NPM 2018: Absent (Day 30)

Well... I forgot about the 28th. I suppose I could post two poems right now but I just don't have the emotional energy, and I already wrote three haikus this month. So here you go. One poem, written on the spot, to finish out National Poetry Month. Thank you to all who read my work. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you'll be back to read again next year (or whenever I decided to blog again.)

Absent

Under a tree
shaken by wind
Across an empty table
with empty hands

In the shape of
nothing
Known by the color
of nothing
She said
I will leave this place
and I will be new
with the first step
And the wind
laughed
The wind talked back
at nothing
Because she
was already gone

NPM 2018: Good Girl (Day 29)

Good Girl
Written September 9, 2017

for Holly Bambina

Good girls are sickly sweet,
they are whipped cream and
sugar sprinkles, sugar showers,
sugar rushes till your teeth hurt.
They say a good girl is made of spice,
she is everything nice, she is daffodils
and tulips in a tamed garden,
she tastes like carnival cotton candy,
she is cinnamon on apple pie, but I…

I’m made of the darkest chocolate,
I am strong coffee and stronger gin,
a thick slice of toast with no butter,
and a cloud of ginger and cumin.
And if I’m a flower I’m dandelions,
I’m daisies on the side of the road,
growing among the gravel and rocks,
not caring where the grass stops,
never doing what I’m told.

And now we know you were the fool
who went on and loved me still
with your softness, golden-eyed,
your honey tones balancing my shrill.
You loved wildflowers and making wishes,
would take a bite of my temper
just to know if it was delicious.
You seemed not to care what I was made of,
who I was, or what my harshness might do.
Now that you’re gone
so are all my rough edges and
all I’m made of is you.

NPM 2018: Spills (Day 27)

Spills
Written March 29, 2018

Gray
is a big color,
it can cover
so much at once.
And I
am sometimes filled
with gray spills
for months.
So keep
my colors for me
while I am working
to be strong.
Gray
can’t last forever,
so come whatever,

I won’t be long.

NPM 2018: Coffee Haiku #2 & #3 (Day 26)

Coffee Haiku #2 & #3

That man could be found
with a paintbrush in one hand
up on a ladder

In the other hand
poised like a trapeze artist
Grandpa had coffee

NPM 2018: Noise (Day 25)

Noise
Written December 19, 2017

my biggest regret

in the greatest darkness

is being too tired

to do the right thing.

i do what i hate

to make myself scarce

when it takes too much

to continue being.

but nothing resists

the shadows so much

as the push through the noise


just to hear myself sing.

NPM 2018: Recovered (Day 24)

Recovered
Written April 24, 2018

I sat leisurely
at the keyboard
and typed this out.
I sipped iced tea
in the springtime
and didn't recall
your thoughts
on cherry blossoms
until they were gone.
I sold a painting
and left the state
and had a crisis
and recovered
and didn't tell you
anything.
Maybe this year
I'll stop
writing poems
about you.

Nevermind.

NPM 2018: Coffee Haiku #1 (Day 23)

Coffee Haiku #1

Coffee for breakfast
is not glamorous but a
kind of survival.

NPM 2018: Darkness (Day 22)

Darkness
Written November 4, 2017

Hours shift sight
and night consumes.
I am not afraid
of the darkness,
only being within it
without you.

NPM 2018: Spiraling (Day 21)

Spiraling
Written April 20, 2018

I, fearlessly,
the one with fire
in my blood,
who pushed you down
and now hopes
to hold you up,

would, without pause,
at a moment's notice,
if you just said the word,

do, immediately,
with all the love
in my heart,

anything
for you.

NPM 2018: Stones to Throw (Day 20)

Stones to Throw
Originally written May 2017
Edited March 2018

The days are gone,
the ones you claimed.
Each forsaken,
cast off and out of sight
while you cry to the ether,
into empty wind,
that you deserve more.
But there are more tasks tomorrow
than hours to contain them,
more moments of deceit
than time
to make amends.
You only have two hands
for what you own and
say is yours,
and in one you hold your pride,
in the other a stone to throw.
How dare you seek forgiveness
while you exact revenge,
and how dare you speak
in the light of love
when all you carry
is heavy with hate.

