"gulps" poems
how do you stop your throat from burning
from salty tear-stained gulps and gasps
for oxygen that is no longer there?
there is too much carbon dioxide in the air now
and i want to fast forward into a world
where i can breathe in sweet helium
and ask for it to stop.
because there are times
when it's impossible to breathe
and when my puffy red eyes
can't open more than a millimeter
because you have glued them shut
with your accusations.
i didn't want to be gas station concrete any longer
i didn't want dirtiness to be my middle name
i only wanted to cleanse myself of you and your fists,
you and your laughter
you and your hatred.
i wanted to be clean.
(a.m.c.)
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 1:08 AM UTC
Yogurt.
"I begin the day buying yogurt in a small favorite grocery store."
Not pizza, nor gatorade.
Bananas
although they are imported from afar and grown in monocultures.
Attract fruit flies in August.
Peaches
locally grown with rainwater. I ate all the farmer's peaches alone
stacking them by the railroad tracks.
Water --
rainwater, tap water, distilled water, carbonated water, spring water --
deep gulps, infinite sips.
Nuts
in moderation, or not, unsalted, raw, replacing chips. His bowl
of filberts, almonds, walnuts quiet weekday mornings.
Edible plant parts --
roots, leaves, stems, flowers, fruit, buds. In olive oil
or butter.
Potatoes --
look online how best to prepare. Baked or fried. With a little
fish or meat.
Tea and honey,
play and prayer. Swimming and running,
talking quietly.
Bread?
Bread's possible as the Bible. Each is liable
to bloat us.
Wine and dandelions.
Dandelion wine's Ray Bradbury's story. Cans in a pantry, books on a
shelf
to the end of time.
Pasta
we used to call spaghetti, never noodles. I wonder if I can remember
how to make
grandma's sauce.
Tomatoes --
cherry, grape. Grab God's eye
going by.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 11:34 AM UTC
*Let me be captured by the night.
Engrossed in the conversation
between the stars.
Syncopated twinkling like...
thousands of fireflies
trapped within sealed jars.
Let me be enslaved by the moon.
As I drink her glow in
greedy insatiable gulps.
Crestfallen...
Her beam with an agenda...
As the landscape she sculpts.
Let me be ensnared by my solitude.
But I hear crickets...
Chirping and chipping away at my
bastion of dreamstate.
Persistent calls
I try to shun
that never abates.
Let me be trapped in my thoughts.
So I could harness...
And immortalise them in
indelible careless scribbles.
Erecting and...
Rebuilding them from the
rubble of conflicting squabbles.
**Let me be overwhelmed
by the mess of my being...**
Let me wallow
Then emerge strong from this
decrepit state of mind.
Let me breathe heavy from my
punctured lungs.
So I could heal in time before
true solace
in this dark,
I would find.*
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 12:05 PM UTC
Strangers known
by shared room
Honey voiced , high cheek *****
no less, no more
Licorice words pounding
on a chest
scrambling to wrap fingers
around a single perfumed breath
Two days dragging on
pulled through mud
stuck in fog
seconds are hours too long
Then ringing came
answered by drops of syrup
pouring out a reply, yes!
drinking it in with big gulps.
Mirror reflects practiced hellos
swishing hair put in place
teeth and lips splitting
breaking through stone face
Pacing back and forth
frantic footsteps pounding
crushing carpet in a line
south, north, south, north
No ring, no change
red blushes fad grey
phone silent, gaze up
stare blank
Is the swooshing hair the wrong way?
Is the grin too toothy?
Is the face not constructed right?
Stood up and let down
sailor on a ship
already sunk and drifting
off the starboard bow
Stood up and let drown
by the honey voice
the high cheek bones
Failure in hindsight sighing
“I should have known
I should have known…”
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 3:31 AM UTC
he gulps me into peaces
__
led to his bed.
eyes kissed and asked to
come and go to where I
dream and imagine
but do not think.
he gulps me into pieces.
oh my god
oh my god
oh my god.
and when he sees I am at last
in peaceful,
speaks.
god could but desires not to answer
all who call out to him.
