"relearning" poems
Just ten minutes after I'd revved the engine
I was only nine miles away from the love of my life
Day dreaming of when we’d met just eight short months ago
Soaring at seventy down that country road
Only six more miles until she’d be in my arms again
Five years ago thoughts of love would have seemed so far out of sight
Yet four times I've already proposed, “too soon,” she’d always say
Amazing how in three seconds your entire life can change
With just two tires there’s little room for error
When one blew out I hit the asphalt, hard
In a wreck like that there’s zero chance I’d survive
One hour later the ambulance arrived at last
EMTs pressed two paddles against my chest
Shocks were delivered three times
At the hospital doctors performed four operations
Five months I spent in a coma
Followed by six months of physical therapy relearning to walk
In time all seventeen broken bones had set and healed
It cost me eight grand to buy a new bike
Now nine years later I’m still riding, fearless, wife on the back
The tenth time I asked, she finally said yes
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
Tossing and turning.
Unlearning abusive systems and relearning loving skills.
Becoming a dream keeper as a rebellious angel child anything is possible.
So I am very soulfully strong and heart-meltingly adorable.
I provide nightmares for my worst enemies.
And sweet dreams for my dearest friends.
Anyone in the middle is going to live with their political aspirations.
May 31, 2022
May 31, 2022 at 3:07 PM UTC
Sweet Serendipity
you stumbled upon the pieces of me
and i'm so glad that you did;
life will never be the same.
You stumbled upon the pieces of me
i'm relearning how to to breathe
life will never be the same;
you set my heart ablaze.
I'm relearning to breathe
would've suffocated if you hadn't met me
you set my heart ablaze;
I am forever grateful that I found you.
Would've suffocated if you hadn't met me
but now inhale more easily
I am forever grateful that I found you...
Sweet Serendipity.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 1:13 PM UTC
I hope she knows what she's getting herself into.
I hope she knows what your heart sounds like after a night of
comparisons between her handwriting and mine.
I want you to know that I am through with dumbing
myself down to fit inside your god complexed hands.
Don't tell me I never tried to save us.
I wrote you songs with knives on my palms
and your ears were anything but listening.
I had a dream about you every night since you told me
you didn't know how to love anything with a heartbeat and hope.
I started sleeping again when you came back, and oh when you came back...
I am not sorry that my temper is as short as the lifespan of us.
I am not sorry that your smile is the only one that ever made me
want to wake up in the morning.
I am all pain and long long longing and she has always been
a storm with a heart dead set on your stillness.
Our problem is that I never stop shaking long enough for the dust to settle.
I've been writing with the same pen for four years and
you still only recognize my words when she plays them back.
Let it not be confused, foggy or incomprehensible-
you were the one.
Until the one became none and I stopped being a number when you stopped counting miles.
I hope she loves harder than a woman with dementia, relearning parts of you every morning
in the places you reserved with my first and your last- maybe next time.
Maybe next time, maybe next life will be different.
Maybe I'll be patient, stronger, I'll stop covering my smile. You'll stop pretending to be in love.
I will stop shaking and the dust will settle and her poetry will make you sick.
Her poetry will sprout evening primroses and she won't know that you always fall asleep before midnight
or that you're allergic to flowers that bloom when the sun is down.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 8:55 PM UTC
She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till, in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood
Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,
The glare of that much-mentionned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.
3.2k
“the pleasuring words”
~
are not of necessity singularly complected or of one nature
know them by many other names, colorations, languages,
throat growling purring, pretty soft and stern, singsong,
begged borrowed stolen, barked and pleaded
but when the eyes quietly say,
come to me
darling
in manner unspoken,
the pleasuring of the silence
greater than if sullied by a vocalization,
the wild sounds my heart commit
pounding mounting ever louder,
requiring no translation, though with repetition,
they grow louder
with every heart throbbing,
a new language relearning
the pleasuring words are spoken
by silent eyes when you
call me by my other name
my
darling
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 12:10 PM UTC
-A Psalm Of Johnson Regarding How To Get Saved
Because all have sinned and strayed away from God's path,
We are all deserving of his perfectly just wrath.
But God instead sent his equal to die in our place,
Because he is infinitely full of love and grace.
So in order to escape from your eternal doom,
You must believe God raised Christ from the dead in his tomb!
Dec 25, 2020
Dec 25, 2020 at 1:33 AM UTC
The Moon and the Stars
It all started one night under the stars.
