Category: Uncategorized

Words in the Electronic Ages

  
 What we know of words upon a page
 Read, learned over again until sated
 In the richness found.
  
 Then turn to the electronic blue haze
 Where even words resonate, echoing fade.
  
 For the sweetest lies, a believer craves.
 Then scrolling over plastic flowers dancing,  
 The words of a lover’s refrain found
 Written once too often 
 In wooing others
 On the same blank cards
 With pictures of bears.
  
 The words like 
 Cheap plated jewelry’s shine 
 Turn black in the bitterness
 On the day some thought 
 Something pure, pristine was born.
  
 Then, finally, is it known the words
 Of the poetic, the romantic
 Are but rhetoric and lies
 Written and said  
 More than once
 But promised
 For one.
 
 The gravity, the gravity
 A black hole.

Water

Turn

Breathe warmth

Rest comes easy now

Curled around you—

Poured would be better

Yes—

Become liquid

To be the bath water

Surrounding you

Or the water droplets of a shower

Cascading over you

To possess for a moment

The ability of water

To touch you everywhere at once

SMOKE THE CRAVING

I debate:

Should I buy

That pack of cigarettes?

God knows I want too.

The store clerk

Stares at me

As if I’ve lost my mind.

I nearly answer—

Yes, I have and other things too.

Please, God.

I just want to feel the smoke

Rush through my lungs.

Skimming, skipping, speeding

The way pictures crash the dam of my heart.

I am flooded.

I’d rather be flooded with waves of nicotine.

Yes, it’d be a blessing to drown in nicotine.

Reveling in the stench of smoke

Would help dull this taste of bitterness,

Would dull this craving for a sweetness

I can no longer have.

And why not?

What’s it all matter now?

A slow roll kind of Catholic suicide.

How long could it take?

I mean, really, at this stage?

“Ma’am, can I help you with somethin’ else?”

Says the clerk behind the counter.

I am still standing there,

The crazy lady,

Trying to wring the water out

Of the water bottle I just bought.

“No, thank you,” as I walk away.

So, no slow roll Catholic suicide.

At least, starting not today.

But this patch of bitter taste,

This patch of craving for a sweetness,

Are sewn with double stitched seams

On the underside

Of my skin.

The Well of Loneliness

Originally Posted on https://braveandrecklessblog.com

Searching for something

In this void

Of fatigue–

A tender touch

Or warm skin to lie against,

A hope to grasp

When against slick

Stone.

Hours pass.

Anger and sadness silently left

And closed the door.

But the heart is chambered

Like a shell,

Swirling down within itself

Until reaching a breaking point

Of being long overdrawn,

Overworked, over tired,

Over

Over

Over.

Still learning in the stillness

Of time mixed with languages

Neither known nor understood

At all.

When there be no common ground

To stand upon–

A start, a beginning is lost.

In the travels

To find new shores

In this age

Without directions

Or something resembling

The instruction manual.

Turn to ask a friend,

“How does that dialogue go again?”

But there is no answer

In the old cliché’ of “seek and ye shall find”

You’ve knocked upon the door

And no one answered.

Live days in monastic silence,

Find it difficult to voice an answer

To the Walmart clerk saying,

“Have a nice day!”

Every night

Crawl downward and in,

Say a small, silent fervent prayer—

“I will always miss you

And I will always love you.

May my soul find you.”

Waking in fragments

To find it is time

For glue and duct tape.

They fix anything

That needs to be held

Together

At the bottom

Of the well.

The Price Of Salt

Originally posted on https://braveandrecklessblog.com

I went to all my baskets of words

To find them emptied out.

In fact, it seems

Anger and sadness

Sandblasted holes

Clean through the dang baskets.

Then I went to all my junk drawers of words,

Pulled each open and found each empty.

Frustrated, I tugged them all the way out

To make sure no junk, trying to hide away,

had shimmied behind the drawers.

But my efforts were to no avail.

All my words were gone, stolen.

Even my most treasured one,

Used ever so rarely for food or wine,

Used just once, only once,

For a love. 

Is this the price?

The price I pay for salt?

But this isn’t essential

To human existence.

No, I should report a robbery.

Call the cops and say,

“Someone stole all my words

And my most treasured one.”

Then I could file an insurance claim.

Perhaps collect something incalculable

And patch those dang baskets.

But how would they calculate

The value of such a word?

