Monday, February 15, 2016

Was Auch Immer

It's raining and the cardinals are in the puddle beneath the bird feeder filled with safflower seeds and for a nanosecond I feel sorry for them-- out in the elements of Winter. But then I change : I want to be more like them. No, I want to BE them-- outside with all the air and trees and mud between toes, cold rain on my face. How we spend so much of our lives inside, encapsulated away from earth, stars from which we came. No wonder we're so lonely. No wonder we all feel we're living inside ourselves, disconnected.

I'm reading these poems by a poet who moved to my hometown. She throws around words like horse, hay, thoroughbred and I want to say, Those are MY words. That is MY hometown you're writing about. Like Lexington is my child I want to protect her. I want to be the one who tells her story. This poet has 4 books of poems out, only a few years older than I am, and as I read her newest, I keep thinking, why are my poems not good enough for a book, for a pretty, paper-back cover. Who chooses who is heard. Am I not worthy, do I not have things worth hearing to say, have I not proved myself enough in journals, in lifetimes, in trauma, in love? Is it something I'm doing wrong-- too little or too much of?


The hours, years I've dedicated to writing, writing dedicated to me. All the poets who have shaped me, who told me over and over: write what you know. Write poems. I feel now failed by.

So yeah-- I envy the birds-- out wild in the rain, ungroomed feathers, in the puddles, beneath a grey sky arteried by tree limbs. At least then, I'd be immediately loved, accepted-- a definite part of the published, tangible environment, like a book that can be held.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

the gods are home

                                                                         mOon

                                                     suffered,
                                                                               not in words                      but openly

                    every month

                                                             to say  moonlight

                                                                                 is beautiful                     and she                   
   
                       benefits you,

                                 correctly,

                                                               up and down

                                                                                     she says


                                        the gods are
                                       home,



                                               and often, gods


                                                         are observing when

                                                             you pour

                                                               for better
                                                                  days

all the feeling

will turn her
aura blue    the feeling feel-
try-finds its weight through her
body    she cant scream
it out     it is not
one of those feeling-types

she has the feeling    again
reminds her of her mother
whose feeling reminds her of
her mother and so on it goes
way back they say written
in her bones in her genes :
what was seen felt when the man
(in the memory's memory-room) was
afraid and drunk and not himself      again

it had been a difficult
few centuries for the family
at the least they had
fresh air   had the voice
of their mother coming out
of her bones    they were merely
occupants of a place    at the least
for a brief time

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The things we do to stay alive

I found bricks to hold so I may feel again
the weight of my body    otherwise i'll float
away from the now before me    around
me    surrounding me as though I am lost
in all the empty space    all the planet-potential
at night books cover my body-- the weight
of scalp-to-toe hardback poems whose bathwater
stained pages blanket me in smeared beauty    I dream better
with this alphabetic weight : I dream :

                                                               my whole
                                                               body is wrapped in plaster    beneath shell
                                                               my body shrinks smaller because my bones
                                                               believe they've been forgotten  & my spirit
                                                               shrinks in unison   inverts on itself    black
                                                               hole spitting out used-to-be-stars on the other
                                                               unseen side of the universe where the other me  
                                                               is very real and counting fish beside the river

Sunday, January 10, 2016

These are not fighting words

A man in a black top hat with a faceless
face asks me if I want to look

into the eyes of a dying whale    in the background
of his question the puppies cry for me

to hold them   they can no longer remember
their mother I peel lipskin with my two

front teeth with space between them
they used to say was a sign a woman was easy



I break too easily this just-begun
day I don't want to hurt before noon

It is 11   I know the whale eyes will hurt-teach
me about surrender the back of my throat makes

clicking sounds like it knows what I don't
like it is hungry but I do know how

to place my hand inside a glove    finger
by finger I know how to make you feel

wanted    it is a good thing
to start by touching your skin


Friday, January 8, 2016

You tried to take the wildness out of me

Couldn't move couldn't find
my way back    to my-body without cold shock
of swallowed-water    Begin with
fingers    wiggle them awake till feeling
spreads back through every piece
of physical-self    It took years
to say the whats I cannot say
because you might someday read this
(are you the reason I only read poems
by women   am I searching
for a confession to hold me)

That was the sound of me confessing contents
of my search-bar   contents of mysilence 
When the blur faded I was able 
to see your face   your face 
surprised me    I don't know
why    I swallowed every blue
balloon and named the cat
Blue   Blue is hiding beneath
the sofa again   Blue's hair is
shedding everywhere   I love
Blue because he's always there
I swallowed Blue
I swallowed decades
of spiked-unacceptable  It was bust
or let out so I screamed
at light-hole in the sky*
became a symbol of my-sorrow     my-brokenness     my-what-broke-me
I shouldn't have
blamed the moon   :
powerless to move   so still
a swallow
would betray the silence
of bone carrying inside itself the memory
of everything I wouldn't have been without you

* (you changed my relationship with the sky)


Friday, January 1, 2016

We are all talking about the same God/ you and I

(your round prayers so beautiful (sit beside the window (a row
of spiral shells ))) I am seeing what whispers
look like   this new day started beside light
beside its lumens cloaking me from cold's sadness
when all the creatures around me sleep

If God is in everything    your God/my God
who are the same    I am sitting on God
who is blue and soft and covered in fleece
blankets    God supports my spine    God
is my spine today as I stretch to take down
strings of God-light    take down the glow-hum
the angel put in a box    put into the space above
my head closer to where
God is said to be    I will walk into
the cold God-air    into its thankfulness I'll have

a momentary God's-eye-view of the Earth and I will
take every Broken    and make it beautiful
again    take my arms    whirl them
into grace's field    into the knowing
I never changed in the center where I am
un-broken    I am still
there