KS

For K:

As I was sitting,
  legs lotus-folded (like human origami)
Listening to your message
Thinking how your wry wit always
  sends trickles of glory into my laugh

As I was listening,
 ears cold without the warmth
Of your conversation to heat them
I wished for your kind of company,
  like a museum in the rain

And I was thinking
I don't know what this means

I was searching for evidence
 like a deaf man for music
Or perhaps more like a dust mote
 looking for home

Perhaps more like a map
 Embossed vellum with names of
Places etched meaningfully
 With red dotted trails leading
Looping and folding back into themselves
 Except the X is absent

I was looking for meaning
 in the ideas we'd shared
And here is the truth, I do not
 twinge with dolorousness
 I do not keep souvenirs of you

You will find no evidence of the time
          (chalk-dusted fingerprints on cold glass)
Spent with me until you
          (hush and behold the mystery)
 reach to discover moments
          (hidden and higher than most)
Stacked tall in my memory
          (tip the shelves in the library, it all tumbles down)

Strange Creature

Am I grown a strange creature to you now?
Is that why you chase me down with your eyes?
Is that the reason for your beating of my mind
With what you don't think are misguided intentions
They burn me!
Am I grown a strange creature to you yet?
As you are to me?
We used to be parent and child
We are now stranger to stranger
We've fallen so far
I couldn't tell you the track of our separation
Am I grown a strange creature to you?

Summer Storm

            The clouds are on one side a soft, sweet dark gray and a low blue. On the other, a dull rose that fades to yellow-pearly dimness, like a sheet of faded newspaper. Our yard is all dead, and prickly, spiky, unkempt, except for the harshly pruned lilac and the sturdy Rose of Sharon. There are seven seconds between the lightning flashes and the rolling, rumbling thunder that ricochets so willingly off of the mountains. The rain started soft, gentle, cold. Now it’s coming down faster, colder, but just as easily.

            The man inside my family’s house, sitting at my family’s table – he looks lost and a little sad. I surprised him with my urgent errand-running as I scrambled to find this notebook and this pen, the blue one with ink that isn’t miserly. He looks lost, and I hope to him I look like spring, like fresh air and summer rain and the clean feel of just-washed linen. I can’t see into my family’s house, I just get a snapshot of the yellow-lit window, the fringy orange curtains hanging 1/5 of the way down. A wilting houseplant. An embroidered square hanging pink against the cupboard-side.

            The mountains look hazy behind me, lost to a pale ocher mist. I’m sitting on the very edge of the trampoline, the water pouring to a pool in the small dimple that I create. There’s this large rainbow umbrella above my head, only because I don’t want this paper to get too wet. If I hadn’t struck this writing mood, I know where I would be.

Spread-eagled or curled fetal on the trampoline, frozen to the bone and feeling in tune, feeling like I belong with this tiny, tame, and quite suburban square of nature, and not just that, but the whole of it. The wind and the miniature pellets of moisture, the brief, purposeful flashes of lightning, the jagged teeth-of-giants mountains, the barely bending trees and the tall grass along the edge of the backyard fence, reminding me of safaris I have never been on.

My right foot has been pricked by some dead, disgruntled grass blade. I don’t care. I don’t care. The air smells like ozone and damp dirt, and I feel like heaven. I feel like someone small and enthralled who has not learned to love walls and sterile air and hasn’t learned to fear the world, the filthy, throbbing, gritty, wonderful, natural, living world.

My breath is short, shallow, happy, and rather shabby. Eventually I’ll go inside. I wouldn’t want to catch some six-syllabled, racking cold. It would be worth it. But my father is calling my inside to pray. I’ll have to go, and I am sorrier for it.

Constellations

Hold those words out
Eject them form hibernation
Toss them, set them
Let them hang in the air

Watch to see if they sparkle
           Or dart or cut or
                     Just hang
Watch to see if they lash back

Did you chew them seven times before you spoke them?
Seven and seven again before you woke them?

Heed history's dark edges
Clever words lead to high ledges
And revelry will flee
Without two glances back

So
   Hold them close up to you
      Cultivate them, flowing through you
          Hang them in the air like stars
To see if they will sparkle

A-biography

I love the smell of gasoline

Blue flowers, and green neon lettering

Embarrassing-honest people

The words nocturnal, cavalier, and arable

Reading, reading is my second-best to humans,

Greek mythology, all mythology

Solving math equations, being surprised

The soft waves of my mother’s hair

All kinds of clouds and rain

Smooth fabrics, sharpened-pointy pencil-tips

Gravelly voices

      and exploring

With and without
  Hush now, don't pout
Running my hands through my hair
Quantum mechanics
And butterfly feet
  I can't tell you why
Elephants, the only mammals unable to jump
Bats, with bones too thin to walk
  Just hold on tight
We are all the children of nine
With and without

Telling someone not to listen to the jibes
Helps no one
And I can tolerate and forgive
Your shredding of me to pieces
I can let it slide with peace in mind
But you keep your filthy darts away from him

You watch your words and keep them high
You watch your conduct, tone, and airs
You watch your thoughts and deeds' intent
Or I will mind them for you