a god poem?

Her forehead presses against the window glass.
She is painting breath against fingerprints
and rain stains.

She is hiding behind her heavy sighs
looking into the night and against the moon.
She is leaning in.

She's too young to doubt and too young to believe
She's got virgin thighs and 12 year old dreams
etched in her poetry.

When the lights go out in her bedroom
she thinks about death and other lights
in other rooms.

She's a tree climber with calloused hands.
She's heard of Jesus and the Sandman.
They keep her up at night.

If there's a place for the seeds that fall from the trees
and a place for the people on bended knees
then there's a place for her.

Out the window there must be something.
Out the window there is nothing
but the moon in the sky.

a sonnet of sorts...

He speaks in silhouettes of her
outlining each curve
and flaw in each year
each vowel
envokes a scent of her
each pause-

He speaks in silhouettes of her
and i want to drag
my finger along each fissure
in the sketch, each break
in the seemingly solid line.
He is a monument
sketched in memories


locked in an artist's eye
so i will be a passer by.

supertunias

a tiny pinch
between my thumb nail
and index finger removes
the newest growth
from the supertunias
that fill the nursery.

each one has a stem or two
over reaching-falling
more to one side then the other.
So we pinch it back. forcing
their growth in other directions.

First a seed, then shoot, and stretch
and above it all, the first attempt
at a bud. But with the ease
of tip and nail, I snip
off the chance, leaving only an indent
on my thumb.

if only it was this simple
to obey, like nature sometimes will,
and redirect
all new green
still vying for your light.

yellow cat's remarks on his first winter

I paw at the dangling
cloth she has thrown
around her neck
and watch her slide
on another layer of skin
before she steps outside.

And from the window sill
I see her dig
a path down
to the darker dirt
moving the now interrupted whiteness
into piles.

This is what they do
when the ground swells
overnight and swallows
up everything on it.

The new dirt burns her cheeks
and when she comes inside
there are tears still dripping
from her eyes and chin.
The white earth clings
to her thick layers
and hangs from her hair.

She says she has shoveled.

And from her heavy breath
and slow motion movements
I know this means "defeat".

beneath the ice

3 days since our last conversation
and your words press
through the phone
like you're stepping
onto a frozen lake in early january.

Treading slowly past the familiar

I can picture you, on the edge
of your bed, shirtless, in your ripped
plaid boxers, taking off your socks, one
then the other
and our green candle we would light at night
and our clear blue dishes that the farm gave us
and our jade plant.

we’re almost tip toeing now
“when will you visit?”, he says.
I can still smell you on my lips if I try hard enough.

and when you say good bye
my name spills out of your mouth
like a stranger or a lost lover
or like a muffled crack from beneath the ice.

striving to be like bamboo

I am striving
to be like bamboo
and bow
with the weight of winter
arcing my frame, almost
to the ground

and when winds wither
and when snow clumps
melt into puddles
I will rise again and drink
and grow

knowing my roots, too, cling
below ground level
shoots and knots and achors of fear
thoughts grown out of control
holding out of habit
pull down on me.
Still I will bend.

Persephone's absence

Mid April and still no sign of her.
Frozen earth and naked branches,
a three month affair now flows over five
forcing us to hide inside from winter winds.

Come back, Persephone!
And let us feast on the fruits of summertime.
Put down the pomegranate seeds and send spring
so we can watch damp dirt dry
because your mother will cease to cry
and will restore the warmth with her love for you.

Dry Heaves

Alzheimer's stole her life
like pages missing from a book,
tearing out chapters by the handful.

And when she died I couldn't cry
but I hung my head over the toilet
trying to gag up the missing pieces.

Anchored then in my rippled reflection
I looked my grip around the rim
and remembered all that she couldn't

Georgia rips and Kent cigarettes,
soap operas and back scratches,
my name and her mother's face.

I added her story to mine
and flushed away her sickness
with he tearless toilet water.

Sunday Night Shopping

Tonight I walk down each isle, searching for something simple to make for dinner, when I haven't slept since Friday and the fluorescent lights make my head pound and eyes squint and each blink lets me see the fall again.

I watched him perched on my third floor balcony, 2:30 in the morning, gripping
the edge of the roof for balance, tempting me to join him.
I watched him, locked in a stare, like he was trying to memorize each branch and
twig of the tree in front of him.
I watched him shout off each thing I said to him, each threat I made, and push off
the edge.
I watched him fall, thirty feet, through the brittle branches of the pine tree to icy
ground.

And now, his skull lined with fractures
And now, his brain lined with blood
And now, bruises paint his eyelids like a cheap whore.

I would pray for him if I had a god, crouched and waiting, like he was that night,
tempting me to join him.
I would cry for him if I wasn't so tired, so angry, trying to think of anything but
the brown snow patch and fallen branches outside my window.
I would sit by his bed, not looking at his piss bag, morphine drip, scabbed
forehead, swollen face.

But now my stomach pulls me back to the supermarket, down each isle, scanning the shelves for something simple.

Before you come to bed

I slip under our faded
down comforter and in between
our pale blue jersey sheets,
wrinkled with signs of sleep

and stretch my toes down
touch each sock stuck
in the tucked in sheets

and press my nose deep
into our bed, past the smell
of your after shave
and our sleeping bodies
to where the sheets still smell new

then, drag my hand down
to that rust colored stain
from when my period came
too early and the thought
of waiting on our love making
seemed impossible.

Tracing Grandpa

Like a statue, he sits
silent, still, representing
the memory of a man.

As the IV clings
to his forearm, dripping
life into his violet veins
Nana traces her finger
along the cracks of his face
like she's searching
for directions on a faded map
studying
83 years of experience
chiseled into his cheeks and forehead
remembering
a life of boundaries
his love, like barbed wire
keeping her at a distance
unless she wanted the scars.

But now he sits silent
thinning like an icicle in thaw
with bruises, like inkblots, dying
the paper thin skin of his hands.