Lying in the field on the clearest yet brisk last nights of summer's warm-held grasp. Telescope, blankets, friends and stars. We watched and waited as satellites and planes flew overhead; deciphering shooting star from orbital waste, relearning and recalling constellations recognized throughout man's lifelong past. Gazing into the wide open of the unknown with thoughts of extra-terrestrial, black holes, and the possibility of life after death.
The darker the night the more magic seemed to exist. After wrapping up our outdoor viewing of the universe, we headed indoors for peaceful sessions of passing the pipe while listening to shamanic throat singing and overtones, as our friends sat gravely entranced, zoning out to the wonders of the world covered by media through National Geographic and the world-wide-web.
It was somewhere a midst all this where I find myself; body calm and mind relaxed, propped up on the couch pondering the innermost immortal thoughts of the interconnectedness of life and death and sound and energy, spirit and soul as visions of spirals infinitely intertwining as one appear before my eyes. The sensations of what I imagine the reference of “getting the gears rolling” in the center of my brain as my pineal gland begins its first steps of decalcification brought about by the intentions of man.
Up until this point my life was on a one track path. A steady straight line towards the unknown, unawakened, and ignorantly naive, believing everything I had been taught up until that moment was a true solid fact. With this new sensation of the potential for higher vibrations within my own soul, my heart began to rapidly race but without pain and suffering, rather with the excitement of this new realized grace.
Awakening to this new idea, to this new age, to this new way of life.
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 11:06 AM UTC
wring your mismatched hands together they don't belong to you but they're still yours
you watch old reels, the war replaying on a silver screen
relearning a past you still don't remember (your hair used to be short, but you like it better long)
your smile is crooked when you look at him
you don't know if it's fondness or hatred (or something in the middle,the point between rage and bone-breaking love)
he'll never understand how easy it is to make men into machines
but the blueprints for your breathing patterns are hidden away in ones and zeroes in the back of your mind
your tongue and teeth are stained with your old body, ten thousand lifetimes ago you still feel your arm sometimes
ghost aches haunting your every step
when you close your eyes you see an ashtray, blood filling your eyesockets like saltwater
you've forgotten about that night (1942, the war playing in the background as you looked at him, soft around the edges) stars falling from his palms into your chest
you're an ampersand, your fingers interlocked with his
when you ask him what it was like
(you aren't sure what you mean, but he is) he says, soft around the edges,okay
and it's enough
war isn't pretty, it's a tragedy and so are you but it's enough for now
press your fingers into the sway of his back
cough russian winter into his lungs
and try to forget about it
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 5:28 PM UTC
Sixty Eight years of age
and he texts her puppy love
msgs six time a day,
in between phone calls.
long ago lovers,
high school, I think,
Facebook stumbled upon,
and the inky surprise,
that they have relearned to be,
a new shade of
a true blue tint of
the word,
devoted.
mushy is the heart that goes
soft to hard to soft,
soft by innocence, then
Pharaoh hardened by life, then,
softened by reflection,
mushyed by wisdom,
that came costly.
when relearning
the side effects of
discovering the words
that were left unsaid,
or even better,
spoke this time with
better understanding,
greater appreciation.
Now so better
After Aging Aching
in an oak cask
of finally, filly fully
fermented love.
I don't need inspiration
to clap for you,
but your confidence un-betrayed,
name omitted,
as one grandfather tips his hat to another,
all he can smiling say,
God ****
romantic rediscovery at 68,
I suspect is even better than the
first fumbled go around.
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 1:08 PM UTC
Hello Dear Friend,
It’s been a while since I’ve wrote you.
Woes of lost friendship must have driven me here,
in fear of other lanes that is, to this letter.
Laughter and joy has been had, them in lieu of you.
Ewes can ape wolves, as you’ve seen in three years prior,
the choir sang the same triad, this time quiet.
Quite sad— I know, but I’ve spoken enough on me,
for thee I am writing, and to thee I now write:
You must have been busy bringing joy to the world;
or joy to a world, of one I’ve met never.
Another basis, wherefore, I stop this stasis
of silence. We’ll needn’t recall to remember,
for like the migrants of nature, nothing has changed—
only the season, or maybe just the weather—
regardless, the moral stands as thus: History
has shown those of the same feather flock together;
so, as such, we do not lose time in relearning
quirks or behaviors—innate powers take over
Then, again, the inane behavior shall ensue.
Fluid synchronization of minds—now union—
is source to the river highly known for knowledge.
