of meeting you
the way that your face felt
as though i had cradled it
and cared for it in war before
the way that your big feeling
furtive eyes wanted saving
to be met with salve in a bid
of tomorrowlike understanding
i've swatted the flying fruits
round my head before with
ample self-protection but i
will never be able to bet
on a jackpot like the reason
the sunshine brought your heart
to my needing bareboned belief
wishes and hope 5-7-17
from the time that i met her, she was always so defiant, so peculiarly against the grain of what most people considered acceptable or true. she pointedly disliked natural-formed hearts in art. she ducked out of pictures taken for the wrong reason. she needed heaps of alone time in hikes with a dog chosen for her spirit as voracious and independent as herself. and one battle she always saddled up to was the subject of wishes. adamant as an evening storm, she'd say, "don't waste your time on eyelashes and dandelions, on numbers that string together on a clock. there's a lot more worth your energy." this roiled up the places inside me where my favorite childhood songs cast their lighthouses, where the fanciful part of my dreaming head felt comforted in the joy of picking dandelions once spring hit and i was good and outside.
so one day i asked her, "what's the difference between wishes and hope?" her answer seemed to imply that the latter was noble, and had a sense of trust lain into the providential, the order of the universe that superseded everything. while the former relied on tradeshow tricks, the smoke-and-mirror show of superstition. and the whole thing made me think about belief, and where it came from, and if all the bright shining wishings of my carnival-sugared head throughout my life were betrayed by my sheer want for better, my desire for the unexpected to knock me silly with luck borne out of my willing, or if my scars shown with the knotted shapes of disappointment. i had to wonder where we all keep finding the will. where we store all the heart chips to bet like the universe's casino broker still might have a wink in our names as though he owed our father a favor from back in the gold rush days. somehow i keep singing, because it's all i know how to do.
imbroglio 5-22-16
words are an instrument
that instrument and i are in a relationship
and that relationship is an imbroglio
it is unforgettable the way
i have heard three dangling words
escape from the panting breaths
next to my ear as though they meant
all the heavens and stars combined
in their intent and gravity
and much later when nothing
except silence replaced them
i am tempted by mistrust and anger
to give them scarlet lettering
banish their welcome from my life
but were i to fall deeply into regard
with the presence of a cello,
and it sang the clockwork of my heart
if a person kicked and mangled that cello
and it did not last into forever,
i would not hate that cello
but would be grateful for everything
it enabled rightly in its fair time
sometimes someone makes something
like a stradavarius or willy's trigger
and by some stroke of grace, it lasts
through hundreds of generations
of doves of freedom to redeem
and those instruments are
the pet-names that last a long marriage
or a cherished childhood expression
someone whispers to a smile on a deathbed
or a monologue uttered inside the globe
theatre that recounts the same heartstirrings
today as it did back when foodforaging
took hours and a maidenface was salvation
the instrument i employ
to channel to another these vibrations
that comprise my inner sanctum
is verily lovable, because if we did not
play out these songs then we would
sit in silence and not know any
of the joy and sorrow, the pain and pleasure
that each other held in womb real as rocks
but sometimes i am forced to put
the thing quietly back in its case
and under the bed, because it is time
finally, for quiet.
words are an instrument
that instrument and i are in a relationship
and that relationship is an imbroglio
reeling 3-30-16
i remember each of us
self-aware and bright
locking on to the notion
that an us was a supernova,
and spinning out reels and line
of the best usses we knew
how to show in real and time
now as i lay down quiet
in
