My Fading Portrait

(For my friend P. You have always been so vibrant and alive to me. I will remind you every chance I get.)

When did my colors start to fade?

The first time you overlooked my dress

and the care I took to turn you on, only you weren’t

and aren’t, and can you believe I still try?

When did my paint peel, like a weathered door

that you no longer cared to enter

and I, the gauze ghost behind a pane of cobwebs

stuck between life and death?

When did I become an outline of a woman

all women, any woman

and too soon thereafter, just a frame

so long without my nuance

that I lost my face?

Was it the first time my desire tired you?

Was it the last time you took my energy and rolled your eyes with it

or when you tamped this rambunctious spirit down

with the toe of your sensible work boot?

Honey, draw my portrait.

I have so long forgotten the space between my eyes

and how you once traveled the distance.

Were my lips full, or just swollen with kisses

that once came without request?

I am fading, and who will conjure the me you met?

Who will remind me that I was once a masterpiece

screaming with saturated color,

excitement, and possibility…like a traveling van to Woodstock?

(you hitched a ride… don’t you remember? You stuck out your thumb and said “take me with you.” And I did.)

Sweetheart, do not age me so soon.

Do not pull me into a gray cinched bun

with these tresses still so unwilling to be tamed.

We are not old.

I am not done.

I cannot be the empty frame you just look through

to the chair, where the newspaper holds your eye

and the television, your ear.

Paint me with passion

Leave nothing to memory.

I need to see it all.

Do you remember?

Show me

PLEASE show me

before the mirror has no face.

Separate Wonders

You hold your hope out
like the eigth wonder that it is.
I see the light of it dim
cupped in the cage of your hands
panhandling for care and feeding.

You are a single parent
and the long night has been sleepless...
a series of same.
In the dawn of unreciprocated work
a thought wavers in uneasy release
dips and bobs like a mosquito that cannot find a landing.

You reach for it
but your arms are full of pyramids, temples, walls, and coliseums
structurally burdened.
Wet dog....you shake,
uncontrolled patterns in arcs like arterial blood
and yet
you are still wet.

You are the sole provider
the runner with a torch.
It is yours to carry.
It is yours to drop.
There is a meter running, and I have no coin.

There is a ninth wonder.
I carry it beneath the wing of my arm.
No one sees the light
a child unnamed, waiting for a personality.
My hands hang open
from the surrender of my arms
wild things
requiring no care or feeding...
only time
for a course to expire.




(There is a hope, as brave and bold as any soldier, and yet it too, cannot self sustain forever. How long can it remain unrewarded? You consider releasing it, but it has its own life span and will not be hurried. There is a hope, as timid and unsure as any awkward teen, tucked away until it fully knows itself. You attempt to rush it, only to stumble like a new colt on weak legs.  We acknowledge our lack of knowledge, and we wonder.)
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Breakfast On My Mind

is it a man, a woman? filthy pajama bottoms. the cement must be cold. hard. i shouldn't look. and yet a person sits disheveled here in a public place. a cigarette for breakfast? it's 7:30 am. a cigarette for 7:30 am...and barely a layer of flannel on which to sit. I will buy a coffee. a bagel. what kind of bagel? possibly allergic to nuts. hates raisins? doesn't do cheese. fuck. *sigh*. "Plain bagel please"...."and a coffee." cream? will creamer be wanted? sugar? certainly it would be uncomfortable to be so disheveled and standing at the condiment bar. i have to provide these accouterments to coffee. what if the only cream is in a pitcher? do I go out there and say 'how would you like your coffee'? it doesn't feel right. thank goodness, there are packets of creamer, packets of sugar. four of each should cover it. a stir stick. a napkin. plain bagel in a plain bag. it's going to look like i didn't give a shit. *sigh*. do i put the coffee on the ground? do i say something? how do i make this less demeaning? it is a he. the bruise beneath his eye screams for attention. he is reaching for the coffee i hand him. his hands are filthy. i feel stupid in my dress and high heels. he says nothing for a time. i guess i will just put the bag beside him. i hear 'thank you', but my tongue is swallowed. i think i say "happy breakfast." really? happy breakfast? i ignored his eyes. i missed his name. i lost his story. i am close to tears because i can never seem to get this right. i imagine myself casual, yet confident.

I say "Hey! Good morning. Can I join you for breakfast?" I sit cross legged on the cold hard cement and my eyes form a tunnel toward his reality. I touch his hand. I ask his name. I hear his story. "Do you feel invisible?" I ask. "Not anymore" he says.

Stumped

I can't seem to hold on
I can't seem to let go
I've lost my hands and the stumps of my arms wave
as goodbye and hello
and neither the coming or the going or the bald end
knows the damn difference.

Can you see these incomplete appendages as they war
to pull and push
almost comical in their inability to do either
without a grip?

I am tired of watching them.
You must be too.
All that flailing.
A bad dance by a worse dancer
in the throws of this tryingtryingtrying
and you, with season tickets!

If I could just come into myself
push through the tight ends
fingers filling a glove
thumb...index....
opposable
I could hold something long enough to know.
I could release something long enough to know.
(at least in theory)


She said she had reached the middle of a lake
the shore lined with her many children.
She could see us waving, and she tried...wanted to...
but couldn't seem to make her way back.

I scoffed then.
'Selfish' I might have said.
'Weak' even.

Oh, I understand it now.
In the most difficult of all battles
(that being self to self)
she lost her hands
and we lost her.

I keep trying
to swim with stumps.
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Poetry Wall

It came in sections, as most things do...donated from there, purchased from here. Drilled, painted, squared and hung. And what I thought was going to be the most comforting and beautiful thing, looked rather helter skelter, and my mind just cascaded around the edges with no intent of joining in. So I uprooted anchors, and hauled it down the hall, where it is in a somewhat more manageable chaos. It beckons without imploring. It rattles, but causes no deafness. My poetry wall stands at my entrance and exit, which just about sums it up.

What is Strength?

What is strength?

It is a candle from which both ends might be lit.

Is it strength to show pain, or to hide pain? It is strength to pretend, or to tell the truth...to protect, or to inform? It is strength to move or be moved? Is the surgeon who cuts, stronger than the patient who is cut? I wanted to be strong from both ends. It takes strength to face giants. It takes strength to be a giant. It takes strength to be a disappointment. It takes strength to be disappointed.

If I'm doing the best I can
and I burn up in the flames
how will you label my ashes?

"Before the Truth will come to fill our eyes

The wool comes down in the form of fire

And when the the answers and the Truth have cut their ties

Will you still find me

Will you still see me

Through smoke

I was born in a house in a town just like your own

I was raised to believe in the power of the unknown

'Cause when the answers and the Truth take different sides

Will you still find me

Will you still see me

Through smoke"

 - Needtobreath

Intelligent Design

I crossed Dallas twice in one night.

Sometimes strange things happen

surreal things

like Dallas in the middle of California

and my stride stretching across state lines,

like that night the rain

pounded its tiny fists against the windshield

and somehow

at the height of midnight

went silent.

It made no sense

to see the rain lose its muster,

and all it took was one degree

33

32

such a delicate balance...

we forget

there is Laminin

and one misappropriation of the chain

will cause our structure to fold.

In all that is unknown

and questionable

outside the norm

as if ever there was such a thing...

there is this glue that keeps us

together enough

that a silent rain

is not an oddity at all.

It's just snow.