A horse
A rocking horse
yellowed by time
and a threadbare blanket
translucent on the clothesline
The wind giggles in its folds
and pushes it to beckon
to the sun, though
it needs no
urging
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Wait (Deep Grief)
There is a deep grief with me today
Not depression
or sadness, necessarily
but the longing, aching press
fathoms of need
chasms of yearning
every cell of me straining
filled with oceans of unansweredness
instead of… whatever it is that should fill this hole
I’m not sure what I should be grieving.
Surely something will tell me the answer
something I can DO
Shall I sound it out, or plumb its depths?
Shall I plot its edges and guess at the creature within?
Shall I keen into the darkness and make a picture from its echo?
No.
Instead, I will wait for grief to speak to me
wait for it to tell me its story
washed up on the shore, uncovered by time
and salt water
Treasures I wouldn’t have seen
even yesterday, had I tried to force
this sea of something
behind a dam, between lochs
searching for the monster
Woman Outside
On the park bench outside my home
there is a woman
She sits and stares
and sometimes smiles
sometimes cries,
but she is always there –
A permanent fixture
just past the edge of my lawn
past the white picket fence,
next to the street
to be splashed, choked by exhaust
rained and snowed upon
I am almost certain that,
if she were to walk away,
the bench would no longer exist
Destruction
I am afraid
Very, very afraid
And I do not think that I should have to be this afraid
It’s not Right.
So I tear and rip
until nothing is left
And it serves them right!
See now what they get
when they make me this afraid!
…when I make me this afraid.
and I am standing bare in the mirror
blood running in rivers
red-streaked face from the torn tears I cry mostly from
my heart quietly drowning
hands full and stilled with soggy tatters
of blood-soaked muscle
no longer recognizable
as my heart
my heart
my
heart
Taste of Tears
You taste of tears, my darling.
Come,
let us drink together of your sadness.
Free Write 7
I can’t understand the
words that fall into my mind
like raindrops
flood the gauge on my mother’s porch
all the voices rumble
like thunder so I know
a storm is coming
Free Write 5
there’s a path I found
that winds past lives and years
meanders over gravestones
and ambles across wide open fields
it goes to the grocery store
sleeps under a bridge
while the train rattles by
and wraps itself in plastic bags
to keep out the rain
there is a song that hums
in my ears and leaves
a path of broken staves and
torn-up flags strewn
across tightropes
it slides on polished blades
scarring frozen ponds
and leaves poison in its wake
music of swords and of bees
who were never meant to fly
there’s a man I know
who tramples gardens
cabbages like trampolines and
carrot daggers waiting to be
sucked dry by vampire bunnies
all gardening aside,
she loves the sun
and can’t wait to plant
her heart in this fertile earth
because it’s finally
shining on her too