Dialogue sows the seeds, such that comprehension
of grand ideas, which sprout like fruit at the Lethe,
can be harvested to feed the minds of others.
Thoughts that they found too puerile, we now encounter
regularly, and never have we thought to laugh
at any one. Instead we laugh coyly, as we
discuss things of great measure absentmindedly.
The weight of measure felt by us knows few others—
wherefore, I ask: what deserves merit? But One knows,
and those answers lie in the minds of the many.
But here I must stop, for I, quite abashedly,
feel your response to this notion has bearing on
the rest of my premeditated first letter.
With Godspeed I send this, in hopes—with haste, you’ll read
and respond. At last a new dialogue begins.
Remember: those who look— will find,
Your Dearest Friend
Apr 21, 2012
Apr 21, 2012 at 2:17 AM UTC
Sometimes it is 4am and I'm awake
relearning to breathe, calming my heart
because for once you saw me and smiled
and the reality, well it tears me apart
Sometimes it is 2pm and I'm anxious
heart pounding and hands shaking
because I know in twenty minutes
I have to seem perfect for the taking
Sometimes, it is 6pm and I'm thinking
whether I'm annoying or just weird
I just.. kinda hope sometimes for once
It wasn't just as I feared.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 9:53 PM UTC
“never lament casually”
Leonard Cohen
*the serious are plenty burdensome,
so if the flight delayed, or the device batteries,
moments away from recognizing that
0% is still a viable digit with a special meaning,
these, none deserving of deploring the human condition
but the weight of leaving her in cold Montreal,
while old promises made, demand a presence in L.A.,
freezey veins, icy cracking inspiration attempts in vain,
all the unrecognizable for crying out loud verses on a
cocktail napkin scribbled, watching ink letters wet melting
your wants simplest, fireplace warmth snap cackling
pop love songs verses for her, the sheets of her dark skin,
silken on your tongue, the wetness of her Oh’s,
left a connect-the-dots map from your nose to toes,
but her fingertip markers, now a thousand miles away,
busy throwing up to the sky, hands filled with leaves of
crisp falling colors assortment, only the colorless no’s left
they play a tune you wrote years ago on the lounge speakers,
modified, wordless, so it’s innocuous, background harmless,
this axes paper cuts on your private places where the songs get
birthed, and now your whole package is tonnage measurable,
the lamentations serious, serious constellations, etching a new song*
*<>
“for the relearning is the crown jew-el,
that jesters rob from their kingly masters,
pride in love is the fall season preceding
Canadian winters, always thinking
you know better, be better at keeping warm,
this time which is the next time
you cannot learn from love,
cause it’s twice, two times,
never the same,
past lessons ain’t no prologue,
the body is maybe in the wafers,
sometimes vanilla,
sometimes chocolate
and the epilogue is
100% of the poem~songs
that I loved writing
and hate remembering*”
Sep 10, 2019
Sep 10, 2019 at 3:03 PM UTC
Coming of Age
I spent two days with you in a bed made ***** by breakfast crumbs and tears and sweat from last night relearning the way your body contours when it sleeps.
I know I was getting too close, but nobody gives a **** about what you do on your birthday.
I had forgotten what it was like to be yours. You picked words like apples from the high round bits of my face with your teeth tucked behind your lips. Crisp and sweet like we thought it wouldn't be.
I know that every good day has it core. Even the peach of your mouth has its pit, but our roots run deeper, freer, from orchard blocks and white picket fences.
We planted seeds even though the soil was rocky and dry. Like vines, we intertwined, even though our souls are parched and tired.
I'm turning green, like the sunflower stems on my dusty window sill.
Your evergreen isn't planted in my yard, but your roots run in it.
Yesterday was hard for all of us,
but tomorrow promises rain to wash us clean.
They say to never plant before a rain because the water will sweep the seeds away. Carry them into the next garden, next county, next life
but if you're too ******* afraid to start again once everything's been flooded, you're never gonna grow.
Mar 12, 2015
Mar 12, 2015 at 7:37 PM UTC
Hot kiss in the cold rain.
A steady beat of a pulsing vein.
The fearful calm of the never the same.
The sweet aftertaste of your whispered name.
Two extremes inside one heart.
Living in the bewitched twilight of the after dark.
Made a little brighter by this perfect counterpart.
This perfect flame started by a lover's spark.
The relearning of what it means to mean.
Finding the greatest things on earth in the in between.
It's the transition of real life into a dream.
The infusion of love in this neglected bloodstream.
