body series 18

I would tie your legs and arms to four perfect bed posts hewn from belief 

The belief the sun will come up

The belief the earth will continue to spin

The belief of the kindness of your smiling eyes

I would bind your wrists with lavender sunrise and promises.

I would kiss every inch of your skin in love poems

I would kiss astrophel and stella into your collarbone

Sonnet 18 into your wrists

I would kiss she walks in beauty into the back of your knees

And a red red rose into your hips

I would plant day lilies between your breasts and water them every day

I would watch as the roots twined around your ribs and grew strong with the beating of your

Heart

They would be yellow and even the sun could not match 

Their joyous flight from your rib cage into the sky

Buoyed upward by the essence of you

I would invite everyone we know over and ask them to paint a mural on your bedroom walls

And each of your lovers and friends would make a Sistine chappel to your laugh

And the way you love like the world is living and you are breathing life into everyone you meet

I would cover you with strawberry fields and then eat ripe, living strawberries from your body

Taste the sweetness on my tongue

I would build a mountain of you and play on your rocky slopes

I would ask you to watch as the moon and stars whispered your name. 

"Erryn

Erryn

Erryn"

Country song

We'll dun sing the sun up

I'll spin words into gossamer web
Do I make myself understood?
And before I've gone and dun, we'll have sung up the sun
But I'm not convinced it's doin' any good.

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

The winter weather closely guards its secrets
I just can't read against bright blue sky
It's got no tells, the winter might be bluffing
There's lots of room in bitter cold for lies

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

Come over to mine, I'll feed
You stardust, and I hope you'll find
It sparkly, my mother taught me to feed
My guests the best, now don't you mind

Trap fluffy white clouds
Like tea leaves in the leavings
Of your tea, don't trust but listen here:
The sky, she knows you're grieving

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

I saw you 'cross a crowded room in Texas
And again in bitter cold Vermont
Looked over my shoulder, felt a little colder
Like you were the only ghost I'd want

If only I could read your eyes like tea leaves
If only my future was wrote in your
Palms and I could know where you was gunna go
I'd follow you to every winter shore

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
If you whisper, it might slip away
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
To the words that I'm a gonna' say

Met your eyes and did a little two step
Around the clean and cold and stark white room
You turned and walked away to where I cannot say
But I know I'm a gunna see you soon

If only you could leave a little locket
With coiled tresses of your night black hair
And folded tight within, a game I cannot win
A code that says you dun' gone anywhere

It's windy in the winter and I'll tell 'ya
I've shouted so that I hoped you might hear
So sip your stars and listen here real closely
Come back soon to somewhere warm and near.

talk dirty to me

Talk dirty to me

Next time we fuck
I want you to whisper
"I love you"
To my insides
I want to have the kind of sex
That makes me
Understand why people get back together with their exes
I want our sex to be revolutionary in its
Familiarly
I want you to trace every vertebra in my spine with absolute certainty while you stare into my eyes

Next time we fuck I want recite from memory the novel
Written in the lines of your hands
I want to visit the most secret, sacred places inside of you
Come down those well worn paths of eroticism where I have gone one hundred times
Next time we fuck I want to count the constellations of your back and paint the edges with my tongue
Sepia for nostalgia.

Day 30

I refuse to spell out what I want you to say. For the

Life of me, you couldn't drag it
Out of me with wild horses. I am
Vexed. I find myself hiding the
Essence of me. Unwilling to utter it, expecting

You to lift it
Off of the deepest thoughts in the darkest part of my
Unconscious.

Day 29: first snow

Better late than never, right?

Body series 16:

Muscles cord around bone

Tight like steel, braced against the cold

Lungs shocked by the impropriety of the air

How uncensored, how abrasive

The air is clearer this way

All forest sounds (leaves rustling, chipmunk climbing, jay scolding)

Are mute

The forest is not pregnant but delightfully barren

Not green and fertile but 

Austere, and unapologetic

The snow hiding any blemishes,

Proclaiming perfection in uniformity

Enchanting in the drape of each icicle over each perfect sliver branch.

All the snow touches is forever changed

She brings death in the best way.

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?

Black Cat

I know it's early but my first nanowrimo prompt is "black cat"

I hope tomorrow a black cat crosses my path and brings four years of bad luck cascading down on my head.
I hope tomorrow all the four leaf clovers shrivel and die under my feet as we dance on the grass.
I hope tomorrow I open an umbrella indoors and dance until it rains, pouring sweet water across our face as we look up to the heavens, wondering who blessed the world so we met each other.
I hope tomorrow I break a mirror while I'm walking underneath a ladder with an upside-down horseshoe hung on the top.
Kiss me under this ladder surrounded by the glittering shards of our old lives.
I hope I never get the bigger half of the wishbone
I hope the only rabbits I find don't even have feet.
'Cause baby, when I'm with you nothing can bring me down.

Hang the moon

You're so cute that I wish you came in gift wrap, just so I could unwrap you and squeal like a child on Christmas morning.
You're cuter than an anthropomorphized robot looking disappointed.
You're so cute I want to stick you in a muffin tin and munch on you while you're still too hot. I can't even wait for you to cool down.
You're so cute my roommate's Labrador puppy told me she was jealous of your smile.
You're so cute I would hang the moon in the sky just for you.
You're so cute I wonder if all the stars in the galaxy might look more beautiful arranged in the shape of your face.

I wouldn't bring you the moon

The thing is I didn't plan to feel this way.
This summer I was fine.
I counted the stars to the sky and I marveled at the constellations
I thought your eyes were like the sky on a clear day
But I wouldn't bring you jewels from the deepest crevice of the ocean.

