day 27: in the style of "J Alfred Prufrock"

Love song for the Michelangelo Women

Let us go, you and I
Where the sea meets the horizon
String the sails up with thick ropes of our hopes
And whisper "I love you" until our half-audible breaths move the wind

Let us go o'er waters dark, unsettled
Let us sail to test our mettle,
Between years of longing, unspoken desires
Sleepless nights and dancing until the sunlight

Do not question this simple thing we have:
Call it love and feed it table scraps and hope it survives our dangerous voyage

Let us go you and I
We can build our boat of fallen trees and swift heartbeats and the memory of our first kiss
Every morning we could wash our ship clean with salt water tears and sunrise
And between us we pray ourselves afloat.
Three "Hail Marys" and never a "Land Ho"

I dare you to run down the streets, my heart in your throat and my name in your mouth
I dare you to meet me at the shipyard
I dare you to take a bite of the juiciest peach you can find, let the juice drip with abandon down your chin, your hand, your wrists, your living chest
I dare you to climb aboard the boat
I dare you to taste the salt air, to take the living wind into your mouth and
Taste
With your red tongue
The sea.

Come with me to circle this earth
Rich and fat with our love
Come with me
Disturb the universe!

day 28: Gratitude poem

The King is Dead

Dethrone the turkey
From his smug place at the center of the thanksgiving table
His crispy skin
Crinkling under our forks.
Eat the rich

day 26

Acts of service 

For erryn

I would love to wrap myself in a blanket carefully woven from your kind words.

I would put your laugh on my lips like chapstick to soothe the sting.

I would stitch your smile into the elbows of my jacket to patch the wear.

In return I would give you a smoulder to keep you warm through the night.

I would give you a cool quip to soothe your headaches.

I would give you the syncopated rhythm of my heartbeat every time you say my name.

Day 25: Toothache

Body series 15

Toothache: a pain in my brain
Soreness resting in my gums
My jawbone sits alone
Mourning its faulty child.

Day 24: Mountains

Body series 14:

Stone grows out of the earth.
Reaching for the sky.
Fighting against wind and water.

These mountains are old
Not old like the lady who sits next to you Wednesdays at the bus stop
But you think the lines in her face have a kinship
To the arches and dips of the hard rock.

These mountains are old like
Language. Old like song. These mountains remember
Their first love. They remember the curve
Of her back against their creamy white sheets.
They remember her curling hair tumbling down her spine.

These mountains grow trees:
Hemlocks and families of beeches, and bushes:
Blueberry and mountain laurels.
Home to chickadee and nuthatch in the winter
Bluebird and phoebe in the summertime.

These mountains are growing
New and jagged
Raw earth, bit by bit,
Exposing itself to the sunshine,

Not growing like like a child
But you could imagine the shifting of
Massive plates of earth might feel like growing pains
You could imagine the mountains reaching for the sky.

Day 22: Gaurded

Body Series 13:

Vines winding up garden walls
Bitting into hard stone.
Biding their time
Knowing triumph is inevitable.

Day 21: Something that ended too soon

So Says Jack

Beanstalks in the sky...
You want to climb up to the clouds and
Get lost in the frozen haze of water
But you're awfully loud
Tiptoeing through the water world in the sky
Melting the frozen peace
Shattering the order
The beanstalk can't hold
And before you know it you're
Falling from heaven

Day 23: Love bites

Love Bites
I take stock of my hickeys in the mirror.
Not the worst it's ever been.
Nonetheless, my chest aches.
It's always like that after she's gone.

Day 20: Dancing angels

Dancing Angels
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
One. Thirteen. Twenty nine. All primes.
Two if they hold each other close and
Sway together. More (five?) if they stand on
Each others feet. How many angels?
I know sometime I swore I could feel feathers
Sprouting out of your shoulder blades. One?
Seven if they all move like their feet don't touch the ground. (Like you?)
How many angels. You
Taught me to to count in primes.
Eleven angels if it's a waltz. I thought I knew
Good from bad before I met
You.
How many
Angels?
How can the angels move while weighted down by all the bad
In the world? (On the pin?)
Like when two people who (were?) in love.
Can angels fight?
I tried to teach you to dance but your wings got in the way.
How many angels?
None, now.

