April Madness 2019

you always said that
you would catch me
if I fell
(you should've said when
instead of if).

but I'm falling at
9.8 meters
per second
squared,
reaching terminal velocity,
(terminal means the end)

and I no longer believe that
love works like that.

oh beautiful sky
oh round gray stones
I wanna go where the bluebells grow

I've thought of it often and
I've thought of it fierce but
the flowers out there dry all my tears

used to think I was a city girl
now I'm all grown up
and the clear blue lake is my
sippy cup
I will drink it up
I cannot get enough
where the skyscrapers are the ground is all dried up

oh beautiful sky
oh borrowed home
I wanna go where the bluebells grow

7
spring smells like matzo ball soup and rainy days,
almost summer afternoons, and evenings watching
fog roll across the bay and over hills
still green from winter rain:
the only tradition held scared -
food.

for all the times i should have known better

desire fades day by day.

it begins in the high of being near you,
followed by the torment of reminding myself
over and over
that you are only here because you have to be
(and no one would ever choose to stay).

it should end when you leave,
but somehow it lingers on week after week,
as i look for you in unfamiliar faces,
though my inner logician knows
you will never return
(and even if you did, it wouldn't matter).

the pain dulls
into a tiny but constant ache
that only sharpens when i hear that song
or hear a name too much like yours
(and think about how you don't care to remember).

when it leaves, i don't even notice
until i wake up and realize
that you were in my dreams again,
and i feel only confusion
in place of longing
(except now there is another face
and the pointless pain begins anew).

VII. The Weaver Towers West Laundry Room

I drag the basket up and down the elevator
(and sometimes I'm afraid the elevator will finally fail
and trap me inside, because it's old and battered
and sometimes the door doesn't want to open),
haul my clothes into the washer and dryer,
pull my textbooks out of my backpack,
and bury myself in cell structure
or how DNA splits apart
or how to fling bricks
so they break windows.

The words and the ink and the paper mold together,
pulling in my eyes and yanking on my ears
and hiding the steady stream of people flowing around me
as they find better ways to spend a Sunday morning
(but I can't hear them over my headphones,
and maybe that's for the best,
because I have work to do).

city nights are paradoxes of quiet loudness and bright darkness
shadows at the edges of your eyes resolve into neon beings,
angels watching from the churchtops,
hallowed sirens spinning redbluewhitebright signalling to the heavens
stopping hearts with unknown fear and offering momentary lives until
the church bells toll on the hour and the sound
fills ears and breathes new life into
souls that still need resuscitating even after
all these years of hearing sins and punishments renounced
across the downtown radio & television-altar news -
prayers in dark quiet streets are made quieter by the faraway car horns as
crosswalk blasters singe the near-cool pavement through a red light -
no one asks for rain but the rooftop gardeners, yet it still patters down
sending figures scattering for empty doorways and forgotten
Superman umbrellas and lit-up gas station asphalt, anywhere dry enough
to sit and inhale the oildusted petrichor, watching the flickers of
streetlight halos in this dripping wilderness of metal plastic and cement -
petroglyphs betray the oldness of the stones, yellow black and silver
spraypaint proclaims visions seen in waking sleep: we are lonely
in the crowds (we are surrounded by breathing bodies yet see no one)
city nights are paradoxes

#3 - burden

Grief is my mistress' son,
I have known him in so many faces
All leaning toward the light
And looking away into a distance
Not yet formed over the horizon.
I learnt his name in Here
And in Now - the aching
Vowel sounds of my youth
Returning the echo.
I have seen him again,
The apertures of departure
Lingering on sharp cheekbones
And offering reflection.

My mistress lingers there too,
Nails pressing into wristbones
To imprint there - as everywhere.
At three am I wonder
About the tattoo beating in my veins
And whether it is mine or hers.
And does it matter when all i have is her
Love and grief.

The trees whisper
____go home, go home
__stranger among us
as I walk along their midnight path
flashlight wash along the stones
they crackle as I step
__go home, go home
____stranger, among us
___there is no promise
but I ignore it to worship the sounds
crickets and late night rustles
bushes and twigs, a distant hum
of life to whom I am familiar,
____go, home, go! home
_____stranger among us
____there is no promise
__that we will understand
___but you are welcome

Aurora Borealis

They are burning Kansas today.
And I don’t mean some metaphorical Somewhere-Over-the-Rainbow-
click-your-heels-to-go-home-Kansas. I mean the fields
in Kansas are being burned on purpose,
and we in nearby states are breathing
just a bit less easy because of it.
There is no fog,
only an itching in the back of the throat.
Do you know what it feels like
to know of another’s fire, with no way to reach it?
To feel the itch in the back of your throat or
on the tip of your tongue, to know
that you are not their Kansas,
can never be their Kansas
(and here I mean the metaphysical one,
the there’s-no-place-like one.) Maybe you
are Canada or Antarctica or a missing point on a map,
and all your rainbows are rotten,
And none of your tornadoes contain oases.
There is no deeper meaning in your color-coded streets,
and maybe you chose the wrong building materials because you
were never very good at architecture.
It is best to remember that even the Arctic
has moisture, that snow can sooth the worst flames,
can cool the most aching of throats, and there are those
who have been waiting their whole lives for your light show—
you quiet dancing rainbow.

Breath.

I wake to breath. Drift to breath.
Fall to my knees and grieve to breath.
But in the water, I am a diver
holding on to a thread of breath
and the sea skirts bursting with spray
and glistening foam. I plunge
away at breath with each
flipper-stroke pumping under
cold weight, fighting towards
less of myself- less of breath-
holding on to that gathering darkness
and let me preserve what's left
slow, lolling strides and urge,
urge, urge, urge to be alive, to
fight, I can be kicks
and splashes and elbows and breath
wild wet smiles and breath
of the light bending and breaking
and breath fumbling, feebling
crashing through surface, hard,
rich, bright Hawaiian summers
and breath
stretched to the horizon.

Here's the Beautiful Bracket version of what's happening:

i wasn't sure whether to feel elated by
a house-flower we could take care of,
or nervous because you're an orchid,
cursed to wither in my shaky hands.

we had bad luck with a pretty pale
purple-pink plant that never bloomed
more than it had before, and simply
faded away and shed all its leaves.

you're light-hearted, quiet-shaded
with a slightly shiny middle dusted with
a sprinkle of red flakes that looks closer
to a light peppering of spice on a near-white
canvas, slight tea-stained tinge in splotches.

i find myself falling for your sweet, slowly
blooming buds, while i let my parents' pierced
words about your pasty colors pass through
an open window to even more flowers i want
to watch grow and cultivate for years to come.

Sunday Sonnet No. 2

Our meetings fill my mouth, my mind, my heart
with food and words exquisite on my tongue.
The fire of spices burns when we speak smart,
while words as sweet as cream clear out my lungs.

We sit at tiny tables, dimly lit,
our legs so close, like pasta they entwine,
bent o’er paired dishes, passing small tidbits
of tales from life combined with bites divine.

My meal tastes stronger when I eat with you,
but as we part, doubt simmers in my gut.
You may be comfort on a new menu.
The pattern: fall for friends as, from trees, nuts.

Am I in love, without a second thought,
or am I Pavlov’s dog, with food, so taught?