Yellow

Ever notice how yellow is a gathering color?

It doesn't stand alone

but clusters together

fields of mustard

as if

it has a cumulative desire

to trump the sun.

Winged

I am sparrow

claw clutching edges

of poetry and prose

little evidence

that the hard work of soul

is in flight

Desperate

I was sitting with a friend last night who lost her husband to cancer last year. She said that it was almost as if 2010 never happened, or it was ages ago. And now, almost twelve months later, she is saying she is no longer numb, and the grieving even more desperate. And I want to tell her it will end, but we both know it would be a lie. We grieve, we die, we are reborn every day. There are moments when we are living, and dead moments when our blood is turning to alcohol beneath six feet of earth and the beetles are feeding off it, drunk and inappropriate.

No hands, no retreat, no return. Only a continual going out from our shoal, arms out, belly up...bloated and burnt. Then you lift me, with your sweat and love, desperate even in that. Desperate for that. True gifts indeed.

 

She Took Me With Her

"When she went, last night,
She threw closed a
Thousand doors and
And a phone lay crushed on the floor

It was a fire, big and wild
Of another's wood
That scorched, not warmed
And only a river of tears
Might put it to shame

She hushed me quiet
As she opened her window,
That i might see
A clenched passage

Unavoidable

We didn't speak
Or hold hands as
She guided me
To where her innocense
Had been sacrificed anew

In her hands of a child
She carried a sack of burnt offerings

I watched as they squirmed
And writhed to escape
Or perhaps, fight escape of
A resolve they underestimated

As silently I shadowed
And her child's fingers fisted,
The sun withdrew knowing
It had no place here

She sat me on a bench
And looked away as
She settled beside
My torn shell of helplessness

Then it began,
Just a tear, then a stream
Finally a river
As one by one
The bag was emptied.
She cried too

Purge,
First a history
That should never
Have been written,
Then a guilt, mindless
Of compassion

Next,
A horde of miscreants
Masquerading as love

Brothers, so called
That might have sheltered
But instead hid beneath her,
And a sister that might have loved
If only she knew how

Efforts,
To fix, explain-conceal
Music
That fell just one note short
Of true healing
And two wine glasses
That lied about forget

And finally,
Mothers
That never were
And weak, foolish fathers
Who never could be

And when at last

the bag was empty,
Swept away
In the dirty flood,
Then she took my hand

And it was no longer
A child's frightened squeeze
But rather the tender hold
Of a beautiful woman
Who would no longer

Carry other people's trash

To the curb

Then close, she let me draw her

as I kissed away her tears,

And her sweet face

Found my shoulder.

She let me hold her

Having learned her hurt

And she taught me love, again

The way it should be.

And when

There was no more to do

No more to cry

No reason to linger

-She let me walk her home

I liked that she took me

I like that we held

I like that love still lived

In a home of broken windows

And dirty linen

Where rats rule the cupboard

But I hate that her heart had to shatter

Once more

As purchase for me to learn

That her love is unbreakable" -  9/15/11

*Sigh*

On the edge of all I know
I am brilliant
clearly
the things I fight against
are truths that wish to be known

And yet
all I can do is live what I know
as today
and acknowledge
that I am fucked, either way.

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the things we do against all we can't

It's 5:00 AM, I'm on my bike beneath a teenage moon that's still wide awake from a night of heavy partying. His eyes blink drunkenly as I follow the beam of my narrow headlight. If he wasn't so hung over, he'd be doing a better job, or at least give way to day. But the sun will hurt his eyes, and he's in no hurry whatsoever to fall behind the world.

I pedal to the coffee shop with my goosebumps on full alert to the temperature of night. I stand at the counter, rub my eyes. "Decaf." She looks at me askance and I shrug. I take the long way home...stopping to window shop and sip the cinnamon off the surface of my Java. When I get back to the house I tuck myself away in the backyard...book of poetry, a flashlight, my warm mug. The moon yawns and slips just a bit...just enough that the world becomes silhouette, and I nothing but another black mark against the skyline.
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Easy Out

Ommission has a backward ease to it

you can't return
to the forgotten
once your footsteps
have hardened in clay

so we shrug

there's no power over yesterday
today
and no ruse to circumvent
error

Let us lie
at the intersection
of our parallels

(poem response to a 3 Word Wednesday poem. Photo showed construction of two bridges that ran into each other.)

All Arms

It's like we're legg-less
crawling up each other...
all bicep
shoulders screaming

the only ease
seemed surrender
on one side or the other
and strangely, I've white flagged 'em both

But ease never carried much promise

I live my life like a war
and each day a battle.
These arms have always been my strength.
Coaches would tell me to kick
kick kick kick
but I let my arms do all the work
'cuz I never really had a leg to stand on

I know this...
they keep holding on
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(L&L - Was a little drunk when I wrote this)
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Sparks

and when she lit him on fire it was like the fourth of July.