Day 19: while you were sleeping

Punch a Nazi today and urge your local university to divest in fossil fuels

While you were sleeping
I alphabetized your spice cabinet
Put the cardamom before the cinnamon
The thyme before the turmeric

While you were sleeping
I swept your hardwood stairs
Brought the dust from top to bottom
Collected your cat hair and herded the dust mites into the dust pan

While you were sleeping
I took out the trash
Cooked you breakfast
Made your bed (with you in it)
Fed your cat
Vacuumed the rug lying in your living room
Replaced the rotting tiles in your roof
Planted a garden in your yard (daffodils and lavender)
Shoveled the snow in your driveway
Raked the leaves from your yards

While you were sleeping
I looked for the words to say
"I love you"

Day 18 Birdhouse verse 2

Birdhouse in your soul

I build the birdhouse in my soul out of the twigs and spare bits of fuzz I find in the corners of my ribcage.
I build it out of the lines of my lover's hands
I stick it together with the syrup-y sweetness of the warm sun streaming in my morning window, kissing me awake
I build until my hands ache with the fastidious care
I fit each twig into the pattern like I'm coming home

Feel moth wings flutter
Feel like an earthquake on the wind.
Shake by birdhouse.
Each moth wing heart beat threatens to tear my bird house to shreds.

I build my birdhouse in the deep part of my soul
Protected from storms by forests of love
Protected from rain by thick, thatched roof
I build my birdhouse in the deep part of the evening
I gather golden sun rays and store them in my birdhouse to keep me warm through the night.

day 17

Theres something about traveling 90 miles per hour. 

It's too fast for reason to keep up.

Day 16

As is traditional for Nanowrimo, here's a link to 'livin' on a prayer' to signify that I am more then halfway through the month:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk

Also this poem was clearly inspired by 'birdhouse in your soul' by they might be giants:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAbZzdalZh4

Birdhouse in your soul

I build the birdhouse in my soul out of the twigs and spare bits of fuzz I find in the corners of my ribcage.
I build it out of the lines of my lover's hands
I stick it together with the syrup-y sweetness of the warm sun streaming in my morning window, kissing me awake
I build until my hands ache with the fastidious care
I fit each twig into the pattern like I'm coming home

Day 15: Dreams of Lattes

Dreams of Lattes

Do you think when coffee beans sleep they dream of lattes?
And cows? Do they dream of clouds?
White and fluffy: ladders in the sky
Climbing into a heaven of spun sugar.

Limericks

Consider this a late day 14 poem. Day 15 coming later today.

There once was a girl in a gimmick
The subject of many a limerick
Her body was object
Her brain was not subject
This sexism was widely endemic.

There was a government oligarchy
That ruled by enforcing hierarchy
Minorities oppressed
Generations depressed
Until all was gross patriarchy

The weather is rarely the same.
Some places will never again
See rain, always drought
And without a doubt
The reason is human-caused climate change.

Day 13

I promised you love poems

I promised you love poems
And I gave metaphors about dying wolves

I promised you an epoch in which your eyes catch the sunlight
Instead I could only remember the shape of the burning planet

You deserve pages about your smile and the way it melts ice
The way the moon rises a littler earlier each day just to see it
The way the tides rise and the seas part to see a flicker of joy on your face.

I'm sorry that right now the only rhyme I can manage is "doom" and "gloom"
The only smile I can think of is my own, and the work I have to do to find it again
My road to healing is long and winding,
I'm glad to have you walk it along side of me but I'm sorry
I promised you love poems

--for E (you know who you are)

Day 12 National Novel Writing Month

Today while I was watching some of my students play a soccer game, I got hit in the back of the head by a basketball throw by Hayden, age 5. I turned, startled and betrayed and saw him and Lucas, age 7 laughing. When I informed Hayden, age 5, that his basketball had hurt, he smiled. I asked him to apologize and was offered, by way of apology, the word sorry, thrown to the ground, as carelessly as a candy wrapper, left in the dirt as Hayden, age 5, and Lucas, age 7, sprinted away from the apology at top speed.

Why are you being so mean to me?

Formed and died on my lips

Before my attention was stolen by Henry, who had just disrupted said soccer game by kicking Finn in the ankles and then shouting at Finn as he lay on the ground curled up in a fetal position. 

(No Finns were harmed in the making of this poem.)

But if I had asked Hayden,
Why are you being so mean to me?

Here is what he would have said,

"I contain multitudes. And when you inquire about my actions it might be inferred, by a scholar such as I, that you are also inquiring into my nature. You are trying to discern the motive of my action and if, in performing that action, re: throwing a basketball at your head, I was revealing a significant portion of the innermost workings of my brain. 

Why are you being so mean to me?

"I am five and as such the summation of my personality can be traced to one of three sources: firstly: my parents, secondly: society and thirdly: my friends and immediate peers. None of these sources were explicitly advocating for my to project a basketball in the direction of your head and yet something compelled me.

Why are you being so mean to me?