NPM 2018: Very Busy (Day 19)

Very Busy
April 19, 2018

The world wrote a note and
left it on your front porch,
to tell you good morning
and remind you
it was very busy.
You went out
to fetch the newspaper
and check your mail
and almost missed
the note.
You were watching
bumblebees dance
from clover to clover
as purple blossoms
reached up from the soil,
the intricacies of such things
pulling your attention
from the overgrown lawn
and a house layered in dust.
You were listening
to a robin chirp above
and rustling leaves below,
sounds esteemed beyond
the rush of passing cars
and the swift tearing
of letters being opened.
You were feeling
the wind pass over you
and through your open hand,
as you held it out
to test the morning rain
which dampened your hair
and blurred your eyes,
but you didn’t notice.
When you turned back
and faced your front door
you almost missed the daisy
pushing up through the porch.

NPM 2018: A Morning at My Father's Desk (Day 18)

This is one of those poems that is so annoying vulnerable/intimate I have to give it a preface. I don't remember why I was at my father's desk on this morning in October, or why he was not at it as he usually is, but it doesn't really matter. Here is a poem about it. Don't be weird, family.


A Morning at My Father's Desk
Written October 18, 2017

A professional photographer took your parents picture.
It was the Christmas of 1999, their last one together,
and now they pause from a gold frame by the window.
How comforting to sit under their gaze, how luxurious
to look out and see a barbershop and someone else’s
empty rooftop garden, the university students meandering
down your street, under falling yellow leaves.
A coffee cup from Chicago is half full, half drunk,
its cold scent trailing over the faded wood grain.
Books currently being annotated, a dozen or so,
sit crisply at the desk edge by the wall, just beneath
five sealed graduate degrees in cream colored paper.
The smell of ganja wafts up from the avenue
and dissipates at the horizon, into a milky sky,
hovering between billowing cotton lace.
From afar you would not have chosen any of this,
the stack of boxes in the corner, frilly curtains,
a closet full of tools but empty of memories,
and yet here is the life you have made your own.
This is not the luxury of micromanagement but of
designated fragments and pieces formed gracefully,
the luxury of knowing absolutely your purpose,
whatever uncertainty, whatever you hold, wherever you go.
What a comfort it is for me to follow.

NPM 2018: Notes on a Mountain, Part 3 (Day 17)

Notes on a Mountain, Part 3
Written March 29, 2018

Human forms crest sideways
in riverbeds and rolling waves,
growing up slowly and then
all at once,
and then coming back down
to hobble and hunch.
They do not rise again
even when it rains,
they simply spread out
until they reach the plains,
filling potholes and ditches,
covering valleys and bridges,
over every divider
always reaching wider.
They form crevices and nooks,
forming wide berths from brooks,
their elbows and knees
stabbing at the trees
and gently, with rippling hands,
erode the edges of nearby land.
And the mountains look down
with their cresting peaks of stone,
uncompromising, immovable,
yet irreparably alone.
They know we do not rise
in ways that can be measured,
but they see from afar

we move infinitely together.

NPM 2018: So long (Day 16)

So long
Written January 19, 2018

‘You have so long,
only so long’
said the wind
to the song

so hurry,
decide
what you must say
before I sweep

your voice away

NPM 2018: Panic (Day 15)

Panic
Written May  30, 2017

I beat
beat
myself between
heartbeatbeats

I beat
panic
I panic
in beats
between
breathbeats

This is the
everyday beat
my everyday
beat
My fragile life
beating
in rhythm
beats

I can’t
beat
sleep

I can’t
beat it
or breathe

It’s not even
a word anymore
It’s just a beat
beating
heartbeating
breathbeating
Just a thump
beat
in my chest
beat

between breaths

NPM: Oh, Brave Gravity (Day 14)

Oh, Brave Gravity
Draft begun December 9, 2015
Edited/revised/finalized April 12, 2018

The narrow path is broken
and I have fallen
far from the height
of that righteous road.
My body sank
like a stone
alongside the ground
which I had walked upon
just moments before.
My hands clamored
for any small
semblance of rescue
and just as I thought,
"This is it,"
I landed.
Not broken.
Only bruised
among a pile of bricks
on a dirt road.
I looked up
at the remnants of
that carefully trodden
narrow path, knowing
fully, for the first time,
bridges
are more than elevated
travel.
Bridges are
more
than crossings
but methods
to get you from one place
to another
even if it means

being broken.

