you want to be free—hold
a gale same way it passes
strong and sudden
especially how sound bursts
from the mouth and makes
the stomach soft especially
when the eyes are burning to
burn slow enough the shadows
blend with the light, and
hope is the only peace known,
intimate—when all is a strong
wind and like the wind
so, us.
mortal
like a cobra floats above its own gravity to give a poison—to threaten with swaying—being between thresholds or some,
gentle as a cloud will rise when there is no warmth and so wanting nothing—hold truth like wet sand cradles a jellyfish, letting it roll a little in the tide—like this, more immune to pain like the stars and their dust were that
left rivers in a thumb once, swirling too hotly—and i spin, too, leaving no evidence though i feel like fire—just elastic—same a cloud grows too heavy but always ready to let go, falls
somewhere lighter when the warmth is just enough—
and being of the world and of the stars both, a person leaves no indelible mark—even when like a thunderstorm, breaks— pushing orange leaves from branches and
lets the new leaves in—or with a light rain keeps little faces from withering—to just feel the wind for a time—the gravity that let form its own dream—i dream and wonder if it wonders, too.
immunity
what makes my rhythm—maybe
the way of poison, a bright
color against
the whites and grays
like living by once
how deep sunk the hand
in my head when loved
young and impressed or
how blue the sky bled
aside the clouds and so
stared into an emptiness—are
my notes sharp now on the fall
because i have loved
broken things too much
that love hard or are an absence
and prefer the rain that informs
where a self begins and that of others
must end, not the fuzzy line
mind a cloud and the
blue everywhere—not my self
so tricky
when it is familiar—
an emptiness that allows
things to pass through
like—who i am—same
a cloud pushes the edges
of the sky in shifting.
i dance on the flats,
the way back up
a stumbling, happy song
wanting to stay with
old friends and the ones
i said i would love, and not forget
how mom would only pat
me on the back but never
hugged in private though
she craved me
never like her father craved her
shrinking—she loved her child, same
my friend sung in the driver’s seat
going nowhere loved nowhere
and chose it, she tried to
choose. and like my
father’s books—his
very eyes a tunnel for me
that held the exit—i am
unwilling to be at mercy but
full with it, shifting through
empty spaces that will
push—this very rhythm,
an antidote.
dry air
low chance of rain—the
breeze of heat, heavy
a poppy will lose strength
begin to curl at the stomach
clumps of red, falling—wind
that carries desert sand
arriving and
the swing sparks grass
dry and brown like
flickering stars
wherever hope keeps knocking
with every failed attempt.
the stem that carries the weight—
letting it go—colliding with the dead
again—rising
before the fire catches
on something as dry and wild
as itself—and sometimes
aground for days
once petals fall and the skin, thick
is harder to love.
the bending stem curled
in surrender and
all the pretty poppy seeds made
ice-numb and dreaming—
a summer storm could fell
hold close to the ground
especially now.
wait for spring, for
easy, red petals, the
clouds ocean, full—that
touch every spot and see
how the shape of them
is a truth, a ship
or your friend not lost
but right there, remembered
like the indestructible heat in
memory, too or a poppy’s
most, heavy head
and the sparks and
their immortality.
strong sun
the sky was heavy the day
i decided i liked orange
and pink together, torn
down the gray, octopus
curtain and placed a flower
bombed flag in its place,
sprinkled bits of periwinkle
to calm the delight
a shocked, blank edge calling
and i would sink into the heat
of a long bath, another too
cold day—the sun has slept
for weeks in Seattle—
and float between the shattering
like when i was very small, like
a torn hibiscus bleeds and
laying face-up in a kiddie pool,
legs a tad too long and splayed
in the time-eating heat
i tried to rub the sun from my eyes
but it just sunk in more
until i could see it behind
closed lids—
was a dream in focus
my body a boat
adrift and still
sought out the halting heat that
pauses every thing
this version of me, just
a little bit more time.
endurance
the tide will come in
but i—always—outrun
upon the—jutting rock,
once, being
a starfish holding the air
face down—folded
could not
un-cinch the tongue
let loose procrastinated
words. tender—the
past, tender
right to live
like a sunflower
diverted by the sun’s
path is inevitable
or an ant will find
its queen
i divert in
halted syllables—sung,
hobbled back, face
up—air—
gasps.
snowy flowers
some grow in shadow under snow
shaking off ice incidentally as
it forms to suffocate
any warmth—born into
the bones of their ancestors know,
to shiver in the cold. how
cracks in the dirt divide a world
where rains have run off steep slopes,
the way roots cannot reach another
through hardened places
just the long edge between us
like is the friend who came back to me
already gone and saying, goodbye
too late, evidence of something coming
i could not stop, the same
his mother said it was my fault
because i was his best friend and
my mom told me i did not love her
these small deaths—
i now have a petal that will not
open. from below snow, how
like my mother and her father
like my mother’s mother
who wrote secret books between
making lunch and shelling peas for dinner
pushing the binding to
undo later by another—i felt it
in the cool wind of giants some
neither too warm nor too unkind
driving to work, walking to school
laying upon the ground in a
puffy jacket beside me
and i am bare, until un-gripping
the hands that had to let me go,
the warmth of others burned
like a question buried.
***
a person cannot hold a
defining edge to trace the line
without falling far
being almost one and the same
on thin margins—born
flat-footed and dreamy if
like myself—and maybe
how i decided to just fall
on one side and then the other
sometimes almost too far, and
would stitch each part i found that fit
the best and the worst of things
within my knowledge like
peter pan with his shadow—
that kept trying to run.
maybe like this a person
can escape the bindings that
limit, or was it in seeing
the true face of my mother
a little broken but still beautiful
without the anger,
who tried to give me anything
but what she had been given
who removed her own leaves
to be free of memory—
and could not get enough of
the sun anymore,
until she was only a stem
unable to hold, and
would smile, a
little aggressively
even as she fell. she
did make my heart, too
same as my father taught me
the depth of warmth, and
the necessity of careful thinking
and i took this warmth
like a blanket for any i
might run into being half
a snowy flower, or would
curl up in my own mouth—
too sad to be still
and push
as i wanted for her, the way
she taught me to do
like i wished for my grandmother
and maybe even my grandfather
they called a monster.
***
i define now, on what some
might say is too soft an edge
of what is the truth and what
is a story we tell to make
the truth pretty like/
a flower, too small to be picked
placed in the vase forgotten
next to sunday’s paper
too unusual to be left alone
by those who would wear them
in their hair for a day or two
and what an adventure, how
through hard or powder snow
they keep pushing,
learning what is warm in
how hard they must shake
and the way light looks
a little dark beneath the layers,
and then suddenly, the sun.
In Due Proportion 