Why Hello Goodbye

I fear that when I say "my love" I'm speaking to a ghost about folklore. It isn't crying over spilled milk, when you're not holding the carton. We sit at the table with chips piled high and it's in your cards, but I busted. It's my crop in my field on your farm. I'll raise it only to raze it in the end. A crop for the fire. So let's gather it, and we can heap it, and light it to dance around it. We are the halo to the light tonight. Let the fired warmth soothe our skin covering the ache in the bone. Cast upon the fire all the unwanted and undesirable anchors we hold onto. If you can for the night forget the chains imbedded in our skin so can I. I will dance in our tears of joy and grief, as awkward as my conjured thoughts. In the mud we move until the cold of the night creeps over the dance floor eventually drowning the fire.

Alternatives help us judge life like a fuel gauge, so you can conceive how much better it'd be if  I didn't know differently. As I fall asleep next to the smoke and hisses I know I'm getting there. There isn't enough tomorrow for today. I've spent enough time in the company of hunger, exhaustion, worry, and illness. Seasons have an ending, but these hang around like lost children. Orphans given up by others crowd in my shadow, laying claim to their home. Their jaded eyes peek through their window at the evening activities. My eyes are clouded to the color of tomorrow. I see enough heartache behind me for all the beards on the porch in the rocking chairs. I see only trouble ahead of me. Thirty-seven and counting.

As I lie awake in the cold, cloudy, rainy sunrise none of them seem that bad anymore. Like a golfer I take par on this course called life. I want less of the same and more of that health and wealth; please deliver it in stealth. I joyously and longingly watched it fall on others like a blanket of fresh snow, so I still hold on. The lottery ticket prayer uttered without warning is: deliver me or scorch the earth.

I begin to see now

I begin to see now
the meaning of you,
or perhaps it is
another beginning
one of uncountable many

The way you take me inside
Warmth, dwelling
Liquid bed of seeing
with eyes shut tight.

There is so little time for this
Perhaps at the end we will
have properly begun
to know the contours,
and the language of being

Together.

Thor's Day in the batey (for Francisco)

i watched you work
in dark skin
under a warmer sun

they may never hear
your voice brother
in those frosty veins

so many days passed
in short breaths
back facing south winds

but i swear,

i saw your heart
in your eyes
under hurried good byes

los robles (the oaks) casting shadows
on the hillside
as a watch man

you waved to me
with calloused hands
i cannot forget it

the cane burning fast
like the moment
when we heard Him

speaking with us.


(This poem has incredible personal significance and meaning to me.  I spent the last 8 days with friends in the southwest region of the Dominican Republic. If you have never been to or heard of a batey (Creole for 'village') you may not quite understand it. I encourage you to make an attempt to know. The only way to live is to grow.)

My Pillow Pulls My Hair

My pillow pulls my hair.
“I have to go to work.”
As soon as I say it, he firms up his grip.

He knows what’s waiting for me.
“Room for cream."
“Double cup it.”
“A large with skim milk and non-fat whip.”
He’s trying to protect me.

Big and fat and white.
He could be running the company.

Why does he have to remind me
That I have two college degrees?
“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”
Don’t tell me that I could do better.
“I know that.”

So why don’t I?
Because I make decent money?
Because we're moving soon anyway?
Because I’m focusing on other things in life right now?
Getting my legs under this new marriage.
Figuring out what I really want to do.
Finding my narrative voice.

With daily interruptions by my Sugar Daddy
Who hurts me.
Weakens me.
Keeps me living in fear.
Keeps me hating my life
For 40 hours every week.

My heart sinks into my mattress.
I guess I’ll just have to go to work without it.
And without my hair, too.
I pull hard to get away.
He takes a little more every time,
It’s starting to show.

“Sorry dear.” My alarm woke her up.
It’s 2:35am.
Assholes need coffee.

5 Winter Haiku

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Winter forces us

Into holes, blankets wrapt ‘round

Translucent snow skin

Hope fires the sky red

The sun mocks us like friends with

Postcards from the beach

You said it was too

Cold to lick the metal pole

I gueth you were righth

If you turn the heat

All the way up we can shrug

Off heat bills till spring

Peeing your name is

Easy... You know what’s hard? Yep.

…near impossible…

work

this place is dark
and i have to leave early
to arrive early

to stay late

Johns aren't Joes

In the mirror you're one of a kind

An ace of spades

Silence the deck when it whispers

Speaking in tongues

Inquire first with the joker

You are a bouquet

But you see a flower

And so the gardener plucks

The wolf's season is over

Hold his breath a little longer

Just another wolf

Just another meal

Mouths remain red

At a table set for a TV dinner

This is breathing, second nature

So many before

Too many after

RIP dreams

Guilty eyes

RIP heart

Never see you

RIP beauty

It's the mundane that drove

And let us out

to view dreams, heart, beauty

love isn't found with torn seems

or dangling from teeth like a cigarette

american dream

american spirit

american nightmare

The wolf's season is over

Hold his breath a little longer

Hold it for him, and it will all be over

We’ll meet in the sunset

And flee to the sunrise