Category: Poetry

Fools

April first is the start of National Poetry Month
And fools everywhere avoid
It because who wants
To decipher the
Words of
Fools,
Who write
To decipher the
Codes of the heart
And paste together the
Ripped and thinnest membranes of the day?

Hardly anyone who sees the dead wing in the windowpane
Spliced between the storm and screen
Will leave the house while
Her mind stays home
Sticky with
Fools,
Who die
Trapped between worlds
Pranked from their spindled legs
That carried them all the way here
Only to leave the very height of themselves behind.

Vernal Equinox

When you left
You carved a line in the center of
All my days and named them
Before and after.
Some days, I still count like that —
Stuck in the wish of before
And the yearn of after;

But in time the sun shifted and
On the tip of my finger
Spins a new world:
Before forgiveness,
Something must die.
And seconds after,
It’s spring.

Altar

“Altar”

Integrity lives, only once it’s found its true continent –
Once all the places you have claimed are unclaimed,
And every language you once spoke is unspoken,
And the face you cannot see is seen
In the eyes of a foreign shore.

When what you have lost you crossed oceans to find
Living in a stripe against the sky,
When there’s no final edge to fall from,
Just an endless, rounded rise.

When ancient ritual is carried back to your own holy altar,
When every piece you gathered along the way is sacred,
And even scraps are buried on bended knee,
Then, light the candle in the center of your one true home.

For once the fragments of the life that you have chosen
Are placed in circles ‘round the flame
What you didn’t choose remains as spark and wonder
Rising to the great unclaimed, where you will meet again.

News Cycle

Imagine a massive field of daffodils
All silent but undeniable with their screaming yellow heads;
Imagine we stand beside this field without our iphones —
Only scrolling across the hillsides
Only liking with our hearts
Only sharing with each other this same and simple view —
Would we stop being horrified
By the monstrous sound behind us
And multiply our great belief
That small green things
Rise in great swaths of generosity
When we look and look and look
For spring?
Surely, what thunders toward us easily and bellows in our ears
In a tumble and torrent of pissing spew is
Also undeniable;
But what grows in the crush and the sound of us is fire;
Without breath or astonishment we swallow lumps of coal
Whole, gasping for air, burning our throats
Seared by how wrong we were about the world,
Muted by the aftermath
And charred remains of faith.
Turn your back, now,
And walk away. Crouch low, until you see
The kind and sprouting shoot
That returns once more to rally the lighted forces of our
Love.

Marriage Counseling

“Marriage Counseling”

My disagreement is cinched and stuck inside my craw
Breaching the space between us
Even though it’s speechless,
Clamped behind the trussing of decorum,
Dropped by the strangled clang of conduct,
Captive in a voiceless box of words.

What isn’t said says everything of course
About the course of us,
That gaping censored space is up to me to cross or not
By tattered twine and rotted wood
Or a feat of engineering
Forced and wedged between the teeth of us.

Let’s run to the jungle where the steam is fine
Along with certain rain and howl,
The tangled vine around my throat will swing
Sending me across the void
A wild cry loosened from my lungs
Could land me next to you.

 

Better Half

You were the errand and I was the list;

Me with my brain in an urgent row
And you with your patient gait
You kept forgetting your purpose
And I let you carry the weight

Sometimes I knew that I had to go
Sometimes you had to stay
But mostly we left the other alone
And were bound by the opposite way

I handed you a life to live
One endless task at a time
And you handed me the reasons
I could leave my own behind

So what of this, the perfect us?
It should have worked for two;
Each took their helping from the half
The other never knew.

Conversation

Between youth and age is where we all live.

Break it up if you want by who is most relevant;

Who can pull off a beard,

Who likes sarcasm and who prefers psalms,

Who remembers Aunt Bea and who among us

Just.

Can’t.

Separate those who hook up from

Those who make love,

Remove the walkers from the hikers.

Cleave each from the other like

The rotted from the ripe

And still, it ends the same.

To know the shape of the world,

You must hold it all.

Thank You

And today let it be said that each of you

Every one

Shapes me and shapes the world

And for this

I am eternally aware

And utterly grateful

For the light and the courage

Of those who act bravely and deeply

And those who laugh hard

And grieve wide

And bake pies

And make art

And offer tremendous generosities that make me cry

And fall to my knees

In awe of humanity