NPM 2018: Wash (Day 13)

Wash
Written March 30, 2018

I’m not saying
to let all the colors
wash away.
But for a little while
you be blue
and I’ll be gray.
And I’m not saying
the colors don’t
run or bleed.
But they can hold
their own
in times of need.
So I’m not saying
get used to it;
this is not the end.
But when the rain stops
all gray hues and
the blues end.

NPM 2018: Mornings (Day 12)

Mornings
Written December 7, 2017

I miss you most
as frost-covered windows
keep the sunlight from waking me,
when instead
of your warm weight against my back
tethering me to sleep, I feel
an empty cave of blankets.
Mornings
were made for your softness.
Your golden gaze
anchored every moment but
longed for adventure,
your heart beat emphatically
in a rhythm that spoke of
running in the snow
and chasing
whatever we could find.
I miss you most
because
there is nothing to keep me here
and nothing
to make me rise.

NPM 2018: Notes on a Mountain, Part 2 (Day 11)

Notes on a Mountain, Part 2
Written March 12, 2018
Edited March 31, 2018

We walked to Alki
and threw into the Sound
a set of lost keys,
never to be found

And I wish that I
could fling myself too,
gleaming and graceful,
into that gray-blue

You can move mountains
with enough faith, they say,
but is movement enough
to fall completely away?

To become a boulder, then a rock,
then a pebble, and then sand,
until I’m just part of water

forgotten by land

NPM 2018: Ours (Day 10)

Ours

Written November 30, 2017

Edited March 31, 2018

What was ours

is behind us.

We belonged to

what we owned

but now

the life we make

belongs to us

alone.

NPM 2018: When the universe laughs at you (Day 9)

When the universe laughs at you
Written April 5, 2018

It's funny.
Hindsight is so respectable,
calculating missteps and mistakes
among pitfalls and bad breaks
and piling up your honors
in sad little corners
just to be forgotten,
lost and rotten
like there's no one they matter to
and while we're at it, neither do you.

It's funny.
Memory is intangible but
it can be caught in winter air,
reminders of how change isn't fair,
and from a stranger an awkward glance
tells you there are not second chances
because history says you are just too much
leaving you here, knowing you're
not enough.

It's funny.
All the lies that life tells you,
like that your thoughts have a place to go
between summer squalls and April snow,
like your spirit has a way of moving out
and can leave your body to do without
and all the while forgetting
that above there's no one betting
against you or your striving
or your trying-to-stay-alive-ing.

It's funny.
Humanity fails tremendously
but putting all of its tender trust
in an ambivalent universe or pixie dust
when all along there's a Creator
usually content to wait out your anger
and once you're done with all the lies
the truth shoots you between the eyes.

It's funny.
Everything stops eventually
and where all roads and stories end
you confront your oldest, truest friend.
The one who's seen all the trouble you're having,
who's coordinated all that you're planning,
who sees the life at which you're grasping,
sees you, knows you, and isn't laughing.

NPM 2018: Wanted (Day 8)

Wanted
Written November 19, 2017

I echo of myself in the cobalt stars,
waves of wails on deaf supernovas, rings around
a black hole, an orbital cry which circles
back to me, calling infinitely in my finite flesh.
Are you there?

Golden curtains of sunrise fall from my head,
sweeping over the land and sea to find you,
my fingertips are within and without,
clutching at hoarseness, at the coarseness of the earth
where you cannot be found but must be sought.
Where are you?

My body is but a noise reflecting back from the depths,
searching canopies of leaves, layers of brick,
among dusky gazes and unsoiled remarks I,
I cannot contain ravaging hope longer than it takes
for sorrow to bounce from one edge of the universe
back to the one inside my heart.
Is that you?

