Poem-A-Day #263 : But It Is Response

But It Is Response

I'm letting the aloes die

This isn't a sane response to winter - but it is response
so that's something

Last night the wind was strong enough to strip the adobe from the patio ceiling - the bare concrete is stained with white - patterns want to form there but manage only to look like patterns

When the pots were broken - I broke the pots - the earth inside was infested with flies and I watched them struggle in their new found freedom

No one actually expects patterns to form - the world already has its order and it won't conform to ours - but the idea that pattern does happen is nice

I felt the idea - nature abhors chaos - and it rolled in the back of my mouth like phlegm

You throw the shards of terracotta into the air and they all land in a circle with the sharpened points inward - they make a strange portal

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