A calm I first knew
in the warm sting
of Miami beaches
in the swell of
a wave was
enough to hold
my attention,
thankfully,
a relentless
press.
Could I be free
from chains I was
born in like my
mother and hers
before
to allow them
to break away
even as they
bruise
and clank.
Because this place
can make a person
unable
to feel or see
what is right
in front of them
when the image
blurred
by sad memory
or old pain
seems as real
as it gets-
so loud,
demanding
we remember
everything
to survive
and we
try to carry with
love, without
being angry
and with all
the fragility
still, so
we will not become
the darkness,
we might become
the very thing
that keeps balance.
Some say
this world is soft to
lessen the blow,
and I feel the
partiality of it
limiting-
I cannot
in hand hold
this beautiful place
the complicated petals
layer upon layer
like a chrysanthemum
without holding
the dark, as it is
between each
shining edge
a defined line
showing
this petal and that petal.
And instead of running
from everything
known
like I did at first
like happiness
was a thing
ran into, suddenly
behind a door probably
someone else opened
waiting to be found,
one day, I began to see
in places that
cannot be touched
by perspective
too much like
on a snowy, narrow
pass in the Cascades
where my heart
could still
its panic:
in that moment
a rush of wind
is beautiful
because I live-
I knew to go
looking after
the waves.
And the vast words
held too long
unsure of how
to say them
having not defined
what was indefinable
could split ice
and rock
beneath the places
I kept running
and I would simply
slide
for awhile.
It took some years
to become still enough
that my own shaking
could not unground
my thoughts/
and longer
for the hold
to take place
that is space kept
for knowing things
as they are
as much
as is possible
in any moment
without needing it
and with all
the uncertainty
where I could look
at what had happened,
these chaotic moments
and grief
that could crush
who I believed
myself to be,
to look back instead
with love for the sake
of love and gratitude
that I was myself
all along, especially
in the rainforest
walking, or with hands
digging into the ground
another living thing
having not much choice
in things, like lavender
with its sweetness
for no reason
to give it water
when it would not rain,
part of the learning.
Can you see
where the heart
will survive
by it’s aching,
running to be free
knowing what is
and isn’t worth
staying for,
is as basic as
need of air
if in a place
a person feels
their own thoughts
cannot be trusted
when it is mostly
the thoughts of others
like a sidewalk, broken
but you try to run
and trip.
But finally
to hold still
in the calm of
knowing the dark
as it is, dependent
upon that which grows
and thrives/ maybe
a glimpse
on a mountain pass
quiet enough defines
the edge
of your self
when it is difficult to see,
you have held it.
Tag: Poetry
a cautionary tale – Zelda to F. Scott Fitzgerald from the hospital
Dear Scott,
Remember how I told you,
“I am really only myself
when I’m somebody else whom I have endowed
with these wonderful qualities from my imagination?”
I’ve been thinking, all those pieces of me
are like pecans in a loaf of bread
baking in the oven and as it bakes,
those pecans get further
divided by space
and fluffy dough stuff/
think that’s why space
with all its soundless,
cold in-between
was something
I didn’t care for at first
but now I look up
and see myself
in the reach between stars
in the places of nothing:
a soundless place
I can speak and
hear it.
I am not silent in a clothes basket,
4 years old and thinking I am hidden-
no, I am un-shelving continents
with my dancing
with my love
having everything to say
and nothing worth saying,
according to myself.
When I went insane, love
I was caught up
being every version of me,
a puppeteer holding the strings
poised but unmoving
uncertain in where
this one goes or
that one came from/
‘they’ see
an effervescent, socialite
dancing on tables, and
I believe I’m showing daddy
I don’t need hard work
to build character,
that my beauty is enough
but, truth is
I was working hard,
I could live off the wistful smiles
on boys faces and be plump
as a jelly bean
stuck to their cheek,
that sweet aching
they don’t really like
but take all the same.
I was many versions of myself
scattered around a sun
and I could feel a warmth
but it was skin deep
and these parts of me searched
one tip-toeing on the event horizon
with a spoon in her mouth
flask of vodka on her hip
and another draped along Europa’s
smooth surface orbiting Jupiter,
her tidally locked, lover
(they say Europa spins faster than its orbit,
because the stuff inside is unbalanced, Scott).
