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