Poem-A-Day #278 : The Wind Convinced Them They Were Ice

The Wind Convinced Them They Were Ice

                                        . . . their voice
                                                                 is one of curling
                    leaves
                    a sort of unfurling
                    that resembles rolled fabric

          a tent holding its bones tightly . . .


I said that I didn't mind the cold that my hands and feet are cold even in the summer that this violent weather was perfect for sleeping

But there is that spot on the inside that stares into the distant fire and wants the forest to ignite around us


          . . . we cannot endure because

                         we see things as outside
          or
                                        inside ourselves . . .


There are things in this world that one does not want to embrace and there are things that one wants to take up inside themselves and curl around and absorb

The curling of the wind is a part of us and the freezing could be as well the only divide is one of listening and one of finding another story to tell

                                                            . . . bullshit
                    the wind is nature and voiceless

                    I hear that

                                       but you are made of air
                                       and it sometimes finds ways to curl

Poem-A-Day # 96 : Line

Line

The line becomes the edge of the forest that you weren't allowed to cross when you were nine and then the line turns green and then the line softens and branches fall into the cornfields that run up to the line they are yellow and sometimes fallow and always delicious over a grill with butter running on your chin the line becomes a symbol for things not attainable for the mysteries of life and within the line is darkness moss possibly bears oh my what is that sound the one like celery bring twisted in your fists the one that is both dry and so very full of liquid is there a creek in there full of frogs and small fish to stare at for hours we could name them naming is a fine thing to do Adam named the things in the garden is this a garden are we even religious is there even a grounds for religion in a world where that could happen where this could happen where the line is hardening is a thing drawn in trapper keepers and thought about is a monster that attacks in the night out of the closet a line like a knife trying to two dimensionally suffocate you by filling in the spaces in your lungs with scribbles -

Poem-A-Day #58 : I Am Clearly Still Angry

I Am Clearly Still Angry

The clay pots sit where they were left in the fall - waiting and filled to the brim with last year's soil - the small rocks lining the bottoms of them taken from that house with the rose bush I endlessly obsessed over - caring more about its limbs than my own -

The sound of their breaking - imagine the sound of fired clay against concrete - the breath being pushed from the lungs of a body being beaten to death - ribcage cracking like kindling on a fire the wood so wet that all it produces is smoke and the smell of furnaces -

I want to promise that they will be protected from this - that they will have seeds in them - will have new sprouting heads - that I will not throw them one after another towards the highway that spirals into the distance like a great rubber band across the landscape -

But I can't keep secrets - and I hate the idea of things growing from these shells and I want them to sit dumbly in the rain the wind the blistering heat of summer - I would only plant to watch the green shoots turn yellow and white and wither -

I am clearly still angry -

But let this emotion enter and absorb the room - here the pots become vessels for something greater than growing - they are where we can place our organs as our bodies empty - I feel the pain in my back becoming greater - let me put my kidney here just for a moment -

The heart fits nicely in the small urn that had alyssum in it - purple flowers pop across the surface like barnacles - that we had that kind of water - that those small beak mouths could open and find their peace - that the sun wouldn't need so much from us -

How does the soil know when it is time to squeeze the roots until they break - that winter is coming - that the trail of vines is also a lower intestine - fuck these branches needing to be pruned - and these fingers for tracing the buds like life signs no one will notice the fresh scent of green anyway -

Source - Garden & Home