Category: Poetry

Drunken Heart

Drunken heart,
Stagger to the center
And spin within my ribcage
Where love’s been locked

Bound within old corset-bones
This narrow-wasted hourglass
Cinches swell to sand

Unmoored by you,
With drench and wet and whistle
I watch for stars between the bars of my breath!

A message in the bottle spills
Slurring all the love songs and
Blurring all the lines

Loosened, slippery, reckless
The chest is spilling all the goods, now
and sloshing over sides

All that’s buried all that’s sunken
Chained and roped and left behind
Now hiccups toward the shine

With the swivel of the fearless
And the salted edge of flesh
All the garnish is sublime

Numb now, the fall is fine
Plummet toward the night befogged
Softened, deepened, done.

Sobering thought,
Dragged from the horizon —
With cliff and crash and crested sea,
Love wrecks the
Careless heart.

All is rising

My loves,

All of you with the open hearts and the hard earned souls, the curious minds, the writers and poets and painters and thinkers, all of you who believe, and pay attention, and fight the good fight – all of you who fell to your knees with the shock of it all — I thank you for being in this world.

I have been so heartsick, and angry, and most spectacularly blindsided. I have wondered if all the good does any good at all. If good even matters. If kindness is just a kind of naiveté, that lives inside the bubble along with my French press and my fair isle sweaters and my cranberry chevre. If silence is just a way to stay deaf. If words are a just a way to stay still. If prayer is just a white man’s way around. If light can really illuminate dark.

In the last few weeks, even my pond feels privileged, like its tucked itself into the prettiest trees and proclaimed itself complete. And all the fields feel haunted by the ghosts of civil war, and all the birds circle for prey. Even the sea is creaking and chained, even the branches hang waiting, even the flame is frightful again.

Even Gilligan — who the hell gets a Boston Terrier? Why didn’t I adopt a shelter dog?

As I prepare for Thanksgiving, Trader Joe’s seems ridiculous. So does my Macbook Pro and the way that man just smiled at me.

Why arrange the flowers? Or tell you how the moss looks? Instead let me tell you about my first boss, and my second, and my third – all of whom grabbed my pussy, too.

Why laugh? Or turn the word hope over in my teeth? Instead let me live just one day in the constant despair of the marginalized – or even meet someone completely unlike myself.

Why forgive? Or try to see the other side of things? Instead let my rage destroy this horror of humanity.

And oh, my very soul! All of these things I’ve been writing – all that work bubbling up from the deep well of my center – suddenly looks like it’s floated on the surface all its life – just skimmed off the top by my uppity Brita filter. Pointless. Useless. Just one less plastic bottle in an ocean of debris.
I have tried all the usual things – wine, bourbon, cake – but still, I can’t be calmed. I have been rudely awakened, horribly startled by an alarming orange face. I want to slap it hard and go back to sleep, but I can’t.

Waking up is hard. I am humbled, to my knees, because I thought I knew. And I am once again struck, as I have been so many times in my life, that what I knew to be true was not true at all.

Everything is different, now. As it always is, with every new awakening. Everything is different. And as my eyes adjust to a whole new world, one that’s always been there but I didn’t have the capacity, or strength, or courage, or experience to see, I hear people say come back to bed. While others work to convince me everything is truly well and I need not be so heartsick.
And still others call me forward to lead new armies. I am astounded by the mobilization of so many of my friends. The constant call to arms. The instant organization.

There is urgency. All is rising, as am I. All is rising, as are the seas. All is rising, as is the dawn.

All is rising, as is my gratitude for the good in the world. For you, my loves. For you. Because to be awake means to see it all – the bird, and the prey. The man, and the monster. Goodness holds it both and all; not blind, not myopic, not half asleep. But both, and all.

All is rising, now. As are we. And with it must come gratitude for the beauty of the world, for the poet, for the prayer, for the stillness of the pond. For you, my loves. For you.

Monster & Muse

The moon is a monster;
A clown without feature
White faced and bloated
As if it floated from the sewer

And as my gaze is dragged from my body
And ripped from my head
And my eyes roll back
With slack-jawed stupidity

I’m in the middle of the street
With my mouth hanging open
Waiting for a worm to drop into my throat
And feed my lonely fear

I turn my back and still it looms
Standing far too close
Threatening me with the horror
Of how minuscule I am.

But the moon is also a muse,
A soul beyond circumstance
Untethered and glowing
As if it’s always belonged

And as my gaze is lifted from my body
And orbits ‘round my heart
My lashes shimmer
With star-filled tears

I’m in the middle of the sea
With my arms stretched out
Waiting for a prayer to rise from my throat
Worthy enough to meet you where you are

And though my feet are still, still it shines
Across every border and every blind
Uniting the universe with the gravity
Of how miraculous we are.

