Poem-A-Day #230 : Stray Cat

Stray Cat

I have felt not at home
within
and without

The universe is not a cold dead place

It is just cold
and mostly not alive

Our matter
coalesces around us
it speaks to us at night
in the sounds of houses settling

If I have a hand to hold
let it also be my own

Poem-A-Day #147 : Study on Rain #2

This is the beginning of the other part of Study on Rain #2 I posted.


Study on Rain #2 (7/17/04)

There,
across the street
huddled around
a half-dressed man
who is crying,
are other half-dressed people

Through sobs,
What will I do
now that I've
killed...

And is he talking
literal moments of time
actions with reaction
or
can there be metaphor at
10:00 in the night
with two young girls
in their underwear
standing over him,
consoling him

Later in the street
she was clothed then
standing,
we took the girl home
at 3AM in our car she said,
There are some times
you're just tired
you know?

What to think
of a reverse pieta

And then the mother
the next morning
was there asking,
You took her where?
I didn't know my
son had friends over
tonight...

Poem-A-Day #135 : What I Wish I Wrote

The more I dig around in my old journals, the more I realize that my mindset has changed little. I've learned more, read more, discovered new ways to frame my thoughts. But, in the end, the thoughts are the same

Young me liked list poems. I still do, but I try to not be so bald-faced with them. Young me was also very dramatic. Which I'm still ok with.


What I Wish I Wrote (1/25/99)

I wish I wrote about the way to get home, the roads to follow to an ideal place.
I wish I wrote about the paths not to follow and the pitch forks thrown your way.
I wish I wrote of the ocean, or, at least, of the salt on the tongue. The crystals that settle on lips and eyes.
I wish I wrote of the very alphabet, of the history of the word 'adequate'.
I wish I wrote of the road home. I wish I wrote of love. I wish I wrote of hearts.
I wish I wrote of the waves, the people that are inside them dancing to the shore. But I fear the water.
I wish I wrote of stability.
I wish I wrote of self-reliance, but I am not alone in a cabin by a lake.
I wish I wrote of the wilderness, but I never venture far from home.
I wish I wrote of who I am, but...
I wish I wrote of others, but I have exhausted so much time on people not worth my time.
I wish I wrote of the road home, but I don't know how, I don't know what that place is yet.

Pill

Pill 12/21

My mother can’t help but call the sweater old looking
and she starts pulling on the little knots of wool around
the elbows

We are in the living room and it’s Christmas and it
doesn’t matter but she’s balling little brown bits of wool
into a ball of cat fur and calling it all old

I look into the ball she is making and try to focus on it
on the light gray thing that is getting bigger like it’s a
super massive black hole

Her voice is soft and she is meaning well and the
sweater is a few years old at this point and I don’t mean
to hit her chin when I pull back my arm

But I do and she drops the ball of cat and wool and it
drifts to the floor to the floor and stops and she looks
at me with such surprise

There must be something there then and anger over the
years pulled back into focus through the ether of space
gravity doesn’t just let go like that

Realty

Realty

The lot across the street is being cut down
                        Weeds have been grown for three months
They suck at the air, choking in the humidity
                        A soft plastic thread spinning becomes a hack
It is watching dominos, they fall so gently
                        Like a sudden narcolepsy of grasses
From across the street behind glass there is no sound
                        Just the falling, the clumping
The sparrows hopping madly in the sidewalk