Walking in fractured twilight
Is the smoothest time of light and mind–
A wish made–
To braid reality, this curve of light, with sweetest memory
Thus, so entwined
One begins to hope,
Believing in miracles once again
To spite all fractures made of years.
( An older poem written in 2015 while in Provincetown, MA. Revised for this week’s writephoto challenge.)
At sunrise over water,
Remembering as if in a dream
The child and you and me
As we stood by a sea
Half a world away.
Both of you now baptized differently by my tears.
And for and from you,
I am left with things neither given
Nor felt in years,
Linked by all the fears
To form over a decade of a life
Lived like a stranger
In my own shrinking skin.
I have stood
Since the dawn
At this ocean’s edge
Waiting, waiting.
And now at noon
The rain begins.
Fierce pelting blows
Washing me clean
Of all I know
Or dare to dream.
For living continues
Within my own skin
Storm clouds rode in
Upon a sky soaked in sunset red.
Wildflowers bowed their heads
Down on either side
As I drove by
Smiling, thinking of all things new.
Once home, I stood in the yard,
Arms akimbo, welcoming the new—
What the storm, the wind, the rains
Would bring—
As gently as their nature could—
All things new, clean, green
With spring.
I gather hardened scars of loss and damage
Braided into keloid beauty
That are not blossoms of bitterness,
But fragrant beauties
That make me who I am.
Even the bars of your barren garden
Called love could not steal away
The essence of my hope.
Instead, the black, barrenness
within sugar syrup words
Of one never able to love
Contain no acid
To eat away
My skin of hope.
A phoenix rises in flames
From out the left side of my chest
With feathers of flame yet,
Set free to fly where it wills.
One day, it will return,
Nuzzling deep inside my chest again,
All the ashes gone,
All flame having died away,
Its fiery colored feathers
Whispering, singing to my blood
Of beauty seen,
Of tantalizing things touched,
Of all the air breathed, smelled, felt,
Of the sounds soft and harsh heard
All along the way around the earth.
Through the whispered tales
Of those fiery feathers
My blood will tell me
Where I am to go.
I clipped away dead branches
From the living shrubs today.
Not an easy thing,
But a thing that must be done.
Strange it is how dead things
Will cling so tightly to the living
As if to squeeze
The last remaining bits of life away
And thus, have company in death and dying.
There is yet more to do
So only the living things are left
To flourish in the spring sun.
I hesitate in remembrance
as if the fates would choose
a day of gray and leave me there,
as if a blossoming could be had upon
a second visitation to any day.
The creamer clouds disperse and swirl
in my extra strong coffee
like memories of things I wanted–
never had, never attained
all those years ago.
Stirring the coffee still,
I stare out the kitchen window.
Decide against a bird feeder
filled with black oil sunflower seeds.
I do not want cardinals here.
People say cardinals are spirits
of those you’ve lost come to visit you—
No. I want no cardinals here.
No spirits of the lost to visit or say hello.
No twittering or chittering away.
No vibrancy of color outside this window.
No. Not here. Not in this place.
I’d rather this be a spiritless place,
A virgin place, void of spirits, void of touch—
At least for a time
Give me a minute.
Let me have another cup of coffee,
Will you?
Before I slosh on after,
Down the trail–
Again– maybe.
You say, a guard now stands there,
Of the newer variety,
Who advises of the locust thorns,
The kind that pierces the shoe
And can go straight into your foot?
Could have used that advice–
Once or twice
Maybe thrice
In life.
But now I’ve rubbed my thumbs
Over the sharp tipped thorns of regret
Until callouses formed.
Then I moved on to other
Fingertips until bloody, raw,
Proving to myself the sharpness of thorns.
So now, you say this stony guardian warns
Of all the thorns
Along the paths and trails?
Might this guardian advise of a thornless trail?
I really wouldn’t care, but the soles of my feet
Are without callous, and I’d like to keep them so.
Send me down a muddy, sloshy trail where
I might just fall and break my neck.
That would be simply fine,
If the soles of my feet
Remain as soft and unmarred
as a baby’s behind.
Sleeplessness always told the story
Between the here and the now
The between and
What she thought a game
The tracks that led to nowhere
The last section of a living
Something not well lived
A swirl of memory
Piercing through knots
could not be undone
She had lived with no plan
With only a heart that failed
More than once
A heart she could not ever trust
A heart that spoke in religious tongues
She’d yet to understand
Its rhyme or reason for speaking
In lies and whispers,
For leading her astray,
For leading her to abandon her dreams and plans,
She would never know.
This was her last act, in her last years,
To strip herself of harlequin clothes.
Sit among the willows,
drifting in ghostly silence,
each wrapped comforted
by misery’s blanket.
Except I am no longer,
listening to words
carefully scripted,
tumbling into deceit’s
delicious dishes
easily prepared
by your thin lips mouthing words
filled with ghost meaning.
Regurgitated regrets
bitter in the soul and heart–
I can tell you that.
A thing you would not
ever know, catalyst of misery,
your starring role.
Except–
tell-tale signs of age
now crackle through songs of your
sweet, deceitful voice,
makes harder to catch
victims snared in misery
of life trials made.
Stop floating among
the willows, thinking yourself
Calypso casting
spells of delicious
deceit, when you’ve aged into
Macbeth’s witch drifting
in the ghostly fog of ego.
undone in spectacle
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