thanks to They Might Be Giants
“What’s a soul,
and how do you build a bird house
in it?”
My soul ached then,
as he built a space
larger than the sky:
the bluest wonder widened
within, opening his nascent world
to dawn’s infinite chorus,
and I rose with the song
to a dance
I had thought forgotten.
When did I lose such trust
in the fragile
feathers of love?
(November 14, 2021)
by
I look out and see the sun;
I feel no warmth.
I do not want to be here,
but I have nowhere else to go.
I would say I’m unhappy,
but that implies happiness
existed as a measure
to gauge an amount of rain.
If I listed all my faults,
I’d have something to do.
Today was much like yesterday:
hot, dry, and lonely;
The sun slowly shimmers
the surface of the lake, like ice.
(November 11, 2021)
You begin with some mundane action,
which is not so mundane, of course,
as the poem progresses casually,
like a suburban park’s path,
along an implied narrative’s arc.
Then some fragile moment occurs—
perhaps a squirrel who, startled, stops
mid-path to stare for an instant,
it’s dark eyes questioning your life
before fleeing into the nearby brush.
Then you turn on an epiphany; and,
rising above the path and squirrel
like a Pentecostal dove on fire,
you signal your transcendent virtue
to all those who pause to understand.
So, the poem comes to a cliched close
softly condescending so as to not
offend any who might see themselves
mocked behind any veiled smirks
or metaphor they might find here.
(November 7, 2021)
by
I had a poem, Identity, in the second issue of Acropolis Journal. It was part of my collaborative project with my sister, a visual artist. I wrote a poem using each card of the tarot as a palimpsest, and she illustrated the major arcana. Here is a link to Acropolis Journal.
https://acropolisjournaluk.wixsite.com/acropolisjournal/kelly-neal-identity
Like raw clay upon a wheel,
I twist decades’ old regrets
to shape my truth with desire
to be some other than I am.
As if life’s embarrassment
could be stripped away, like skin
cut loose in great bloody skeins,
free from doubt’s infinite knots:
Tangled in old fishing lines,
I am trapped within myself.
The only recourse is guilt
inlaid along my arms’ veins
like intricate red nets flung
across a river’s slow wash.
(November 4, 2021)
(four haiku and a tanka couplet refrain)
The flames slip across
the old wood in the fire pit.
I think of you.
My life trails behind
before I step into it.
I’ve been here before.
I am always here.
Today, I lost who I am:
I tripped on a root.
I see who you were
when I fell in love with you.
Forty years slip past.
A mountain is a mountain;
a river flows to the sea.
(October 31, 2021)
For several days, I don’t write at all,
then start to worry I won’t write again.
Not that it matters to anyone else,
except me and the niggling voice within.
I know, time to think will quiet the voice
which fills the silence like an open wound;
for Time’s a negligent god, not caring
if I pick up any of the dry bones
she casually drops as talismans
on this twilight path I long to travel.
So, I tear out my heart as sacrifice
to the twisted beast who is my other:
will it satisfy this constant hunger,
and let grace fall on me like winter rain?
by
It’s like seeing old pictures of yourself
long after the camera’s cold click. You
have a sense of familiarity,
a recognition that you were once there
in that moment, but not of the moment
before, or after. The lines have taken
on depth as their specificity blurred,
the colors clarity fading through time
into generalized gestures, and
you stop short, stunned at your oblivious youth,
the clear lack of fear, the unacknowledged
audacity that spoke with more wisdom
then, than you ever knew you had, and have
since lost like someone waking from a dream.
(October 21, 2021)
by
This is me:
laconically bored
sitting in the stands
watching from above.
This is me:
focused on the moment
tracing a rune
across the killing floor.
This is not a mirror,
a simple reflection,
rather, a dissection,
a slow flay, where
skin peels off
in thin sheets until
only raw red bits
of sin cling to bone.
I am a myriad,
shattered.
I am a scar,
angry and raw.
(October 14, 2021)
Beneath the bed, I hide
my sack of broken secrets.
They leak into my dreams
like drops of rain sift slowly
through limestone to form
deeper pools, darker caves.
I wake to put them on again
still damp, clinging to my skin.
Through the day, they etch
their strangled blue runes
onto my hollow bones
with a cold acid. I become
a flute to my fears, a crescendo
of trills like dying birds.
(October 8, 2021)
We drown in our waste,
as history fragments, like
ice shelves to the sea.
(October 1, 2021)
“till we turn to see
who you were, who you are, everpresent, vivid
luminous dust”
-Denise Levertov
Like wolves feeding on a fresh kill
steaming in the snow, each dead second
is pulled apart. No matter the effort,
time disallows the past to continue
fully formed. The future devours us
leaving little tufts of fur and bone bits
to decorate our current troubled paths
and explain away our broken sorrows.
I am hungry for something I don’t know,
a freedom from imposed obligations,
an escape to a place I am not known.
Yet, where I am, and who I’ve been tangle
like the strings of old puppets in a crate,
waiting for someone to haul them away.
(September 28, 2021)
by
There was always a way; a way he knew
to map an idea out of the landscape
lying before him like an unfinished
puzzle; some way to reshape creation
with a simple jig. His mind danced about
the problem, as he rose and sat, sat and
rose to walk across the yard cursing his
thoughts for not seeing it: so simple, so
obvious. He’d lumber back to the bench,
pick up the pieces of wood and begin
to cast the abstract into the concrete.
Beneath his broken hands, he would divine
a new pattern from the pattern inscribed
in the broken palimpsest of the wood.
(September 26, 2021)
Happiness
—after Jim Harrison
The wine and whiskey, I am certain,
do not compliment the anti-depressants,
as well as I wish they would; yet, “all this time
counting the mind, counting crows”—
I pour a new glass with a touch of ice
to begin this conversation:
Hell has come to us as a heaven
we will never know, like Sappho’s apple
dangling slightly beyond our fingers
which grasp only at still air.
Where do we go when things fall apart?
In 1978, Buddha’s birthday
was three days after my eighteenth.
I was a crumpled bag of emotion:
my father had died two months earlier;
I was in love (and still am) with the girl
I would marry. I moved, two months later,
125 miles to the north, leaving my hometown
forever, yet still trailing all my doubts and fears
behind like crows along a fence line
who caw and flutter, marking
their constant presence with darker eyes.
We think we can escape ourselves,
ignoring the crows flying in and out
between the twisted oaks nearby.
We flee burning madly as we go;
yet, we can only be ourselves,
and, most days, that is not enough
to keep our fears balanced tightly
like circus clowns spinning plates
atop long fragile poles through the night.
(September 15, 2021)
by
the darkness festers
into the night, then lingers
through the waking day.
(September 12, 2021)
subtext 