Category: Poetry

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Cheers to You

  

 

“Have a good day. Stay out of trouble,” she says as she pats his naked ass and then flies out the door, already late for work.

Here’s to a year of self-possession and comfort, independence and fulfilling your own expectations. Here’s to love and familiarity, trained fingers and lips finding all the right grooves. Here’s to kindness of kin, those who have your back and keep you no matter what. Here’s to the empathy of strangers and believers. Here’s to compassion and good samaritans, accidental heroes and intentional fools. Here’s to health and good cheer. Here’s to you.

To another year with you in it. 

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Pinwheel Day

  
Arbitrary framework the hours make; 

the shadows perform tragedies on screen-less walls.

When I was 12 I discovered an ache inside me,

one only quelled by singing the love song antidote

in lilting swallows warbling trills at the edges.

Nature offset flame in cool wind balancing my moods

 that hatched my youth to full fledged childlessness.

Today is just a day; life expels to slowly turn pinwheels.

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If I were your eyes…

  
I’d find more than the prize to keep myself on

or the road

if I were your eyes.

If I saw what you saw, 

I’d be wary too, 

wondering what next, who else wants what I have, 

what I need to protect.

Gazing out from yours, 

the world would be clear,

hindsight perfection,

for mistakes are costly and pre-calculations wise. 

Peering from under your nose,

I’d assess what’s what,

figure people out,

know their numbers,

predictive labels paying off in fearless dividends.

And if I stared at your desire,

the way you do,

square in her face,

laser cutting pupils

penetrated retinal heart,

a mirror reflection I’d see chestnut fire burning me.

 

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A Cello Rests

 
 

A cello rests in a room, its neck snugged to the corner, 

nearly facing the wall in neglect as if ashamed, 

calumny’s dust. 

Never her fault, I never loved enough, not until late, too late.

I played for spans.

A public school music teacher examining my third grade hands declared, 

“You have long fingers; you’ll play the cello.”

And pronouncement became performance.

I practiced and played: solo, ensemble and orchestra.

Competitions endured at the lust of a failed cello teacher and complicit parents

yielded no more than a B plus plus, merely a red ribbon.

But I scored Romberg’s cello sonata into my fingers for life.

And the taste, a hint of burning desire–first conquest, then mastery.

Until the mid-70s teen culture enwrapped me in smokey rock concerts and pubs,

boys and weed.

And the cello lay low in my childhood home ’til California stole me.

She plays me time to time, decade to decade since then,

testing my resolve and desire, the want-it factor.

She breaks my every attempt, every dream of recapture,

having long ago mastered me.

 

credit: clker.com

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The Other Woman

  
Today, I am the other woman. 

Well, not THE other woman but another woman.

You see, I’m not myself, so I must be someone else.

Someone like me, who I am most other days, does not hide

does not steal away from the controls to cede the center.

Not the spotlight but the hub, co-equal and convergent.

But all the other mothers took my role today, the hiders

much-to-doing but not without martyred smile and cheer,

disposed to giver-worker-bee-busy-as-a-buzz-on-beer.

But I have always been eye of the storm where the stillness

of separation–me from them–oxygenates breathing space.

And yet today, I played her, the subdued sideline spectator,

the other woman waiting in the wings to seduce the shadows,

bait them cover me in downy anonymity, cog-less care free.

Who is she, this other woman impersonating me?

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The Pain of Acrobatic (Non) Reason

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I want to help her. She needs me. Burrowing in a hole will not make the world disappear, the majority of it anyhow, exclusive of a select few pieces to which she clings dearly, obsessively, as if these things–broken pieces of jewelry, ash, cookie boxes and wood shavings–were life itself.

She makes me love in a circle: the start lost in the end of caring, hurting and discarding. I give up and then cannot let her go. But she must be severed. She demands it, not so much in words as in self-destruction, persistent non-choices that astound anyone with a will to live. Slow suicide.

And yet, instincts hard as granite kick in, mindless protection that deny her death. The inversions and subterfuge she contorts herself to, no yogi or circus acrobat of the soul could compete.

