“what I lack is myself”
—Susan Howe
The door’s full like words
in an open mouth,
blotting out the space
it opened onto.
An entrance becomes a wall,
an allowed space disallowed,
as keys and locks
become ritual.
Such small sacrifice
the tongue becomes,
burning clear
any lost syllables.
Nothing’s left to say;
everything’s unsaid.
“Props and other disinherited
paraphernalia are never enough.”
—Susan Howe
My hands cradle my face,
covering my dead eyes.
Worn thin like ragged cloth,
I am tired of my life:
Before sunrise I wake,
slowly move down the stairs,
and start again. Morning
rituals of coffee
keep the old dramas near,
private. I want to wail,
long howls into the dark.
Instead, I feed the dog,
whose tail wags happily
as she eats her kibble.
(August 9, 2021)
Yes, poetry burns in feral anger—
a knife flash fast at the shadowed church door
cuts through a dank cassock’s folded black cloth,
twisting quickly below the priest’s fat rib.
Yet, the mundane’s slow-etched eddy of truth
leaves its testament in the margins
of the more violent rush and tumble
relevance churning in the crowed streets.
My life is easily enough dismissed
with the trivialities of the day
dropping their dead petals across my path
like roses in ecstatic agony.
Yes, poetry burns in feral anger—
and burns and burns throughout the dullest day.
(July 26, 2021)
(after J. Ruth Gendler)
Acceptance makes hot tea
for you on cold blustery days.
Acceptance waits for you
to decide who you are—
She makes no judgement
based on arbitrary rules.
Acceptance knows she is stronger,
because she knows the difference
between herself and Acquiescence,
who is too afraid to be different.
Acceptance sits near an open chair
knowing you will find a way home.
She likes to listen to your voice
as you take delight in new ideas.
She does not care they are not hers.
With the gentle reassurance of love,
Acceptance takes your hands
as if they were fresh cut flowers.
(July 1, 2021)
then, an ever present now
The shuttlecock flits nimbly across the loom with a soft clacking beat. “For every time I’ve told this tale, I’ve told it twice again,” she implies with a sigh as she begins. She speaks of patience and home, and slow unsolicited seductions, as time unravels across the floor like red pools of forgetfulness at her feet.
He watches her hands shift the threads as if playing upon a lyre. He thinks, “There are so many ways through the woods; so many rivers and creeks to cross; so many hollows and caves to wander lost, always different, always the same as the ones crossed before.”
For years and years as he wandered, he watched the waves pulse repetitive hallucinations and horrors towards a horizon he could no longer see. Unearthly monsters churned the waters feeding one upon the other; the past devoured the past with a ceaseless hunger for more. While elsewhere late at night, she walked the halls without a light, leaned against a shuttered door, and listened to the incessant voices muttering their plots and plans for a life she abhorred.
As the story faltered to its close, there was no soft landfall upon the strand, no wreck scattered upon a beach; no violence in their reunion, nor familial embrace. What had grown between them, tangled like olive tree roots upon a cliff, could not be troubled enough to be called love, if it could be called anything at all.
The mud thickness
on my shoes,
as I plod along
singing.
I bend slowly
into the earth;
my voice swallowed
by the wind.
Except for names
of the dead faces,
I remember most
versions of the past;
the storied details
reassure me
that what I knew,
I know.
Despite other’s
revanchist revisions,
I hold to a path
which will lead me home.
(June 8, 2021)
The wild mustang grape vines
its way along the fence line,
further obscuring boundaries
between what is said,
and what is perpetuated.
The past is of no consequence
beyond familiar stories to bolster
today’s latest interpretation,
which momentarily coalesces
to cloak in ambiguity
the Absence as it festers
in vague nostalgic shadows.
(May 30, 2021)
Outside, a butterfly flits
across the sun-dipped tips
of black-eyed Susans
swaying in the wind:
While inside, I struggle
with what to write.
(May 21, 2021)
with spring’s violence flowers burst
into bloom from winter’s death
as chimes toll slowly in the tree
mere weeks ago ice creaked
tightly along the chase tree’s
twisted branches as the chimes
hung limp and people froze
to death alone at home
(May 9, 2021)
when listening to someone speak
each word takes root
along the tendrils of the unsaid
a pattern emerges
branch grafted on old wood
flowers to mourn the newly dead
(May 8, 2021)