thus the human was invented:
an imperfect messenger
a version of his image
that answers you in
pieces of peace
as best as any
human can
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 4:35 AM UTC
This is me apologizing. This is me finally coming up for air and coughing up apologizes instead of swallowing them down with gulps of water. This is me looking at your face and seeing the bags under your eyes because you stayed up all night trying to call me and apologizing. Looking at your nails and seeing the skin around them ****** and scabbed and the beds unevenly bitten down to nothing and apologizing. Looking at your eyes and seeing the way you bought colored contacts to cover the fact you spent days unmoving from a mirror trying to love yourself and apologizing. This is me seeing the needle points on your lips from where you injected your own blood to attempt to regain that color I claimed to be in love with and apologizing. As I'm looking at your arms and seeing where you scrubbed your skin with chemicals trying to erase the essence of me and when you smile I can see that you chugged a bottle of bleach to try and whiten your teeth bright enough so that you could be accepted by God himself into the pearly gates all I can do is apologize. I'm sorry that you spent hours carving my name into his back with your fingernails and biting your own tongue so hard it bled when he told you he loved you. When his flesh connected with yours causing the world to stop for a second and listen to your shrieking I know it was me you were screaming for and I'm sorry. As I'm standing here staring at you and watching them put brush stroke after brush stroke of blush onto your lovely pale cheeks trying to restore the life you lost so many years ago I'm finally realizing it's too late to apologize yet all I can think about is how this isn't even close to the eulogy you deserved. I should be talking about the way you danced and how your voice made my own falter momentarily and how you were more alive when you were dying than I ever will be when I'm living rather than apologizing but all I can seem to rationalize is how I spent years dry swallowing your love and spitting up knives to use to carve my initials into your thigh so you would always remember me and how I never even had the common decency to count to three before destroying you and I'm sorry. I'm afraid to look up now that I've finished apologizing because I know your empty eyes filled with nothingness will be staring back so horribly confused because I doubt you ever continued listening after I used the world eulogy and I'm sure you're going to wonder why I'm talking as if I'm sitting at your funeral rather than on the end of your bed but I don't know how else to make you grasp the concept of what you're doing to yourself by loving me in a better way than this and I'm sorry. C.a.l
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 7:21 PM UTC
The river is polluted
The skies are grey in falling night
The stars are hidden from our sight
Constellations convoluted
Bilge water and bile
Corrupted hearts so vile
Defile of a sacred form
This is not divine
Only desecration
The river is polluted
The seeds we plant do not survive
And even life is doomed to die
The trees are all uprooted
We want the leaves
We want the flowers
We want the scent of the forest
The river is polluted
Our dismay is all man-made
Unwholesome branch that holds no shade
Our hope for shelter all eluted
Brackish is the water
Swim if you care to drown
We take giant gulps
Deluded with hope
And still we die of thirst
Jul 8, 2016
Jul 8, 2016 at 5:09 AM UTC
Depression tends to have a manipulating and controlling manner that spits and hisses from behind her snarled teeth,
Depression swallows the light.
And in doing so, depression gulps down yellow, drowning the sun and all his mighty.
Depression chomps on green, bits off grass and shrubble stuck to the inner corner of her lip.
Depression chews pink, each candy floss cloud tickling her taste buds.
Depression chugs blue, the ferocious waves sloshing down her throat with ease.
Depression regurgitates darkness, there is no colour when depression grabs my hands, looming shadows engulf my vision,
Depression’s feet start to move and I realise we are dancing to the dull thud of my heartbeat,
I dance with depression all through the dark, but it isn’t just dark, it’s the kind of dark with no moon, no stars or streetlights, it’s the kind of dark that creeps up on you until you cannot even see your nose.
The darkness slithers under my fingernails and slices back my skin, slipping beneath my flesh, it wears my hand like a glove,
It wanders upwards and claims my face simply as a mask,
As it seeps down, down, down, my legs now become stilts.
I am no longer dancing with depression, depression is dancing me, I am her puppet.
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 1:45 AM UTC
An empty park picnic table
cooled by the light,
whispering breeze,
spotted by the burning
life-giving sun.
I see us there.
chatting,
laughing,
enjoying each others company
in this never-ending summer.
I see myself
dressing up as the wife,
laying out a picnic basket
and table cloth.
Pouring iced tea
into a chilled glass,
Watching the condensation
slide down your fingertips
as your throat
gulps in the refreshment.
