I wait, as we do, quite
often. I wait for my husband
as he bounces around the
city finding rugs and
furnishings and bits of
paper with pictures most
have never seen to make
a stranger’s walls look
personal. I wait
for the home where I can
see a tree instead of a
crane, both making homes
but one giving breath, as
well. I wait for dreams of
expressing my self, and I wait
for solid funding. I wait for
physical love. I wait for
understanding and for
things I don’t even know
I need to ease my inward
groaning because
there never isn’t groaning,
even if it’s only released
through the soles of my
feet. I wait to find out if you
love me. I wait to find out if
I love me. I wait and I
think and I wonder if ever
the waiting will end because
at some fantastic and
mystical point I will finally
rest in knowing the who I
am in me and you.
Category / Poetry
Rejected Feelings
Rejected feelings, stick figures in a
full bodied world, find paltry places
in which to hide themselves, sitting
with their knees splayed out, their
elbows pointed arrows in the
directions I haven’t gone. Angry
buggers, and who can blame them,
dodging the out-flung expletives I
hardly ever throw? If I feel sorry
and feed them, will they thrive, and
then, what
will my penance
be?
Hope II
I am not done. My
story is not over. The
sunlight waking colors in
great swaths of green,
the thrum of human
energy optimistically
planning on unguaranteed
destinations –
I sit with my head low and
admit there is more that I
don’t know than I do, and
that is a reason
to hope.
Pain
Pain creates a haze
most times, as
though there is no
handle on the door and
the whole great world
were a paper bubble
around itself, crinkling
frail with a few sirens
thrown in. That is, unless
it’s sharp, and the
moon’s outline is a
knife that cuts the
inked sky and lets
the dragons in.
Without
I opened,
inhaled
understood,
and
my floor was not
grass, and my sky was
low, my heart
cracked in that old
lost line of
withering
with the withoutness
of you.
Misconceptions
I am a note in a barely flat
down from birth,
breathing loud and crying
quiet. Carried in circles,
the music of my silent
self undressed, ashamed,
and just a little too
human to go back where
I came from. I
am an unmother with open
arms. Define me, if
you dare but know I
carry your tears in my
pocket and they’ll
return when your eyes
glass over. I
am a learner who
shares to love the thoughts
I feeling buy and make
for dinners, some
healthier than others.
I am no chef. I
just try to eat the
real stuff.
The Lie that She was Small
Her mother said she only ever
could rely on family,
misty-eyed recollecting
isolation, the inescapable
feeling she was a
smaller species than others
she had met. Her mother was
taught by her parents, of course,
both of them djins released
from bottles, booming
names with cloud-trumpets
and opinions pulled from sandstorms.
Magic was full bright but
sadly mathematical with them.
They felt small, too, probably
taught by their parents.
Their daughter
was different. Of all the
DNA combinations
possible from two tempests,
her recipe twisted around
itself and dreamed. She was
flowers in a music garden, white
eyelet and patent leather shoes,
unruly red hair, magic
filtered soft through the evening.
That was her destiny, poor girl.
To them, she was smaller still, though
she could bellow a pipe organ
beautifully. In the end it was all djin
air and it made its way home
to the bottle.
