It works its way under my clothes
Traces my spine then spins around front
Finding every tiny paper cut and scrape
Before pooling dark and syrupy
Where it always meets me
Where it likes to go
Then, because it can
It finds me at home
Coming in the back way, down the basement stairs
It works together with the termites who arrived first
It eats through the cellar floor then onto the foundation
Turning all that once stood firm to dust
Finishing there
It moves to my pretty tended garden
A modest but colorful affair
It takes its food and fodder
Then fortified and ready
It swings itself, catty corner, across the street
Smug and full of itself
To my wretched neighbor’s yard
From the archives:
Shana Tova
Scissors
Mammalia
This is no labored, sweaty job.
Myself apprenticed, grasping at straws.
Wearing out my best mind.
Working too hard, but never hard enough.
Instead, I’m handed a gift.
Free and clear. Exacting, portioned right.
Brilliance so bold, who wouldn’t want to bottle it?
Prayers for next time made futile and damned.
This can’t be summoned or conjured up.
There’s no newly paved road, no tarry path to the horizon.
And even if there were, nobody’s lined up and clapping at the end.
Lifted high, without effort, athlete-like from there to here.
I’m alone. By myself and incandescent.
From the archives:
Accelerant
Take This Inspiration And Shove It
You are not okay.
I’m not talking about a suitcase hurriedly stuffed and thrown in the trunk.What this really looks like is a glass half-filled and warm, leaving a tepid ring on the side table. There’s the garden I once tended that’s grown wily and coarse. The paint is allowed to peel, leaving a clear sight line to the writing on the wall.You’re the steward of the overripe fruit and flies. I see you cling to the threadbare, aged beyond needle and thread. Perfectly good you say as you stubbornly save everything I’ve said goodbye to already.In my own little corner I’ve gathered the brand new moving boxes and crisp shopping bags. I’ll put some of my stuff in there. What doesn’t make the cut will get sun bleached to cyan or die on the vine where I left it. Because my work is slow, the job will be three-quarters done before you even notice. From the archives:Modern Narcissus
Five Minutes
Radio Silence
I broke the pact I made
I failed at one, two, three - all the tries
I discarded everything then gave up for a time
Choosing to lay my focus somewhere else
Never became maybe
Maybe then yes - okay.
Here is my unexpected truth
All I really needed was a container
From the archives:
(untitled)
Rending
Hydration
The paper cuts easily
The fabric frays in the beginning, then catches a break
It’s smooth sailing from there
When I get to the kindling, there’s some effort
I put my tool aside and use my hands
The dry ones crack sharp while the others shed and bend
It takes a while, but I do my best
There’s stuff here not worth mentioning
They lay untouched as nothing I have
Or nothing I can be
Can do a damned thing about them
Then there’s the spilt sugar
The wind comes, hot and sure
It makes quick work of the clumsy hand
That laid that sweetness down
The flies and hot water left hungry, myself spared
From the archives:
The Book
These Are My Subjects
Take This Inspiration And Shove It
There’s a tingling in the space between me and not me.
I’m aware of being an animal.
Are you walking these streets?
The hairs on my arms stand up to reach you before the rest of me.
Is it the wind? Or your breath on the back of my neck?
Its useless to ask.
So I question nothing anymore.
Whatever it is.
You are that potent.
One of these things is true.
There is no wrong answer for this.
From the archives:
Testosterone
Time, As Few Of Us Know It
The very second you lost me
She’s the real deal.
Streamlined, aerodynamic.
She glides right past me at the track.
No knee or ankle supports.
No plodding.
Gazelle like and bright.
Her name should be Lululemon Athletica.
Does speed sacrifice alignment?
Sure, but I reject these sour grapes.
This is my time.
The elder in me requires care.
And youth forgives form.
Later she leans against the fence.
Smoking her cigarette, breathing greedily.
I change course to avoid the acrid, the stink.
My brow begins to knit.
Don’t start, I tell myself.
