Middle age

desert of my life

there were things I never meant

to take root in spite

An education

The
children
scribble on
the bathroom walls,
and a nation tucks its guns into bed.

Forever give me sadness any day

To my right, “they have good coleslaw.”

From across the table, “it’s chopped instead of shredded, that’s why.”

A minute later to my left, “they have good coleslaw here.”

And farther down, “yes, it’s the best coleslaw in town.”

It continued like this awhile longer,

the buzz of hearing aids, the comfort of repetition

and appreciation of ordinary things.

I think of complicated things,

and I feel alone.

I think of coleslaw and am filled with a sadness 

that soon there may be one less friend at our table.

I look around the table and smile warmly

as I take mental snapshots of each face, 

faces alive with friendship and creased with memory.

Eyes grow watery with age. I think

it has to do with all the loss, the body must let go

forever. Give me sadness any day.

It fills me with love,

and I overflow.

Serve me up, piece by piece

serve me up, piece by piece
what good am I to myself

take my hand and write the words that will untether hearts and minds

take my feet and lead the refugees out of war, furthermore
take my arms, open them

take my shoulders and lift the young women above the oppression experienced by their mothers and grandmothers

take my head and place it on a lunch tray because it is of no use to me
as it has not commanded my hand, my feet, my arms, my shoulders
to do what needs to be done

serve me up, piece by piece


A prompt from imaginary garden with real toads

A Tetractys

Raw
sticky
honeycomb
between your teeth,
and honey flows from the warmth of your mouth.

A prompt from http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2018/06/fussy-little-forms-tetractys.html

Queen Mary

We made love on a haunted ship, leaning out the porthole under a full moon on Halloween.

Ten years later, 

I remember your laugh.

It's the warmest sound in the world, 

happy, sleepy and sometimes high.

My heart feels like your bedroom candle, 

the one made of psychedelic colors

that melted down the side of the dresser and swirled into a pool on the old hardwood planks

next to your bed.

I don't remember our bodies, or anything else.

Except, you didn't seem to notice the waxy mess.

I think about the smell of the earth

I think about the smell of the earth
often in the spring, scent
of freshly fertilized fields
wafting softly over morning dew.

My nose instinctively crinkles and my emotions turn instinctively annoyed,
but I let the fertilized earth fill my lungs and I am filled with love
and a sense of protection over this place.

The smell of the earth reminds me
of what is real, of what is not
curated for our consumption.

The midwest farmers are real.
The midwest farmers are everything.
The midwest farmers are everything I am not.

I love them for this.

If you are not familiar with the midwest life
then you may not understand what it is
to be made of contradictions.

To all at once be judge and protector.
To all at once be thick and permeable.

Like the soil, the conditions have to be right.
Tillable, the desire to be turned over
irrevocably transformed.

Slipping

We're slipping away

I said

your face told me to elaborate.

Away from what
I don't know
from where we came.

I have amnesia
every day
a different day but maybe not.

Suspended in jelly
my slow thoughts
follow my tendons visibly moving under my skin.

I am made of puppets
you said
I don't understand.

This jelly is red
seeping
I don't understand my pores.

Breathing
the world in
to my skull I am sorry I did not protect you.

I should have
manipulated these hands
into the earth every day I go.

Elegy

Writing, rewriting
an elegy
almost daily
makes her feel more real to me
like back in ninety three
we were so silly
always laughing
our future planning
years together spanning
still now I'm weeping
sweeping, piecing
together broken feelings
of someone gone but never dead to me
trying to find the remedy
too blind to ever see
the love in front of me

Inverted landscape

But if I could just
cup the base of your neck in my hand
and pull you to meet me, breath to breath
your mouth to mine
I might be able to experience you
all of you at once, instead of in pieces.

But only after we share
a cup of loose-leaf tea and gentle smirks.

Can we float outside these walls, hand in hand.

Inverted landscape
the trees are purple against a sepia sky
and nothing is moving except the tips of the purple grass
under our worn sneakers, pointed toes, grazing.

But did I mention the floating. That's important.

Like in those movies where an unseen force
is pulling, pulling
leaning forward
the toes again, grazing the purple grass.

My breath is the salt spray

My breath is the salt spray
on your deep brown skin
as if we were ever on the same beach at the same time.
I reflect on those Los Angeles years
through a new lens
tinted
brown beach holidays when there was time to make the traffic-locked drive from east-side neighorhoods
we may as well have called the Westside whiteside as we stayed inside
I'm learning
about white privilege from black teachers
and now I almost know
what it feels like to never have had to speak for all the people of my racial group because
we are individuals
we have always been
individuals.
I have never had to worry that my actions will reflect poorly on other white people.
I am sickened by this
realization that I have no history, no meaning, no shared experience
of depth I cannot fathom.
Cast me out to sea, I want to struggle
to stay afloat
to take into my lungs little gasps of air and water...
My breath is the salt spray
on your deep brown skin.

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-six-6/

Vivante

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe1gmkL3xQg

I apologize, it's true

that I imagine us, cavalier

more violently alive than the world would have us

https://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/24561/auto/0/At-the-highest-point-of-her-development

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-five-5/

Long winter

It's April and snowing again
and the sounds of life slowly disappear
and I can't think of any other words except
blankets
and the landscape recedes, zooming away from my window, down the block
my ears suddenly ring with desperate silence
as I feel the weight of the window sill
lift beneath my warm finger tips
to let the isolation whoosh out of the bedroom window
and the smell of fresh nothing fill my lungs

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-four-6/

Band Names

Fizzled Daydreams We Are
Perpendicular Universes
Colliding in Your Back Seat
Locked Into You
Until I Gaze Upon
Unexpected Pistachio
Ever So Slightly
Split Like Me

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-three-4/

Fine Lines

I think there's a fine line
between remembering and forgetting.
The clinging to and the letting go,
as with my body and its blood.

You sense there's a fine line
between sociopathy and buddhism.
The monk is not attached to her hair,
as you are not bound by reproduction.

She knows there's a fine line
between starting over and moving on.
The postcards have different names,
as her luggage waits by the door.

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/day-two-5/

Panorama

That I think of life as death and death as life
is a secret held close from the common.

And you might think me inside out and backwards
in that brief moment of your discerning.

But that's okay my short-time friend
the mortal soul knows its calling.

And I will hold your hand and lead you from here
As you allow yourself to untether.

Where edges of the world bleed into focus
and tears are shed for the smallest beauty.

Life and death betray a spectrum
of a love story unending.

A NaPoWriMo prompt - http://www.napowrimo.net/here-we-go/