By the time I got home

By the time I got home
I was worthy of love
I was dressed in hope

your words don't reach
are just not as sharp
I see myself here

I see myself here
not as you see me
not as you say I am

Line

I try to drown in light

slight and brown

the river writes 

leaves drop graffiti

set out to swim tonight 

#MSU #RedCedarRiver

Witness

my illiterate left hand startles
as I write my children again

Empty at last
opening fists
to make nests

singing the quiet like a top 20
ashes, wishes wafting off me 

Catch

tickles start in my palm, aim for my pits
catch in my throat: I am open, I let
my shame (shame) show

here are bugs leaking from my breath
like starry maps from blind eyes. O
I have lost my fingerprints

I must just be falling asleep I must be
falling falling falling into depths
or deaths. I don't

know the presidents who visit in my
dreams on boats shaped like me,
wooden as my smile. I fight

I find my freedom with my fists and feet
the slick of water still gets me though
entanglement, undertow

-

Tableau

So I'm in a car. I'm in a car stopped at a traffic light.
On the block on which my son lives now. It's by the--
by the Starbucks redux, by the telephone pole, by the
old 7-11, the zebra crossing, the Asian buffet--And. At--

At the zebra crossing, a mom looks on fiercely as: her
skinny toddler drops her hand, and steps precisely--as if
at prom, then delays--to tiptoe the three steps--three steps
away to press the button--the button that will summon the

white walk-sign man. And then I think she says thank you.
That's it. Oh. NoNo. there's a baby too, who anchors the mom,
who had yielded attention for a moment, but is now bouncing--
bouncing, appealing, willing mom to look--look back. Willing

her to smile back. I imagine the baby is a girl; the toddler is a boy.
I'm not reading their signs, only feeling my past. And they're so
close, so I'm smiling and nodding my encouragement to the child,
the baby still bouncing in the pram, the mom. Nodding to myself--

It's that familiar. Memories buzz in the car's hum of silence. The
residuum of busy, sticky hands I've let go. Panic--a fog. The years
alertly sliding in--backlog. Stuck waiting for a sign--green--walk--
wait--ok fine--we're waiting--so incoherent with longing, still, life--


______________________
Ha. I've managed to sneak "At" And "NoNo" in there.

-

Nine miles of pavement

alone but with thoughts and lyrics
the whistle and whoosh of traffic

I can imagine the uplift of impact
almost feel I might be able to fly

Unclear Condition

Morning is manic fog
milky, vanishing, slipping
under cereal, hugs,
reminders, lists,
all the things
we must bring

they are literal--Driving
the littlest human
to school and...
you know what?
they say...
that may be frost

just ponds of them
hanging out in the fields
with horses, ducks
the littlest human watches
my face cautiously
for a trace of panic

Fog flaps in the wind.
like blankets, begins to
put this year to bed. I
wonder where the sun will be
this time, next year--
and will we be here

An Epistemology

The planes and birds just fly past
the long conversations
from our history

In the doorways amongst trees
we are getting bigger by
one more breath

With loud shouts, are shared maps
for the future, showing us all
the three ways to survive


      
_

Danusha Laméris: Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk 

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs 

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” 

when someone sneezes, a leftover 

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. 

And sometimes, when you spill lemons 

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you 

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, 

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile 

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress 

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, 

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far 

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. 

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these 

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

_

Nuclei

My heart pulses like a womb
mind races like a detective
mouth is full of seeds
and leftovers

A cardinal in a tree like a flag
I'm in tears nearby fleeing
the hardscrabble of lies
and kisses

What if the compass is my face
slowing the world with sighs
say flowers are our saints
fierce, fearsome.


------





Nu was cleaning out At's car (it cost him 5$$$), and I was keeping her company, walking the driveway with music and marveling at how green everything looks. At then went to see Chapo Trap House up in Traverse City with his friends.










-

The Telling

It's like we are hoarding
their journeys, songs, stories
their trauma alone, icy, burning

It is in the dripping of pain
from the empty sky, empty day,
the scrim of our red, weeping hearts

What rends us, is the vatic cry
of all the children calling, calling,
calling our names, even as we sleep

***

In the Light

I mean there are things drowning in my EYEballs on the regular,
my skin circles me as I shed, my face turns toward me, expectantly
listening as my voice--out there--somewhere, fizzes like a walkie-talkie.

No one is sure where we are anymore, and if they are, we yell "fake! fake"
until they turn and blip away. It is an autumn morning inside a beautiful painting
drunk on beauty, high on drugs, wandering around in something someone made up.

Sometimes our laughter or tears escape us slowly, and we try to urge them on:
be free, be free of us! You can do it! Then life feels like a summer afternoon--so very
long, all about the waiting, words breathing themselves to life--trying to find their source.

_

Lift

You said to sing with you:
I start off like a boat

dropped into the water
turning round and round

worrying and wondering
at the same movement

until I catch the uplift
and the current leads us and

we're at the top of the next note
floating, the size of an insect

which then washes over, catching
us in the clear curl of the wave

* I don't know where this came from, but I will say Nu and I have perfected the howl part of Lady Gaga's shalalalalalalow, and sing it every time we're on our way to school.
_

Wordless

I am the child with a knife--
for all my years now,
and in monosyllables

I have been digging in the
softness, the door
to some other worlds

Moon is eyeball today
side-eye tomorrow
I stay here, I witness.

_

Today at UU

Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich

[The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (New York: Norton, 1984) ]

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
–And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

**********************************************
Every mention of death in the sermon today seemed like a special message just for me. And I would start thinking about how my children are too young for me to disappear. And I would imagine that Scout and Huckie would be bewildered; that Nu would be devastated,  become hard; that At would rally, becoming more vulnerable as he goes. That they'll all keep looking for me everywhere. Ugh.

_

Sun's Light

...passes through me--
it makes me strange
flashing like sighs
signing rainbows

melting extravagantly
becoming sweet, sweaty
celebrating, stumbling
determined this is love

In an epilogue, we may seem
imprisoned, undermined--
But here, we are optimistic,
glittering in our sisterhood, one.





_

Lost

I make dinner from beans,
things I dig out from the ice
of the aging freezer (foraging)

Up close--pores on rocks
I can remember veins on leaves
Do you remember threads of moss

as words run out
and scenes are spun out
what if this is (apocalypse)

trees bleeding water
their wounds like mouths
breathe until empty, are still staring

It happens so fast--from hit to hurl
in a blink--I meant to leave you words
now I barely have time left to think (love)


_______________
It's literally colder than Mars right now AND I'm beginning to get cold feet about leaving the fam next week AND I know I will have to do some driving on127N soon AND I'm panicking from the weather forecast AND hearing someone say that the world may end in our lifetime...
_

Glyph of Myself

my prayers soon wick 

into still damp night air

incensed with fear, fervor

they will stick--resting 

here, wrestling over there, 

hope blossoming into prayer

so quick as my once human 

landscape--conjured from time

and conquered through age--fades

_

Ticking

shaping my time into dials
into calendars and structure
into life, into legacy after death

collapsing the words and worlds
casting new spells to tell you truth
demanding all the years to do it with

little changes from sunrise to sunset
little changes from sunrise to sunrise
little changes all the way into summer

_

Northward Rant

I'm one sigh away
from freezing, I release
like a light bubble

like fluorescent nighttime
hospital--heart beats
in intervals: no no no

dropoffs pickups
activities... O my
hello, goodbye

I'm returning turning
I will come back
irresponsible

like that like this
like you can like
only this

_