A Rose in the Crabgrass

 

It's the quite of evening

as everything downshifts 

to a slower beat.

No place to be.

Someplace to stay.

Birds and bees have gone wherever they go,

silently waiting for tomorrow to take flight 

again...to my dogs delight.

His needs so simple,

mine so complex,

I fear they are unmeetable....

until I look in my husbands eyes

and that way he strips the wallpaper I've hung in disguise,

the way he rids the garden of weeds

I've planted as flowers.

He knows a rose from crabgrass,

so why this farce?

I keep thinking I can get away with it.

Teflon Brain

 

I am not a collector of memories.

They are too slick.

A silicone layer surrounds each

that allows them to slide into oblivion

where they can't hurt me anymore.

But this practiced skill...

lubricant of the mind...

sends with the avalanche, the good

important,

and meaningful.

But to subvert this skill

might mean death

or suffocation without death

on repeat

which is worse.

So I beg your mercy

if your name escapes me.

But I never forget a face....

falling into categories

good....or bad.

I just can't remember why.

The Silence of Wisdom

There used to be noise
to fill the void.
Like an audiophile I would collect
the unspoken word
and pipe it in as my own.
But no one recognized the voice as mine.

And when that fault cracked,
wider than a Richter could measure,
my thoughts became so loud.
They argued,
and the debate was more than I could stand.

Like an audiophile I would collect
song
and sing it as my voice.
But it pointed fingers and boasted things,
untrue things.

Silence
Please...silence, solitude, peace

My world became soundless,
because I made it so.
I began to let the void be void
and allow the quiet to listen,
let the silence speak in settling tones
you could fall asleep to.

Soon the time came the time when silence
had no need of infusion,
because even the pregnant pause overflowed.
Silence
became the loudest thing,
and in its eloquence...
such wisdom.

2-5-19

New Years Dread

There is a sense of dread
like soot from the fireworks
in wobbly descent,
landing on my journal.

I swipe at the mark
and smudge the new page,
once sharply white with dreams
and unblemished with the disappointment of failure.

The new year is presenting itself
like an open book
but my fear...my dread
is that the same words will be penned again.

Progress seems so marginal
excludable
and yet I wonder.
We are only dead if we are stagnant,
so therefore I must have moved,
progressed.
I am alive.

My father is stagnant
dead
and yet his heart
beats another year
into being.

1-1-19

Guilt Pool

I see it shimmer in the distance
like a mirage I should aim for...
because I'm thirsty,
parched for that which I am so closely acquainted.

So far removed....the reflection is
beautiful!
I know I'll see myself there...
as always, the familiar melancholy of the guilty apologetic smile,
never reaching the eyes
until tears ripple the water and force the curve upwards.

I do not know a more powerful cement
than guilt.
It is the most heinous gift we can bestow,
and like lemmings...
we gift ourselves just as easily
(good little students that we are).

Today is different.
The mirage looks dark and deep,
not a surface reflection at all...
but bottomless.
Could it be worse that what I see
every time I trust a likeness to my eyes?

I run
with the purpose of an athlete.
I jump with legs at full power,
crash down...cracking everything dusty
into the shrapnel of lies.

Even as I fall, I know this is better.
This is honest, as honest as I can hear God tell it.

I reach the bottom expecting to drown there
"deservedly" echoes.....echoes.....echoes...
And it is the last lie,
because there is no more water here.
My plunge has displaced years, and years, and years,
ad now I trust the earth.
I stand on solid.

Why the hell had I only lived the surface before?

Post Era

There is a car
far in the distance,
an after thought of sound.

The birds have claimed this space
this tree
as home.

What do they fear...
the birds?
Flight seems so easy
unless you have legs.
Then your feet leave prints
and the floor boards creek
and everyone knows
you just aren't capable of stairs...

You're sneaking out
the best you can,
but legs aren't wings
and footfalls are so heavy and loud
when you are carrying a body.

I tried to leave you everything...
(but me).

And that's the crux of it.

I have driven a painful road,
not unlike your own,
just a pendulum swing away really...
We're not so different
but for my legs in flight.

New Day Darning

                                                                                                                            

In my mind

I can see a hand

stitching, like my grandmother's,

her weary eyes squinting

in concentrated effort.

The thimble makes the slightest

yet completely satisfying

*tink*

rhythmically against the needle’s eye.

I fear there’s not enough line to finish

and there will be one too many knots

and stops and starts and tired tired tired.

Yet the thread pirouettes,

reversing with the same planted spaces,

familiar X patterning coming to roost

along the hopeless halves of a torn dream

surgically reuniting

whether they like it or not.

In my mind

I have the power…

my grandmother's chalky bones

scattered somewhere,

gathering

into an intravenous potion

injectable through that needle

darning a broken heart

that will not mend.