NPM 2018: And now. (Day 7)

This is another one of those poems I can't remember... obviously I wrote it, but I can't remember why or "who" it was written to/for. Maybe I wrote it to myself...?

And now.
Written January 2018
Edited March 2018

Oh, darling,
this is not the moment.
Don’t be coy.
Don’t simper
and wring your hands.
Don’t
blush, sweetly,
and compromise.
This is not the moment.
That moment
lasted 20 years,
and now.
Now.
Put aside caution.
Forsake inhibitions.
Curse the wind
because
this moment belongs to you
and sometimes
you must take what’s yours
before it is killed
with kindness.

NPM 2018: The Cycle (Day 6)

The Cycle
Written November 21, 2017

It used to be a signal,
a symbol of progress,
the marks of my age
like rings in a tree
all circling back to
hope.

But one day it was gone.
Inexplicably, yet not quite
miraculous,
and I didn’t miss the ache but
I did miss that certainty
that certainly
I would never have to question
myself.

And then
it reappeared by force,
a signal of past poisons,
a symbol of my disability,
the mark of what should be
hoped for
but won’t be because
the cycle is broken and therefore
so am I.

NPM 2018: Notes on a Mountain, Part 1 (Day 5)

Notes on a Mountain, Part 1
Written March 6, 2018

Here, I’ve fallen before you
I close my eyes to rest at your feet

I reach for you and your warmth
I touch darkness and cannot sleep

I thought I was a mountain,
fearless and strong, but I crumbled

So here I am, waiting to rise up

next to you, stronger but humbled

NPM 2018: The Bright Side (Day 4)

The Bright Side
Written November 10, 2017

On the night we came
to say goodbye
no stars speckled
the thick, black sky.
But the moon hung
like a pale lemon wedge
over the road,
across the river’s edge.
And then I was sure
you weren’t gone too soon.
Without sun or starlight,

there’s always the moon.

NPM 2018: Unloveliest (Day 3)

Unloveliest
Written July 2017

I know exactly who I am,
even if you are uncertain
about your numbered days
or the infinity of diamonds
or the countless rings in a tree.
Who I am is not mathematical
or purely methodical,
despite my aggressive desire
for justice and truth.
And I won’t change who I am
if you change who you are
and I won’t be less of me
if you are suddenly less honest,
because the me that loves you
does so even in the middle
of the unloveliest mistake

NPM 2018: I Wish You Were Infinite (Day 2)

I Wish You Were Infinite
Written August 19, 2017

I wish you were infinite
like mountain echoes
with each wind calling back
to its sisters
between ice and stone.

I wish you were infinite
like walls of waves
over endless seas of sand,
cresting and breaking
on every shore.

I wish you were infinite
like raindrops from storm clouds,
or needles from evergreens,
and like so many things in nature,
you are.

But you are only infinite
in the circle of my grief,
following through peaks and valleys,
until there is nothing left
but memory.

National Poetry Month 2018: What I Have to Offer (Day 1)

Hello friends! Welcome back to the blog. I have posted about three and a half times since last April, which is a testament to A. How busy I've been and B. How important it is to blog during other times of the year.

Once again, I will be posting a poem a day for the month of April. Some of them will be written during this month and some of them will be older, but I promise that (unless you have access to my secret poetry blog) you haven't seen them before.

Enjoy

What I Have to Offer
Written October 16, 2017

Here is what I give to you,
to all of you, the least of you,
to the most deserving but also
those who want it gone.
I will give it for all and forever.
The gift goes on and on.

It is soft like mothers’ whispers,
if you are battered by sound.
It gently beats, never retreats,
it is safe to speak around.

But it is also for the others
who need to hear it thunder,
who need to feel the shake of life
to wake them from the dead of night,
to throttle fear into disarray,
this is what I give away.

I cannot give it otherwise,
it can only laugh or cry,
it is not stable, it does not merit
apathy, if you can bear it.

And I cannot keep it to myself,
or to only one of you, the least of you,
I cannot only give to the best of you,
I can only give it to completion,
without fullness there is no creation,
it simply will cease to be.

I don’t care if you don’t want it.
It’s already out of my hands.
I have to give it away, it’s just
who I am.