But after last Friday
I think about the way you run your hand through your hair when the sun comes up
And I think about the shape of your eyes when the sun goes down

It's just that I really liked the ways the stars look
Galaxy spread across the sky
And now I wonder
Might they look better arranged in the shape of your face?

I was so happy on dry land but
Now I'm thinking the bottom of the ocean isn't so far away after all.

Tonight she missed you

Tonight she missed you so bad it hurt, physically.
Her intestines cramping in pain, pinpricks of pressure in her eyes.
Something crawling out of the depths of her throat.

Tonight she listened to Rachel Patten's "Stand by you" a total of fifteen times on repeat
Which, given that the video is almost four minutes long
Is a total of nearly an hour
Of a song that makes her want to cry.

Tonight she told herself It's getting better on repeat
She did not count the number of times
Whispered like a mantra into her mourning gut.
Tonight she did not believe herself once.

She thought about the mountain goats line "The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you/ And that you are standing in the doorway."
And she believed that.
She has written this poem three times in her head,
And twice deleted it on this computer screen.
Forgive her,
It seemed so self indulgent.
So full of self pity.

And you're not there, standing in her doorway.
She has not checked once
But she knows you are one world a way,
Three hours before her.
No mater what she hoped.
You can't lend her your wings from across the world.

She wishes you hadn't changed her so much.
That thought also makes her intestines hurt.
You're not standing in her doorway.
It's three in the morning and she misses you.
Forgive her.

An open letter to the person who left the dishes in the kitchen sink

An open letter to the person who left the dishes in the kitchen sink

And I got out of bed and descended the stairs
Smiled, and kissed the gentle morning airs
Heard the birds singing their fond morning wishes
Went to the sink, and there . . . I saw dishes!

That sweet, dewey, sun-speckled, cloud-dappled morning
Came to a sharp sudden halt with no warning
My leisurely morning was pushed past the brink
The greatest of tragedies, dishes in the sink!

I wonder, dear friend, should these dishes I wash
For if I do then my skink will be spotless
And then if I don't they might sit here all day
And draw in fruit-flies and stink and just stay!

And please know that I'm sad and I'm not just nit-picky
When dishes are dirty I feel deeply icky
It's hard when they're dirty to feel like I'm home
And it's so deeply awful that I'm writing this poem. . .

From a place of real love, and good honest discourse
I know that it's hard to keep clean a shared resource
But just know it brings up some bad places I've lived
Where no one else cleaned, only I did.

I don't think this poem will convince you to clean
The dishes, or change this filthy, piled, fruit-fly'ed up scene
I don't know if this letter will force you to rethink
The way that you up and left dishes in the sink.

This letter's a plea, and a futile one
This letter's a jab, and it's made in good fun
But maybe the next time you'll pause and consider
Do you want to be the subject of another open lettter?

Underwater

Imagine being at the bottom of the ocean
Imagine a world of water above you
How heavy it is
How dark

Imagine crying at the bottom of the ocean
Only you're not sure if you're crying.
You're under water
And you're cold
And you're holding your breath.

It feels like you might be crying
Or maybe you're starting to forget what it was like to cry
On land. What did the air used to smell like?

Erotica

Consider sunlight dripping across your shoulders
And brushing your lips scarlet
I think about your tongue
I try not to.
I try not to think about your voice naked in the air
The way your husky "please" sounds
In my mind you taste like the bluest, sunshiny-ist day in fall
You taste like a fresh apples
Plucked straight off the tree
Dripping with ripe fruit
Bared of leaves
Branches writhing towards the sky.
Please

So what?

So what happens now?
I've woken up crumpled between your bedsheets
For the third time this month
And I look over and your sleeping shoulders
A world away on the other side of the bed.

An open letter to my Spanish teacher

An open letter to my Spanish professor 
And your concern that you forcefully “outed” me when we were doing a class dialogue
Wherein you chose me to fill the role of mujer on a date with an hombre
And at the end instead of saying (in Spanish) I was tired and goodbye
I looked that hombre straight in the eye and said me gusta mujer
Which is a ballsy move except that it’s pretty bad Spanish and so
When you asked me to stay after class to assuage your own guilt that you had forcibly outed me
I found it simultaneously laughable and punitive.
Professora, if you didn’t know I was gay at this point may I direct you to
Exhibit A: My eyebrow piercing
Exhibit B: My Jewish stick and poke tattoos
Exhibit C: My undercut
Exhibit D: My sparkly lip-print crop top
Exhibit E: My literal ring of keys I carry to class
Exhibit F: The rainbow pin on the front of my bag that reads “Not gay as in happy but queer as in fuck you”
I know it’s Spanish class but you can read English and I know everyone else can too
Professora, I have not been in the closet since before you knew what gay was
I know coming out is an ongoing process but it’s hard to imagine anyone anywhere considering me una heterosexual
And also, I had a bus to catch
And when you asked me to stay after and reassure you that my feelings hadn’t been hurt by my mid-class outburst of queerness
I was amused that you thought anything you had done had forced me out from between the cobwebbed coat hangers and moth-eaten fur coats and into the light and furthermore,
Professora, I have a bus to catch that doesn’t care about your guilt over being a bad feminist
And maybe you could take that guilt and include some queer-inclusive vocabulary so instead of saying me gusta mujer I could say yo soy una lesbiana and also
Have you considered that every example in the textbook is una mujer y un hombre and maybe also like including the genderneutral pronoun elle
Instead of holding me after class so that I could personally tell you that you shouldn’t feel guilty and
Don’t lose any sleep over it, professora, and don’t use this as a learning experience to change any of the curriculum and just maintain the status quo
No, I don’t mind missing my bus to soothe your ego, professora
But, as we learned to say in our job interview unit, gracias por la concideración.

Haikus on Climate Change

Leave it in the ground
It took billions of years
To get there. Leave it.