From the archives:
I answered my own question
All of the roads they did lead here
To mend
Rain. It did.
Before I stepped out, a minute, an hour ago, when I lay sleeping, unawares. It clings to the air, the tree trunks, the branches strewn about all random-artful.
Palettes soaked in themselves, wild, unfettered. Promiscuous watercolors I don’t have to paint. This is the stuff of dreams, what my photographer self waits for. It doesn’t look real but you can’t make it up either. I walk up about free, gathering it all in. Having a destination stops me not at all. Ridiculously early I will be anyway. I stop just short of greedy.
The best part is that the rains will come again. I see it in the sky, opulent white, opaque, the wind softening everything.
If it weren’t for the storm brewing, the shadows would be too deep, the palette drying under the sun. Nature would have put itself together again and I would have walked by. Nary a glance at what could have been.
By the time the sky unleashes the pelt, the soaking, I’ll be inside.
Warm, untouched, clothes, hair. Camera face down. Ready to be my other side. Content with incandescent bulbs, the TV, the safety, the perfect dry.
From the archives:
I Stand In Judgement
I walked to the end of the driveway
The Water Table
Here is my steady wish
A horizon line of glassy water
A fine, calm mirror
For the firs and clouds and whatever else awaits you
A heartbeat sweet and slow
A dry brow
An easy smile
The crinkle around the eyes - an extra prayer!
My plans for you, selfless and unfettered
Your table laid with iced confection when hot, warm repast when cold
I hate the thought of anything less
Sunup to sundown need be for you
Ready, accommodating, alert
Shoes to hold not bind
Lay the weary to rest, let the bed rise to meet you
It’s an object, inanimate, and the one thing you don’t have to help
From the archives:
Hydration
Picture Edit
To mend
I’m so much better than I was
I thought I was good before
I couldn’t have imagined this - what I’m doing now
I show no sign of stopping
I’ll keep going on
If I’m lucky
If I’m allowed to live
Ten years from now
I can’t imagine now how good I’ll be
At that time I’ll know what I can’t know now
What can’t be made now
What can only be seen hence
When I see it I’ll understand
From the archives:
Picture Edit
Careful Words
The High Cost Of Being Me
When cold rain fell in sheets
When the wind took your umbrella
When the ground opened up
When the cracks swallowed you whole
When your right hand took the brunt
When your right hand looked like meat
When the rest of you stood unharmed
When your right hand rested
When your left hand shone eager
When your left hand surprised everybody
When your left hand was the hero
When your brain met your left hand halfway
When your left hand remapped your brain
When they both became dominant
When you became the southpaw
When your right hand thanked your left hand
When your brain thanked your left hand
When your left hand and brain thanked your right hand
When they all rolled up their sleeves
When everybody did their job
When you think about evolution
When you marvel at redundancy
When you know why you grow two of things
When you are abundant
When you are rich in body parts
From the archives:
The sun it did rise again
Rations
Yes, Please
The prettiest words are the greedy ones. They alight. Then they pollinate.
Because you have things to do.
Upright and important
You squirrel them away - somewhere.
Until they are a damned nuisance.
Then give it all a smidge of time.
Stingy and cheap but better than nothing.
It’s not enough. It’s never enough.
When you’re about to burst you give them some room.
So what if it’s the rocky soil? The tamped down, head between hands.
The between of, not the desk, or even a nook.
The words, they comprehend.
For them it doesn’t matter.
They see no craggy impediment.
Any accommodation will do.
You are wildflowers.
A furnace, a factory.
The early 20th century.
A virile stag. Aloft.
You are trite but you don’t care.
From the archives:
Plainfolk
Suffer The Words
To mend
That yellow tree begged. No - demanded.
And for that time, you of sinew, of audacity.
Like a pretty, petulant child.
Stole every morsel of me.
The hero dutifully captured.
I moved an inch and commenced.
A staccato of to and fro professional-like photography.
Glistening leaves already lousy with mud and death.
A brush of frost veneer saves them from certain obscurity.
