Wednesday, April 30, 2008

May comes tomorrow

April 28, 2008 - Monday


onions and graphite


writing
late into the eve
of a day of
slow stewed savories

wrapped in warm
chenille I fell adrift, room
aglow; faint scent

onions and graphite
on my hands
filling dreams



April 24, 2008 - Thursday


breathing the good wet earth


Through the tall wetland grass she glides
bare legs, limbs, nosed sun-kissed

long hair a glisten
on toward the herd,
the baby white she calls Hopi, the people.

From the rocks comes the baby snake
skin new and body blue organs,
eyes milk white, gleaming blind
into the warmth of her palm.

The way was leaving
and her mourning would go long
into lives as yet unknown

where she would dream her days
of breathing the good wet earth.

And where she walks, with Hope she goes…


lymerick 121 (yes that’s a random number...)


little girls dream of Princes
little boys dream of luck

but the gender nutritive
on the whole,
they're more oftly fucked.



April 17, 2008 - Thursday


bright penny


I
nary the first to come away
unstick from the mess that binds
that took a life to ingrain

– yet like a child to the sun
her first bright penny –

she looks on it all with wonder

II
and what it took to unconform;

those things that should frighten
release her heart to soar.

in her new day
no other's



April 16, 2008 - Wednesday


a strange malaise


knowledge, comprehension,
bring about a strange malaise

as if something detriment
to innocence were lost
with their gain;

sad and bittersweet
the joy of her ascension

how she loves her way.



April 15, 2008 - Tuesday


her heart’s unrest


There was a comfort
to the lack of want
and the
– not so much denial of self –
but a firm hold on the reins
on the strong will that said
conform

an allowance
of observation of others
that keeps you unnoticed
of liberties the norm
cannot come away with

but I was not free
perhaps never would have
in completeness

if not for another paying

the death toll

oh my heart knew peace
(of such without tactile
pleasure)

my heart knew peace
but my spirit was not free



April 11, 2008 - Friday


if i could breathe water


If I could breathe
Water
the moon to drink
your smile sweet
though brief

fleet


logic’s child

She stared
about the room
wide-eyed
ready for things that go bump
things that may come
in darkness

Logic's child
knowing otherwise
she may be hacked to bits
off-guard.



April 8, 2008 - Tuesday


and the world suddenly


May steals soft into my heart
stalking it creeps along
the shadowed rim
just outside the light;

Robert
brother
death

that first May cruelly

these years of becoming

and the world suddenly

too wide

the nights of wonder...



April 6, 2008 - Sunday


she seeks


Her inheritance?:
a heart too wide

Yet
when her mind stills
brief
knowledge interludes

and The Quiet
is deafening

The Quiet
The Quiet
feels more like destiny
the harder she tries to spite it

And transcendence?:
The Little Death
far and few between

she seeks.



April 1, 2008 - Tuesday


A question to Mrs. Parker


Oh Dottie,

Did everything throb
that first time you read the author’s name on a book and the inscription inside…
...to you...

Did you adore him?
Were you near enough to reach out
and touch his
…heart…?

Did you desire him?



March 29, 2008 - Saturday


missing in America


the call came one night
around one or two

I awoke my husband who didn’t want to wake

didn’t recognize her in the bus station’s exterior
amidst the crowd of street-lit downtown
faces searching for lost hope
as I kept my gaze low

there she was, down-trod but not beaten
bright eyes in a body hitting forty
always a dreamer
with a scheme up her sleeve

but all I had was credit
and she wanted cash

so at the end of the week at the hotel
the end of the week of getting her clothes
new documents to replace the lost…
food, a hot pot, and anger
at the little cash I could spare going
toward cigarettes
half drunk bottles on the dresser
skimpy swimsuit on the towel bar

gone again

my sister

missing in America



March 28, 2008 - Friday


not what i meant at all


sometimes I
look into things
like health insurance
or birth control
that won’t make me feel
so fat

but I come to no decision
and nothing changes

in fact I come away more confused,
the questions to the answers I sought
not what I meant at all

and the answers?

I’ll never know them anyway.



March 19, 2008 - Wednesday


The Summers of My Youth - short excerpt/non-fiction


March 02

You know, it didn’t stop raining for days in March that year. But it wasn’t a gray rain. And when it stopped, there was Texas in a beautiful spring. It hadn’t gone straight from winter to summer as one would have thought. And though I don’t recall a spring in Texas before that year, it seems like we’ve had several since.


this day

this day
six years ago

when all the world was raining
and all the world was green
flowers, startling abloom

the smell of damp earth

everywhere
everywhere

and then we buried you.



March 14, 2008 - Friday


i have become


sometimes
when I am happy
I cry – senseless deep sorrow.

it’s for you and you
and how you used me
that one of you knows it
the other will never cop to it

that brother is dead
sister is Missing In America
father is happy at last
mother may never know
only she can help herself
that My Husband Once has grown without me
because of me
is the one who knows he used me

that when this one man holds me
I feel as beautiful as I believe myself to be

and that I have come this far, baby
can do anything
be anything

I have arrived
have
become

and cry perhaps
for the sorrow and loss it took to get here.


mind a drift

My Husband Once
had taught me how
not to pre-wash dishes,
not even to knock the big stuff loose
what a time saver!

and the dishwasher
took care of it

and we could be out and on
to other senseless tasks…

but in my little place now
where when things break I fix them

or not

I am learning

I loved my hands in water
and the clean smell of soap
puttering, doing, making

and the time

to think

in my little place
where these little things please me

and I walk-about

singing



March 11, 2008 - Tuesday


otherwise


Last night I dreamt

of Medieval things.

They came at me full on

in blood and glory,

Honoria with her sword

and the fire burning...



Words for the visions,

aglow in air came streaming,

I the vessel to convey.



And I awoke weeping.

All I want to do

is write these things I dream.



But the world won't let me;

it would have me otherwise.