The perfect play of light on the perfect pair of eyes.
The look of which expels the bitter taste of goodbyes.
It's the safety rope for the deepest self dug holes.
Shes a harbinger of love, the savior of souls.
The North Star, that brightest bit of day.
That little feeling inside of you so you never lose your way.
A radiant hope in this desperate living death.
Every inch of her a place to catch your breath.
Made of the stuff of heaven, part blind trust
and perfect mixture of both love and lust.
It all boils and burns into left with only this...
A simple hot kiss,
in a cold rain.
With love flowing in every vein.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 8:39 PM UTC
It's been a while
since feelings like these have pervaded, invaded, slipped through
the walls I built up.
I was afraid to trust
having been misused, mistreated, mistaken.
But you cured me...
it seems, I hope, I fear
with your incorruptible inculpability.
I was wary to let go, commit, reveal.
But you convinced me
it's okay
to express, abandon, accept.
So to me
it's quite new
(kind of hand-me-down new)
this feeling, experience, occurrence;
like closing a box,
hiding it away,
only to open it
much later
and find something:
new, developed, changed
better.
It's all so
strange, unexpected, exciting
incredible:
the way you make me feel.
I'm relearning
how to trust, to share, to grow
to love.
And,
despite my misgivings,
I long to grow closer, learn more, be free.
Because to me
you're unique
amazing
inspiring.
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 11:36 PM UTC
i wanted to be more than life stuck in these bones,
but they're intent on running.
i thought i'd be content with settling down
but i think they are hunting for something.
i can see myself moving from city or town
though its hard to feel more than motionless
when about a month maybe more
is all you'll make an appearance for.
i'd like to feel more than simply life in these bones
but right now they're only good for aching.
matching socks hide away my weak feet for a while
but it doesn't take long for the absence of skin--
reminding me my brittle feet are breaking,
creaking, wary under the weight of heavy bones.
my hands feel empty.
but doctor's say nothing's missing...
i know i'm losing something to distance
you can hear it if you listen.
i keep replaying the sound of your whole life splitting
its way from mine
a misgiving sound for a while i'd been wishing
not to listen to, but i
decided to make it into an alarm clock instead
to keep me from dreaming too big, because
nothing scares me quicker from sleep.
i'm relearning how ferocious
your memory could be.
and only when you look you will see
inside your reflection--half of what you should be
not a would-be, but a could've-been
stuck with fuckin' half-life personalities
singing for their expiration dates,
cracking under your empty gravity.
breaking, fading, floating away from reality.
it took too many broken bones
to realize how unbroken we weren't supposed to be.
myself personally, i think there's no sense in
looking in the mirror
when i see no more beauty there.
i could let loose these slippery bones
and collapse on the floor.
and i figure to stay here a while, because
i can't sleep inside silence anymore.
city sounds don't cut it, so
i let your memory whisper faintly to me
but not so gently, more in line with a taunt
composed of words like,
"you are the thing that carved the me
out of me
so of course i had to set myself free."
but you can keep talking to me
and choke out all the mystery
this is near to death--
it's half misery, half meant to be.
it's all left me.
you haven't been living the right way
and it's left my body empty,
boneless.
it's let my body empty-out;
crooked tendons pining towards you.
a sorry skeleton, crawling,
unable to keep it in the ground.
Nov 5, 2016
Nov 5, 2016 at 10:13 PM UTC
so here i am again
staring at nothing
wondering where it is that i went wrong this time
and your last words echo
over and over and over
"don't call back"
you're a ghost now
and i still see you
walking the halls at night
doing the things we used to
laughing the way we used to
loving me like you used to
it's haunting
and i feel chills from nowhere
like your hands are still on me
still moving me
still holding me
like i know you never will again
and i haven't slept in weeks
and the middle of my bed
is relearning how to hold just me
because i can't stand sleeping on my side
while yours remains vacant
and i can't stand to look in mirrors
because my eyes are the same
vacant
and empty
and your clothes still hug my frame
like i wish you would
they don't keep me warm like you did
and you didn't leave reasons
and you didn't apologize
and i was left to wonder where i went wrong
but you got lucky
you don't see ghosts at night
or hear phantom laughter
or feel chills in the dark
because you weren't left to wonder
you just left
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 11:16 PM UTC
Judgment, misunderstandings, self-protection,
all weapons of mass destruction:
wounding others and ourselves,
with each thought and resulting action.
Lady Macbeth knew this,
why did we not heed her justice?!