Remember when I jumped in the fountain
in my red swimsuit? The space between stars.
Remember how our feet burned on white sands
bright as whiskey fire when we lived
at the end of everything
and the beginning of anything?
That burning was close as we could get
to finding the sun I speak of.
I was most beautiful
picking all the things I love
about people all the things
I love about living: laughter, dancing,
drinking- all the things that please me
scant almost too much
the way men turn me
like hands turn the pages
of a book
a blank page
opened in the night
and wanting to be
filled, or to know
finally, what do you find
between the stars
and the sun?
and was it enough.
On that beach we lived for awhile
where I should have felt some peace,
my hunger just became greater/
all those versions of me I created
and not one sun upon which to orbit
like the pecans in that loaf,
I am lost now
foot stuck in an air pocket
in that fluffy stuff and
100,000 versions
scattered across the universe-
the paths are all broken
or were they just
never charted.
Before you sent me away
sometimes I would think of baby birds
when hungry, but I wouldn’t know
I was hungry or
I’d think of a zipper over the mouth
of little girls and all the stories
that could be told
watching our daughter reading
under the oak tree
and didn’t know
there was a sadness,
I just kept dancing
hours upon hours
so I could be as
worthy as you were
to be alive.
And, when I said to you,
‘People look like ants in a bottle’
I was just afraid I was the same as them,
these people that looked like strangers
walking in circles and
that I was a stranger, too
all of us like ants
marching in straight lines,
protecting the queen, carrying
bits of leaf back to our anthills, so
I needed to love you first
and live incidentally
and that’s really
the story,
don’t you think?
Now, all these grown men
try to fix what’s gone wrong
with shots that make me shake
with violence,
and my mind is hoarfrost clinging
to bare branches,
my self, a ghostly butterfly
too insubstantial
to rest on the flowers/
I wish
I’d stayed with the girl
in the clothes basket. She
liked to talk about happy elves
in a make-believe place
everyone told her she needed
to leave behind, but she
is real, can follow the path
from her smile to
the stories creating
who she will be
when she is stronger
if she trusts
she is strong
and not a woman
who needs you.
I am the empty cup
with no handle,
the handle is somewhere?
Maybe
it was your hand on my stomach
as you slept maybe
I am a little girl you told
could only bloom when
you were sleeping
so you could be
F. Scott Fitzgerald
without inconvenience.
No one could have survived us, Scott,
but everyone really did love me,
didn’t they? All of my
stars and the space
between them,
if I could choose again
to chart the paths
with someone by my side:
you, my family, this world
or even my own heart
if I would stop and
feel this hunger.
in caves
Sunflowers grow | beneath cliffs, a din heard in the mouth small sound of roots deep, stems bracing waves that crash high like a hand held to the face with eyes closed pauses all of it here, some will arrive by wandering but it is dark and so much unknown to wander freely or consider to stay. We see only their crowns as they breach the unseen, their beginning is close, just a step into a place the sun holds without ever saying, hello/ we could know them: their bright faces petals a happy yellow and lovely, framed in what some would say is joy but they are shaking their heads slowly no, yet again with each rising and setting, they follow from the place they would leave if only these deep roots inch by inch would pull free - Did you know stems grow in the night to the west so the head can sway to the east at sunrise. The stem guides like stars in the night, desert sky are persistent or pollen on a honeybee is small easy to miss but irrefutable/ they, are guided far round cold corners wide, clementine eye, happy and content/ how the heart keeps the mind stays the heart to keep on and the sound in this hidden place, brushing upon damp walls: the wind at the end of its journey over wave and accidentally in this hollow is song like woman who whispers, do not let me break, please but same way, rounds corners and rejoins the sky- wandering you may slide cliffside into deep ocean, not seeing it is a cliff where waves will slam the mark of this place, and will swim near a place dry but dark and cold when no one is around to see you. Wild sunflower grow, long stemmed and leave, I would say this old cave- eventually. Eye following the sun even as it sets with you, no madness or sad keeping of memory but growing round cold walls into the quiet beauty one day, of knowing nothing of the previously known.
