Tag: #end
Afterlife
when it’s time
kneeling, bowed head
nothing uttered
all felt
…
describing life and its
merry dance of thieves and joys
pockets picked, cheeks pinched
the rosy after-glow of loss and gain
…
shaken out blankets beneath trees
mystery of indentations past and present
who lay watching nests built
careful and with slow deliberation
…
before I lived how could I
describe the outline of love
moving in rapid sync as
tired swimmer in from cold
…
just as you give up on believing
raking autumn leaves, someone smiles
and breaking across their holy face
a connection of electric worth
…
for the lonely are not lost
they wander in search of hope
throwing sticks for panting dogs
breaking through water, flying in indigo bloom
…
a new season turns her heal toward sun
this afterlife will feel a familiar place
of lost faces, angels made of earthly composite
reflecting in the eyes of smiling ancestors
…
we will feel tears on our cheeks
burnished leaves falling in their spiral
where all things are forever and
the call of owls brings night fall
…
like a smooth glaze of assurance
tapping windows with sleet
closing up house, warm and merry
we step into the beckoning echo
Splinter
There is a thin slice of glass in my foot
I cannot see it
but I know it’s there
at night when
the fan whirls like a dervish overhead
and I play the xylophone between my legs
a storm blows in
like a warning and a representation
of everything felt and bottled up
old trees hold on, their roots tested
by the metal of young wind hurling
all order into chaos
we stand in our night-clothes
looking over fences
at destruction
she has a white line the length of her stomach
he has a scar hidden in his throat
mine is without and within like
a snake who cannot decide
which part to digest first
we three are the wounded lovers
with our perpetual thirst for
promises to ring true
devotion to stay where it was first placed
by the window in a jar of water
to bloom and scent the pulse of night
but such things rarely obey
wont of humans without power
the storm and her threading fingers
lays waste to our belief we control
even the tiniest morsel of this crochet world
…(l)…
when he married her
he thought she would obey
the tick tock of her laboring heart
stay steadfast by his side in the howling wind
but she was a maelstrom of her own
making
soon the wedge in their marital bed
was a dry river without resurrection
…(ll)…
she wanted
her husband to save her
when the doctor said C.A.N.C.E.R. and she turned
to the eyes of her children and they
looked away in painted terror
but he only knew how to put out fires
not the slow melt of all safe things she had
taken for granted 33 years
so they diverged
like a split oak touched by
lightning will remain
upright yet stranger to its mate
…(lll)…
and she was the string
between the wounded male and female
her own heart hollowed out
murmuring at night like a singleton
by the small hands of trust and promises
unkept
it was as her grandmother said
a poor thing to imagine humans
to remain steadfast
after all, the storm blew everything
even our very best intentions
whipping them into the air
until they were fragments of themselves
transformed what we knew
what we were familiar with
lending no safe harbor
for the weakened need to have surety
the only thing keeping them
upright
was their conjoined pain
a frayed ribbon between three houses
in the wildfire dead of night
where even
creatures who prefer darkness
stayed in their nests
for it was only then, in the tempest
they felt themselves capable
of surviving another moment
only then
shouting their grief into four pursing winds
writing pain along the narrow margins
of life and death
they lived another day
and on that day
wrecked and emptied
found succor in the equal fall of others
bending to pick up the debris of
their former selves
rent into splintered pieces
unrecognizable and sharp to the touch
Anguish
anguish
is a selfish emotion
and a raw cry
made from the belly of the beast and all those terrors unseen
something honest and hardly admitted
kept behind fan and sleight of hand
it is something you hide for fear of being told;
do you only think of yourself? Are you aware others have it worse?
why can’t you just GET A GRIP!
You know all this just as you know
you can’t take one more minute
one second longer
staring at now familiar nightmare
feeling it turning you inside out and back again
(as if jaws were attached to your innards, pulling like a lover would)
anguish is an exhaustion
hunchbacked and ready to tear its own eyes
where if you could you would
run away from yourself never to return
where if you could you would
S.T.O.P.
where if you could you would
scream and never quit
until either your heart refused to beat or
something changed permanently
O the salve of darkness, shrouding such horror
how you have begged for change, change, change
please make it BE ANYTHING BUT THIS
and much as you did, nothing ever would
ease up and chill out, letting the prisoners out in the sunny yard
NOT THIS TIME or so if felt when again and again
you returned to
anguish
who is not definitely no
friend
but the enemy you know better than you ever wished
dangling by garter
over an old dunking pond
the shape of witches still burned
screaming in treeline
Another day more
Had you asked me
To embrace the idea of dying, before allotted time
I’d have said, no savage emotion, ever led me that far
It was as if
I skated every so often, on thin ice of sadness
Without being absorbed, to its fathomless hollow
In that singular experience, I was far luckier
Than those who see only darkness
I had claimed my own piece of light
From a family legacy hell bent on repeating, the same shrouded walk.
From the start I altered trajectory, a mix of stubbornness and fear
For some will be proud of where they came, their strong willed ancestral history
And others … wish it wasn’t so … spend their lives trying to be anything else
I tried so hard, skin chaffed from my fingers, plucking my own way.
