that's mrs. mediocrity to you

hawk eye sky circus
circling pattern and crisscross river
wing map walk back
reveal

there’s an oak tree
in the brush line
by the driveway

with a branch
that’s been hanging
since the ice storm
of 1991

i remember my sadness
at the damage of trees

i remember being young
and appalled
at life’s cruelty

i remember how
the basement flooded and
the lack of electricity

i remember that my parents
came to stay

it’s been 26 years
and that branch
is still hanging

and i wish i remembered
how to cling with tenacity
to a tree still growing
through bad storm

.

.

.

the face of truth
is marked
by shadow

you and i
think
we know better

but symbol
is all
that’s
necessary
in a world
molded by
glyph

we’re sure
we invented
shorthand
clever acronym
monument

but

we’re going
backward
in a world
losing time

carving lives
from bits
and pixels
and love
from empty
promises

filtered
imagination

so little
left

to recognize

.

.

.

the wind tells tales of emptiness
littering wide roads with leaves just released
from the captivity of decent living

beneath a sky gone grey with culture
an empty swamp sags with the pattern of destruction
heron filled and heron full on rotting fish and
stain stitched opportunity

and all the green has rolled inward, hoping for storm
or honest anger
finding nothing but dry heat hot
from the memory of august
balanced on the razor of reduction

the sun sinks red and rises false rose golden
as blinding answers dive
into the dusty hardheart crevasse of question
playing host to this catalog of possibility

while the distant beauty vulture
screams his mocking two-faced litany
of violent regeneration

.

.

.

.

.

all settled in

to the confine

of vine

and blooming

just the same

.

.

.

where the colors are verbs and the mountains are writers

i found my heart by the shore on a beach tired of shifting

and there were feathers sounding of owl

and bruises charting moons to hold you quiet

and whispers weaving stories of forgiveness

boulder cradled by sky

bare-boned and ever spine-proud

marked by nothing but hour

and eye

.

.

.

we want things to be black and white and the world is made of color. we don’t even get shades of grey to choose from, we get red and purple, orange and blue, green and yellow. we get the full spectrum, an elusive rainbow made of light and still, all those colors are never enough.

my garden is thirsty. i’m thirsty. we’re all thirsty for something, always. we’re all here beneath the same blue sky, the same night stars, the same tired sun, and the world spins round the way it always has. we think we know better. we refuse to see the forest for the trees because the trees refuse to acknowledge our presence.

i step outside at night and listen. i look up at the stars and there are no answers, only questions. i know the names of some of the constellations, but others i’ve forgotten. i don’t bother relearning them because i’m tired of naming things. some of them don’t even exist anymore, even though i can see them. a name seems so irrelevant.

gravity holds me in place and keeps me silent and makes me laugh with the cage of its promise.

i’m not a tree because i’ve never grown roots. every tree out there has made that decision. but i’m the one carrying water. and i have no idea what that means.

we thought shoes were a good invention. and guns. and cars to carry us to other places. we think we are smarter than ourselves.

this is a prayer and i don’t pray. this is a mantra that needs no chant. this is the morning a flower will open.

we are not seeds but we know how to hold them.

we plant hope and beg for rain.

the sky is grey, the sky is blue, the sky is orange.

all of these things are true.

or false.

depending on the day.

.

.

.

i have one of those
messy minds

the kind that leaves
a desk
forever in disarray

or forgets to buy milk
but remembers to look
for signs of life
in a garden
in early spring

and almost always
your birthday

and most definitely
that time you stole a hat
and we laughed until we cried
when you thought
you’d been caught

but probably never that
you hate dark chocolate

i’ve read so many books
all the titles are gone

and i gravitate towards
the asymmetrical

because the patterns that fall
from my criss-crossed brain
consistently refuse

defining parallel

.

.

.

A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 11
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s write a defense poem.

.

outrage is the new black
and offended is breathing
down freedom’s neck

swimming in a sea of authentic
epic
mindfulness

and the people that rule us
are confident in anarchy
or ambivalent on war
or curiously human

and the sun keeps shining
insecure and self-conscious
thinking we expect
something more like moon’s mystery
or standing still
or tenderness

when all we really want
is (r)evolution

.

.

.

A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 10
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s pick an emotion.

.

talisman of time
unbreakable memory
society’s weapon

you can always
refuse to choose but
you will be followed

return to the mountain
live with rubble
carve your freedom

.

.

.

A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 3
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme from PAD is three (fill in the blank)