Leave it in the ground.
Good fuck! The science is clear!
You're killing us fast.

Leave it in the ground.
The sky weeps and the ground is
On fire and the seas rise.

Leave it in the ground.
No one else will save the world,
We must save ourselves.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/keep-it-in-the-ground/

A nursery tale

Nabokav's balls sit in a wooden box I keep on my beside table
One end is smooth sack and the other is jagged, like little roots
Or many bloody uvulas, flapping without sound perhaps
My best friend has the balls of Kerouac
My roommate claims to have one of the testicles that belonged to John Muir
But it's so pulverized it's genuinely hard to tell.
Please, tell me again what it is: literature?
Is it fantasy?
A lesson to be learned?
A radical political expression?
An original thought?
If you're curious
Nabokov's balls smell like little girl.

A bug's life

Insects have six jointed legs, four wings, three body segments, two antenna, and one exoskeleton.

Six: The number of times I got distracted during work today just thinking about the way your hair falls behind your ears. I have been teaching for nearly ten years but today I paid no attention to the way Lee refused to share blocks with Claire until they were both crying.

Four: The number of dances we had on Saturday. I remember the tunes we danced to were Siren's Fiddle, Apple Blossom, The Hat Thief, and Heartbeats in A. In that order.

Three: The number of times I was sure I should kiss you but didn't this weekend. Once after our third dance, once at the late night song share in the sheep shed, and once as we were saying good bye and you were gazing into my eyes and my heart was pounding and I looked away first.

Two: The number of days it has been since we danced. The number of days I have been thrilled at every text I have received from you. The number of days I have analyzed and studied, to the minute detail every interaction we had this weekend. The number of days every love song I have heard on the radio has been about you. The number of days I have been penning poems on perfume scented paper with hearts over the dots on the "i".

One: One juicy enormous stupid fabulous secret crush on you.

Some days

Some days I miss you like the ocean pouring over the edge of the world
Uncountable gallons of water rushing into nothingness
In a roaring, pounding endless movement, impossible to drown out.

Other days you are a bruise on my heart
I only remember the hurt when I bump into the accidental memory of you:
When someone makes an offhanded comment about the linguistics of the Seneca Nation
Or I pass exit 18 on the Mass Turnpike.

Tonight I did not watch the sunset
I went shopping and did the laundry and the dishes and vacuumed my rug,
Exercises I refuse to turn into a metaphor of missing you.
I did miss you anyway
An ache to match the distant hum of my sleep-deprived headache building up behind my eyes.

When I finally lay down, exhaustion a twisting pain in my back and neck
I lay in bed with my eyes wide open staring at the ceiling.
I had to turn on the fan so something would drown out the constant murmur of your name in my ears.

Goodbye

I miss the sun
Waiting
In her cloudy bed
Below the earth.

Some days I cry
For hours
At the kitchen sink
Because something

Reminded me
Of you.
And when I die, burry
Me in red earth

Beneath a lemon
Tree and
Make lemon and rhubarb
Pie from my bones.

And tell all the
Non-believers
That my spirit wrings
Bitter tears from stone.

The day you left
Was sunny
And sweat ran rivers
On my back as

I watched you leave.
"Sunshine,
Come back!" I called but
You couldn't hear me.

Witching weather cont'd

I don't want sunshine. That tame, sleepy warmth.
Give me storm clouds, gath'ring like a  coven
On the horrizon, clothed in their best black
Cocktail dresses, throwing amphibious
Ingredients with abandon into
A cauldron until something starts to boil.
I don't want sunshine. I want witching weather.

Give me the kind of witching weather that
Sucks the breath out of large men and blows the
Strongest off their feet. Give me the kind of
Witching weather that will tangle in the
Long dark hair of my lovers and whisper
Secrets into their lovely ears. Weather
That will bring the rain like an explosion.
I don't want sunshine. I want witching weather.

Give me lighting on the horizon and
Pressure licking my skin. Give me the hair
Quiv'ring on the back of my neck and shaking
On my arms. Give me thunder rumb'ling under
My boots and air with rain I can taste.
I don't want sunshine. I want witching weather.

I want to dance through the storm. I want to
Fuck through a hurricane. I want lightning
To pour through my body and light up my
Every nerve. I want to stand against a
Tsunami and let the wave wash me away.
I don't want sunshine. I want witching weather.

Witching weather

I don't want sunshine. That tame, sleepy warmth.
Give me storm clouds, gath'ring like a  coven
On the horrizon, clothed in their best black
Cocktail dresses, throwing amphibious
Ingredients with abandon into
A cauldron until something starts to boil.
I don't want sunshine. I want witching weather.

Day 30

Day 30. Here we are folks. See you again soon.  This poem is clumsy but it was important to me that I wrote it. Today's mood: https://youtu.be/RIZdjT1472Y

For Taeer

When I'm with you

My favorite thing is

To curl up in a ball in your sternum. 

Wrap the warmth of your beating heart

Around my shoulders and

Let your steady voice rock me to sleep.

Sometimes you aren't enough.

I couldn't make a bobsled team with me and you

Couldn't fill the spots on a pool tournament roster

But together we could play a hell of a game of bridge

Together we pedal a tandem like champs

I would like you to take me apart piece by piece

I would like you to build a Lincoln log cabin from my ribs

I would like you to devour my words like you've been fasting and I'm the first meal you've come across.

I would like you to tell me you love me in the same well worn words you've told me

one hundred, one thousand times before.

Just so I can say it back.

