I fled from days
of standing under your patchwork roof
offering no protection from the rain,
least of all my own rain pouring out of me,
threatening always to drown in its leave taking.
So I learned to float, flowing along the curves
others presented in my efforts to find
time, love, home,
the back roads where berry bushes
grow in abundance.
Yet I never tasted,
never picked any berries,
fresh off the branches.
Instead, I always found
the snakes hidden, lying in wait
beneath the berry bushes,
for the seeking,
and I, always bitten,
never learned my lessons
of serpents who lay in wait,
or the lessons of Eve,
I still sought,
in spite of the venom,
in spite of the bites—
I found the rains pouring out of me
once again
to travel on
seeking
As a child,
I survived the explosion of dreams
that left hot greasy remnants
dripping down the four-inch squares
of avocado green ceramic tiles,
marring their mirror like shine.
As a grown woman,
I survived the eruption of dreams
that poured down an encasement of hot ash
over all of life’s plans in the moment of diagnosis,
leaving monumental statues of grief.
Thus, I chose to live
where silence drones,
a rumble in the ears.
Nothing left--
a hole, a void
made by echoes
of desires held long ago.
So, I have taken a corn broom
to dance with me
in time to music
only I can hear
to sweep away the dust, the cobwebs,
the fuss of other’s opinions and ideas
of me, my doings, my words.
Yes, from my words,
I shake loose all the years of dust,
the years of ash, the years of grease.
All words, oh, so many words
I never loosed upon the air
to float free upon the winds,
tumbling away, up, around,
then returning once more
to spring up as wildflowers
when things turn to green.
I begin to loose them now,
freed to scatter where they will,
root, spring up where they
find a place to rest.
clay slapped on the wheel
shaped from spinning motion with
the control of hands
form, substance given
before the heat of the kiln
then give years of care
secured from breaking
ends in sharp edged shards broken:
mosaic in form
Your lies hang,
apricots swaying
in the summer air
from the tree
of your despair.
You pick the ripest apricots
to make jam
you ladle into small jars,
gifting them to friends
who smile softly,
touched you think of them
by gifting your small jars of jam
made from the apricots
you pick from the tree
of all your despair
denied.
I tire of seeing memes about having a positive attitude and choosing one’s feelings plastered social media. It is no surprise our young people are in the midst of a mental health crisis when constantly bombarded with messages telling them, in essence, “The only reason you are sad is because you are making the choice to be sad,” or, (one of my favorites for sabotaging anyone’s self esteem) “You have a choice to make your day wonderful or not.” While such simplistic messages are well meaning, I believe they are sometimes extremely toxic. After all, what if your parent died on that day? Did you make the choice to have a horrible day? What if you go home to a toxic abusive environment? How can you choose to make your day wonderful? So before reposting those wonderful positive messages on social media, let’s all take a step back and think about what we are really saying to someone who may be going through something or in an environment where there is no choice in the matter but to feel what he or she feels. Let’s send messages that say it’s okay to feel what you feel and acknowledge it and to take time to feel it all,so something can be gained from it—a lesson, a positive action taken, whatever it may be, so we know our suffering was not for naught. Hence, this piece.
shattered on the floor
my favorite coffee mug
nothing big, not much of a thing,
just my favorite coffee mug--
sunshine yellow, with coffee beans,
and a coffee spoon printed inside at the top
along with a line from my favorite poem,
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons”
yes, trite, you might say, emblazoned upon a coffee mug
but still, yes, I loved the mug, love the poem.
and there it was—
shattered upon the floor
there she stood,
apologizing—ad nauseam—
saying she’d buy another to replace it.
But it was not to be found.
Of course, the store didn’t have them anymore.
The mug was the first broken thing.
The first of a few, if it wasn’t liked,
didn’t fit into the ideal
of what could be
forged of me
if pinched in the grip of tongs
and held in the fire long enough
to be broken down to a molten,
malleable state, pounded upon the anvil,
shaped, dipped in water to sizzle cool enough
to start the process over again—
for easy fracture.
Many things ended up broken,
shelved, stored in closets—
pictureless frames and frameless pictures,
parts of me
hidden away, never to be seen
sitting on shelves
in black closets—
until I emerged
chipped but no worse for wear
unbroken into the light.
What is it that you wish to know?
How someone could live with
The edges of a life chipped away,
Breath not taken, suffocated,
Heart stilled,
Walking dead
Through the days of life,
Just so onlookers believe
The pretense they wish to see?
While I, struggling for air,
For the beating rhythms of life,
Having lived too long inside a shrinking skin,
Become petrified wood, stone,
Armored in minerals.
Only so close.
Only so close.
For I have lived years and years
Of rings and more rings,
All mineralized,
Surrounding the core
Of me. Nothing
Could truly touch,
Know the center.
Nothing ever did
Perhaps, ever will.
It is easy to live
As stone.
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 