I lay a blanket
on the grass,
inviting you to come sit.
We lay.
And that chuckling breeze
picks up
and lifts the whole of
my 1950s homemaker dress.
You smooth it back down,
lowering your hand on my hip.
The wind has stopped,
but you keep smoothing away…
down my thighs,
across my backside,
up my back,
until my head is
cupped in your hands
nearing closer to your face.
I would not call it a kiss,
because a “kiss” is too
short a word, too precise
and too emotionless
to fit this phenomenon.
You embrace me fully
leaving no passion unaccounted for,
no ounce of me left untouched.
I succumb to your embrace
and we start to make love when…
A car horn beeps.
I blink.
Look around, and remember
that I’m sitting in a
library parking lot
looking at an empty picnic table.
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 7:47 AM UTC
There's something majestic, yet also extremely gloomy, about a streetlight at night in the rain. Something, some unplaced dimension within the echoing cars and within the particles of water, as they spray...into oblivion
Mother, do you recall that rainy day?
The day my gumboots soaked through,
I beleive we were waiting for a bus. It was one of those city rains, when all you could dream of was home or the warmth and comfort. When all you wanted was a bath and hot-chocolate or another item of food, steaming with love. Mother, I remember holding to you're body for warmth as we sat under that old wooden bus shelter.
I clung to you're body and melted into you're lingering scent, you're falling breath and you're human form.
You held me, you hid you're shivers so as to warm mine.
We watched the cars spray etheral mist into the orange lights of the city.
We watched lovers rush by under umbrellas, we watched rain curve down the cement like a snake on it's own journey.
We listened,
oh did we ever listen, we ate up the noise, the stories within the rain, we cuddled until we felt the warmth from our bellies rise out of us like smoke or a dragons breath, tainting the air.
I, you're daughter. You, my mother.
You're long hair curling down your breast. Me, like a little berry scrunched up as close to you as I could get. Like our bodies would drip into each other as one, our breath the same. Only my gulps of air came much sooner and you silently resisted my subtle games. When the huddling was done you reached out to me with you're strong hands and you led me along the night of echoes. I can't remeber much else, asides from sitting with you in the empty pizza shop as we both savoured and satisfied our cravings for comfort. Cold-handed laughter as we danced over the most delectable pizza.
Then we caught the bus home, you sat on the red leather, grabbing the creamy yellow bar, I jumped onto the ratty blue seat beside you and leaned once again into you're body, melting into sweet harmonies.
Eating in the sounds of humans and the sound of the bus, splashing through water
and journeying on through the deep
and endless city night.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 3:18 PM UTC
I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs
Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,
Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,
A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking
Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,
Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo
Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----
The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,
Let the mercuric
Atoms that ******* drip
Into the terrible well,
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.
3.3k
Standing here
I stood my ground
floating
closer
than the distance
Further
than ‘ahead’ I saw
me
fighting for resistance
Fast
unmoving
– not alone –
with only me
I stayed
Fumbling
– screaming loud –
to hear it:
. . . silence . . .
yet I disobeyed
Cocooned in air and
muffled
by these fitful gulps
I dared not breathe I
marked out time
in vacant space
I owned – yet
not yet: not for me
Thinking hard
I cleared my mind
– illusioned, lost –
yet
memories traced
Would I
(should not) leave
I’d try
The where?
Just ‘some’
to
ANY place
Jul 10, 2015
Jul 10, 2015 at 7:15 PM UTC
Teacher: Alright Panda what are your Favorite colors?
Me: My favorite colors are Red and Black
Teacher: Interesting colors Panda, why are those your colors?
Me: I honestly doubt you want to hear the answer to that.
Teacher: Come on Panda, tell the class why those are your colors.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In my head the decision warred to tell but then my life was already hard enough as it was......More and more my demons wanted release so finally I gave in prepared for the looks, name calling, and lonely life again.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Me: you really want to know why?
Teacher: Very much yes, we would
Me: Ok then, Red and black are my favorite colors for their meanings.
Teacher: And what are their meanings?
Me: Red, stands for The blood that is shed during death, The blood that I shed when the knife glides over my skin, The blood that can be heard rushing through your veins when the fear becomes to great....The blood that your heart leaks from the poorly covered cracks from being shattered so many times....
