Taking Flight

Hurled against the world’s pull,
it takes two days to fly;
but going home
we arrow to our nest
with the certainty of homing pigeons.
 
 
Both flights last not long enough
to shake the soil from eyes
that ever yearn
for a country of cloud
and sky as ocean.
Outer boundary expanding the inner;
 
I only know this fragility
from the air.
I dream, sometimes, of the edge
where the blue sky turns black
and gravity’s jesses are loosed
to let our frail hawks
fly free.
 
Out in the front yard
the whippoorwill’s chick
watches the wind threaten the trees
from the safety of the nest.
Tomorrow may be good for taking flight.
 

Burst

Peel the layers from me-
onion round,
smooth, and biting.

Maybe it is better to see
with the inner eye
a string of linked dolls-
paper, two dimensional

no, that image never works.

If I slipped my skin once
how easily is it done again…
how easy is it to fly
without wing.

There is passion, there is weeping,
there are gnashing teeth raging
there, somewhere, is needing;
there is me-
there is too much me.

Black

Sleepless nights
are not the problem.

Sometimes after working hard
all day at everything

there is dreamlessness-
a nothing space

that is God-sent, even though
He and I parted ways long ago.

Too many nights I wake
with a gasp, those hands on my throat

there is no air
there is only black.

Back of the West Wind

Let the wind cry its anguish
for those who need pity
and weeping.

Let the branches shake
in a rage of unfettered
fears and needs;

Let it name itself
in rivers of unnecessary words.

Let others shake their heads
in disbelief,
in non understanding;

They do not know the deeps,
they do not see
across the median of three a.m. :

They only see
the offside of the dawn.

Angkor

I have been here before.
You can not say otherwise
when my body resonates
with the heartbeat of this place;
and my soul sinks, porous,
into the uplifted stone.
Tears of fiercest joy
course down and splash upon the rock.
A thousand years-
too long to stray away from home.

Patience

I creep, kitten like
towards this:
 
slow my heart
slower still my mind.
 
Two hours can be Eternity
and twenty feet Infinity
 
It takes time to go that far.
Time and courage.
 
I take small steps,
my feet are tiny
 
and the way uncertain.
Trace them
 
in air,
in nothing.
 
cap them warmly and
with laughter, gently now.
 
A kitten, clawed,
curls against your back, flexing.
 
Sleep the only victory
the body triumphs and accepts.
 

Undone

I came in from the dark
a long time ago.
A slow decade’s turn,
while I hung in velvet smoothness
night-spangled with diamond stars
and life, cliché ridden.

The Hag prophesied days like this.
Ice veined, blued
melting skin in torrid heat;
But she never said
I’d set myself against the Sun
Maybe she thought I’d not dare.

But what’s to dare, really?
Love is not a prison,
and no bars can hold me;
having more skin than bone,
I encompass
more than petty thought.
So I ask again:
What’s to dare?

It’s all cat hair and pollen;
Allergens.
yet it’s my soul itching
not my eyes.
The Hag said Watch,
that failure wasn’t what
I needed it to be.

Before she died,
She whispered me a great secret:
Hold lightly…
and she died, burrowing
herself under my ribs.
A worm, and a goad.

Morning, with Hangover

One day I will learn the difference
between aneurysm and hangover
and it will be too late to care.
 
Only bourbon coils in the belly
waiting for its double strike
only bourbon punishes twice.
                           
                                   Eat some dry roasted peanuts
                                   you’ll feel better.
                                   You need potassium and electrolytes
 
God damn it  SHUT UP!
I don’t need you to tell me that,
I don’t need you in my head.
I know where the o.j. is
(it’s in the pitcher with the bourbon)
and I know where you aren’t.
 
I have to clean;
I have dishes and laundry,
and children;
and this hangover,
and a shell.
 
My heart, attacked,
was bleeding until I pickled it,
I sang myself to sleep.
 
Love and self loathing
blended like bourbon and o.j.
and tossed me, wailing,
into odd dreams of storm wrack.
 
this morning I am hollow
cast upon gritty shores.

Music for Hope

I feel the bones beneath the skin
some of the stuffing is gone-
what was in rises to the surface.
It was a deep dive
and these crampings are merely the bends.

hush now.

I can not pretend.
This is not daisy chains
or linked paper dolls;
it is a very deep thing,
divining this mystery.

I feel the bones beneath the skin.
What is gone is unneeded for this,
what remains rises to the surface.
We divine hope,
we seek marvels.

Shhh. She sleeps for now;
cradled in the bones,
drifting in the sea,
drinking in the hope,
becoming a miracle.

Arachne

Returning home, they swarmed the walls,
festooned the corners with massive webs
and someone called for me to bring a broom.

But even in the name of holy cleanliness,
I will not kill my children,
not by the ones or by the thousands.

I will spin in the corner and weave on the old loom
and dream of husks and the sweet iron taste of blood.