you singing underneath your blanket
and it’s so cold out this morning.
Six Scents or Return of the Thieving Child
Yes, that is blood you taste.
The ever-growing space between us.
It’s good to be judged, to know
how it feels.
I can give god to you, and you can give
god back to me.
We take so much medicine
but in the end it’s the same amount of glass.
The illness eats away our lives in just a day or two.
I lost you after class, in the weeds and crushed water bottles.
Trying to be possibly human,
to feel pretty good about the disadvantages.
You asked the question, so I’m going to trust
that you want answers.
It’s true: I accidentally ate chocolate, planned a wedding
and described an old man’s perfume.
So many cloves in the chai it made my lips burn.
It’s true: Woke in the pre-dawn, before bells,
excited to meditate.
True: she would have most certainly hurt me had I stayed.
Half-Life
Wearing a shirt that’s yours, and a tie you tied.
The schools have closed.
It’s our opportunity to sleep.
Paint the bathroom, the kitchen – blue.
Egg nestled at the bottom of a huge nest.
There’s no trouble to listen to, and no,
there are no vegetables in sugar.
Yet late yesterday, I ate one, and stayed home to make a mixed tape.
We have beliefs, like anyone.
We made the choices that led to these results.
Sometimes sleeping in holes dug in the ground,
sometimes in bombed-out buildings.
Accused of being optimists,
we did a lot of thinking and hesitating,
every day finding more to give away.
The same nostril kept bleeding,
but the other was clear, and through it
I could breathe.
A Week of Silence
This is where our narratives diverge.
You went down that dry riverbed.
I climbed to the mountains.
Some say monks hide there
and that their clothes are ugly.
I found the spring and washed my face, feet and hands.
A deer with the eyes of my kindest sister
stopped near me.
All my advice fell like brittle leaves in a dying forest.
I had never felt less alone.
The green glow of ferns and nettle, water droplets on moss.
I do not wish to keep anyone
from their scheduled visit to the underworld.
So please, friend, continue on without me.
One Virtue
Boys could be in any park kissing.
The crows call them boys, anyway.
A few people are still listing reasons.
A few are choking on blackberries.
I’m a mother, son, lawyer, etc.
But we don’t have anything in common.
The crows: curious, demanding.
Some mother is always there, knowing what we didn’t have.
Some romances are conducted by email and some after death.
We’ll be aged, polishing our bruises, calling it passion or confusion.
In the park, near the tracks …
Just as a mirror falls and
we must work in pairs
and alone.
The Incense of Those Rooms
I back away slowly.
Depending on what my needs are.
Depending on who asks.
A landscape of musk –
Selling my mask
to a cynical child.
We used to go there before the fire.
It’s hard to know how to story things,
what anything means or meant.
The good of a few drops of peppermint oil.
Old betrayals burning in the back.
Aboard, I was well-read, an unreal self.
Evaluated and humiliated,
enduring
to make way for real knowledge.
It overwhelms.
‘A million scarves,’ is what
I wanted to say.
Back to Our Bodies
I