Day 29

Second to last day. Today's mood: https://youtu.be/JRWox-i6aAk

"Blue jeans, white shirt/ Walked into the room you know you made my eyes burn"-- Blue Jeans by Lana Del Rey

"Lana leaves a trail of flopping tongues. She picks one up, autographs it, throws it over her shoulder and walks to our gate."--Lana Del Rey Walks Through Airport Security Megan Falley

One foot presses against the ground, made anxious by the close proximity of her skin. The other lauches into her next step and the collective silence of the room wraps itself around her bare shoulders. The ground behind where she has walked looks darker, less complete without her.

Every time her eyelashes brush against the skin of her cheeks every nerve in every body in the room stands to attention in a militant declaration of loyalty. Her eyes are the atmosphere holding us to this earth, pushing down on our shoulders with pounds of pressure. Her eyes are the force of universal entropy, pulling every cell apart from every other cell into countless spinning pieces.

Every time she takes a step I want to capture that motion in a scent and breath it in every night before I go to sleep. Every time she takes a step I am sure I believe in god. Every time she takes a step I want to get her name tattooed in a universe on my skin. I know the universe will never capture the vastness of her.

Day 28

Today's mood is an owl city song. Pick 1, they all sound the same. https://youtu.be/psuRGfAaju4

A Spell for Survival

I would build myself a home in between my ribs
To be closer to the thunderstorm of my heart
And I would indulge my more voyeuristic impulses by visiting vertebrae
To see the lightning of my nerves.
Every month I would frolic in the monsoon of blood
From my uterus--a sacrifice to my still barren womb.
The earthquake of my thigh muscles ebbs and flows
But I delight in its destructive potential.

The magic, when it's always storming, is being willing to dance in the rain.

Day 27

Homestretch. Smile at someone today. Today's mood: https://youtu.be/FL3Id1pfRM4

Sonnet 18

I would compare you to nature but to
Be frank, that's trite and actually your
DNA is closer to a mushroom
Then a rose. Also, beauty standards are
Patriarchal and oppressive at best.

Day 26

Four! More! Days! And it's Friday! Today's mood: https://youtu.be/z9Uz1icjwrM

Today's prompt is repetition this poem is also a villanelle which means that it fits in a rigorous format and also I'm pretty bad at it. Still, it was an instructive exercise.

Rain on Roof

Today I drove and listened to the rain
Pattering patterns in big raindrops, wet
Noise, filling silence then noise again

I often use the radio when I drive
To school and let the music drown my thoughts, but
Today I drove and listened to the rain

All my drive was covered with the shade
Or rainy clouds, gath'ring raindrops going slap
Noise, filling silence then noise again.

When music plays it helps drown out pain
Sorrow, and shame, and the rest
Today I drove and listened to the rain

I felt so lonely only with my shame
Without a voice or song to soothe me
Noise, filling silence then noise again.

My drive was filled with long forgotten pain
I arrived and found that I was spent
Today I drove and listened to the rain
Noise, filling silence then noise again

Day 25

This week has been a long week. But next week will be better. And the next.

Today's mood: https://youtu.be/FTQbiNvZqaY

I'd rather be dancing
I am a painter with my feet
A poet with my toes
I make sentences with my finger tips
I would spell out the metaphor of a sunrise
When I swish my hips

To say that I am a poet of the body
Would be ostentatious at best
Intolerable at worst. I would
rather lead you
My hand steady on your shoulder blades
Your weight resting on my forearms
Around the room in a swing so smooth
You suspect you're floating.
I would like to move you.

Day 24

Wow. Wow wow wow. Wow. Today's mood: <https://youtu.be/xUNqsfFUwhY>. Take a minute today to consider that there is good in the world. Then get to work.

The task for today is ten ten-word stories that together make a poem. The idea is that each of these ten word long sentences create a self contained emotion and that also if I string them together they will make a story.

She dragged herself out of bed with a Herculean force.
Dresses meant she didn't have to match two different garments.
Her lipstick, like war paint, served to intimidate the enemy.
Morning sunshine was soft but the day was rock hard.
The radio played hard rock and she refused to cry.
She compulsively checked her phone but there no messages.
Despite skipping breakfast, she was late to microbiology class again.
Microbiology was meaningless in the context her own heartbreak
She was a good scientist but exhaustion weighed her bones
How could she grow bacteria when her heart felt dead?

Bonus poem

A bonus poem for today since once I start to do meter, I tend to get stuck.

We all have smoked our share of weed

We all have smoked our share of weed
We've all tripped acid twice
We all have gotten black out drunk
But getting buzzed is nice

Some of us smoke cigarettes
Cause we think it looks cool
When lipstick stains around the top
But some prefer to juul.

My friend Brett, he likes to brag
Of sex he's had on shrooms
His orgasm a galaxy
His body like a tomb

Easter keg hunt leads to a
Cascade of  broken ankles
And camppo doesnt put a stop
To drunken easter trouble.

We find ourselves lost in the woods
Stumbling, cold, and high
But we're always looking for
A party of some kind.

Day 23

Today's mood is fucking stressed. I dunno, go listen to nature sounds for ten minutes or something.


(For) my lungs were never meant for the sweet air
But rather gates of unrelenting steel
Pumping life through my body wrapped in fair
bright armor, a cold, but noble ordeal.

(Watch) My body cut a path through featureless
Fluid. Powerful tail, sensitive spine
Seems silly on the dirty earth. Useless
For terrestrial life. For fish it's fine.

(For) When I am broken, none can see me cry
Under the water, flowing from my eyes.

Day 22

Today's mood is the two of cups. I always sleep better next to you.