paper crane prayer
Blooming in dark alleys these bullets called innocence: children who discover the world sting my eyes these bullets called innocence pepper on the page sting my eyes and they are wet like my father’s when reading, The Little Prince and they are wet between the pages when reading, The Little Prince and I am riddled with responsibility between the pages a crumpled paper crane, a bookmark and I am riddled with responsibility leaning between pages now a pause a crumpled paper crane, a bookmark this tired from saving the world leaning between pages now a pause thinking what kind of story is as good as: this tired from saving the world and knowing/ the beauty of night jasmine thinking what kind of story is as good as: children who discover the world not knowing the beauty is them, blooming in dark alleys.
habitant
The people we play
the ones remembered
from memory or some story
a ghost beneath the nail we
scratch at hunting fathers'
tender and mothers' dreams
splintered beneath unkindness/
it's the mantle of yesterday
of what is loved and not
yet owned or even known.
Still we choose to be brave
to live a life kinder, flowers are
on the table because we thought
to walk to a garden, coffee brews
on a Saturday morning, little feet
already rushing beneath the sun.
My heart, does
a war rage outside the window?
Are the people who wage it
good? When I blow upon
the palm, even in this
dim light dust looks a little
like stars, and I decide
there the universe is
in my own hand,
and the children receive
this debt, a path lit
by this child we stay,
a joy that is owed.
dear wildcat
winter comes again in time and our
skin splits/ the heckling of stars:
the way implied, they could
be a sun, be the warmth
spoken of, yes I know
and we instead cracked
cups glued many times
hold fast.
how small the earthquakes warn
of a shatter and maybe
we choose to tie the rope tight
instead, tight around
our own eyes-
my dear friend, hold
the hands of your choosing
eyes shuttered and heart wild
with hollow rage like
a sun burns
from its self until done.
and what can we choose but
an anthem of joy or
despair?
dear wildcat, please free yourself
of the hunters trap and if
you must chew your own
leg to be free, be free
or if the rope is tight
and just right, I will try to
find you if you ask,
because I know your wild heart
and you know I am cracked
and full of nuance/ how you
came along and saw me going again
above the waves, breath held
to go down again but I stay
where nothing will rip
feet from sand, even
the crash all around/ but
you could see that I was tired-
it will be a choice, my dearest friend
to let an anger go that will not
destroy your enemies, at the
knowledge that nature is unjust
and will not strike down those who
would harm but give them chance
after chance… for you and I
to speak truthfully and
uncomfortably is
the only justice.
so pull the wound wide
and see like the ocean waves
there is no choice
but to return to the shore pounding,
flailing as a storm brews or in a sleepy slumber
beneath a still blue free of everything
but the pull of time, no choice
but to hold, “thought by thought.”
through the trees
I smell gardenias when I think of warmth,
feel smooth, hardwood under still new feet
how little hands can scale old
umbrella trees like that iguana
castaway one morning after a hurricane
I spotted arching up into the leaves
and little feet swinging in the air:
how I hid a small cache of treasure
perched on a branch
just like him/
shiny plastics from my costume
I wore during the warm, Miami nights
twirling and dancing in parades
flipping on the black asphalt,
sometimes landing on my knees still,
and unconcerned I’d collect the
shiny stones that fell off and
put them in the tree hole somewhere
high up- reminded of how I could shine
so bright when I moved quickly,
how people watched
entranced with my spinning.
One evening after dark
I played on the sidewalk on my own
an only child and wildly imaginative
and spotted the cactuses slowly opening their flowers
like they did every night: a night-blooming
cereus that I went over to put a tiny lizard,
a green anole, on its topmost point
of green just above the little spike
how it launched itself into the darkness
between itself and the ground way below-
my alarm and wonder at his tiny bounce
before he ran. What if, he had stayed
atop the blooms having been placed
so safely by my hand,
where the stars above were now closer
and the grass that usually towered, tiny
and inconsequential? And, I hoped
it would feel freedom like I did
up in my tree, free from all
the must-dos and perfection
the pressure to remain small
but be admirable. I found myself
closer to myself in every treetop
or perched on a floating log
in the partially frozen alpine lake
one spring or stepping further
into the warm waves of the Atlantic
where all that is heard now
is time and my own heart.
In Due Proportion 