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.
Tag: Poetry
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.
shatterproof
the crash
Truth is to forget underwater
how the waves crash
beneath the seam
how the waves crash
truth in seconds
how under
the shower I crash
how in dreams I
collide with colossus
and tragedy and conquer/
uninhibited, un-able to
drive seed to
stem. Truth: I forget
to crash beneath
and end up above
the waves in
love thinking this
is who I become now
like summers I swam
between mangroves and hot
sea surging, that perfect
storm on the horizon – I love
so deeply in truth
underwater in the crash
of waves: how the seam
defines if we will live or die/
the crash beneath
stormy skies
and showers:
and how wide
is the breadth of
a wilderness like I.
us, mirror
The way of a mind like a seed
on the wind floats up
instead of with the wind
somehow, or people born
wedged in sidewalk cracks
deep away from the sun
know where happiness
resides tumbling
upon its arrival:
in this I feel almost
a lucky misfit.
Even a self divided is
scattered like pages
lost within the house
with no binding.
I see windows in every room
that inform nothing except
where I have arrived from,
and, I, in every room
stitch a binding, day-
in and out, am
surrounded by a puzzle
of words on paper.
But aren’t us the
song? Aren’t us the
dream and
attuned to truth:
the paradox of remaining
genuine when a melody
unfolding.
when the war ended
It’s a sad story,
the drowning man
in a cloud of fists
the first thing in morning
woken thinking of yesterday
and swinging wide like a boxer
finds the finish when he
splays on the mat, hair
absurd and wet for
just a fight in his memories
of fire and rush
of the way the sun
shocked when he woke seeking
like missiles seek below waters
a mid-night butterfly to take,
hunts
way of shore: soft
sand and dawn,
the cellar
where Geppetto carves a heart/
and how still is absence
of war. stillness
pulsing like a star grown
old or the shock of gardenias
in a scorching heat,
not a violin struck with flint
or the way a man can wail,
through city streets across
smelly kitchens and
mothballs clung to old coats
dark roads and alleys
in living of dying-
the flower unfolds
its self.
I think the man
questions if he can
swim in dark waters
and how will he meet
the sun, swinging
with those
wildcat fists? how
he could, like a shock
of gardenias, breathe
life of so-called dying;
make a home with
an artist in the cellar
where he is waiting
on the shore.
In Due Proportion 