Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Sunday, January 24, 2021
Address
I can weigh the difference of a day
I doubt most resurrections--yet
the rhizomatic tenderness of your banks
are prayer: lilting, tidal, endlessly
old / done / enduring--but
even in the porous ecstasy of freeze, I know
the delirium of loss, know you won't
take me any place to call home
Friday, January 22, 2021
Repair
while I keep walking
everywhere.
Silence sings here, shame too--
like a mosquito hymn
in my ear.
Perhaps I'm a savant of fracture
on an enraptured
exiled page--
perhaps I've siphoned my love
into stories just a little
or too late.
Tuesday, January 19, 2021
Let's Goooooooooooo!!!!!
Monday, January 18, 2021
I Said, I Say
I'll rearrange for my fingers to speak
to the clouds
unfolding like a migraine confession
I mean, I mean
You've cried so much, your eyes
drop like pebbles
and wait to show you a way home
I try, to free
the mistakes I made as a parent
then I draw you,
my love, as a silent self-portrait
***********************
A detail from a mural in the Children's Garden (early morning walking date with L!).
Monday, January 11, 2021
yes but also no
The instructions surprise: perhaps I will solve gravity or simply realize how unready
"pour the saliva" they say chorus my saliva's spectacle how random, how to unbait sighs
I once described a snake exist/lament/impact/about the junction of having breath back
'pouring' itself down a hole the scratching exhaustion having my back, trusting offspring
the kids were so freaked out of dying on tv every day to try to sidestep the cracks
Friday, January 08, 2021
Threnody
Waking in a labyrinth
with the outline of a lie
around us the dark blossoms
clinging like skin
hidden in sight like the dark
set aside like a dementing task
hurrying to meet our dark
corners of darkness--passion-
perversion--spill into you and me
returning to the dead lamp
you are furious as a rakshasa
engorged, incoherent as sirens
I'm as possessed as a pisasu
who possesses only you, and
can die for it. Or live. Or shriek.
Thursday, January 07, 2021
Every day seems an apocalypse
for L.B.
Every day seems an apocalypse
clouds plant their borders in beds,
these immense struggles go by
*
In the harvest, the friend is a forest,
the friend who walks into the snow
measures beauty yawning in mud
*
Gathers our indecisions into words,
into seeds, reimagining the drought
of tongues, scattering in floods of fear
*
Here is apotheosis--we can lie down and
not die, we can let ourselves be carried
away by love, becoming transformed by it.
_______________________________________________
"what didn’t you do to bury me/ but you forgot that I was a seed" Dinos Christianopoulos
“They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds.” Protest slogan in support of the Ayotzinapa 43 /Families Belong Together.
Saturday, December 19, 2020
Expiry Date
I want so much for us as I wake this morning
wordless--moving only heart, breath
surprised at how steadfast
for much goes missing all the time: plans or
a present or something that lies, dead
as a future kindness unsaid.
I lose my sense of self, my words; I have
become that one actor who played
that part in that one movie--
Do you remember? How much bigger could I
have been, how much bigger my role,
my words trawl empty
yet full of yearning; and errant words return
sad, humble. I need an army--an armor--
...I'm too numb to concede
our decline of tenderness, as every sign of
bitterness witnesses us forward,
begrudges us to a deadline.
Monday, December 14, 2020
Through my Head
My children's love passes right through me
(like an arrow, like a bullet)
My parents' love steeps all through me
(like a tantrum, like a blush).
I fear death; there are deaths I fear more:
My deaf father sleeps deep
through knocking, my mother and sister
talking--unmoving.
My tired children sleep past the blare
of smoke alarms, heavy
I wonder if I can shake them awake
like a pair of dead batteries.
But the world does its singing, then
my body curls like smoke
plummets, coaxes with folded hands
draws doors in heartache.
So let me tell you how I scan the dates
of people's lives, guessing--from
the headlines of their last year--if death
might have felt like a blessing.
_
Sunday, December 13, 2020
Tiny Notes
The tiny tree went up this weekend--powered 95% by At and Nu.
😍
While I was writing that poem about Chelli's moving day yesterday, I was trying to make the verses look like the many roofs we've been under, but it actually looks like a tree too!Also, as she said after she read that poem, I completed it "so fast!" High praise indeed!
😛
Saturday, December 12, 2020
Moving Day 8000 Miles Away
8000 miles away
my sister is moving
her furniture is being taken apart now
it will be put back together again, very soon.
She remembers how I arrived at her
house in Delhi the week before she did,
how I cut my hand open unpacking boxes, how
I made that a joke about my rakta dan--"blood sacrifice."