Teacher: (Gulps) And what about black Panda?
Me: *Black.....My true color.....Black, stands for the darkness and destruction warring in my mind, body, and soul, The darkness after death, The darkness in my heart from all the hatred thrown at me, The Darkness and destruction from my inner demons who keep warm and safe at night, The Darkness that one day we will all see, because nobody can escape death....Hes one bad-ass Mother ****** who always gets his way....Those are my colors....The colors that make me and I stand for...*
Teacher: Ummm....Very...Very Interesting Panda (Gulps and steps away) You know I think it's time for lunch why don't we all go to lunch yea? ( Scurries away)
Other students: I told you she was a freak......Crazy......Belongs with the dead if you ask me.....She talks about demons so much I would be surprised if she wasn't one.....
Me: Smirks You guys should learn to keep your opinions to your self, they might get you hurt one day.... (Get's up and walks out the door leaving a note for the others)
Note- "Roses are Red, Violates are blue, Red like your blood, blue like the sea....Keep on talking soon you will all see who the true demon is and hey it just might be me." Yours truly Panda <3
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 3:35 PM UTC
*
Cast among the downpour,
gates beneath dark clouds are left open
The creek is rising, drowning underbrush,
darkening tree trunks,
moving swiftly the discarded,
Collecting at the walls of this place,
as stone and mortar slowly crumble
From a desperate vantage point
overlooking nature’s angry powers
I see a shape, a floating aura,
eyelet gown of gold stitch, woven ribbon dreams
Mahogany hair flowing, eyes captivating,
drifting atop muddied raging waters,
directing the flow with blown kiss persuasion
Suddenly swept away, barely a breath remains,
swallowing life in surrendering gulps
Flailing intoxicated waves, undertow’s grasp,
when a hand reaches, fingers interlock
Glazing blue skies whisper in sunlit reflections,
ocean breezes soothe washed out tides,
as a sand dollar wishes on a seashell
And now upon this beach I lie safely within soft arms,
tasting her mimosa lips, warm and sweet
I drink in her flavor neath palm tree shadows,
cool in the heat, but hot of her skin
My heart hears the glistening, tingling my senses,
awashing me in desires impossible to imagine,
as I happily drown in her*
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 at 7:03 PM UTC
I drank the alcohol, expecting something.
boy was I let down, when I got nothing.
No silly laughter, or grand horror story.
No youtube video, or easy talk for me.
Just a headache or two and a feeling of suffocation.
Just a scolding from people, and a dizzy sensation.
The bottle looked nice, and tv shows made it seem fun,
but after 3 gulps, I just felt like a street ***
So I said goodbye to armpit beer,
and I assure no rose wine here.
*** is for pirates,
much too complicated for me.
I'm done with heartache alcohol,
as you can plainly see.
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 10:41 PM UTC
Tonight we’re aligned with the stars
I’m wearing Orion’s belt
You’re drinking in thirsty gulps from the big dipper
The little one’s in freckles on your chest
And now I can hear the wind chimes
On the porch
I can hear the leaves
Of the Bradford Pear
I can hear the cats and dogs and coyotes and deer and owls
Making nighttime noises
I can hear mom snoring in the house
For one of the last times
I can hear the trampoline springs creaking with age
And feel it bouncing and swaying under us
Like it did in its heyday
I can hear you sniffling, sister,
I can hear you crying
Your warm wet tears
Are drowning my ears
Like all those summers we did swim team
When I take your hand
It’s smaller than I remember
It’s Abby circa ‘99
Though you didn’t let me hold it then
And I never tried
Now our hair is curling in swirling halos
Around the same face
Mom’s face
We never did look like Dad
Now we’re gazing at the same stars
Under the same March sky
Thinking, saying, “God is good”
Saying, believing, “How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
Believing, knowing, that it’s true
Even while our hearts are rocks,
Our hands are clay,
Our minds are swarming
Teeming
Buzzing
Hives
But “God is good”
“How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
When our mother is a fish
How can He not be?
We know:
“God is good.”
While we’re reading the Braille of the sky
Two foxes slink by
Now we dismount the trampoline and go inside
Where we hear Mom snoring
For one of the last times
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 3:40 PM UTC
I'm poring over your words...
