3 February 2012

Standing at the sink,
After doing the rest of the dishes,
I twisted open the top of the thermos you bring to work every day.
Rinsing it out,
I was overcome with such tenderness for you,
That I wept.

A Poem About Death

Funny to think of all those times I wished for you to come.
Expecting you would be tragidramatic and sudden.
Thunderous applause and everybody would turn around to see us.
But look at us now, we're as close as lovers gone numb with familiarity,
You've been with me all along,
As simple as the grass.

Emily and June

We were holding her then,

But nothing was holding her.

I saw the head bend to fit through the opening.

That's the way it had been engineered, but I never knew.

My mother had her left leg

I had the right, pushing against the bottom of her foot.

We were a doorway, the three of us,

Come through, now, come through.

I looked mostly at her face.

Even in her pain her brow was knowing.

And around her eyes there was a stillness,

There was something old in her, something sublime.

She bore down in the usual way and then it happened.

We saw who we instantly knew,

Our new girl and right away she was one of us.

Right away.

Stage Fright

There is a bird inside my chest.
A hawk in a parakeet cage.
He is trapped in there together with all the bird-related cliches and idioms ever invented.
He is broken into unnatural angles.
Beating, beating.
Railing against my rib cage.
Nothing will soothe him except his being obvious to everyone.
Look at these ratty feathers, these beady eyes.
Look at these ravaged wings and their reflex for flight
that has become only a painful scraping.

20 October 2011

I keep my tiny money in a big bank,
And I know there are people raving in the streets.
The big banks are greedy and evil.
They are ruining everything from balconies with monocles and cigars.
But I'm in love with the bank teller.
She is a young black girl that wears her hair like my grandmother did in the '60's.
Short in the back with an elegant, voluminous s w o o p on top.
She has a scar on her chest that I always think is a tiger's eye pendant.
And I stare at it unabashedly at first then raise my gaze apologetically to hers.
Her eyes are quiet, kind, and sad.
When she calls me by name I can feel my tongue filling up my mouth.
And the big banks of the world are ridiculous.

28 August 2011

At the two-year mark, my love is at a place where my language starts to break down. The feeling I have is strong and deep, but it's also very simple. It doesn't have any reservations or conditions or conflicts of interest. It doesn't need to justify itself by the overuse of adjectives, ornate verbosity or ruffles. This love is a flat, cool, blue thing like a calm river or sky. It lies at the base and at the ceiling of my days and moves them along with a quiet constancy.

What would I have done otherwise? Maybe my nervous system would have short-circuited. Maybe I would have grown hard and jaded. Those were real fears for me once, but here I am. My heart as soft as a flower and my eyes are open.

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It's your very skeleton I love, dear.
The honesty in your gait,
The frank way your hands fall at your sides.
The earnest curve of your skull into your brow and then jaw.

I let my eyes fall
Into the places where you are most yourself
I am going to stay there forever
In the slopes and valleys of your bones.

27 August 2011

While making love, I knocked a bowl of strawberries off the night stand.

A mosquito stung my nose while I was taking a bath,
I slapped him into the water and bathed with him, dead.

I went to sleep and dreamt of a wall of water, hare krishnas, and a hanged man.

A full moon. A hurricane.

The rain, the rain, the rain.

The dams will break and wash the symbolism off everything so we can see what's what.