Today's poem is inspired by the mountain goats quote: "The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway/ Is that it's you and that you are standing in the doorway"

Four Walls and a Ruf

And did you know I built this house up from the fertile earth?
And did you know when I laid every brick into the one below it I thought of the way
Your lips part just gently when you see something that makes you laugh?
And have you considered every curve in the doorway is a prefect compliment to your hips, your calves, your smile, your warped sense of humor
Everything in you curves like the grain of that dark oak wood
Or maybe cherry or ash or even sweeping brick and stone--
What do I know?
I know the sound if your laugh has carved deep groves into my memory.
I know that I will never tire of the way you say "Rum" instead of "Room"
"Ruf" instead of "Roof" "Pellow" instead of "Pillow"
Your rounded syllables sit in this doorway and I hear them resonate
In the very roots of this house and for a moment I want to call it home.

Day 21

Three weeks of this. I'm not sure if it feels longer or shorter. Today's mood is the ace of cups: may your life be overflowing with sweetness and may you know how beloved you are.

To the G Train Overlooking the Gowanus Canal
I still think of you when I'm lying awake at night and sleep has got lost on the way to my bed.
It's so dark here is Western Massachusetts but sometimes I pretend I can see the truck lights blazing through my window
Sometimes I pretend I can here the baritone of blaring horns instead of the soprano of peepers in the springtime.

Sweet G trains roll on through my dreams
And take the turns gently
Fold yourself around the twists and turns of my mind
And sink under my consciousness

Do you know what lurks in the subway tunnels of my mind?
What creeps though the soggy dark pathways and nibbles about the electric neurons dreaming
Of a city that held me in her wakeful rails?

Day 20

Chag sameach, friends. May you too escape your own Egypt on this day.


A Spell for Burial
"Bury me in the garden/ So that I can feed you"--Garden by Gregory Alan Isakov

When your father taught you to ride a bike,
He ran along behind you as you pedaled
You must learn to let go
Holding the back of your seat so that you wouldn't fall and skin your young knees
And you do not know, could never know
Putting down the heaviest things is always the hardest
The force it took for him to release his fingers
Unwrap them from that metal post and watch your young legs pedal
Nothing lasts forever, even you
Away from him and you did not, could not know
How much he missed you that day, as you petaled away
So when I die you must burry me in the garden
And brought a piece of his heart along with you
Because you remember that when you turned around and shouted "I did it"
And I will feed your winding beanstalk, your perennial thyme
He was wearing a huge smile and told you
"I'm so proud."
You do not need remember me.

Day 19

Spell for Restful Sleep
I had a dream last night that you and I were on a sailboat
And the sun was wrapping itsself around us
And the waves were rocking us in time with the bluegrass band
Sitting at the stern. A fiddler and a mandolin player
And my friend Jesse, playing the accordion and
Beating out the dance with his fee.
You and I were dancing and looking into each others'
Eyes. Drowning, you might say.

And as we held on to each other and swayed
And the wind kept greeting us as someone we knew
My friend Amelia from Albany
And your friend Isaac from Ithaca
And your friend Bob from Boston
My friend Nel from New York
And so the boat rocked and so we danced

And then I looked up from the rippling heart beat of your chest
From the bliss we held each other in
To see storm-dark
Clouds galloping from the horizon to the ship
Where we danced and I could see the lighting racing
From the night dark clouds to the tear dark river
And lighting the river up in a white lace lattice.

I looked urgently back at your watery eyes
Desperate to tell you
"Abandon ship!"
But you were across the ship from me now
So far away
And the wind swept away my voice.

Day 18

I'm writing this poem from inside a classroom and its rather dark in here.

Today's mood:

https://youtu.be/P_i1xk07o4g

Gambling for Lonely Girls

He bites my neck and I roll my eyes back in my head and think of Neil Gaiman's "vampire sestina" 

"It is a lonely game, the quest for blood"

His tongue paints a line from the pointing arrow of my collarbone

Up to the corner of my jaw and I shiver

My gut rolls some dice and they all come out snake eyes

So many ones staring at me as I shiver

And he gently draws the silky skin of my neck between his teeth again

An insistent tugging, wanting, desiring

His hand slides around the back of my neck and he pulls my head down

And for a moment his gaze catches mine

With both eyes I fell held in place

I struggle to breath air in the dark velvet emptiness of his pupils

I never could remember the rules to black jack

Just a simple game, the numbers adding to twenty-one

I always had a hard time laying my cards on the table

His hands palm the whole deck of me

And his clever fingers turn the spades of me

He will always be closer to twenty-one and I don't know if I should let him (w)in.

Day 17

This poem is kinda a part 2 to day 12. Also, I was thinking that if I ever write an anthology, this is what it will be called.

Today's mood: https://youtu.be/a5_QV97eYqM

A Grimoire for Sad Girls

This book looks like the lipstick smudges you left on the bathroom mirror to remind yourself how much you love you this book looks like a forsythia bush is full bloom all sunshine flowers and no leaves all beauty and impossibility and no way to sustain it this book looks like the bare back of your first love

There is a spell here that will teach you to forget your first love

This book sounds like the first bird song you hear in the morning it sounds like your favorite song being blasted from the car next to you at the red light it sounds like your name it sounds like call of a lonely coyote in the winter time

There is a spell here that will teach you to mastrubate

This book feels like lying down on sun warmed rock in the summer time this book feels like the warm mud holding your toes it feels like hot water pelting tired muscles it feels like a calloused hand running down your spine it feels like falling

There is a spell here that will teach you to fly

This book smells like walking into a greenhouse in the wintertime this book smells like salt and sweat and tears this book smells like pussy this book smells like lavender hyacinth and lilac it smells like frying butter and garlic it smells like your grandmother smelled it smells like mints and cough drops

This book will not take you home but it can teach you to find home where you are

Day 16

Half way! Half way! Half way! Today's mood:
https://youtu.be/PaYvlVR_BEc

A special thanks to my microbio teacher for the title phrase

Respiring on Iron
I've been fitting myself into corners for weeks now
Sliding sideways into the crevices between class and work
On the days when I don't have time to cook I snack on spare change
Munching metal, respiring on iron.
I puzzle piece fit myself around the jenga tower of commitments my life has become.
Sometimes I sand down my corners to make sure I fit
I miss my corners with an absence in my chest.
At night, in the instant before I fall asleep
I close my eyes and try to remember
What quiet sounded like.