Used so rarely for things

And only once, just once

For something, someone rare?

How to calculate exquisite?

Happy Endings Are All Alike

Originally posted on https://braveandrecklessblog.com

Or so they say.

Wish I may,

Wish I might,

Find one to curl up into tonight.

But it’s too late.

Far too late for that.

I can imagine what those endings are like.

I’ve read them in books.

I’ve seen them in movies.

I’ve even lived them for little while,

A season, maybe two,

A few years and played a fool

Because I wanted too

And didn’t want to see

A truth or two.

I have friends

Who model happy endings.

It’s really sickening

In the syrupy sweetness

Of it all.

Yes, they are all alike,

I do suppose.

Perhaps,

Unhappy endings are most interesting

Of all.

I don’t really know.

I’ll tell you at the end.

Window Shopping

Oh, do so pardon me,

Window shopping only, dear.

No temptation to try it on for size

in some strange dressing room,

to look in the mirror to see

exactly how it fits.

No touch of whimsy

to impulse buy

only to return,

and God forbid,

pay any re-stocking fee.

I may appreciate the look.

I may so enjoy

reading the product description,

but no,

no thank you, my dear.

Please, no trial samples

to increase the clutter

I’ve collected over years.

You see, love,

it’s like in Ecclesiastes,

there  is a time to buy

and a time to leave it on the rack.

Yes, sweetie,

I know it’s on sale,

but the return policy

is too exhausting with disclaimers

to know if it’s worth the risk

of finding a good fit.

So, for now, my sweat pea,

let me just peruse

the clearance stacks

and perhaps read

the product contents

out of simple curiosity.

Perhaps, one day,

though, I doubt it,

my dear,

I’ll find something

that strikes my fancy,

take it from the rack

to the fitting room,

try it on for size,

and find a good enough fit

to buy.

The Bluest Eye

Originally posted on Whisper and the Roar and Brave and Reckless. Written for feminist book title prompt: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

In the bluest eye,
I thought I’d found
Home.
My heart’s desire,
As Judy, in the movie,
Once said.
Now, the bluest eye
Holds no warming flame
Of home.
It turns a mirror
Up to me and shows
The fool that I have been
For selling pieces of myself—
The plates, the cutlery,
The sheets, the towels,
The quilts and bedspreads,
The leavings of a life.
The leavings of a house.
The leavings of myself—
Without a proper winnowing,
And sold it all at Garage Sale prices.
In return, I thought I’d gained
What I’d always wanted.
But I leave emptied
Of all my leavings
In the bluest eye.

In the Songs of Birds

When I was three,
My mother taught me to read,
And words
Became playthings and playmates
As I sat in the back of the restaurant
Watching her work her dream to death.

Later, as I grew,
Family losses piled, heaped
Weighty upon the shoulders of a nine-year-old.
Words became
Escape, shelter, survival,
A path out of destruction.

And so, words stayed
For more years than I’d care to say.

But now here,
Waking mornings,
Hearing birdsong,
Or in early evening,
The warm sun blanketing
My skin as I fill the birdfeeders,
I hear words in the songs of birds.
Silly though it may seem,
The cardinals have much to say,
“It’s cheaper here. It’s cheaper here.”
To “Pretty, pretty, pretty.”
The mockingbirds chatter away
Announcements of “She’s here, she’s here, she’s here.”
And I’m not sure which bird continually asks,
“Wanna see, wanna see, wanna see a receipt?”
All the while, the Blue Jays squawk away,
Warning all the others,
“Stay away! Stay away!”
Then in the chittering of the squirrels,
I hear the demand,
“Where’s the food? Where’s the food?
You let the food run out! How dare you?”
As they scurry away,
Pretending, at least, to be afraid of me.

Among all the noise and chatter
All the words of birds and squirrels
One word, never felt before now,
I feel move within my chest,
Peace.

The Mixed

Too dark
Too light
Too in between
Too bright
Too rosy
Too peach–

Just too much
Or not enough at all.
This has always been my plight.

I am African-American
But not black enough .
I am Native American
But not red enough.
I am Latina
But not brown enough.

Just mixed enough for most
To assume whiteness of me,
Sparking comments about a whitey master
in the woodpile of my ancestors.

In this ocean of the mixed
There’s affinity
But no belonging
As I reach for a new shade of blush
That is just close enough.