He hopped around like Brer Rabbit on caffeine

colored sparks coming from his ass.

She should have been horrified,

or at least worried

but she hadn't the skin for it...worn as her sediments were.

(response to "what you got?" That's all I had. At the moment. Just sayin')

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Heal Thyself?

The fact of the matter is, we all try to heal ourselves.

You are gauze, he is tape, she is stitches...

we take. we take. sadly.

But (and here we've come round again) we bleed out, and need attention.

It hurts to be the healer

It hurts to be the sick

and we've all been our share of both.

So empathy will be our bandage...and a modicum of mercy.

I have been the child with the cancerous childhood. I still attempt the surgical removal of every tumor. I have no blade. I grab your hand and poise it to slice. It's just the way of things. But I love you no less for it.

(comment to a post)

Photograph

I laid it in the sun
exposed
perhaps to watch it fade, or to highlight it...
I'm never sure
but I clip it to the post in the yard every day
watch the light do a slow roll across our faces
in no damn hurry at all.

It seems as vivid as ever
all that weather, yet still saturated with the hues of love and denial

I think the color releases only in pace with my eyes
and when they see their last
the sun bleached photo will take flight
a graveside dove.
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The Collector

I think one of the greatest things we do for each other "in here" is witness. Without judgment or even opinion at times, we witness each other in the minutia that gets missed. So much goes on between our ears, the unspoken growth and death that our fingers scream about on the page. We witness these things and press their petals into our scrapbooks. It's important to be so heard, and collected.

(blog post response)
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To Capture

How do you fold and package anything?
I cannot.
Whatever I capture still has life in it,
trailing vines that leech out from the corners and curl about
as foreigners with cameras around their necks.

There is no containing such a flash. I wish there were.
And then I don't.
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Quickening

The Quickening

could be a novel, a movie, a psalm, a proverb.

It is as ancient as Adam and as quivering as Eve.

It is the light that draws our wing and burns our breath.

Ah...the quickening.

It is our life, and our death.

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Absolution

The scent of absolution.
Such a dainty thing.
We sniff like dogs, thinking it fragrant like NEED, like steak.
And with our nose to the ground, we miss the delicant waft that came like a moth
beneath the light of our search.

Now I wait for it to come back around,
yet knowing I need only ask.
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Musical Exorcism

I am picking up the guitar again.
My arms and fingers remember it like the weight and shape of my babies.
And I think to myself,
if I could write a lyric and a tune,
have them flow out from my levied equator,
I could exorcise things
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As It Happened....

We made love
red heat under my skin
like a boil, a welt, coming to surface with a sting
the pange of regret, and the oh so fucking awareness
it wasn't real

But we gorged on each other
and I spread my legs to you
the width of you, and us, and wider still
as if I could not open enough
and it never was...was it?
...enough

But your name was in my hair
scritching out a memo of our deed on the pillow
where I lay naked, moon light bathed
because you would have wanted it so

And on the last wave
we floated away
as if we ever had.
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Off The Cuff, Like This...

"I want to fuck a girl
No wait! Maybe two
Or maybe a girl and a guy
Or maybe I want to just fuck myself

I want to drink
Get drunk
Piss all over your shoes
Then puke in your pocket
Just so you'll know my life

All these bastards driving in circles
All these thoughts
Driving me crazy
That damn ocean
That just won't listen
That lover full of self
My life, full of shit

I wish i was fat
Just to wish myself skinny
I wish i was fucked
Just to break the wall
I wish i was drunk
Just to piss on your shoes."

~Lil' Coyote
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Spade

I'm digging

always my shovel out

the handle has worn grooves in my hands.

now the water runs free when I attempt a cup.

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Bad Economy

Is this economy of self....
hiding much of who one is?

Ha! If so, I should conserve.

But I'd rather die empty
than a full sponge un-wrung.
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Rainy Days and Mondays Music

♫You first found me in my holding pen
Stopped to take a look and stuck your finger in
I bit one off and you came back again and again . . . hey
Then the nice people let me out one day
And you told me how to act and what to say
But you never get what you wanted that way )
Did you baby?♫

______________________________

♫Everybody's laughing
Maybe it's just me
Just something unrequited
Maybe it will never be

I lean into the whisper
But I don't hear a thing
It's a tear in the dark
all alone in the car in pieces.♫
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Plant From Linda

It’s notable to give a living thing…

as if whatever instigated such a gift

continues in long life

far beyond any act of kindness

or consideration
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I Know Nothing

I agree as much as truth allows....

which in small amounts

poses as wisdom

until it disappears

into the thin air of pretension

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Wave of Madness

Madman across the water
enigmatic in his restraints
lambasting the barnacles
as if they could be blamed

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The Good Fight

If I choke

in dead of night

and me deader

therein

I hope my wings

are sufficiently tattered

and bald

in the giving of feathers

and currents fought.

