Awoke this morning to build an effigy.
A 9 am text turned it toward a eulogy.

I left exposed
my heart of gold
to another gone soul.

Hospital rooms,
beeps and boops,
my grandmother’s last soliloquy.

Her last trip through memory lane;
I listen intent, every word
branding onto my brain.

I beg just a little longer be
the bearer of the key
to this exclusive library, her history.

But, alas the doorway is flooding.
God has shut the ark door.
No salvation is coming.

Pulmonen et vita submersi,
analogon Atlantis

(Lung and life drowned, analog of Atlantis)




Goodbye ‘Maw-Maw’ Nell Broussard

My boyfriend Peter’s like smoke, he’s elusive. He doesn’t always carry his phone.

There’s a crosswalk in Tokyo, it’s in all the movies. The light changes and hundreds of people walking in different directions meet - but they don’t collide - they make room for each other, flowing around each other like water.

Peter and I make room for each other. Then we come together and we make something. We’re of such different textures - we come from stark counterpoints but somehow, we mesh.

He’s the first person I go to with an idea because I trust him and I think he understands me. He’s my secret weapon. His advice is a coin I’m careful with.

He’s gone through the long slog and achieved a dream. And he did it poor. He fought a guerilla war with almost no resources. He lived in crowded spaces, existed on Ramen noodles and saltine crackers, taking any job to cover.

He’s practical, goal oriented and he can be unsympathetic. He’ll whisper, “Nutup up, tinkerbell - you’re such a baby,” but there's a supportive energy to it - and he’s usually right. He heralds a reality I’m not always used to.

Anyway, he was smoky tonight. I couldn’t reach him. Sometimes we go over a week without talking (I'm not always reachable either) and when we do, it feels intimate and victory-like.
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Song for this:
Come in from the cold by Marc Broussard
One Two Three by Hooverphonic

The sky is a cloudless crystal blue
with a breeze to chap your lips
I’m grateful for it, it’s heaven-sent
the dawn was a celestially stamped, angry red
sailors take warning

It’s going to get feisty cold,
I’m told
about the time we go back to school.
A polar-bear vortex with all its features
will spread its icy paws

What jumps out at me first
is how it could be worse.
if unapologetic nature
pounced sans disclaimers
with a cold worth semi-Shakespearean verse

What follows, star-crossed
is a week storm-tossed
a winter holocaust
with heaven-kissed frost
that only madness would call a judgement

We’re steered from harm
by precision alarms
stay warm
sweet friends
wrap up, stay in
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Songs for this:
Come In from the Cold by Marc Broussard
World's A Changing by The Bingtones