Sophistication beyond compare
I can only savour in gulps
Such fantastic fare
•••••
Your stars are sculpted out of porcelain
Whilst mine, white washed vinyl
Your haloed moon, commands immediate attention
Mine only hovers...
As elliptical paint over stencil
Oceans of yours brim full
Catching the shards from the noon day sun
When mine suffer from receding tides
Turning into stagnant estuaries
where water hardly runs
Myriad views from snow swept mountains
You paint perfect with delicate pairings
Stuck with a view from a porthole
Sometimes all I see,
are the vast expanses of tumultuous endings
•••••
Still poring over all of your words
They all weigh much
but soar like feathers on birds
Artform fit for gods beyond compare
Drowning in the magic...
Of your incredible fare
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
Poured a potion into a glass
I must pause pain just for the day
Make breaking down a distant past
A few gulps in, lots less to say
Numbing the cold cumbersome wind
Feeling the nice, warm, sensation
Silent smiles, eyes rolling in
I've missed this lone meditation
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 9:46 PM UTC
Your name burns
at the base of my stomach,
it tastes like flames
when I say it
but I continue to swallow,
big gulps
that drown out the ringing in my ears
I wonder what it would have felt like
to kiss your lips,
taste the fire in your heart
blood red lust
like innocence dressed in her mother’s lipstick
to trace the outline of your freckles
on soft uncharted skin,
I wonder what it would have felt like
to be your cartographer
to sail the high seas in your iris
and find sand in between my toes
after every visit
I keep imagining the things I would say
if we had met at a different time
I could have started by throwing matches
into your puddles,
and noticing how you smile like sunlight
glinting of the ocean
you are across the world
exploring,
mapping your own skin
and sailing with a crew called options,
they beckon your name
and make you forget that our hands ever brushed,
that we ever exchanged smiles
like two preschoolers
making engagement rings out of fruit loops,
you’re standing tall and brave
shrouded in the peace of letting go
while, I,
wait at the port
for you to return
knowing at the base of my stomach
that you will pass me by on your way home.
“land, ** means refusing to
acknowledge my tedious “hello”
you will step on my apologies
like the creaky old boards of a ship,
and I will become the tide
lapping at your bare feet
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 2:17 AM UTC
21 years or older but I asked to use the bathroom first.
Then I slip in when the bouncer isn't looking.
Naked bodies hanging on poles.
Men, smoke, 90's rap music.
On the stage, they bend backwards like dogs.
Dogs staring back, mirroring the position
and her self - esteem.
A woman approaches two men at the table in front of me.
Her fishnet wrap shows she's naked.
******* grinding, tossing hair.
Some slimy guys buy us drinks from a table a distance away.
Dorena gulps next to me.
I leave mine alone.
Absorbed into this vision because I have to immerse
myself in this because I must write.
I need to tell people that her hand slapped her ******
like it did something wrong.
She made her hand do that because that man
was giving her dollars as I watched them slide off her back,
her legs; the sides of them.
She gave his friend a dance and a magic trick.
Setting fire to matchsticks she placed on her ******* and her ****
He blew the flame away.
The dollars blew to the ground
and after her performance she went on her knees,
and picked up the remains.
Her dress, the money, her composure.
Afterward, she lit up a Capri, the type of cigarette
I craved all night.
I bummed one off her and she fled out of sight.
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 11:32 PM UTC
The animal inside me wears a sweater when it snows.
He lives in Logan's house with his new wife,
and is afraid of the neighbor's electric fence.
The animal inside me eats only cold food from a can
that Logen scrapes into a metal bowl,
and plays with scuffed, rubber toys.
The animal inside me hates the toys and the Alpo,
though he gulps it down and makes a show of play,
ever eager to please.
The animal inside me sings of the Ones who ran wild.
He has a fine collection of bones buried in the back yard,
and revels in rolling in fresh deer ****
Sometimes, when no one is there to see,
the animal inside me chews the new wife's leather shoes,
although this is mainly a thing of the past.
The animal inside me loves to run, which hardly happens anymore.
He is waiting on the doe-eyed collie who lives down the road,
and wishes that Logan would just burn the stupid sweater.