Warning bells clanging,
freeing us to step onto a new precipice?
There's blood on my hands,
every time I don't trust and understand,
but think I know it all,
and make my many, many demands.
Perfectionism has been my cleansing balm,
but, in the end, it's just caused more harm —
Relearning is my matrix,
continuously transforming and claiming calm as my healing balm.
Feb 3, 2024
Feb 3, 2024 at 8:13 PM UTC
hey, yeah, yo,
what?
no way.
guess what?
grooving for all of
eternity.
where am I,
how did I get here,
boy this place is different
than yesterday.
get a note from the doctor,
never was suicidal,
not even hiding
in some crazy state of denial.
did what the president
told me to do,
yay, wahoooo,
scoooby-dooby-doooo.
shUTerRP shannon.
raining on my funk.
thrilled, something like
that. ready to get back
to the action, gotta change this
attitude, this moment has already
left for tomorrow's clock.
another day, lost a dollar,
going, going, gone.
who turned out the lights?
i just wanna make beats
and run away again.
just kidding,
not really.
gonna go sink
my teeth in lasagna
and forget about January,
& the past four months.
hey, hello, nice to meet you.
very glad to know I'm
somewhere in 2014.
fresh starts and stuff,
healthy lungs
and a fatter ***
relearning how
to feel
this earth.
proceeding with
caution.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 5:20 PM UTC
I have learned to trust beauty that comes from my body and elsewhere
I have mapped out the rivers that flow through my arms and into my chest,
And I have memorized them and labeled them as “Something So Much Better Now”
I have knitted and patched up the tears and fractures in my bones, placed there by strangers who did not know themselves as well as they pretended to
I am learning to appreciate the rain aside from sleepless nights, besides,
Sometimes even the sky has to cry
Every evening I have taught myself how to tuck myself in again, kiss my own forehead, and chant myself bedtime stories,
And every morning I have taught myself how to appreciate opening the blinds and cracking the windows to smell whatever roses the bees are flocking to at 9am on a warm summer morning
And yet I know that the cold is coming back,
And I know summer is as short as a child’s attention span,
And winter has been harsh before, but that does not mean it cannot learn from its mistakes like I have, and still am
But I am learning, I am relearning
And with that, I will teach myself how to respect the colder weather like a mother or father
With strict discipline, openness, a warm hug, and trust
Dec 11, 2018
Dec 11, 2018 at 12:29 AM UTC
The foreign feel
This cool plastic
Pressed to rough
Skinny artist’s fingers
A gentle pressure
Spills inked expressions
Cursive scrawl confessions
I submit myself
To this oddity
Relearning how to
Embrace myself again
Oct 10, 2011
Oct 10, 2011 at 2:55 PM UTC
Memories encroach on a star speckled consciousness,
How the sun felt in years gone by.
What was life like when happiness sprouted from the earth?
How mud splattered flower child was taught to be quiet.
We spend years relearning that we are birthed of stars,
Only to let simple vibrations of air
Crumble war torn castles of consciousness.
Jan 15, 2021
Jan 15, 2021 at 12:58 AM UTC
THEN
You were a pillar, sturdy and tall.
I desperately clung onto you.
Dependent, naive and still young,
I was ignorant to the fact that you
woke up too early and came back too late.
Until one day you collapsed
in front of me
and I fell along with you.
My fault, my fault, my fault.
Those bleak nights with your absence,
I stared into the darkness that seemed
to stretch for eternity.
I could not stop my cheeks from getting wet;
that saltiness that seeped into
the corners of my mouth.
No. I could not stay like this forever.
I need to change.
I need to be independent, because I'd
lost you.
I don't want to lose you
any further.
NOW
You were once my anchor
to keep me from sinking.
Yet I've learnt to stand
on my own two feet.
You have finally returned,
but you are no longer as strong
as before.
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.
You are shrinking- more bones
are protruding.
You move slowly, meticulously,
as though relearning how to
walk again.
I admire your resilience;
your diligence to get better.
No more waking up too early
and coming back too late.
We are both aging, yet
your rate of getting sunken cheeks
and sagging skin appears
to speed up too fast,
too soon.
If time could rewind, I want you
back to when you were still
tall and radiant, and that
I would get a chance to love you
more- I would not be a burden
to you, then.
What has been done cannot be undone.
So I embrace the changes
and learn to love you
in the present and many
years to come.
Thank you for being my pillar.
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 7:08 AM UTC