poetry

She now refers to it as ‘The Scramble’
Five long, hard years stuck and lodged
between Grief and Depression
(They even taste differently)
Each passing day another dragging whiplash,
in slow motion, against the back
of your broken, shipwrecked soul.
There is no 999 call available for that emergency,
no rescue team a-coming,
it’s down to you and you alone in the end,
to get yourself up and on out of there.
But, that’s easier said than done,
when you’re having trouble
even crawling to the bathroom.

Some rivers
wind through sand
some through stone
where stacks of books
slowly bear
the casual
fingering,
when students look
from valleys
still
to shelves high
from worn carpets
clutching papers
frayed.
Some rivers
are in the mind
they flow
from youth
to nights alone
where wind
wears down
the casual
lingering
in lines
that wait
for morning’s
light.

I don’t hear it so much anymore,
not until Carol’s iPod, set at random,
returns to it, never often enough, too often.
Years gone, I used to let it dream me
back to an afternoon’s visit to Spillville,
peaceful Iowa town that could be
anywhere peaceful and verdant,
where I like to imagine Dvorak first writing,
tentatively remembering and tapping
the lovely old tune at his piano keys
until the notes had become most of him,
and they both became parts of the New World,
and the new world that never was

Here is my climate,
changing by the moment,
swirling around a red center,
ready for release…
Little slivers
of Lucy’s diamonds
started spilling
all over the floor
into puddles
stained with blood.
Shipped across the sea
seven days a week
to fleece the fools
on every front.
You can have all the jewels back
to bathe in blood,
along with (most of) your greed.
I just want a million … or two … (for now).
This is
the most sacred moment,
resting between

Mother, seventy
years of freedom
have shackled the
house that you made
with the British furniture
I steadfastly tie them
with a nation’s manacles
Even as the yellow house
grew, the nation shrunk
into cavernous hollows
of windswept children
sunken eyes
stained teeth
cadavers
a nation brought primordial
urge of death
now I swallow all symbols
of oppression, forget them
to be caught in the cross fire
of a nation’s freedom.
Seventy years is a long time

hands, cloistered for healing
perfection of stitch and scalpel
touching skin, homing in on disease
healers come as shaman, midwife,
child protector, word toucher,
poet, or physician ee cummings:

A wind has blown the rain away
and blown the sky away and all the leaves away
and the trees stand
I think, I too,
have known autumn too long

I yelled like the city,
heavy burdened with weight
like the shoulders of Atlas.
I tried to sever the strings,
the threads that entangled identity.
I lived in each moment
a passive bystander,
active in lacking courage
to voice myself.
I fell victim to the taunting
tongues of teens,
measuring my worth
with their words.
I sauntered with open palms
begging for friendship
cringing inward
at the sight of rejection.
I yelled like the city,
heavy burdened with weight

That fawn
would be
like love
only… leveling some field
with hope on my breath
old bones
around the root of the body
gone wrong
and my teeter god dazed
yes, heaven is a vanity event
the feathers cut more than skin
collect memories
in nondescript jars
angry fathers smashed when we were young
and yet I want to lay at your mercy
hand upon me
let it pool up beneath strewn Polaroids
this gift of not being – I wager the fawn is more than metaphor
motel light, carbon footprints

40 thousand people 40 thousand phantoms are marching towards you right now you have taken their lands you have taken to hatred you have been taken by greed they knew nothing of this they knew everything their backs, painted by barbwire, cooked by bullets know everything 40 thousand dreams that couldn’t connect how the price of onion & flour and[Read More...]

Walls may stall
Movement of humans
But they cannot stop at all
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