I wake today
with the seed
of a fertile memory
and hope
the morning’s
translucent sun
will dance
its laughter
upon my tears
swirling
like a whirligig
and lift it
as leaves
in an October
breeze
upward to kiss
the branch that
wisely let go
yet the haunting
dreams that colored
my damp pillow
and clung the bits
of mixed emotions
into my tousled hair
can’t be brushed
away
Grandma told me
vanity is a sin
of many single women
while I was innocently
unaware that my uncle
had a secret
till the heat of the day
forced him to reveal
what was under
the covering
of his social deceit
and I couldn’t help
looking
his back
covered in hair
and imagined
my aunt
brushing 100
and I suddenly decided
never to marry
and ran to the water
begging forgiveness
I may have known
the seductive song
but now rags
of shriveling skin
deceive my body
another clump of hair
clogs the drain
and I’m a siren
singing in water
trying to drown
my cracking voice
I wobble
with lascivious
contortions
ankle deep
on this island
with only a flimsy
curtain of days
to keep me
from crossing
the sea
Pollock threw
himself
into his paintings
dripping energy
like heat
from a fine
vodka
till the chaos
of what he felt
left us gawking
unsure of what
we know
to be art
or chicken scratching
and we jealously wish
that in one big bang
amid the viscous
flow of paint
we could tangle our hair
and let
ourselves
out.
If I were clairvoyant
I wouldn’t have to peek
and my pancakes
would all be perfectly browned
without one edge curling
bent out shape
with my indecision.
But it isn’t my fault
for it is God
who messed with my head
tossing and turning
my hair as I slept
checking to see
if I was perfectly
done.
(Many of you know that I have not been in the best of health for over a month. I am now on a medical leave, hoping for less stress, and more healing. Thank you for your patience. I appreciate those of you who I see still coming back.)
Spring brings the deluge,
the pouring of sky’s soul.
Here I drip
many days’ deluge
finally feeling
ready to fall.
Eyes blurred,
I planted iris bulbs
crooked.
First shoots,
curved leaves leaned,
proved my pain.
Yet today’s stem
of tomorrow’s flower –
straight up.
Straight down,
a pint of past beauty,
for a bud of hope.
Only her eyes moved,
darting back and forth,
my god, oh, my god.
His eyes open,
starring into the sky;
she knew him, dead.
They took him
in hushed tones;
she alone on the hill.
Her screams bent
allowing no words,
just agony.
Her body curled
sobbing with her softly,
then gut wrenching.
He took her life.
Even her pockets
were empty.
I have reached for the tissues
more than five times
and the pile of my agony
still grows.
Tomorrow I will pick them up
and toss them in the trash,
but today the floor
is where my heart
will lay.
Somewhere around
tissue eight or nine,
anger will come out of the box
and I will cry
no more.
I have never been a fan of singers
whose voices lift
the spirits of thousands.
And, Wind,
I am no fan of yours.
You roll my child’s ball
making her run
far away from me.
You curl my shoulders,teasingly tossing my hair
to obstruct my view.
Every second I have lost
from seeing
my sweet child’s face
in playful laughter
can not be returned.
Wind,
do not sing
your beguiling song here.
The price you charge,
too high.
Darkness hid every drop
of rain that evening.
I could hear only
the tiny pings on the roof.
I felt the heaviness
of pressured air.
There was no line
between day and night,
between calm conversation
and drips of cutting cynical words.
Unwarned came the torrents,
the angry cry of clouds.
Finally, when it returned to a drizzle,
soft and steady,
the rain became my comfort
as you went out the door.
They all stood on this hill,
stomachs hungry
for more than the rinds
of day old bread.
Yet their voices are lost,
wispy like dying fires
after the dead coals
are stomped and ground.
We have not feed them,
filled their need,
while our own greed
has stolen their future.
Children can not play,
innocent in their day
when the sun only makes
cross shadows on the hill.
My large kitchen spoon
bent too easily
as I tried to dig
to China.
The top soil
was thin,
so thin,
barely covering
the rock below.
My mom
wasn’t impressed
by my efforts then.
I just kept
on digging.
Please keep
those tasty,
tempting,
tantalizing,
thesaurus teasing
bites of you
in this place where
I devour them.
According to me
it is easier
to fight
the robot codes
that to fight
my weight.
I will be
the Biggest Loser
if you bail and post
where I can’t
read your words.
Yesterday, there was one leaf,
green and growing strong.
It was the promise
of one tulip,
the mystery
of its color,
red,
yellow,
pink,
growing by the base
of my tree.
Today,
chewed off, again.
Just like last year.
I could blame
Princess,
my white squirrel
who circus walks the top
of our cedar fence.
I could blame
the rabbit,
who doesn’t deserve
a name,
chewing his door in the bottom
of our cedar fence.
Or I could blame
the fence.