Lucky two foot patch you are, that anyone saw you at all.
Next come the words, unplanned, unbidden.
A slip of verse, a clearing.
Hands breathless to jot, to cradle you.
To pore over and edit later.
15 minutes is a very long time.
Would it be I could live two lives.
Not twice. That's not what I mean.
Simultaneous. Porous.
Eating from both tables.
Not sampling - no.
Full on, all in.
As if there were ample hours in the day.
And enough to go around.
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Radio Silence
PlainFolk
Check Back With Me Later
Either you're quieter than church or I'm deaf.
Whatever it is, I don't hear a damn thing.
This is like trying to listen for fading tan lines.
Or holding my ear up to a soft pencil drawing.
I wish I could hear something in nothing.
But there's no there.
When there isn't any there there.
From the archives:
Chicken Scratch
The High Cost Of Being Me
No Trophies
Hands are to clasp.
Paper to crease, in two, then four.
Thread is to sew.
The fabric to warm, to reign.
What once was asunder.
What once lay splayed and wrecked.
Get me the lamp.
Fetch the bandages, the salve.
I can't do this on my own.
I can't fix it in the dark.
May I weld hot and straight.
May I cobble.
Rough hewn and jaunty.
It doesn't matter how it's done.
As long as it snaps shut.
Sure in itself, sure of you.
Affix, iron smooth.
Pull apart, undo.
Only if you can knit together.
Purl one, purl two.
More beauteous and bountiful than before.
Words to cajole.
That dollop of honey.
Lap it up, scrape the jar.
The repast is yours.
Take your time, for sweet after bitter.
Is better than sugar alone.
Procure me the finer things.
Cashmere wool, marbled paper.
Trained eyes, a wide wood table.
A window to let in the sun.
And a pretty curtain to keep it out.
Barter the merchants, best you can.
But I'll work with whatever you have.
For me, this provider, this job doer.
Even the cheap tools will do.
Check out some previous posts here:
Seats At Starbucks
I won't talk about faces
I've had quite enough of them.
This is my providence.
So here, I do what I want.
I'll write of a landscape.
The color of dried mud.
It goes on forever, this vista.
That's what makes it barren.
That's what makes it heavy to carry.
Or maybe it's an abstract.
Crafted by clumsy hands.
Wielding churlish colors straight from the tube.
Too lazy and sullen to mix them.
Or maybe they like that ugly purple.
Bruised and stiff, if sore were a shade.
They would, wouldn't they?
Believe me, I remember that coverlet.
Laid upon me, such as it is.
A cheap, thin blanket, lousy with thistle
Smelling of mildew and blood.
It's brutal silence
Tight lipped and cool
It's fixed in stone.
Anything else got buried long ago,
With the dead birds and the goldfish.
The backstage of the carnival is always worse to bear.
Than even the part we see, dizzy and swirling.
Why do they come day after hot day?
Year after year?
I said that I wouldn't.
But it seeps around the edges of things.
Wounds festered through the bandage.
Faces aren't welcome here.
But look, I talked about them anyway.
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PlainFolk
Check Back With Me Later
What I know, what I don't know
A wisp of a time
An inkling
Fragile, yet.
For those 15 minutes
I sat in the palm of your hand
Nested there.
Among the flotsam and clutter.
You took that other turn.
I watched you, I watched it happen.
Prism-crisp, I see it still.
Misstep, misspoke, carried off by wind and hurl.
Breeze being too light a word for what you lost.
Turns out I have a shelf life.
Breathe in I'm there, breathe out I'm gone.
Here are the liberties I took
With the liberties you didn't.
I got up from my chair
I raised your window wider
Fresh air! I said.
My lie, white and oft bleached.
Blinded I am, by my own fiction.
What really happened.
Is I let you blow away.
Along with the hope, bunting soft as it was.
And when that took too long
I fanned what was left.
Is it hard? Does it smart?
Sure.
But I'll be damned
If you get to make all the plans.
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PlainFolk
What I know, what I don't know
