sketch an elephant
Amongst your dainty teeth
So you will never dare forget
That tongue that’s underneath
I need to paint a teakettle
Between your knobby knees
For every time it whistles
You will meet a gentle breeze
But instead your hand picked up a pen
Then turned it to my palm
At once I knew you didn’t need
My brushstrokes to feel strong

The dishwasher isn’t running
So I can’t clean these mugs for our tea.
I try to just use the ***** ones
But the moment of grand illusion,
In which seem like the stove might just light,
Is passing and the water just sits there
Awaiting that spark to boil.

Long after the moment passes, the gas still rushes out
With this rapid clicking sound that makes my whole body
Flinch in its rhythm.
I’m thinking: don’t clean them by hand,
Don’t go get a match.
But I can’t keep my feet
From dragging across this too-smooth
Tile kitchen floor,
To the sink,
To the cupboard.

It doesn’t matter though,
Because by the time everything’s set and ready
The water’s all gone- spilled across the floor.
I don’t notice. Even as the water
Seeps into my socks
I light the burner with the match;
Nothing for it to boil.
Sitting pointlessly on the flame,
The teakettle slowly starts to melt.
I watch that glowing red iron drip towards the flame
And slowly the dampness on the bottoms of my feet
Starts to hit me.