"Was it the implicit approval I expected to gain from my older and therefore much esteemed colleague Lucas, age 7?  Did I launch the projectile as a somewhat misguided plea for attention? Is my need for interaction with adults so unfulfilled that I would seek it out even with a somewhat mundane form of violence? Or perhaps my rudimentary understanding of aerodynamics and physics is so unsophisticated that I simply intended to launch this sphere into the air without comprehension that it might come down again, in proximity to your head.

Why are you being so mean to me?

"That you might attempt to might know me is an act of oppression unto itself. Even if you were to understand my motivations for this single action you cannot comprehend the complexity of my life. Perhaps my parents were fighting this morning. Perhaps I don't live with my parents at all. Perhaps I have a perfectly amiable home life but I skipped lunch today due to a bad interaction with my teacher. Perhaps I just found out I will have to put my dog down today. Perhaps I got in a fight with my best friend Mila, age 5 and a half. Perhaps I've been experimenting with slap-stick humor and absurdist thought and I wanted to apply the theory to a tangible expression of my truest self."

Here is what Anna, aged 21, one of my co-teachers said, when I asked her:
Why was he so mean to me?

"Sometimes, it isn't about you."

Day 11

I keep looking for your hands in the hands
Of my new lovers. I can't find true North
When I'm driving East and you're to the West.
A year ago I knew the difference from
A sparrow's call and a thrush's warble.

A year ago I could conjure birch tree
Or beech tree from a bare branch. I listen
For your voice when I come around corners.
The big dipper isn't sprawled across the
Windshield of my car headed west on 90.

I keep trying to read the braile of "I
Love you" in the skin of my new lover's
Back. A year ago I knew every word
To "Lone Ranger" (Rachel Patten). It's just
My inner compass has fractured, the glass
In pieces, the needle spinning without
Direction.

10 poems 10 days!

10 poems 10 days! 1/3 of the way to December!

Go for a walk in the woods today.
Remember the sound of your own voice.
Listen to the voices of the little brown birds surrounding you.
They're whispering the secrets of the woods to each other

Climb a tree and scrape your knee on the rough branches
Feel the blood pound through your hands and the muscles
Of your arms and ooze gently out of your scraped knee.
Listen to what the little brown birds tell you what it means to be alive.

Cross a stream in the woods
See the black birch toes shine golden
Look at the bubbling icicles
Dripping and freezing and melting and growing.
Listen to what the little brown birds have to say about contradiction.

Remember what feel feel like
When they connect with the earth
On your walk today.
Listen to what the little brown birds have to say about grounding.

It's the ninth day of November

Megan Falley writes, "“I liked the idea of... having a muse around who [didn’t] necessarily have your best interests in mind."

Some people call it intrusive thoughts. Like, the kind of thoughts to tell you to lick a salt lamp. Or drive your car into a tree at full speed.
I named mine. I call her Chastity.
Chastity has a lot of opinions. She loves red lipstick and she hates bitter food.
She loves the cold but she refuses to wear the bulky coat my parents got me in September.
"It looks," she insists, "Like a marshmallow.
How important are your toes are you anyway?"
Chastity is bisexual and she has a type. She likes men, women, and anyone else, as long as they make her feel unsafe.
"Being on edge turns me on." She whispered into the ear of my last lover, pressing a knife gently into her hand.
She never knows when to go to bed, always needs to check facebook one more time.
"But what if someone has posted something important?" She wines when I try to put my phone away for the night.
Chastity doesn't tell me to do things, she asks, she suggests, she manipulates,
"What do you think would happen if you had another shot of vodka?"
"Do you think Leo's lips are as soft as his brother's?"
"Could you masturbate without getting caught in that public restroom?"
It's hard to blame her for the things that go wrong.
She makes it hard to forgive myself.

Wings

My ex from college had angel wings.
Strong, feathered, soft. She spread them under me and taught me to fly.

My ex from New York had bat wings
His skin was so soft but sometimes when he wrapped his wings around me I lost sight of the sky.

My newest flame has butterfly wings
She seems all brilliant colors and delicate scales. If I hold her too tightly, I worry I might stop her flying.

Nano day 7: A hymn

Trigger warning for this one folks. Police brutality, climate change, sexual assault. Nothing graphic but it's a definite bummer.


A Hymn for thanks:
Give thanks to the sewage pipe
Pouring with abundance into the clear river.
Give thanks to the oil rig
Pulling the dark oil out of the most sacred places of the earth.
Give thanks to the monocrop-er
Pouring their poisons freely onto their green fields
Give thanks to the hands of the few
Grabbing for the livelihoods of the many
Give thanks to the judges in the courts
Defending rapists and persecuting based on skin color
Give thanks for the guns of the police
Mowing down the innocent black folk

For these things I give thanks
May god, in his infinite glory
May god, in his infinite wisdom
Save us.