Day 15

I'm tired, my friends. I'm overworked, underpaid, oversexed, under appreciated, over it, and out of clean underwear.

Nonetheless, day 15 is here and a writer I am still

This poem is dedicated to Taeer

To be or not to be

You wonder about Immanuel Kant.
You wonder if he was right
That he simply existed
A soul among many.
You wonder if he was right
And there is no shape to this tapestry of life
Woven around you.
You wonder if there are patterns in the vibrancy
Of these colors spun around you.
You wonder if you could tease the thread of your own life
Out of that vast tapestry
If you could line it up in neat rows
So that it tells you your own story
Beginning, middle, and end.
You wonder how your story could possibly have an end
When you are so young and your colors so bright.
You wonder if you could follow the thread
as it twists, see the places it crosses hundred,
Maybe thousands of other bright strings,
Where it runs parallel to others, here and there
Where it weaves solitary through new colors,
yet unnamed.
Where will your thread lead you?

Day 14

WEEK TWO WEEK TWO WEEK TWO
I just left a dance weekend and I miss my friends. Today's mood is:

https://youtu.be/FcSqI1KZiLI

A sex poem

The slick slip of her dexterous digits delights
excites
entwines me in this delicious
sensation, creation of ecstasy

Knuckles wrapped white around
Soft sheets
Toes curled in rapture
Cannot capture this feeling
To relish this sensation

Pulse pounding, legs flailing
Moans louder, moans harder
Voice wailing

Body bent about clever curled fingers
Feeling the deepest secrets slid softly
Inside for my satisfaction.

Day 13

Chooo chooo motherfucker! I've been dancing all weekend. I've slept 8 hours in the last two days. Today's mood:

https://youtu.be/FRSYQZdkTR8

I died today

The road murmured sweet nothings
In such a quiet and soothing voice
That my eyelashes grew weighty.
I could feel my breathing slow
Feel my chin sink to meet my chest
My hands loosen in the wheel--
Only to jerk myself out of the sweet seduction of unconsciousness to swerve out of the lane of an oncoming truck--Fuck.
I breathe adrenaline and relief.

Day 12

Hey folks! I've fallen a little behind but I can assure you we'll make it through this month together kicking, screaming, and biting.
Special thanks to Amanda Lovelace to her radically feminist masterpiece "The witch doesn't burn in this one" Go read it!

The Witch Burns in this One

With me I carry two things
One a black notebook, wrapped in leather and bound with desire
And the second a book of matches

The notebook contains secrets
The matches contain sulfur

The notebook has curves and graces
And words like rosemary and cobalt
And pictures of five pointed stars

The match box has little sticks
All alike
Lined up in rows

I carry these things into a meadow of tall grasses
A field of piercing blue sky and dandelion clouds watches
As I set the notebook down to rest on the soft earth

It flips open, scrolling through rainbows of color
A menagerie of words and pictures
Opening themselves to the world.
Entering my lungs one last time.

In mourning I see a woman
Tided to a pyre of driftwood and old fence posts
I smell smoke
I hear her final curses screamed defiantly into the wind.

I slide the rectangle of the matchbook
Apart from its top and drag the head
Across the textured side
The match catches.

Day 11

You and I, my love. We will make it screaming and kicking and clawing to the end of this month. We will make it and it will be glorious. Today's mood is "Friday I'm in love"

https://youtu.be/ucX9hVCQT_U

Origin Story

On my left hip I have tattooed "I am but dust and ashes"
On my right I have "God made the heaven and the earth for me"

I got these tattooed because I asked my friend Syd
Who I met orientation week of college
And immediately found our shared passion for bonfires and bones

And so he used his hallow needle and india ink
Pressed again and again into my hip
As I gripped the edge of his bed, white knuckled in a kind of quiet agony
Until the plain upper case letters spelled out a message to the universe.

I asked Syd for this tattoo instead of a dolphin or a flower or a semicolon
Because actually, this tattoo was my lover Taeer's idea
And she told me about it and also we both acknowledged
She would never get a tattoo
And so I asked Syd if he would give it to me instead.

Taeer told me the idea for her tattoo
Because met almost two years ago at the Ithica contra dance
In Cornell, where she was going to school
And I was living in Serycuse
And traveling around the state
And living in a tent

And she was charmed by Judaism and my anarchy
And I was charmed by her dancing.
And so the story begins

Day 10

Day 10! woot woot!

Have you considered the clouds today?

Have you considered the clouds today?
Have you considered the way they bluster in front of the sun
And dim her sunshine?

Have you considered whether the sun has any choice when the clouds
Blow her off?
That she cannot simply "shine brighter" if she doesn't want to end up
Overshadowed?

If April showers bring May flowers
After May has done all of the growing doesn't that just leave April a soggy mess?

Napo day 9

A List of Things I Can Climb

1) The beech tree on the hill on the south side of campus with smooth, wide branches that spiral upwards. In the top branches many students have carved their names framed by hearts in perpetuity. This love will spread disease and blight to the tree, an open would for sickness to seep in. 

2) The orange 5'9" at the climbing gym with the overhang and the one hold shaped like a brain and all the others shaped like melted bees wax. Actually, I can climb most of the 5'9"s in the gym. My next goal is that slanted yellow 5'10". I try to climb three times a week. It took me a month to master the 5'9"s but I suspect the 5'10"s will take longer.

3) 10, 11, 12 flights of stairs down and up from the subway every day. I make two or three transfers in one trip. Some day I will get where I am going, but the G train will not take me there.

