Tripping Up

We forget to look up,

focused as we are on the path

and how we might trip.

Ahhhh...

but even so doing,

our clumsiness comes to the rescue

and us now, flat on our backs.

Suddenly

we are outside the box of our feet

and the whole world

is a cushioned place

without border.

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The Birth of Dead Words

She writes, thinking that beneath the paper
she might find something tangible.
The tremor of her pen
shakes the page.
It looks alive,
but the words will either breathe
or they won't...
their lifespan having less to do with birth
than endurance.

Some words are so hard to live.
They wear down the epidermis
until she is all nerves.

Her words flutter wildly about the page
attempting to gasp...
to do something audible...
the buried alive, vying for notice.

I am here I am here
way
down
here.


(No, I'm not sure what I'm saying here. The first two lines came piggy-backed on the last poem I wrote. That was a week ago. I saw them in my journal and started typing them in here. They added on to themselves, having something to say.  We can speak truth, but it has a short life unless we live it out. Difficult though. Living it, we'll find it truer, or less. In just thinking...we are never really sure.)
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Step Aside

Kids have it right most times, until we feed them something different. Remember when he said, "Mommy, why is that lady so old?" and you leaned down to whisper, "Oh honey, she's not old!" but she was, and she knew it, and you knew it, and she wasn't as afraid of it as you were.

Oh...and the time she said, "Daddy, why is he all crooked?" and you took her face in your hands and directed her gaze from his wheelchair to the candy counter, deflecting your insecurities. But he wanted to explain his malady...even to a five year old...because they were the only ones who really paid attention.

Children would not consider any of it odd, because it wasn't until you made it wierd. I remember the beautiful man in the wheelchair. I was 30 years younger, but not young by far. He dove into a pool...just right...at the exacting angle, and that cool delicious water you like to plunge into, well... it snapped his neck and swallowed his basketball career. "Why would God change the laws of nature just for me?" he would say when we asked, "why why WHY"? It's physics. We like to make it so much more, so that we have our judgement and our reason firmly in hand.

"Why" is a circular question for adults. It has no landing page. There are no analytics to square off against expense. "Why" is a finger pointed against the circumference, waiting for a target at which to pull the trigger. It's a big word though, and tends to muster all your energy towards an unsatisfactory end. Children diverge in this respect. They ask a repetitive why about inconsequential questions, such as "why are your legs hairy" or "why do frogs croak"....and hell, have you any idea?  But if you let them ask the question of people bound by circumstance....well, they have an answer, far better than your bullshit.
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Dulling the Edge

It is these evenings I wait for.

Heavy air, a waning heat

like the kitchen, after a good baking...

the fruits of which, cool

on a windowsill with white lace bangs.

The pool is so deserted

that the ghosts of its waters beg me come

and I oblige

sitting on the edge, leaning in

as if this were the precipice from which I might fly

or drown...either choice

inconsequential to the movement.

Beneath the surface

an unseen force circulates the waters.

The Praying Mantis has crossed me twice...

frozen in repose

but for the leg bent
unimaginable wrong.

It is a good place
for gentle restoration 

and an edge removed
from that which sharpened the day

into a blade.
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