The darkness under the bridge comforts her, dims the white light of panic, the incessant static of electrified fear. Those who love her may only bear witness, cannot be the net to her fall. She of scissor mind makes it impossible.

And yet, she is my very own hunger artist, living on trapezes, flying from dumpster to dumpster’s refuse treasure. She refuses a hand. She believes she has her own, enough for her. But her hands shake and hold nothing but fairy tales of embroidered delusion.

And though she drives me to pound my head on the wall to relieve the pain of reason, the crisis of choice and chaos and cold winter nights, I love her still.

 

credit: mentalfloss.com

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Wet Thoughts

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And so I sit before you, father-mother missing moon sheltered from the rain above the clouds, intuiting the vacant stare observant.

Though core-less we two, you cold, me warm, a higher vantage point edges your sight supreme at such a remove.

Like you, I borrowed neighboring light lent unwittingly, beneficial excess of the mindlessly ebullient glow of splashing smiles.

Sprayed sunshine at the concert last night in a stranger eye-lock and motionless high five link, praise to musical gods enchanting.

Leaked light of courtesy in rote rhythm of seasonal cheer upon all us retailers and commerce night keepers: “Happy holidays!”

And idle conversation in endless express lines as I count the water meat drops in frosty plastic packages while checkers chat up customers.

Reflect now, we two lunatic hollow grims of burnt out starry stories–so many–whirring past like molten lead dripping burnt passion burst.

For we watch the rain the same, you above, me below, cool companions invisible neon in the night, filtering nothing, just bouncing rays.

 

 

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GeminiĀ 

 

 
Gemini’s bloom, neither starry aster nor royal poinsettia

seasons too late for the rose of summer skies.

One dies brightly, late fall’s supernova, while another paints icy lips ruby.

Your velvet blush pairs story-eyed girls with breathless boys re-enacting everlasting joy;

unrevealed how your Bristly Roseslug Cladius difformis and red spider mite underside,

 laced and aching,   

cache closes the thin divine like children threading hearts to paper clips in kinder class.

Honored sister, pour your swooning sorrow into my hands and let your brave face die.

No man, beast or garden silk delivered so much to so many for so long. 

Release the weight of your beatific crown, heavy with curved care, and sink.

Another June will call your name in vein-flow some day soon.

 
credit: flikr.com

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Curbside Patties

 
 
Where wander childhood sensations abandoned at the adult door?

Where hides the hood in childhood–buried where, by whom?

Who animates ghost crumb trails lost to fingers of leafy time

casts art’s poetry, memoir or history’s smokey sincerity.
 

But the curiously cured shank of hooded time stored in dark canals,

in brain crevices seeping imagery flattened and folded fit for life,

ages salty sweet in half notions nestled inside enormous desire,

full fledged and bloated with expectation un-dampened:
 

A six-year old, hair a twiggy tangle, growing to the wind, sitting

curbside, forming perfect patties from the meaty pliant mud,

shapes the real from earth and imagination aligned just so,

when nature taught her no bounds to science, only hands.

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Chatter in the Wind

 

 
Like fake windup teeth, they chatter on like a cheap gag

hackers, spammers and hangers on, all sapping space

saved for clarity; no clue, they’re all ego, needy strokes,

recognition, checking in, checking on and confirmation

that still, yes, I do exist; your real is genuine connection,

beat loneliness and worthlessness, valueless monied air.

Make room, clear the questions like “What’s for dinner?”

and “Will this be on the test? and “Why?” ask 3 year olds 

only to make conversation, believing sounds substantive:

tone of voice, letters on leaves, form-words, voices heard,

prayers moaned, pledges recited, dreams told, signs read,

memes scrolled, billboard philosophy, sext-up proposals, 

cyber poke, lol jokes, ping backs, whistle blows, doorknock, 

chicken scratch, empty glances on empty screens beckoned

by meaningless noises and jibberish symbols to break down,

take chances, reach in and virtually blow long-wound spew.   

And the whistles moaning the cracked window seals sound

chatter in storm-whisking trees felled by dull, dry tongues.

 
credit: likeclockwork.biz

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