4) Out the window frame of my childhood home onto my slanted black tar route, warmed by the long hours of the summer sun, even after the night has fallen like a blanket over the sleepy suburb of my parents' neighborhood.

5) The chain linked fence behind by my high school. Past the huddles of smoking teen who stood behind it cackling like hyenas and into the cool relief of the woods beyond.

6) Down the ravine behind my parents house and back up to the back yard of my childhood best friend. Both of us climbing together into the wilderness, stumbling and sliding. Using our hands and feet, elbows and knees. Any way we could cross the steep, fertile valley that lay between us.

Napo day 8

One week! Fuck! Yeah!
Thank you to Chloe for the phrase "touch base" and to Lori Moore for the idea of soil under skin

Touch Base
"Come by next week and we'll touch base"
"Come by next week and I'll touch every part of the soft skin at the base of your neck"
"Come by next week and I'll touch my fingers to the pale bone of your ankle"
"Come by next week and we'll get to second base."
"Come by next week and I'll pry open your ribs to touch to the rich loam living inside your chest"
"Come by next week and I'll plant chrysanthemum seeds along your spine and
Water them every day sing to them in the evenings
Until chrysanthemums spring from your throbbing body and
Twine around each other in unbridled ecstacy
Reaching in desperation for the sun that shines back
In brilliantly hot nuclear explosions of joy."
"Come by next week and we'll round the bases, run off the field,
Sprint through the bleachers, and jump off the top of the stadium."

Napo day 7

I'm a little behind but it's fine. Everything is on fire but it's fine. It's all fine. Totally fine. No biggie. Whatever.

Song of the day: https://youtu.be/dTzBXyxJE0w

A gift
I would give you springtime if I could
Wrapped up in pastel paper.
I would give you the warmth the sun has so long denied you
I would give you sugar spun violets
And warm raindrops in a green glass bottle

I would save every dance for you if I could
Every step in sync
I would give you the gift of my weight
In your arms
I would give you the gift of gravity
Swinging you in endless circles.

Napo day 6

If you're reading this and no one has ever dedicated a love poem to you
Now someone has.
This is for you.

The possibility of you

What if we had a whole evening just for us
Possibility sprawled before us on the couch
Wearing something skimpy but flattering

A swathe of time just for us
The sun would sink into the earth with
Comfortable ease
And we would dance every single slow song

What if we had a whole evening just for us
We would dress up together and paint the town red
You in your lipstick colored "man-killer"
And mine called "woods-fairy"

We would sip each other slowly
Like fine cocktails
Drink in the finery and the way the slanting golden light
Brushes under your eyelids
And wraps itself around your collar bones
Like I long to do with my lips

What if we had a whole evening just for us?
And I would write a homeric epic just to the curve of your hips
And you would spin sugar and yarn into something that tugs my heartstrings and
I would tangle myself in your laugh.

And the evening
We would remember it forever after
As ours.

Napowrimo day 5

The Frog Chorus ft Burbling Brook

Today the babble of the little stream
As it flows past the golden beach
Is both a greeting and a fond "adieu".
She is always going somewhere and still,
Inside her something pulls her heart downstream.

Today the birds are fighting,
Loudly for their own
Like teenage
Boys, all bluster
And no substance. "This
Tree is mine and she is the greatest!"

Or perhaps they are noisy weathermen
Loud newscasters of the obvious
"The sun came up! The
Sun is up!"

Today the frogs
Are humming in their
Temporary lonliness "Is anyone
There?" "Is anyone there who will love
Me?" "Just for the night." "Just for the night."

Napowrimo day 4

The prompt was emotional poem without emotional words

Picture the smile of the sunshine
In the springtime freely bouncing
Off the flowers flying towards
Your light eyes.

Listen to the bright cry
Of songbirds trying to find
Love or simply
Chiming in the springtime chorus.

Napowrimo day 3

Meandering poem

Evening prayer


Every night I say a prayer for my feet.
I start with the way the connect to the ground
I start with the way they push
Push their roots deep into the earth
To push the earth
Fast past my churning calves and bony ankles.

The next prayer is for my hands,
The way they shape
The way they hold
The way they tear down.
I give an extra prayer for the thick calluses
On the corners of my palm
A layer of armor between myself and the world.

When I pray I give thanks for each vertebrae in my spine
From my vestigial tail
Up thirty three hard bones
Interlaced with clever nerves
To the delicate formations holding my neck proud
And my chin high

I say a prayer for my skull
Protecting my mind
And my ribs,
Protecting my heart
And my heart
And my aorta
And my skin and my eyes and my ears and my tongue and my liver and my pancreas

The last prayer I say, I say for my spirt
Curled up tight in the blanket of body
I wish it good night make sure to whisper, before sleep
I love you.

Napowrimo day 2

The prompt today was to write a poem asking questions
This poem was entirely inspired by Lorie Moore's Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? which is a delightful but heartbreaking book.

Who will run the frog hospital?

Who will run the frog hospital?
When the lily-soft girls
Are gone from the swamp
Who will kiss the soft green heads?
Who will cradle the long green toes?

Why do you hear a great croak and think man?
Why do you see that slimy green skin and think prince?

Napowrimo day 1

The prompt for today was "instructional poem"

How to Survive Heartbreak:

Have you ever watched the sunrise in the wintertime?
Felt the cold leech into your bones as you shivered under the morning dawn
Did you notice how gray the sky was?
How gray the ground and the trees were?
The sun, she took so long
To creep
Above
The horizon
It’s just too much for her some days

And when she is up,
No matter how hot she shines
And how long you stare
Trying to burn her beauty into your eyes
She cannot reach you.