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Untitled

I've a boat

floating still, with the sheer force of my will.

The buckets of my hands

end the oars of my arms

fulcrum of broad shoulders

forged in the rain

forest...to so many

wet trees

Come,

under the umbrella of my hair

where even flood waters have no rise
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Thick With It

I see you with your head thrown back

neck slick with exposed pulse

mouth open

gagging

with the indigo oil

fresh from dredging

new caverns

with the drill of another

male

phallic

polite

release

Release

R E L E A S E!

muse

Ann

three letters

who can absolve me

with one vowel?

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The Office Job

It's strangling really

and outside there is air, and breeze, and water

but still a city

the majority of it cast in the gray blend-all color of cement.

I would have to go farther

far beyond the front door of this square

to feel the world as round again.

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Déjà Vu

a day as slow as this

my ear laid open like a stream

wide eyed against the repetitive quality

of this moment, so like the last

yet awe inspiringly different

if subtlety is missed

how will I know

that déjà vu is just a myth

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Be a flower on a hill
grateful to die in
someone's open palm
surrender and be strong
stronger than the will
not to

perhaps fracture
in two
the body, dormant under the finger of a caress
the mind
gone Earhart

but that says something
something harsh
something less than you wish
a black check against your white expectation


(Words in Italics belong to William Michaelian)

Silent Conspiracy

I'm not sure

I'm not at all sure we haven't a mute existence between us that is conspiratorial.

The eyes have so much to say!

The slope of your shoulder is brethren to the tremor in my knee.

Together they whisper about the nature of our lives

and bat our wishes between them in the cloistered halls of our monastery.

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2 x 4

I stand between
my beginning, my end
spectator
in a game of chicken

-----------

I've lit and scorched
my own hand, my own flame
contradicting
all but the scars

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W I N G S P A N

you're still caged
i see the bars
i feel them more

it's gonna kill me when you fly
but God help me
i want to see it
more than my own
flight
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Perfect Storm

It was the heat
an exacting temperature
a bumble bee, wind chimes
some kind of smell in the air
anticipatory, recollective and humid

I walked into the house
and was assailed by it
the perfect equation of an echoing evening...loosed.

An apparition, bewitching and amorous
wearing the full season of us,
regalia of last June,
knocked me off my feet
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Reply to Joselyn

I undertand it, feeling unloveable.

I know how they will try and talk us down from this ledge
how they will congregate on the sidewalk below
their hands over their mouths in mock surprise and fear
the well intenders
singing the praise of our worth
and tell us how fucking lovable we are.

But you and I know there are parts that...
dare I say it to you...
only God could love.
There are parts that would make the crowd disperse from the sidewalk
having just painted a big red target in their wake
parts of us so dark
not even mold would thrive.

Keeping Watch

Yes. The best of intentions are in need of redemptions. We never intend to be the error, the virus, the villan. Sometimes we are. And we forgive each other. We leave those doors open. We throw open the window and keep watch for all that returns from what we've sent.
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My Dirty Mind

My dirty mind is right between the eyes
following it's own tributaries into a vast shoreless ocean
following your dirty mind
and hers, and his...
little white boats we are
calm or tossing
crossing paths or solitary.


The water rises in the steam of our imagination
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Chuck's Friday

Let's go dancin'
my feet are shod with good times
born ninety years ago
1921 to be exact
but youthful as today’s movement

the street is the scene of our uprising
sun playing second fiddle
to the incomparable piccolo
of starlings and palm fronds

we've only that white line
to divide us
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Father

Image manipulated from here

I spread my barbs

unfurling all that anger

on velvet leaves of passivity

until I catch the crack

of your eye

and the single tear

you thought I'd missed

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Insistence

It is a moat

we’ve dug with the shovel of our mouths

swallowing the soil of each retort

planting the seeds of our point

until we’ve grown the forest

but lost the trees
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Highbrows

Image found here





My words were sweet

arsenic of insincerity

she ate slowly

from my lips

and of them

fed my highbrows

with manure

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Pulled Under



by Anthony Duce


He plays bass
so fluid I am current
and with me
comes all the living colors
they would have been
could they float
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The Shape Of It

i think we give pieces of our heart away

if we knew the length of their residence elsewhere

perhaps we would be more cautious

but then we would wind up with nothing but our whole heart,

just an organ pumping

rather than the flute it becomes

memories fingering windpipe holes

like yesterday's reasoning and tomorrow's knowledge

perhaps there is no getting over

only through

as seems right

love is not something to be overcome, but to become one with

reconciled in either the having

or the have not

decks delt, cards stacked 

but there remains the space of it

the shape it was, and always is

melodic and missing.

