experimental

that
love was
a hot summer
happiness lifting
smells of Coppertone
gleaming silver moonlight
reflecting in the rise and fall
rippling on a drought stained river
shushing shrill staccato symphonies
of fat crickets and rusty old john boats
easing and thumping against each other
like the two of us, forever and for never
at times, when I hear that sound of metal
grieving against hot metal I can see your
sunburned shoulders, red as the clay banks
freckled with flat stones and just as broad
my chin resting on the smooth of your arm
swan neck, goose flesh, breathy humming
and the fireflies whispering pale promises
erasing the stars and the history of worlds
beyond that cool stream and blue eyes
fixed to me with a poison ivy vine
and the quick ease of July sweat
having everything to gain
and everything to lose
what perfect love
what perfect love

"I don't like you."

“I don’t like you.”

It surprised me … how lightly and easily
it tripped from precious little angel lips.

“I don’t like you.”

It surprised me … how much it stung
my soul and made me question myself.

“I don’t like you.”

It surprised me … how powerful and
definitive and final the words sound.

“I don’t like you.”

It surprised me … how innocence is lost
So quickly, dressed in just four syllables.

“I don’t like you.”


But, I know he likes me. I know that he was acting out in response to his brother. I know that he was attempting to articulate his frustration and displeasure regarding the injustice he had just suffered. I know all of that. It still made me a little sad.

The truth is, kids just grow up too fast. Even inside of the years I’ve been a mother, I see each younger child advancing at a rate faster than the sibling that preceded him. I can only imagine how much faster it is if compared by generation.

The differences are obvious in curriculum and competition and physical development. I was not expected to read books in Kindergarten (which only lasted 3 hours/day). I could, but it wasn’t expected. I wasn’t worried about state competitions in 3rd grade or about representing my school or my county. I didn’t have B cup hooters in middle school, or high school for that matter.

The one constant, I suppose, is our ability as human beings to take our disappointment and dissatisfaction, wad it into a nice, tight ball, and throw it … hard. Sometimes it hits the right target, sometimes an innocent bystander takes the blow. Words don’t need new computer systems or nuclear technology, their ultimate power has existed forever.

“I don’t like you.”

“But, I love you.”

Life as Waltz

In my waltz
You are bass
You keep time
While I race
Tripping through
Life in notes
One, two, three
One, two, three

I never
Fall from grace
You hold me
In my place
Dancing like
Anna’s ghost
One, two, three
One, two, three

Without your
Steady face
Time sliding
Into space
I need you
Ever close
One, two, three
One, two, three

***

I have this recurring nightmare
where the atmosphere burns away in a line like a piece of paper.

The fire bleeds into the clouds and they fill up like blisters.
Toxic puss and acid rain down on my black hair.

The heat wraps around my neck like noose,
My lungs retract, my heart screams

Silver fireworks explode
in the blackness,
my eyelids

closed.

**

End waltz.

Crush

Heavy raindrops destroy tiny petals
Giver of life, taker of loveliness
Delicate by design, lacking mettle
Powerful victims of their prettiness
And there are no drowning cries of duress
Painless, graceful, a natural event
Pinned down, earthy ground seeks no forgiveness
Its brown blood stained splatter, heaven sent
Proud rose, rare lily, distant hyacinth
Your borrowed beauty betrayed by ego
Facing the tempest, to your detriment
Splendor betrayed by that which makes you grow
A garden full of blossoms rarely suits
One who knows that beauty is in the roots

In The Dreaming

I found you in my dreams last night.

I’m not sure if it was you
or the late spring lightning that woke me,
but I knowingly slipped out of bed and down the hall
in that old Stanford t-shirt I should have thrown out decades ago.
You were standing by the big piano in the dining room,
the sound of a low octave ‘G’ caught
by settling dust trapped in iridescent moonbeams.
Each note you struck filled the room for a few seconds
and then washed out like an old photograph.

The hours shifted and radiant light surrounded you,
not unlike the Madonna of Old Masters.
How beautiful you looked, how peaceful,
practically enraptured by the simplicity of each hammer
striking its wire,
each note a pitch-perfect elegy
to your fears and worries.

There was clarity in those keys that are so rarely played,
something odd yet familiar,
something that commanded a new ear
and an old heart that understands the purity
and infinite nature of every precious note.

I came to sit on the bench beside where you stood,
and a shiver ran through me
as my warm legs pressed down on cold glassy wood.
We glanced at each other, saying nothing.
I slid over to make room for you.
And we played.

We played thousands of beautiful, perfect notes together,
each one pinned with a little piece of human frailty
and released into the night.

In the living,
perhaps all of this takes place in a trendy chain restaurant
as we nibble on nachos and make small talk
or perhaps it exists in a pale green and lavender waiting room
with shushed encouragement and awkward handholding.

But in the dreaming …
in the dreaming we sit very still at the big piano in the dining room
and there is harmony
and liberation
and forever.

Healing

I long for a magnificent box full of silvery magic that I could use to heal you. Inside, there would be hundreds of potions in tiny crystal bottles, etched by lightning bolts and filled by angels. There would be restorative salves of rosebud and lemongrass and soothing elixirs drawn from the sparkling white edge of a rainforest waterfall.

I could comfort you with whispered chants and incantations, my hands hovering like hummingbirds above your head, twisting and pulling the mildewed threads of regret and doubt; unraveling your defenses and granting your soul a freeness it has not yet known.

I could cover your heart with tiny, purple violets and the perfume of lilacs, infusing your bluish blood with returning love, it’s perennial patience filling your cells, waltzing with the nucleus of your body and soul.

I could wash your hands with a lamb’s kindness, replacing the dull, thin skin spotted brown with soft pink electricity; placing your fingers and palms together, pressing out oily ills, leaving you clean and dry and welcomed on the other side, spirit engaged, colorless diamond perfection.

I could press cool turquoise stones against the smooth ivory skin of your eyelids soaking up your fever and odium, returned to an earthly rock coffin, leaving your sight clear, vision reborn; see the roaring sea and a single raindrop in their shared innocence and divine power.

I could line your back with the leaves of a mighty oak, its woody strength and rough bark forcing you upright, towering against pillows of cottony white clouds, towards a family and a kingdom whose ancestry commands respect; its inheritance, the iron chain of confident belonging and the riches of age.

Alas, I have no silvery magic, no glorious spells, no enchanted garden. All I have to offer is my love.