Give thanks that no one is coming to save us but ourselves.

Nano day 6: Ashes to ashes

Ashes to ashes . . . dust to dust . . .
Flowers that wither, metal that rusts
Clock hand circle restlessly
Waters rising from the seas

Ashes to ashes, there must have been flame
Smoke billows in thick remains
Rigs suck oil from the ground
Burning makes the world go 'round

Dust to dust without reprieve
My lungs fill but I cannot breathe
Burning fuels with air in heat
Industry won't stop its beat

Ashes to ashes . . . dust to dust . . .
Heat will boil the unjust
Storms wreck havoc on the shores
And still, we burn and burn some more.

Nano day 5: Fog

How to get rid of unwanted spirits

I've been having trouble sleeping this week
It's a week too late for Halloween but
I still find my sleep troubled by your ghost.
You come to me in the depths of my sub-
Conscious. Dressed in a white sheet with holes cut
For the eyes "The better to see you with,
My dear." You come to me wrapped in chains, or
No, you wrap me in chains and drag me down
And then, instead of fighting I try and
Teach myself to breath water. I wake up
Oxygen starved with my apology
On my blue lips, "I'm sorry I can't breathe
Underwater. I'm sorry I need so
Much air." But each morning I am learning
To set my ghosts to rest. I finish un-
finished business. I smudge cedar and leave
Offerings of fruit and the prettiest
Crystals I can find. Maybe tomorrow
Night I'll even try pulling off your sheet.

national novel writing month day 4: break up poem

Think of a metaphor--

The sun setting.  A single boat on the vast oceans. A bird in flight.

Think bigger, more complicated. Bigger.

Grains of sand on a beach. Stars on the sky.

Sadder. Uglier.

The sun setting and not coming back up. A rotting coyote corpse.  A sandy beach melted to jagged glass.

More. Please (no) more.

The dark beach should be daytime. The stars should not be out (visible). The sun should not be out (dead). A ship crashes in what should be a soft sandy beach. Instead its dangerous edges devastate the ship. The ship scatters across the horrible glass beach. The coyote was a classic case of wrong shape, wrong time. But a it rots all the same,  decomposing on what used to be the beach. The seagulls circle overhead. They won't land (can't land on the glass. They starve in midair in the sun-less daytime. 

November writing a lot day 3

A waltz class:

Turn to the left never look straight at

Your partner always a little bit

Off to the left always moving just

Keep your feet moving and don't be late

Remember to alternate dont step on

Your partner keep moving stop thinking

Don't step on your partner don't look at

Your partner keep your feet moving don't 

Fall.

Nanowrimo day 2: Roots

Did you know great tree's roots can reach down and out as high as the branches reach out and up?
It takes many rings of cold winters and hot summers to grow roots like those.
Great trees are home to pill-bugs and squirrels and woodpeckers, a host of multitudes of creatures.
It takes many rings of cold winters and hot summers to hold so much life.
A great tree has seen seasons change, can read the patterns of the wind
A great tree knows when the weather will cool, knows when to lay down its vermillion green crown onto the forest floor.
A great tree knows when to burst its buds for joy of spring, of life, of the return of the sun to the sky.
It knows how to breathe the air and breathe it out cleaner.

National Novel Writing Month day 1: A matter of elevation

Hello folks! Buckle in, strap up or otherwise restrain yourself and make sure you have your safety shears nearby. We're going for a ride! That ride is a poem a day for November. Here, without further ado, is day 1.

This poem was written thirty feet up in a sugar maple tree in a high wind.

Find high ground! 
This is the siren call, the screaming instinct in my gut
As I watch this sacred place flood.
A voice that mostly communicates in grunts and still consideres grubs to be fine eating comes up from deep with me and advises that I climb a tree posthaste.
When the tear-stained water kisses its way up the shoreline, where will I hide?
When tides of people with the same ancient, screaming instinct for survival
Come flooding up to find their own high ground
How can I open the gates for them? Offer them a hand up
To stand with me on a tiny island of dryness
How will the prehistoric part of my brain save me
When the ocean is everywhere I look? When everything is left to the whims of the moon and the scourges of the sea-birds?
Seeking meat to pick off the bones of the still dying?
When people are swept in waves off their land and forced against walls and into concentration camps?
Find high ground!
But how can I stand and watch the world sink into the sea?