that's mrs. mediocrity to you

so much living out loud
these days

so much songbird singing
and restless hand wringing

so many rules to swallow and
pills to follow

and offenses taken to
deep down places

so much sleep to lose and
outrage to booze

mirrors to crack
or pick up the slack

erasures and silence
muzzle and roar

whispers to settle
behind locked door

but i say
let them stand

all those words
to be banned

all the phrases
that offer no praises

words are the drones
in the war of lost bones

our last strong shield
in the cracked force field

of tomorrow’s glinting
freedom

.

.

.

A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 1
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme is resistance.

.

your eyes are the sea
i’ve never seen

bits of sand and salt
mixed with horizon

and i stand
toes wet
on the shore
of submersion

thinking swim
and float
and maybe even
butterfly

wanting to dive
into the heart tide
aqua league

crash myself back
against rocks
grown jagged

smoothing over
soothing wound
polishing our scars

etching fern
into your landscape
of stone

.

.

.

the power of lost

possibility

armored over and
bitter coated

speckle-pretty and
color faded

trapped

in time’s musty
closet

or is it hope

redefined

pale protection
roundly painted

and preserved
in smooth treasure box

waiting

for polish and
jeweled key

to crack wide open

The things I’ve forgotten, the messes I’ve made,
the dried-up, brittle-boned detritus of survival.

Perhaps I left it out as a reminder.

A forecast. A prediction.

Or a testament to who I really am,
beneath the soil of wasted hour and wanted nutrient.

Root-bound. Buried.

Parched or drowning, depending on the weather.

Somehow, even so, I will bloom.

.

.

.

the moon kept me awake last night
or perhaps it was the clock-tampering
or the book i couldn’t put down

outside my window
shadows of branch and ice
looked enough like a forest
to quieten my mind

and i wandered
through fields of forced memory
wildflower whispers telling stories
long ago named forgotten

in the silence never silent
i listened to the music of this house
a symphony of survival and
companion

keeping time with tapping toe
and misplaced sigh
tracking half a century of hours
offered and removed

buried warm beneath a quilt
stitched pretty by restless fingers
tracing pattern and loss
joy and forgiveness

worn thin at the edges
by sandpaper hands and
the scrabbling ghost tempo
of tender perennial continuance

.

.

.

years ago
i planted two poplar trees
side by side
out front
in the corner of the yard

and one grew taller than the other
larger
thicker
stronger

and i feel like that’s probably
a metaphor for something
or at least it should be

but all i see are trees
and words about trees
stamped across the sky
in a tangle
of branches

all the meaning i prescribe
comes from within
me
or the trees
and what i choose to name
the one on the left

my cat
can zoom straight up the trunk
leaving scratches
and cheshire grin
in a weathered trunk
time map

but i like to sit
beneath the canopy
and listen
to stories
told by dancing
flicker leaves
in the shade
of yesterday’s
summer

.

.

.

it was your dream and it shouldn’t
have been in my head but there it was
all memory and miniseries
claiming sleep in a gold rush
of measure

the audience laughed when i landed
and i thought perhaps i was dead
but you took my hand and lifted
til i stood three feet taller
than the mountain you sang
and could see each grey hair
on your head

in the hallway air-brushed footsteps
creaked out their endless
time-frame pattern
step here miss there hush now
tiptoe past the door of dragon

and the wind came howling
through the crack
in my window glass scar
left behind on a night when i dreamt
of forgetting and clambered to follow
the pale scratched trail
of prints in the snow beneath me

.

.

.

those were the words you left on the counter
next to the cat food and two bananas gone too far ripe
the kind just waiting for someone to make an effort
but that takes foresight and a dash of clarity and instead
you wrote a sentence on a red-stained slip of paper
more resignation than wish
or at least
acceptance

already i know what my answer will be
but i like the look of empty space
the box of possibility left unlined
in the corner of a kitchen meant for tea
and forgotten pots boiling over

in the corner i write corrosion
in pencil small enough
to be practically invisible

just before i flip the page to map out another list
half-filled with crisp greens and purple edges
in the shapes we’ll throw away

and here i sit, waiting for something i’ll never have and
my mind keeps screaming about wasted time
and the words are all stacked in the corner
neat as a pile of laundry
and my heart is always racing
even though
there’s no time to begin

four walls and one window and i am cold
but never frozen and two crows just flew by
to remind me of balance

as the sun pokes it way through a cross hatched horizon
painting colors with a brush of no hurry

spinning yarn for another day’s sweater

i found an arrow on the floor
three days ago
and just left it there

pointing southwest

it didn’t seem to be meant
for me

.

.

.

they say lightning never strikes the same place twice
but what if white light wakes you up every morning
and sometimes it thunders in the dead cave of winter

but the moon
rises up through the trees
even when frozen

and silt settles on everything
after a flood
concealing what lies
beneath a smooth surface

and magic makes no sense
but neither does reality

the miracle is that any tree survives

holding out bare branches
in forever expectation
of life going on

just the way it does

even uprooted

even split wide open

even silenced by
a lack

of wind

.

.

.