Poem: May 4, 2019

The Fall of Rome

America can feel like a terrible place,
all of us as selfish as babies, entitled
and blind to our wealth, expecting
too much from our paychecks and
feeling like just because we have
neither the time nor the resources to
fix the attic stairs or to replace the
damaged doorframe where the burglars
broke in, that we are trapped and
everything is broken and Walmart is
too crowded and filled with plastic
crap that we, in turn, use to fill our
houses, and wouldn't it be nice to grow
our own tomatoes and peppers, but
of course, we won't because time
is full and it passes like a dirty river,
and some asshat keyed my car just
before the lease was up, and nothing
is easy, nothing is ever easy except
complaining and giving up and letting
wine and the media fill our cups with
diversions, and isn't that all of us,
rolling our eyes back into our heads
at the latest mess the political class
has scraped up from the bottom of
the pot-- all of us fed from a boiling
pot-- a big, steaming sense of injustice
and dissatisfaction and dust that
collects like ashes and is never swept
up, and we're fighting over virtues and
clutching on to power, constantly
positioning ourselves against the other
and we never hear the barbarians
or imagine the reasons that they gather
at our gates, sharpening their axes,
and all I really want to say is let them
come in. I don't like feeling helpless
or envious or given to waste. I want
to grow a garden with tomatoes and
I want to become wise in my old age.

Poem: May 3, 2019

Retrospective

We've been through this before,
the closed door, the suggestion
of oncoming curves, the sudden
shifts from little girl to uncontrolled
force and hardened will, the kind
of shores that otherwise careful
sailors find themselves dashed upon.

And we know what this means,
that we are becoming less interesting
while her own reflection is drawn
into focus like an artist's study,
something to be perfected, edited
and considered critically from new
angles and through unfamiliar filters.

She is modeling herself like clay,
bending and twisting, reshaping,
or painting a self-portrait, battling
a difficult canvas with never any
of the right colors or brushes, painting
over, erasing, raging for hours
upon hours, alone in her studio.

And we will wait for the invitation
to gather like patrons to a gallery
where we will admire her best
and finished work, cited (we hope)
as influences and source material.
We'll look for evidence of ourselves
in the brush strokes and title cards.

We're not there yet, and we've been
through this before, this letting go,
and in these next days we might
be forgiven if we give in to our urge
to unbend what she has bent, to mix her
colors and to hold her hand, the one
we both know is holding the brush.

Poem: May 2, 2019

My Notebooks

My notebooks say a lot about my brain:
Everything, everything shoved in tight
wherever I can find a place and in no
particular order- not chronological or
in order of importance, just a hoarder's
fortress, a snake pit of tangled words
and the occasional doodle or drawn
partition in an attempt to create order
amid the bits of inspiration, images,
and grocery lists, notes from meetings
written mostly to have something to do
with my hands, outlines and bullet
points left behind and adrift eventually
boxed and stacked against one another
as if crowded into an attic, Exhibit A
in the evidence of my state of distraction.

Poem: May 1, 2019

Not Forward and Not Back

I used to romanticize the past.
There's not a lot to regret or
not like, growing up white,
male, straight, and middle-class
in the suburbs, with bikes to ride
and friends with trampolines
and sledding hills and a long
string of girls to crush on.
Nostalgia comes easy- all curves
and security and personal firsts.

For my earlier years, life was
the act of looking backward,
of celebrating and replaying
the highlights, rewinding and
aching on a five-year delay
while the present grew more
complicated and contentious
in its unsupervised state.
So much easier to play in
idealized fields, to trace back
to places far away from low pay,
addiction, and drifting apart.

To fall in love with the past
is to pine away, to live inside
photographs and watch them fade.
But divorce has a way of waking
you up like a slap to the face,
like a break in the tape, and
the ends are flailing in all kinds
of directions, and there's no point
in rewinding, not a chance of
speeding forward and suddenly
the present is the only girl
in the room, and why haven't
you noticed her before
with those immediate hips,
those relevant eyes, the sexy
way she demands your hands-on
attention, and the constant
negotiations of what is, what
matters, what we want, and where
we will place our hands. Damn!

The present is not a painted lady,
not a lie you can tell yourself.
You'd better touch the present
the way you want to be touched
because to love the present is to
look around and feel your lungs
expand inside your chest. It is
biting into the apple and crunching
through the flesh. It's only now,
and not remembered, a verdant
musk, the heft of something
in your hand, your footsteps
on a solid path. Work to do and
tools and space without revision.

And imagine that path, your only
path that fades into nothing, crumbles
behind you and at your heels, and
all that is to be loved and grasped
within the periphery of your arms.
Even the branches, the divergent
roads that bat their mysterious eyes
and whisper about undiscovered
pleasures, the misty, violet,
starlit twilight paths that sing
like sirens can barely intrude or
be more than a suggestion, a hint
of something in the air. There's
no love there. Not when you
have this: Christmases and game
nights, renovations and mortgages,
dance recitals and grocery lists.

Poem: April 30, 2019

-kai-

Thirty-five years? More?
And still it's easy to settle in,
next to a fire or across a bar,
and find something interesting
to pass back and forth between us
like some nerdy game of catch.

Our two lives passing and crossing
like rivers, and us returning
always to each others' banks.
A place to pause and look about.
Not even imagining that we
might find other places to be.

Poem: April 29, 2019

ikigai

to put something into the world
that wasn't there before: a poem
or drawing. A perennial in the corner bed.

to honor and prepare the way for the ways
we learn, to affirm that learning is nature,
that it happens where the soil is rich.

to see the world as it is and take note,
to feel the presence that is not me,
to touch stones and flowing water.

to find joy, to hold it briefly in my hands
and to pass it forward before its light
diminishes, to sow sparks.

to connect piece to piece, to draw
lines and raise blinds and find the unexpected
ways we match and align to each other.

to be useful and attempt to live
in ways that others find pleasure in, to give
good counsel and honest effort.

to love and make love known
with every muscle and every breath, to gather
and discover our treasures together.

Poem: April 28, 2019

Topography

I've been mining the same hills
for four months now, longer even,
but never with such conviction,
unearthing shiny stones, one
much the same as another, and
placing them in my pockets.

They might be valued in certain
contexts, but mostly the reward
is local, defined by the limits of
my personal radius. My stones.
My collection. My scratched and
dusty headlamp and my daily
shoveling never far from home.