Trailing

Where have I been?
Out to a place that can’t bear the endings,
The way I buy the pear but forget the brie
And put on my shoes but never walk
And stare at the pond from the kitchen window

When I lose what I found and forget my thought
And words trail into fog
The way the path disappears
The way the leaves lie
The way that blue is the only way out
But I’m jealous of the sky

Where have I been?
Out to a place where love loses its legs,
The familiar slump of the saviorless
The curbsided remnant
The unrescued refuse
The way that I lie
Soaked to the motionless side

While you lift with a murmur and a wing
And a prayer falls behind you
The way the words thin into air
The way the wind swallows
The way that out is the only way in
But I’m trapped behind my teeth

Where have I been?
Out to a place that wraps ‘round my wrist
The unbreakable bonds of desire
The way the blinds close
The way the covers hide
The way the truth lies
In here, where I have been waiting like a fool for love’s return.

As if it will crawl in through the windows
Bearing baskets of cheeses
Loosening my mouth
Slicing me a pear and filling me
And all my vases with peonies.
As if love lies waiting
At the foot of the couch
In here, where I’ve forgotten all the words for
Out there, where someone could finally hear me.

And what of the starlings in the fields?
They blacken the sky
And shadow the green
And fall to the earth
And deafen the day
But what of the way they lift you?

Where have you been, they call from the trees;
Love’s come home,
Out to a place that meets you halfway —
Out to a place
That meets you.

Small Snack

I was nearly killed by a toast crumb
And as I struggled for breath I thought this is how it ends;
With embarrassing toast —
Not even the cool kind with the sea salt and the avocado.

After 25 minutes or so the near death experience
Was just a small snack,
I barely even felt the sore
Lodged in the shame of my throat.

I was also nearly killed by a single step, a poor merge
And the way you left me behind,
But I keep returning carelessly
Forgetting the terror and the gasp

And the staggering humiliation of nearly dying
From hunger and haste
And the hubris of humanity,
Who knew all along it was toast.

Ode to Omran

This year the pokeweed seems an impossible purple, maybe in honor of Prince, and the night skies feel incredibly clear — I can see every star that falls from space while I hum David Bowie in the dark. All summer long, when the pines have been still, all the owls called for Snape, and last night I looked for Willy Wonka in my chocolate bar.

One night last week the sun set a singular orange, and I saw Omran with his bloody bangs and his tiny feet on the tangerine chair across the sea. And some day when the lightning comes, it will shock me with an image of 300 struck reindeer, all on a hilltop side by side.

All that is gone, remains. All that happens, goes on. I think you can choose what you carry, but not always what you find. Maybe the world chooses for us – putting Winehouse in your heart when you are fading back to black, or moonlight in your path when you are longing for love?

Either way, all that is here tells a story. And all that is left, is for us.

Crickets

Saturday in August there’s a high pitched wheek of crickets and the lawn is patched with brown and I have the feeling everyone’s at brunch. I could head out for a bloody mary myself, or phone a friend. Something, though, is trying to be known. Even though it all feels familiar like I already know how the sun will set, and I already know the way the crow calls. I already know this day so I’d like a new one, please.

Sometimes it’s like this. Days hiccup drunkenly, skipping back in time. This one I’ve seen before. It happens near the end of things, and before the next; and it could go either way. Barefooted and unfettered, or silent and unmoored – it’s unwritten, unscripted, undone, and unimaginable. And in that unimagined way, it returns to a state that’s known. And so, an August day comes back, used before it starts.

Is there any comfort in that? The way the day unfolds like it always has? And when I hear nothing new, is that really all there is to hear? Beneath, beside, behind this day, is there another waiting?

Maybe that’s why September comes. To surprise us in spite of our August-y ways. But right now, here on this previous Saturday, I’m trying to listen.

What’s repeated and repeated and repeated? Something is trying to be known, and before the moon startles you again, the crickets stay.

Small Snack

I was nearly killed by a toast crumb

And as I struggled for breath I thought this is how it ends;

With embarrassing toast —

Not even the cool kind with the sea salt and the avocado.

After 25 minutes or so the near death experience

Was just a small snack,

I barely even felt the sore

Lodged in the shame of my throat.

I was also nearly killed by a single step, a poor merge

And they way you left me behind,

But I keep returning carelessly

Forgetting the terror and the gasp

And the staggering humiliation of nearly dying

From hunger and haste

And the hubris of humanity,

Who knew all along it was toast.

The Pulse

The pulse is how we know we are here,
The place where our hearts belong
And blood flows
And beats skip and pound.

It’s where we no longer have to hide,
Racing toward the exit
Flushed with relief or red with demand
That what is real is finally being seen.

It’s where we go to find out,
That no matter who you are
Inside, when your wrist is held,
You’ll be known by the strength of your heart.

And when the pulse is taken
We may feel the shattering;
The thready truth of us,
The fragile, narrow, way we carry life —

One beat to the next to the next to the next
All connected at the pulse
And carried back to the heart
Of the broken world.

Common

There are peonies in the garden
But mostly I’m drawn to the clover and buttercups
Scattered across the field;
The way they appear from a distance to be more than they are,
The way we get up close and give them names;
Common, everyday ones
That you’d step right over
And chew
If you were a cow.

But these purple pom poms cheering in the green,
And these clever little yellow scoops
Caught my common heart, uncommonly;
In an unguarded moment
Before I remembered what was
Across the road and past the fence
Waiting to be named
Something new.