that's mrs. mediocrity to you

some days
my heart breaks four thousand times
and that’s all before
i open my eyes

heartache is the farmer of contentment
planting seeds he knows have little chance
of bearing fruit

if you want 40 plants you sow 68 seeds
and if you’re lucky you’ll end up with 50

think too much and you’ll always have just enough

but no one ever said happiness
was a permanent state
and no one ever said
survival was a given

we stand in a field of black soil
and cry when our feet get muddy

the rain will wash you clean
as long as you don’t run
and sometimes the sky has to cry
just the same way a mother
has to worry

have you ever tallied the scars
on the tree that shades
your bedroom?

missing limbs
broken branches, gashes
peeling bark

sap runs slowly through the veins
of existence

but every spring
green
new growth
insists on piercing the cloud
blocking your view
of the sun

and four thousand leaves
never seem
overwhelming

until tomorrow
when they’ll fuel the flame
you find impossible
to douse

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Open Link Night.
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keeps me tethered to the anarchy of fortitude
and i am calm most days
as long
as no one looks behind the curtain

the robin sings at dawn and dusk
celebrating light and darkness
with the very same song

and i wonder
how any of us make it
through a night
that lets us

slip

through the grasp
of reality’s fingers

even dogs dream and
no one
ever told them they couldn’t

every morning
bird call becomes bell or music or
shrill-strapped screaming

but i always wake up

to this tree
this red breasted thrush
this half-hearted thrashing
against the weight
of a twisted
damp-mouthed

sheet

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here is the hardest word

not sorry

nor forgiveness

though both are solid rocks
in the shoe of living

but

here

you cannot stay
you cannot leave

you cannot sing yourself away

or back again

from the eternal sunset
of lavender libation

all you can do really

is open

your eyes
your heart
your arms
your mouth

drink it in

inhale

exist beneath this ever

changing

umbrella of now

here

listen

hear it

raining down

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(title is from the song “Stand” by R.E.M.)

because

each moment holds its own redemption

each sunrise is a dare

each drop of rain was once a cloud

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yesterday

this flower slept in a bed of mud

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but look how pretty it wears

today

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i stood in the sun
and watched a storm
circle north
around me

pulling clouds in directions
impossible to follow

thunder rolled beneath my feet
as i stood

still

planted in a world
refusing to acknowledge

bolts of lightning
ripping through the grey blue steel
of sky’s lost eye

there was no rainbow

but off in the distance

rain reached down
in gauzy
worn-through sheets

someone else’s
dirty laundry

left hung out
to rinse

dry

and petrify

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is contemplation

e x  a   g    g    e     r     a  t  ion

the epic fail of epic

on a trip to Misnomer

any other name gets you to the same place

a beginning (seed)

a middle (flower)

an end (pod)

and you can’t separate any one of them from the other

without breathing in someone else’s perfume

crushing stem and spilling life

but you try anyway

again and again and again

and all the words you cannot say

(because i said so)

take root

in the cracks of cement

that line the path you’ve chosen

to pave with your rules

and your yeses and your nos

no!

but all you see is your own

vision

through those rose-colored glasses

of derision

mocking  the singsong silence

of the empty vowel left raining

from the mud-caked corner

of your tongue

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
where Shanyn has us imagining poetry as seed.
Join us!

quenching the thirst you have for impossible rivers
carving hunger from hand-picked bones

runner roots spread beneath the blanket you wear
when you can’t bear to see stars touch your skin

earth’s heart beats slowly below your body
bleeding echoes of discarded remembrance

as you press an ear to the pulse of antipathy’s vein
singing softly for razor or retribution

or just one answer in a galaxy of question

dawn always feels like a reprieve of silence
the last inhale of guilt holding on to lost breath

but these tears of tree sap and mountain
climb your sleeve with the tread of expertise

rivulets run rapid in the canyon of clavicle
flooding sound from the cave of the voice you carried

washing stone and pounding words into the stream
of every moment and hour in between

is a pernicious master

always telling stories
you wish to be untrue

i live in a glass house
beside an ocean of allegory

the warmth of the sun
burns holes in my persona

the plate i offer is filled
with door-shaped cookies

but just you try and leave
the epochal corner of sanity

i’ve carved in the shape
of false idol altar growth

you’ve no idea how much light
it takes to reveal

the vitiligo that’s running
down your chin like a chink

in the armour of your sentence
and i will keep you here

reshape you with a version
of my own black branched form

feed you wine and golden wafer
from a tray inscribed to say

from the solid root of darkness
you will bloom

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today, where Anthony
gives us a list of words from which we must use at least five in a poem:
(Messiah, Allegory, Luminous, Plate, Shadow, Door, Persona,
Glass, Vitiligo, Epochal, Pernicious, Warmth).
Join us!

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i want to be left by the side of the road
ash to splash and leave my mark
on the side of each car passing by

or can-kicked down a street
filled with knees and laughing children
my voice fading in the breeze of lost giggles

dust me from your shoes and purse your lips
blow me off the shelf you keep your heart on
toss me out the door with yesterday’s crumbs

i want to be the song you cannot scrape
from the tip of your tongue and the dance
you bobble out when you think no one’s looking

spin spin spin into the white whirl of wind
as it carries scraps from home and everything
gets dropped in the laps of perfect strangers

remember nothing of the spoken and every measure
of the pattern our two heartbeats mixed and
melded and never forget the midnights

we hollowed out with hands digging and feet
kicking life further back down the hill

if you have a box i want you to burn it
sit by the pyre and warm your crackled shins
listen to the howls in the cold dark behind you

and kiss the moon for me, just once
when she comes to light your way

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Linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics today,
Marina asks some questions that will really make you think.
Join us!

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i always knew you could sing

your very existence is music,
wind rustles and breeze whispers
howls of moan and humming creak

i hear you finger tapping tunes
in the night of dark glass
against the cold window between us

i always knew it was you
absorbing years and belting them
back out as harmonized sustenance

as a teenager i would run to you
cry on your rough-cloaked shoulder
while you plucked my brokenheart strings

you always listened and i always remembered
to look up into the green gold eyes
of  your long standing deep rooted ballad

to find the leaf of your only regret:
your eternal inability to waltz
in the wallflower forest of forgotten

i’d stand up then, arms placed just so
on the shoulders of a stand-in barkcloth partner
and box step through the shade

of your resonant silence

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This poem was inspired by THIS video I came across featuring music
that was created from the rings in a slice of tree trunk, it’s enchanting.

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Also linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics, join us!

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