Never tamed

Oh love

death is a transition

just as life is a bird

who interupted, will startle

leaving a smudge of indigo

against stark whitewashed sky

the shush-shush of neighors raking leaves

whose auburn crepe bows in protest

for they wish to lay still with the grass

turn seasons over in their golden hours

this artificial need

to tidy, put away, is but one method

of seizing a control far from reach

I fold in your arms, light gloaming through shutters

out of the corner of my eye I see marks on my skin

the furlough of time and suffering, chaffs against endurance

your eyes look oriental as you age

their downturn makes you smile even in pain

lends you a kindness strangers respond to

quiet is infused with our collected breathing

in this moment we live

sheltering from portent

I see the neighbor’s son helping his mother

he’s grown thin and reaching like the trees

not yet aware of diminishment

or why his mother holds back tears

when the sun paints day dark and shadows roam

casting their memories, as we did once with a torch and our hands

your shape lasts in my mind, a totem

I’ve carried an ache so deep in me for so long

it seems to exist independently

a Golem of my own creation

perhaps he will bend and lift me up, when next I fall

weighted by emptiness and disappointment

maybe he will spin me around in browning leaves

escapees of the neighbors rake

flung in unfettered defiance

a string of thoughts

stirred

never

ever

tamed

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The ingratitude of the well

Inspired by the incredible Cordelia Feldman and her novel In Bloom, for sale now. For World Cancer Day.

It would be easy to say

I haven’t been stricken because I couldn’t cope with it

there would be no one, I have learned, if I were;

not a flower garden, or brothers with curry, or kind lipsticked nurses

socialized healthcare, or odd private room

there would not be a mom bathing or a dad talking

about vegetable garden and the latest episode of Silent Witness

who could really cope?

Even as I say this, knowing the avocado heart of it

I also know I could be stricken tomorrow, or already

as all of us could

(as all of us could)

and privately in a fat second

(like when you see a train wreck and you process a hundred thoughts all at once)

I know I have my will written (handwritten, badly, not rubber stamped)

ready to mail to fate should it come.

When I got sick, though not C.A.N.C.E.R.S.I.C.K., nevertheless I really planned

taking another way out

in my head, thoughts of how bad it had become, lead to imaginings

of suicide and how savage that is to hear

for someone who is dying and does not want to die

the ingratitude of the well

these thoughts fly around me

like bees unwilling yet to sting

my heart is heavy for her

wondering selfishly what I would do

had I the same burden

praying to an empty sky, for that not to happen

superstitious that even the mere wish not to be sick

evokes it

as if fate were laughing and throwing darts

at fleeing people

so helpless, we sink our teeth into projects

wind up time like a ball of yarn

knit it into shapes we can understand

all while keeping horror at bay

the imagined car crash, the loved one never returning home

a cancer growing inside like a whistle

on a hurtling train

it is easy to not find time for empathy

or to feel, it is too close, too raw, too impossible

to process

most of all I think of her grace

how she can appreciate something like a child might

I think of her humor

how she’s had me folded on the floor laughing at the

sheer fucking brilliance of her

I am proud in ways that hurt

she’s everything I am not and she’s also

deeply human

if one person says ‘I’m sorry for your loss‘ I will

scream; “She’s not gone yet! She’s never

going to be gone, that’s just not how

she rolls. Don’t underestimate her

don’t think you own her anymore

than you own your own life.“

Those platitudes are all we sometimes have

we mean them more

than scrolling past someone’s bad news

crossing ourselves, as we step over graves

one day slated to be ours

we side step death like the dancers we are

thinking we’re somehow avoiding

something born before we were

and I focus and think of her

how if I could show her my feelings

they would be in movement, in laughter

in light, spinning like an electric waterfall

like her spinning class, where just for a moment

she is that girl beneath the hot trance lights of

the 90’s and I am dancing along side her

as the earth holds us both, alive

despite any ‘support’ she has

which I am more glad of than anything

though what support does against terror?

I cannot lend a description to

my own failings in the courage department

planning my demise when the first meteorite hit

although I read we use meteorite and meteor and astroid

interchangably

and they are actually very different

with only the burning of the sun

in common to collease

their strength as potential planet killers

my math teacher used to say

a morbid mind will only bring sorrow

of course she was right

in her Laura Ashley dungerees

that would now be worth $300 on Ebay

a funny ole world my grandma prosthelytized

nipping at the ever full box of wine in the kitchen

clipping her rose garden when ABBA wasn’t

sufficient to propel demons

I get it

I really do

there’s only avoidance really

we can’t look into the sun too long

we’ll lose our sight before

we’ve made our way back from the garden

or maybe

we’ll stay, our heads upturned

soaking in the rays

To dearest Cordelia, I adore you.

