because all the mirrors
are broken
and your reflection
always hung
slightly crooked
framed by deckled edge
and past perturbance
and i
forever-settled
for the spot-speckled
lower left corner
while you took
center stage
with your soliloquy
of silence
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
.
.
.
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
.
.
.
.
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
.
.
.
.