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He Said, She Said

He: "My deal is less about being easily distracted and more about my innate tendency to stare at ceilings...stupefied, empty-headed, and macabrely moody."


She: "I've such a mood. I bring it out for special occasions."


(Ode to Shadow of Iris, and My Dripping Brain)

Irreconcilable

I think I was born in a shack on the bayou.
I've memories of it
small wooden porch
creak of a rocking chair
the gentle sway of a lantern
crickets so loud they drown out sorrow
or are sorrow
or eat sorrow.

My eyes are the color of silt
and I've the scent of the water in my hair.

They keep telling me
I was born and raised inland
a city dweller
but I cannot reconcile the fact

I do not live where I ought.

My soul has never lived here.
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Uncropped

Oh that I could...
excise the crosshatch of scars
reshape them into a frame

You'd stand back
reviewing my handiwork
hip handed and head cocked

"It's no longer art" you'd say
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Unmitigated

Humility is priceless and viral!
Oh, to let it in
spreading into my description


There is nothing greater than self
put in it's place
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Remnants

We leave scent
semen
energy
vacancy

Long after we've left, we are not gone
and our grieving
never fully done
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Tie My Hands

If I'd fingers long enough

or an extendable arm

far past a bones measure

I'd pull heaven down to me

...and weep

at what it became

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Cab with no Ryder

Your truck stopped by today.
We stared at each other
memories clicking by in syncopated time

we left smiling
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Thumbnail

Amazing how a thumbnail can obscure the moon
and how then again
in another sky
it is the moon.

We're shocked by the size
of something we thought we'd minimized
and the foolishness of ego
that ever thought it could
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Multi

I like my selves separate

all Sybil-esque

the moments when they press in

gather

as in conference

to my defenseless lobe cage

is a noisy cacophony

of narcissists
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Let it Lay

Can I say “I love you”
not a call to action
but let it lay there
like snow
on the Himalayas
like a beach towel
over warm dunes
like Grandma’s hand
at the small of my back

that big
and just that small?


(2/15/11)
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that

that

all  that  which might be spoken

in prounouns and adjectives like year old candles which have lost all their scent

sitting wickless and anemic…a tomb of dead spiders.

Melt the sheets.

Let it rain fire from our hair.

All  that  branding our skin in complex touch.

Wilting, we sleep soundly.

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Ugly

I held my ugliness in for a long time.

It roiled and foamed acid

until there was no stopping the hole from which it leaked.

So I loosed it,

only to find it was not the hideous creature I had imaged.

It was human.

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Memory of The Moon

Does a wolf recall the date of it's birth? Is there memory, or perhaps a scent it once new from being within a mother, that it hunts infinitely? The Moon recalls. The Moon...so in tune with the waxing and waning of it's own come and go, keeps track of all it surveys, having shone so often on birth and death. There is a record, etched with a fossilized stylus in craters and stones , and the record is grand. The memory of the Moon is long, and kind, forgiving, and complicit in the earth's forgetting the pain of birth, so that yearly, it yearns again for Spring. And so the Moon holds our unbalanced history...a rose colored collection of our beauty, the moments we got it right, the days we gave in equal measure to our gain, and our effort...the intent of our effort especially cradled with a tender glow. The rest, the sometimes painful, scared, humbled rest, is cast like fast balls within strike zone of the sun and returned via "SMACK" on the sweet spot. The cover flys back to incineration while the core sails across the sky. And there, caught readily in the glove of the Moon, is our essence...the scent we once knew from being within a mother. Safe. Warm. Nurtured. Loved. It is no wonder a wolf howls at the Moon! The Moon is kind, and it's memory is very long.
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Guilt

I tried to chip away at it
only to dent my spoon
and flinch your eyes
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Mirror

Your disgust
was such a mirror
and in it
I hung ashamed skin
over disagreeing bones



(1/5/11)

At The Thought

My heart leaps

it leaps and leaps and leaps
within the net I've given it

and then it retires
with severed feet
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Crepuscule

You mourn birth?
Holy shit!
You are quicksand
to my mind
and so far down
you have pulled yourself
that there is no further darkness

Even my paltry light
casts feeble glow
on a miracle
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Sorrow Loosed

I blow out

acerbic wind

of my own making

chapping lips

and setting fires
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