Please consider purchasing Cordelia’s first novel In Bloom, it is magnificent.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cordelia-feldmans-eight-things-not-to-say-to-someone-with-cancer-p6bvz0xhsts

She is beauty

If her heart were a drum

it would be outlawed for beating too loud

for the insistent and unwary pound

keeping wakeful when those who rest

wish for silence

beneath her is a lake of feeling

if a mime enacted, his black cloth fingers

would grow numb with gesticulation

his elbows fatigued from the shapes

her wordless passion smacked into

taut skin

trembling at the imagining of her

proximity

she breaks a sweat on the fine hair of her neck

a necklace of pearl and moonstone

for each sway of her fruiting body

she is the picker of her sanity

a welcome devil in empty playground

she blinks into darkness, seeing futures

in one, she is swimming in dark water

the stars illuminating only her want

reaching shore, she searches for her among shadows

trying to imagine the way she feels

naked and shaking off

the spill of her longing

in another they are talking

far into time and beyond, where

landscapes break open pink and ochre

like food consumed by gods

she cannot yet tear herself away

from the smoothness of her skin

or how her cheeks slope like arching

cats, pulling beauty from places

she didn’t know existed

she cannot yet reach out

run her tremulous and urgent hunger

along the narrow slope of her shoulders

and dipping into honey, find a

succulence beyond anything yet tasted

she is a terrifying girl who

knows her power and still

is lost at times to its art

the wince and crimp of her slimness

like a willow tree, capturing storms

she holds her head like a wave

cresting against soft shoreline

proud and a little self-assured

the quivering arrow of her curves

tie like a bow around desire

burns in its simplicity

her skin is mango and sunlight

of all her lives spent

before she was found

still like a water fountain

just before it bursts, released from clay

there is harmony and music

in her tread and no one yet

has found the riddle to her heart

something distant and wafer thin

like a fabric of unknown origin

it is not her wish to change anything

but the temperature she feels

when they press against the other

beneath roar of blood and live wire

crackling into cuplets of lightning

it is not her wish to alter one second

save the moment she relents and

sensing something good

releases her perfume and all the

capture of her loveliness

till they mingle as one energy

burning their quickening on the tail of

some unearthed connection

where beneath the moon they

reach for each other and not

the solace of being alone

lying in a circle like warm petals

she draws her hand slowly

over the silk of her

without words sufficient

holds her breath

as long as it can stay

spellbound by her presence

the entire world paused

in reflecting pools

oceans

never deep enough to

swallow

the intensity

of her regard

for she

is beauty.

Reflecting our make

Born inheriting jaundice

from an incubator world

nobody wanted to hold

the baby with malform

forehead elongated, she held on

wishing not to be born

till calipers force the point

leaving behind viking indent

brand scaring watery soul

who dreamed still of utero

without air banishment

moonshine, her first sup

on the mustard kick of luckless child

unwanted by chain-smoking teens

seeking succor in bricked up people

climbing invisible ladders to some faraway mount

not of tablet and command

more a belief if we earn enough

we can pay away our sin

she was a ward of one

listening to water rise in radiators, surge and grow cold

before her first birthday she learned

life is a scolding pecking bird

retreat inward like sleeping charm

wait out first 18 winters

till freed of snow you take flight

cutting yourself out of smite

the unwanted will inherit their cast

dyed in river beds to wash never indigo

the hue of their regret

O to be counted

surely one more drag, one more wrought night

lying back on pillows watching stars trip beyond

their pinpointed direction never clarified

do they seek their diminishment or

have they already died?

showing their skirt tails like faint ghosts

for weary-eyed consumer of bottled night

blinking as neon sign beneath liquor store

stays on throughout retching dark

luring empty hearts toward comforting glow

we drink because we need to feel full

starve ourselves to let bidden pain flow

cut out the parts that remind us how

we came in and left without touching earth

those children of no consequence

developing thick soles and empty shadows

no wonder then we stay fissure thin

in diminished light of birth

reflecting our make

as weary moon, closes her eyes

flits behind rolling cloud

blocking out acknowledgement

like a candle can be snuffed

between a pinch and rub

you are no more than you were

the crust of you, harder to break

underneath there is a word

waiting in turn to ask

why?

must we inherit for our legacy

indifferent design?

Used to

That time

I cut my hair with rusty sheers

just to avoid

hurting you

easier to take it out on myself

rejection makes me a fool

this time

I cut my hair properly and it looked

better than it had since my eyes

did not require to appear full of hope

you always wanted me to keep it long

so I could not see my way out

I stayed

far too still

warm in the notion

you cared

when you had left

long before

and the chill

became something

I was used to

Sore shadow

Imagine hostilities

as buildings

they will stand before you

stay after you are gone

that evidence

in brick and mortar

shows you their truth

begun outside of existing

when next a person cuts you down

tries to reach and tear out your throat

be mindful of this

it is their pain makes their wrath

their loss that attempts to make you feel

as badly as they do

in that

find mercy

and if you cannot

then find understanding

this war they are in

began before you understood

you are simply the person

who walked too close

to their sore shadow