Selfishly
holding back
this year’s view
of the carried,
buried treasure
of my neighbor’s
tulip bulbs.
Sr. Mary Aloysius,
fingers sliding
over pearlized beads,
keys jingling
in an unseen pocket,
bends down
to tie her black shoes tight.
Then a quieting finger
covers her thin lips.
She points to God
who apparently
was still looking
down
on us
even though we had already checked
our laces
and our manners.
I wanted to say
she was making more noise
than us,
but little girls
wearing tissues
for our missing chapel caps
already had enough
Somewhere around fifty
our brains shifted
from abstract thinking
about the events
of the day,
who is going where
and what they’re going to do,
to the minute details
of puss oozing
from our ears
and sciatic nerve damage
that radiates down our legs.
To remember the day
that meds our should be increased
while calculating
the effort needed
to climb a flight of stairs,
we need to shift
our creaking bones
to a place where we
remember the day
when we were too young
to care that we’d grow old.
Just when I think
I know it all,
the electrifying
realization
of your 2 to 1 ratio,
proves, once again,
the magnetism
between my spoon
and a quart of frozen custard
is justifiably intensified
by the viscosity
of my tears
and the volume
of her breasts.
Global warming,
earth’s demise,
heating arguments
conflicting
with knowledge
we all insist
is true.
Scientists can’t cool
the fiery tempers
of melting icebergs
and angst filled teenagers,
floating soul sisters,
colliding
and damaging
their sinking feelings
hidden
below.
He is thirteen
seen forever
by sensitive souls
who pass his hillside,
who hear his muffled
cry.
Scissors.
Duck tape
wrapped around
his mouth
his nose,
his eyes alone
cry.
Scissors.
I drive on,
no scissors
in my car,
my radio,
just a little louder.
A piece of paper,
value kept,
worth
fifty percent off
any number
of items
needed,
desperately
needed,
has now died,
died,
an untimely death
with the flipping
of the calendar.
Expired.
Hoarders lament,
tearing their treasure,
each half
now fifty percent
of nothing.
Only an old cat
can chuck up
a hairball,
stringy,
stinky,
slippery,
that floats
like an island
in a sea of slime.
Only me
left to wipe it up.
That old cat
and I
ebb and flow
with my paper towels
and his rough tongued kiss.
Wheels spun,
rolling down the road,
screeched us to a halt.
Time was my enemy of love,
held a hand up,
prevented our crossing.
No opportunity
to look both ways,
longingly down the road.
Then my heavy breasts,
filled past love’s capacity,
rested before they got home.
Damn flat.
Chequamegon Bay
quiet as the foaming
washing of rocks,
slow as applebutter
spread on toast.
Where lupines wave
their purple spires
giving seed to
crumbling
sandstone churches.
Barren blueberries
dust of pine
buckets of smelt
batter dipped
and fried.
Then brandy slush
it all till snow
covers the land
marking my trail
home.
Anticipating adrenaline’s rush
mingled with salty popcorn,
the script,
the first sacrificial victim,
heavy in the weight
of the writer’s agonizing
choice of words
falls
to its live or die
ending
with the first reader’s
ominous words:
“I don’t get it.”
She sat in my classroom for one hundred and eighty days.
Front left side, third from the center aisle.
16 days absent, if truth be told.
Not much of a story here.
Flu, broken bones, all the usual ailments of a twelve year old.
If my students weren’t so easily distracted
from the topic of the lesson on that day,
I would have noticed her empty desk.
She entered the room quiet, so quiet, you may have not seen her
as she slipped by with her arms wrapped
around her books and she apologized
when she slid into her chair.
Crouched down with my face closer, I asked, “What was that?”
But there wasn’t another sound coming out
from under her shield of auburn bangs,
her exaggerated part falling against nature.
She moved her hair aside so one dark pupil could peek through.
I could see she had been crying
and in our glance we agreed
to leave the story there.
Students were asked to write about a happy memory.
The bell rang and her paper handed in
told the story of her older brother
ripping a clump of her hair.
In the jostling of books as she left, I could see it was non-fiction.
Her scalp showed a shining new bald spot
the size of a fifty-cent piece
but the story written there
went on to tell of how she felt safe in the walls of this room,
and since I was her teacher
could I write her an excuse
to stay away from home?
She sat in my classroom for one hundred and sixty-four days.
In 1960, Pete and Joe
wondered as they sang
when people would ever learn
where all the flowers had gone.
Gardens used to keep children
running under its sprinkler spray
and kicking the can and water balloons
filled cut grass with fun.
Laughter road the streets on bikes
with cards click-clicking spokes
and sticks banged out a tune
on the leaning picket fence.
Yet drive the street anytime today
and no one is outside
for children left the garden,
unattended, gone to weeds.
A long time since 1960,
you and I still wonder
where flowers in our garden go
when children live inside.