that's mrs. mediocrity to you

ego is a fragile toy
and i’ve been thinking a lot about death lately

at first glance, these two things
might seem to be unrelated

but they are partners i tell you
(and don’t run away because i’ve mentioned their names)

you will dance with them both
one night

and i am never good at answers
but i do know this:

you get to write the music

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

i want to put your youth in my pocket
and save it for a rainy day

i want to tell you dylan thomas was brilliant
and bob dylan was his love child

i want to tell you to listen

but i know you won’t hear anything i say
with my cloak of old age singing me
invisible to you and your friends

i want to tell you nothing kills you but death
not heartbreak or disappointment
failure or ridicule
loss or even down and out

even so
you will die a tiny bit every day

in the same way a tree dies every time
a leaf drops

and a mirage gives up when you see it

but you

and me

we’re all dandelions

growing where we land

sending down our tap root of survival
blooming garishly bright
and then withering grey

and even when we’re spent

there are seeds

to catch a ride on a breeze
and carry us
into tomorrow

so i hold my tongue
because you are young
and i’m just the sun
holding court
with yesterday’s clouds

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

Also linking up with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night, join us!

waiting for the moon and begging for a howl

polaris refuses to reveal my backlit compass

and i choose not wander despite knowing
exactly where i am

instead

i listen for the song of saturn
spooling itself up my arm

i inhale black and exhale glitter

the bear in the corner see fireflies and
promises her cubs after dinner dancing

i stay where i am

silently

breathing life into a night
that knows no shadow

sparks on the horizon blinking
silhouette and solstice

in tandem with the rhythm

of destiny’s heartbeat

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

there are days
months
even years

when life circles around one word
everything you do and think and feel and see
somehow finds its way back to you in
this same combination of line and shape
picking and choosing each step carefully
watching out for the trap of A
the tail of Q
the slithering snake of S

this word will always come home to you
even if you don’t want it
or like it
or imagine it tattooed on an ankle
just in the spot where a shackle would hide it

you tuck it under your tongue
where it rolls around
in a constant struggle to
announce
your infidelity
your use and abuse
of all those other words

the ones that don’t belong to you

this word refuses to be swallowed

catching in your throat and
haunting you
taunting you
with threats to expose

your silence

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

i broke my arm when i was eleven
getting out of the bathtub (don’t laugh)
where i’d been reading
for hours i’m sure
and knowing me, i probably still had
my nose in my book when i stepped out
and caught my foot on the edge of the

faucet

went down hard and hit my upper arm
against the corner of a cabinet
cracking my humerus (it wasn’t funny)
and yeah, it hurt like hell
but nothing looked broken and
i was always falling
tripping, running into walls clumsy
my middle name

three days later i still hadn’t
seen a doctor
no one at fault i just didn’t act
the way a girl with a broken
arm would
and anyway pain is always a guessing

game

but eventually, my mom suspecting
an x-ray was ordered
and i remember
being just a little bit silently glad
because there would be
six weeks of no chores for me
(stupid dishes)
and i had a stack of books to

read

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

Also linking up with the fabulous dVerse poets with anecdotes for Poetics, join us!

i remember the day you told me
about nothing

and every hour after that was a reprieve

the blue of your eyes
never looked like the sky
or even the ocean

when asked

you called it light azure
thinking yourself witty

but i knew it as aquamarine
all cool and hard and ridiculously
slippery

the kind of surface

you can’t
stop touching

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

i can tell these two crows are teenagers
by their hunger and their recklessness

i feed them anyway and they never say thank you

like all youth
their gift is their presence

they haven’t yet learned how to tell time
or rather, they don’t think about time at all
just the way you don’t think about breathing

until you can’t

i hold onto the edge of this curtain
dusty lace and faded white (or is that my hair)

and smile at nothing but birds and sunshine

because it isn’t
silence that haunts you

and to turn away is the same as standing still,
moving forward is no different than sleeping well
beneath a smoky sky filled with endless flight

stars in reverse

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

.

because every girl loves a bad boy

and the river she watched from her window

never quite made it

to the sea of whiskey

and just once in her life

she wanted to float

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

i have seven mirrors in my house and they all
tell the same story

but none of them is true

i drink tea and water and wine
and then you remember

we have not eaten

hunger fills the dark with daydreams
and i open a window so we can listen

to the emptiness of fortitude

you turn your back to me and
shift position to look

for a moon that has not risen

hours later you are asleep and i see her
reflection in the looking glass of silence

but i don’t wake you

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.

Also linking up with the fabulous dVerse poets for Open Link Night, join us!

every day starts the same
a twenty seven step shuffle
to the stove and a kettle
that will whistle me awake
before i burn the house down
and you can count my silence
in teabags and empty spoons
adding up the dreams i try to bury
before i pull my heart
from one last cup
and drag light into corners
with this pencil

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo. see more here.