I don't remember this story. But
she giggles and so then I giggle and then
we tell each other how much we love each other.
When will we see each other again? (There aren't even plans.)
And I want to say: Take a break!
Need to ask: Are you tired? Is that heavy?
But I look at the telephone; I just... miss you.
There's more air than we can breathe between us.
Exile now feels like breaking--
like an earthquake--inside out, fragile
as though an eggshell holding hatchlings,
a coming to--on the other side of worldliness.
There are stones in my throat all day
so I stumble. I speak slowly as though in
a foreign language (all language feels foreign,
cannot say what I feel, clots like moonlight in my brain).
I just parrot from poems I read:
"Art thou weary? Art thou weary?" I dream you
give the movers the address, but Bangalore traffic sounds
harmonize it into my name, send it--back in a whisper to you.
-
Thursday, December 10, 2020
On the Road
Early morning run. Frost. Today. I will
love. Everyone. Like I'm long lost
family, prodigal,
like you're special. I'll stitch love to
even your lack of care, neglect,
share a request--like
tossing a small wish, easy as pennies
into some mall fountain--please,
can you wear a mask?
It lingers in our air--your answer is
irritable, the road rifts, rebels
at your insolent stride
I follow that script, know that road
I sift regret from the open
arils of the day
I still. The road calms, a dove coos
I know now it is "mourning"
not just--"morning"
Sunday, December 06, 2020
Leap of Faith
I'm attracted to gravity, the weight of it
the way it settles into a palimpsest
of belonging
Children best friends puppies homes
friends in-laws all them totems
of becoming
Yet: new laughter moves me, old words
bend my mind--press guesses
into being
We can enter spaces where time fades
earth freezes or poles thaw us
into belief
Tuesday, December 01, 2020
Mud Minotaur
my mask mimics teeth
I hiss from my heart
I've scratched earth from the inside
till it hides at my center, fills my nails
tranquilized by living
traumatized by living
I take the silky dismissal of the day
beat its filthy drum outside my body
like whiteness, it feels--
white, old, dead, cold
or you know--just snowy and lonely
and knowingly waiting for my touch
_________________________________________________________
Note: I yelled out to L that the fallen tree's rootball looked like a monster. Just silence--no response to that, so I turned around to look and couldn't find her! For a minute or so--she was off taking some pictures too... But it was spooky and I panicked hard for a few seconds. Reminded me of reading Donna Harraway and loving on Jim's Dog.
Sunday, November 29, 2020
I take myself down to a beginning
Many things are older than me, I know
many things more mature, mellow
yet someone tells me write
so I say thank you
with a part of the pencil I use for writing
myself, highlighting--I always forget
to use the part for erasing--
my eyes, my loudness
for all those babies even now in cages
the leaving parents the babies
who take care of babies
babies given away
grief on grief--I am unready, each one
already too much. With long arms
I sweep the water's flow
over and over
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
Monday, November 23, 2020
To Sleep
Was I just riding skies
instead of seas--
Sadness and gladness are cruel
sirens, crossing countries
with me, waiting
near the cave that is my mind.
Do you hear me? Hear me!
Bear me forward.
I hymn you in the old ways
drowsily exhaling light
breaking like the day.
Sunday, November 22, 2020
Out and about
maybe something something being in community
about being connected and continuing
About holding my arms out like a tree even when empty
(stop that!) about sending all my pain to the sea,
where it's already salty
By day I will read something lofty, edifying, clear
At night, I will watch stars that seem cold
and know they're really quite fiery
Alert with my intention, my asylum of inattention
I sling myself to beauty, ignore summer's
pillows smattered with snow
Thursday, November 19, 2020
Within Without
Please hold my head as gently
as a bomb labeled 'headache'
knowing the earth is waiting
feeding time under the loam
who is it who knocked on the door (we didn't hear)
who is it who wants to come in (we can't really see)
howling into the cusp, dreams away from disaster
learning the circuitry of sadness, the lineage of loss
For in a different world
I lost many months ago
my tongue a tombstone
fingers clawing worms
Six for Saturday
1) Drama in the morning! Nu and Max discovered some grey, eyeless, blobby newborns by the picnic table on their morning walk. We googled to ...
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Friends and old neighbors shutting it down in honor of John Crawford. _
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I have the feeling that I’m going to succumb to the season and put out a list of resolutions soon. Just wanted to establish this heads up th...
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At had us pose for this pic up at Aunt R's place on Lake Huron so he could put it up in his dorm. "Don't tur...