i should be sleeping but my heart is awake

what even are titles

1. [one]
2. [a poem for social distancing]
3. [three]
4. [four]

bonus: [collaboration]

Calamity Jane
my life in cars
my grandfather was a magician
the second theatre I fell in love with
Fake Queer™
Laws of Physics
Little Blessings
Ode to a Small Town
Why I Go On Long Drives
wildflowers grow in ditches
To Love Recklessly
to be human is to be beautiful in contradiction
missingness ("hiraeth," Welsh/"saudaude," Portugese)
How Can I Love When I'm Worn Out in the World
Evangelicals
It always feel so good to deglaze the pan
we are loud and joyful people
just family things

Come away with me into the desert and

The wind in the trees sounds like the seas,
an ocean overhead,
solid sky beneath my feet

a forest so green
it's like I'd never seen a summer day

keep moving like a shark or I'll sink and die
an object in motion stays in motion

If she were a dog, she'd be the kind of dog
whose whole body wiggles when she wags her tail
and if she were a flower she'd grow toward the sun

our way to dispel evil is through love,
but sometimes
you just have to fashion a whip
and drive the moneychangers out of the Temple

"We are hollow bones" (Black Elk)
"he's naked, which is what he's always doing" (my sister)
"Dianne Kay Drennan, 1958-2009: a pioneer for women in the airforce - 'love one another'" (a tombstone)
"when you're curling your toes,
clenching your feet, damaging yourself
to fit into shoes two sizes too small" (a tumblr post)
"mushily called 'real life'" (Leo Rosten)
"mazes we cannot unriddle" (Leo Rosten)
"inner, furious grace" (Leo Rosten)
"God, with whom he had very little in common" (Leo Rosten)
"may you look out the window when the light is just how you like it" (a tumblr post)
"if anyone is a curmudgeon please have a couple of drinks and yell THERE IS STILL BEAUTY IN THIS WORLD, KAREN" (@ erinscafe on Twitter)
"he died, he got up, so you need to get up - come on" (Pastor Mike from class)

beautiful people are happy
we built sandcastles that washed away
rocks, trees, graffiti on a freeway overpass, the way we need to leave our mark on everything, the final mark carved into a headstone
planes
the time Nadia bought my lunch for me
810 and 586 area codes; transcripts from SC4
looking into other cars when we see license plates from home when we're out of state
human connection: names carved into tree trunks, rocks, graffiti on the sides of freeway overpasses, handprints in concrete, we like to make our mark
bird list poem
smells I like list poem
marriage/funeral juxtaposition
list poem about Marine City with numbers of different businesses and ending perhaps with numbers about the immediate family
fireflies and first loves
a snow poem
dog-eared pages: the sign of a book well-loved
midwinter and the way the Christmas lights still up give me hope
determined but not dedicated
a recipe poem
making yourself fit into the relationship, closing in on yourself, tamping yourself down
something akin to I miss the birds in winter but more hopeful/cheerful [although idk reading back over I miss the birds in winter that's pretty hopeful already]

synthesis
Girt in Nonsense
Impostor Syndrome
The Fruit You Gave Me
I want to fix up old houses
the in-between ages
SAH 289 [*sighs loudly*]
actually all the grandparent poems from last April that I hardcore angsted over

if she were a dog, she'd be the kind of dog
whose whole body wiggles when she wags her tail

and if she were a flower, she'd be a dandelion:



[not actually sure about running with the angst but here it is in case I wanna tack it on the end]

maybe she knocks over vases and visitors
[something about dandelions - oh wait what if I take the angst and turn it around into a good thing again, like people don't like that she's so strong and determined or something]

actually now I could take this poem two different directions - I could continue purely with the happiness/excitment/passion personality thing like "here's a sketch of this beautifully excited person" OR I could take that a bit further and be like "but she's afraid she annoys people" bc big excitable dogs and dandelions both annoy many people

and if she were a flower she'd grow toward the sun

*flowers generally grow toward the sun, fam, so,,,,,,,maybe another more specific image like the dog image??? or,,,,,,,adding something to the flower line somehow? bc I do like it but it is in fact just,,,an obvious thing,,,,

*dandelions
*[brightly][furiously] yellow
*connected? like,,,dandelions are uhhh a network or something aren't they? oh god do I have to do RESEARCH for a POEM???
*growing in the crack of a sidewalk

growth?
happiness?
excitement?
passion?

[notes on kintsugi/kintsukuroi]

a fraying thread
a cracked bowl
worn through,
an old coat outgrown,
secondhand in the first place

filling in the cracks with gold

[idk I like the idea of that but I feel like at this point the use of kintsugi imagery in poetry about being broken is overdone]
[also I feel like I'd like to focus more on the *feeling* - feeling fragile and frayed? which aside from being relevant for many people these days is something I've felt many times in the past]

[also started out with:]

frayed like a thread/cracked like a bowl

[can't decide if I want to go with simile or metaphor]

[notes on yesterday's walk]

The magnolia trees are in bloom.
The world cracks like an egg,

my neighbor mows her lawn
exhaust and the sliced scent of chopped grass

fertilizer

and when the world feels like it's shattered



Still the world spins.
Still the pink and white buds
on the magnolia trees unfurl.

winter is long
but spring is coming

grass stains down the thighs of my jeans

red-bellied woodpecker

the door of the house open,
a spring cleaning

cars revving down the street,
windows down, bass cracked,
tires squealing, top down,
glorying in the April warmth

sparrows and finches querulous in a tree whose
shadow falls long across the lawn whose
branches gleam white in the
afternoon sun

the wind in the grass
on my skin
in my curls

my legs open and close like butterfly wings

a flag straining against its pole, clinking

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,/the earth and every common sight/to me did seem/apparell'd in celestial light." (Wordsworth)