In a quest
to find meaning,
we look to our second toes
and ink blots,
buttercups on chins,
tea dregs, star patterns,
and lyrics read backwards
when really
there is no other moment
that matters more than now.
Why didn’t you tell me she was 45, too?
You told me to follow her,
confess, reach, sing.
But how far?
From the inner coil
of a child beaten mid-phrase
to avoiding the knock of bitter ancestors,
was my story
to be a whisper (not sung-
even crows would strain at the edges)…
or could the minutiae be rich
like a glaze on a cake,
the details of my spinning memory
a delicious antidote (anecdote?)
to save myself?
She put on her mother’s coat,
turned on the car,
and died.
But I am fighting that dream to oblivion.
To live the excitable gift.
I am 45, reaching for tomorrow,
sometimes at the expense
of today, since so many yesterdays
sucked color away.
I can fill in the spaces myself now.
Reflections
Passing,
always watching
from outside-
it’s dark and alone
and night where I stand
looking at a frame
all aglow
and inside is a family
huddled like
long ago in a bunker
with rations and news radio
though it’s 2016 and the news is fake,
trickling into their pores via HD television…
I don’t see their faces
but the tv shadows and reflections
on the wall
look huge like puppet masters,
training these people
to laugh and cry on cue.
Drowning roller coaster
She held a fistful of Prozac and waved a monkey tail
while crossing the street.
Haven’t you ever had the urge
to spin until naked,
making up anthems about your secret super-hero life?
It’s not only about invisibility.
Tapping away at a happiness button
is meaningless if you’re stuck on orange
but the barista may give you a funny nickname
if you believe fervently in free will.
She felt the pulse of the city
was like a drowning roller coaster
(but she never buckled up).
I offered up myself with a Boboli pizza
and twenty years later we bloomed
to make this poem.
A Rush
Grab hold of a hill-full of fog and the morning slips away
like the hours alone on the rusty screeching swing,
back and forth until loss of shadow reminds us
to take bread and eat for that keeps our bodies pushing through
this space, all green and succulent even when buried
beneath a controlled burn (if the spirit can weather such a thing).
An open hole to sing from is the same place for stuffing bad things,
but what comes out may be beautiful, like how we love
is always more than how we fear and touch is a gift not meant to last…
A rush of migratory birds makes us forget whatever prayer
we were repeating and for a moment we pretend to have direction too,
a place to belong that exists only in moving air.
The Word Rummager 