So you can imagine the depth of grief, felt reaching that same temporal state
Of wishing to ease the stir of life, by death’s permanent wick.
Often it is not the same course
Brings you to a well travelled place
But the last thing you’d expect
A sudden illness, like a thimble that lets in needle
As sharply she infiltrates your well being
Until hollow cheeked you are wretched, begging for end
On that day it so happened
The sky was the kind of blue dreams are made of
Emptied leaves reached up to embrace the rays
Newly returned birds called full throated to the world
And sitting with a desire to die, and place pain forever gone
I felt the sun on my face, heard the russle of last year’s leaves
My fatigue whispered, do it now!
And I did not listen
Because I truly wanted
To stay sitting in the sun
Another day more
Thrive
Show me how
to thrive
not simply devoured
by starched white spread heart of palm
telling fortunes at Waldens pond
for the ice is surely as colorless
as mine own frosted breath
held in dove cot
awaiting relent
Show me how
to thrive
in wood cut and lithographic land
forging in Shakers wrapped hand
measurement of generations
prescribing latitude
and those born beneath ice water
hardening by each ratchet and slip
We may resemble the other
I assure you
I sink while you swim
festooned in spring
I hear your delight
caving snow into spectacle and whim
scoring snowy hide with virgin bemusement
leaving blushing to first flower
Show me
how to thrive
unwary of the cut of fencer’s lance
skaters take their effortless figure eight
cut me out while watching me sink
bleary are the reflecting lessons gleaned beneath
as trees wearing cost of growth will shield in poplar costs against fall
scooping handfuls of strain into colander air
Wait for the transport
urge yourself into print
pick a destination
maybe a flurry
picked in shake and shuffle
a bridal bouquet
wet confetti
new days
following season
over wooden bridge
frigid with warm step
Show me
how to thrive
For I feel
Tremulous ghosts must stand in patent shoes around me
for I feel their hands on my shoulders tugging at my seams
I who do not cry
weep openly with sorrow
imagining is often harder than
bearing reality
I think of when he will not stand discontented
staring out at flocking birds
I think of the time I found a starling chick
lying cold on the ground
wondering at the bitter sky
why didn’t you give them a chance?
why did you let me stay instead?
discontent
the child who knew the flavor of strawberry milkshakes
was an artifice
lies from adults, how many more?
behind closed doors and screens
I met a poet an old lady who
wrote like she was on fire
when she didn’t write for a time
I knew she had died
again I railed
why take her? why not me?
I stand disillusioned and empty
she who played castanets and sang
she who had wind-chimes and wrinkles in
her vowels
she had so far to go
I do not
I am here at the fulcrum
waiting my turn at the scythe
it strikes me living doesn’t suit
those who feel everything
like a pretty shoe
isn’t practical for walking
you can admire its form
but it will not hold you up
I ache in ways I cannot give a color
or adverb
it is a disturbance of the soul
the card reader told
you have a dark shadow on your back
she has her hands around your throat
until she dies you will wish for your own death
or you could start drinking again
that might work
sitting at the kitchen table at night
rinsing grief from my palms
strange dark sounds comforting crushing hurt
I examine the bones of my face
they feel as if they should have come unglued
reformed into a mask of ache
outside neighbors children are awake
eager for day to start
a lone dog barks at the moon
because it disturbs the pattern of his knowing
it has been long since I dreamed
when I dream I have hope
hope which is always the most painful place to go
when returning to zero you see the futility
of setting sail just as storms are predicted
you were a hurricane I let whip me up
lent me hope
now I am a milkshake that does not
resemble real strawberries
I am sweet enough for take-out
but nobody knows the sadness behind
a glass that looks full and is not
just residue remains
sticking to the sides
I am holding on
trying not to cry
at the nature of things
some known
some found afterward in epitaph
my grandmother’s hand was
blotchy and purple
still I looked away believing her well
you see
I want to believe in fairy-tales
and ever after
but I confess
it is hard when we are surrounded
by lies in
illuminated
jars
Honey
You demanded
I consider Heaven
I thought of lasting beyond
after life
it made me feel tired
like the rosy apple
has its season
its brief glory
then falls to become earth
recycle itself in
spell of worms
I replied
there is nothing I need
in Heaven
once you have
bloomed and sent nectar
into the recess of time
you need then to sleep
your head heavy with pollen
until the bees come
and make ten fold
your apple blossom dream
Extinguished
You cannot see
that my legs are missing
my arms are omitted
my heart does not beat
my eyes do not see
you may say
how dare you
when there are crippled
and broken and rusted and
crusted and burnt and damaged
people who really have
no limbs
no vision
no fingers to touch with
and still
I will show you
the circumstance of hurt
invisible
unmentionable
lest we are judged
left more alone as consequence
wounded warriors who have seen no war
do battle over and over
with scars that do not heal
eyes that cannot burn
more than a slow life time
flame flickering
on and out
persisting to burn
even though it is
extinguished