Along the Hudson

I drive all the way to Poughkeepsie to take the train down into New York

Even through it’s a full hour faster to take the line that runs from white plains

Because the train from Poughkeepsie hugs the Hudson River

I get onto the train and I make sure to sit on the river side

And although I have hours of homework to do

I cannot bear to look away from the river

Shining in the first sunny day of springtime

Along the river I look for birds

I see migrating canada geese in synchronized Vs

Finally returning to this land as the sunlight soaks into the rocky earth

I see scraggly crows joking from the tree tops and power lines,

This train full of people is the finest joke they’ve seen in years and god knows, they needed a good laugh

There’s one hawk

Too proud for the bent crooked maple beneath it, I know she is looking for opportunity,

Her hard eyes and dirty feathers hint at a pain I know she’ll never tell me

But she is sure to tell me about the beauty and power of her wings and the way they move even the air to her will.

On the train I see the rolling hills of the hudson valley.

I know the giant who lived in peace with the Haudenosaunee people

Who tread lightly across her back

I see her strong shoulders and I sense the strength of her legs

I am awed by the curve of her belly into the soft green-ness of her shores

And I weep with her that we all forgot her tremendous beauty

And in this way I too am the Hudson River.

Along the river I count every single bud

On every single tip of every single branch of every single tree

Birch, maple, oak, pine, beech, aspen, and poplar

They all promise:

“Springtime”

Whisper:

“Rebirth, life”

Each bud is a friend and lover

I cannot wait to meet each individual leaf.

I’m particularly fond of the red maples in their

Pink bundles, turning the sky and hillsides a cheery red.

I sit and watch the river go by and I watch the springtime start

And I feel the tides pull at my chest.

I would drive countless hours for this.

I universe you

Dedicated to Andre Santana for his poem "I universe you"

I looked for the stars in your eyes

Because they told me I could follow your Polaris to find my truest North.

So I gazed deep and

Fell 

Hard. 

I found countless constellations in technicolor  rainbow.

I found nebulas of celestial creations

And supergiant deaths of unparalleled gravity.

I found the speed of light and 

I understood the background electric magnetic radiation

And traced it back to the beginning of all time and light and heat and energy

The big bang. 

But I think they forgot to mention that there's no sound in space.

They forgot to mention the way stars would warp gravity

And twist spacetime around your heavenly body.

I forgot to calculate drag from my irregular shapes

And I struggled to make sense of Newton's third law:

For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction.

You're space was just too big,

Too alien

For me to find my bearings. 

I tried to make sense of the universe in you

But now I'm just floating

Alone

In the dark.

Body Series 11

The acoustic guitar of my body reverberates with remembrance
And longing for your clever hands
And the way they move up and down my strings
Tuned to pitch for comfort, desire, and the softness of my lips
In chords that spelled out the things
We couldn't say with our tongues.

I miss making music with you.

Have you seen the moon tonight?

The moon is loneliest when she is full
I know this because she whispered this through my window on a bitterly cold February night
I might not have heard her except for the snow
Which murmured 'hush' and 'listen'
When the crows and chickadees tried to sing their sorrows into the almost silence

Sometimes the moon runs out of tears
She has cried all her tears and her pale face can't bring herself to hold this profound
Grief any longer.
She has held it day and night,
Seen and hidden as she traversed the sharp blue sky,
So that it is too large even for her gravity.
It falls away from her and she is left even more lonely in the cold air.

Body series 10

A list of ten of the most beautiful words in the english language

1) epoch: (noun) the time it takes between my alarm going off in the morning and when I open my eyes and the measure of the sunlight on my eyelids

2) epiphany: (noun) that Thursday afternoon when sunlight poured into the room like honey and I looked in the mirror and noticed the way my eyes were glowing

3) sonorous: (adjective) when I sing in the car with the radio cranked up as loud as it will go and the snow swirling around me the beat and the gas pedal pressed down to the floor

4) serendipity: (noun) the angle of my hip bones against my skin and the musculature of the legs beneath them

5) nefarious: (adjective) the ache in my lips and the pit of my stomach when the wind whispers "kiss me" through the trees

6) ineffable: (adjective) the perfect swirls of dark hair in my armpits and the way they compliment my biceps

7) eloquence: (noun) the sound of each foot slapping the pavement, one after the other

8) effervescence: (noun) the act of my lungs expanding my whole chest, pushing open the cage of my ribs for air

9) ephemeral: (adjective) the way the calluses on the pads of my finger grow stronger with every day I use the tendons and muscles in my hands to hold myself in this world

10) aurora: (noun) this body and this mind in agreement and the way they think "we are here. now"

Body series 9 (a reimagining of mixed metaphors)

"I treat my body like a temple" she says

And her words spin into the air thoughts of high mountain monasteries

The chill of the air upon a pristine rock garden

No traveler has ever before laid eyes on.

I think of thin mountain air that will not nourish the travel's lungs:

Leaves her trying to breathe a full breath.

I think of tall strong walls and a closed gate

And the grey of eternal winter.

"I also treat my body like a temple," I agree

But I mean that I will welcome

Anyone who knocks on my gates in good faith.

My body is a temple with huge doors and huge windows

To let the light in.

My body is a temple in the biggest city on the best traveled road you know.

My body is the sort of temple where

The spires are worn smooth and polished by many hands

It is the sort of temple that holds an abundance of

Plush pillows lounging on my pews.

It is bejeweled by stained glass windows

That transforms all light into God.

My body shelters weary travelers with storied hands

Who hold my warmth like a miracle,

And echoes high priests who recite its history with their clever tongues

from the pulpit,

And echoes back the sweetest songs of the most beautiful women from the beautiful curves

Of its ceilings and walls.

My body is a temple and I would delight in offering

Any pilgrim who kneels before me a temporary salvation.