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 3:14 PM UTC
Thatcher vacuum seals nicotine
Slurps cigarette like mosquito
Ravenous lungs gnaw and grind for the slow pander,
Thatcher’s just another name for the labeling
We plaster and pine for an out,
Stitch that finite lie beneath squeamish child skin,
Thatcher’s the black lung paradise,
******* infancy coddling cigarette stifle,
The caloric crack of his canines fletching out lust and sickly groove
As he’s scopes out fiend and vexed vandals,
Clutches the sick theistic **********
Cuddle those bruise licked hips
Give God the gross percent,
Cause heaven’s in those greenbacks
and God’s in the ******* kick,
Suckling bout the American tip
The Christian capitol,
Seething on shadow puppet ****** and American dream,
Gods got nothing to do with the slickened crinkle of gain and glamour,
Thatcher’s just the candy man give and cult,
Cough the crutch of contagion greed
And clutch the cuff of your porcelain sleeve,
Thatcher gleans your blackest suite tight,
Struts raven blade shoulders perched on American made spine,
Thatcher does as Thatcher please,
Thatcher thinks as Thatcher bleeds,
And Thatcher bleeds venereal blend,
Gout with the American veneer of broken girl and scabbed moral traumatic,
Trauma tastes as the hollow pixies give out the get out,
Bandaged baby girls,
The teenage horror show,
Just another blazoned hit of one two take the hand me down generic give away,
Desensitize the humanize,
Girls got to get the days glossy puff and sniff,
Thatcher’s content to satisfy,
Callous coroner a spectator suckling Marlboro lick,
Lodging thick smoke and toxin between spittle slick lips,
Albino plumes clotting and unfolding,
Thatcher clicks back the cartridge
Filter and cigarette,
Thatcher gulps back the need because brain’s got a favoring kink for the buzz,
Thatcher sings with the screaming in his straggling lungs,
Hums the western creed
Laughs fickle with God at his need,
Thatcher’s the true American dream
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 5:17 PM UTC
Third day of this trek descending
rapidly from cloud forest into high jungle habitat,
alive with hummingbirds and orchids,
her Q'ero porters guide the tour group
to Intipunko, "Gate of the Sun".
At 4:30 AM and 10,000 feet altitude
biting cold cracks stone, eats exposed flesh,
stealing breath as she gulps pale sunlight.
Coca leaves wadded in her cheek
forge mind against the acts of atmosphere.
A lifelong pilgrimage to this purpose,
observation of the sunrise over Machu Picchu.
The Q'ero pass around a sack of pemmican.
What meat it is, she doesn't ask.
It smells of canvas, but tastes of apricot.
Her fate entrusted to these guides,
she eats what they offer.
This Inca Trail is marked with their scent;
they follow signposts painted on thin air,
read morning mists like road maps.
They have brought her to this citadel,
Lost City of Peace and Power.
Her life for now at equinox,
shaman-guides have opened her vision
to the hitching post of the sun.
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 12:05 AM UTC
Milky golden light sawn through
murky heavens and it bent my glacial heart.
The scent of soggy leaves out on the lawn,
fall has come and done its part.
Winter weighs heavy in the idle air,
hung as though it were a conversation
not yet had
Waning passions hushed by waxing sighs
and unpacked bags in need of packing
before the coming sunrise.
I talk of leaving often but you silence it
with pint-size gulps of red wine,
drunken *** and yet another argument
before you cry
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 12:18 PM UTC
Today I practice gratitude.
Little children practice writing
by repeating letters
on creamy paper
over
over and
over again
until the page
is filled to the rim
like an overflowing bottle.
I lay in bed
in the morning
turn my eyes to the ceiling
and repeat
a list
of things
I am grateful for.
The sun shining
on the windows
making them seem like mirrors.
Wet soil
which is going to grow
new crops in summer.
The skin which covers me
and keeps me intact.
The promise
of the morning
that I might get it right today.
I lay down
in silence
obedient as a piece
of furniture
and embroid
gratitude
on my static body
in all the colors I cannot see.
I embroid it until it covers me whole.
Until it gulps up any shadow
whispering nightmares.
I practice gratitude
thought by thought
until it becomes
instinctive
immediate
like blinking
like swallowing
like thinking.
Nov 3, 2018
Nov 3, 2018 at 8:39 AM UTC