my favorite lover

i spent the morning sipping coffee, curled up with Billy*, my favorite lover.
to be fair, everyone is my favorite lover in the moment, including myself.
spontaneous and fresh
his words moved through my bones like espresso jazz fused with kundalini
i kept him on my tongue while the light grew from warm to neutral
and the grains of the day slipped through the neck of morning
i was paralyzed to all other tasks
his talent to romanticize so delightfully distracting
not romanticizing in an Ovid-esque way of course
but rather unearthing the majesty of cracked wood
there is beauty in the cracks, he tells me
our lives are unfinished floorboards collecting dust
they are not evenings spent at the Adriatic Sea
and, even if they were, there would of course still be
cracks in the sand.

*billy collins

And then of course there were there were the neighbors

I worried the mice would come for our crumbs,
It wasn't much but it was all that was left in the breadbox.

I refused to recycle and tossed egg shells on the floor.
My passive aggression became a performance art,
An audience of barely one.

We tended to the plants on the fire escape,
The ones plucked from the garden of my mother,
A willful intention to undo the past by trying to control the future.
In the end when they could no longer bend to light,
When roots sat parched and leaves hung heavy, exhausted in their grief,
We simply turned and threw them out.

l'arbre de ma mere

Standing,
Half-dead
In the marshes,
Roots grip relentlessly to Earth.
The leaves have all secured their own death though it is barely June.
Insects scatter in search of new residency,
Eventually, oxygen too will abandon this great oak.
Unaware of itself,
Blind to its own corroding bark and petrifaction,
This tree cannot see what the surrounding forest now sees,
Though it can feel it.
There is beauty in its ignorance,
Arms lift up towards the heavens
Saying silent, unanswerable prayers.
Branches stretch westward,
Reflecting on summers when the phoenix came to nest.
It has done all it can,
Which is,
All we really can ever really do,
Now it stands and waits.

staying present (childrens poem)

I try to pay attention to all that I do
Whether crossing the street or just tying my shoe
If I'm making my bed or climbing the stairs
I try to be mindful, I try to be aware.
I want to stay present but my thoughts start to drift
At times I can be focused
I guess it comes in shifts.
Its important to be aware of each moment
Since that is all that is really real
Its good to pay attention
To exactly how I feel.
Whatever the feeling
I want to notice how it goes
Are there butterflies in my stomach?
Or an itching on my nose?
Am I feeling very joyful or grumpy at this time?
Am I starting to get restless or am I feeling very fine?
Sometimes my mind starts racing about what is going to happen next
I'll start to get all anxious
Or I'll start to get perplexed
But then I'll remind myself to stay in the present time
Then I will remind myself that everything is fine
Whatever bad thing that can happen,
that's not happening here
It isn't taking place
Its just something that I fear.
Then I feel much better and can get back to doing what I do
Whether its crossing the street of just tying my shoe.

these heaping bones

grass stained dress
bare legs of dry blood and stitch.
i've worked my lifetime to get here,
wrung towels dry and scaled the Himalayas.
set ablaze to scarecrows in the field,
no longer afraid to share my harvest.
so i won't ride with you in this boxcar set for Chelmno
diving shallow waters
that offer little intrigue.
it shant work that i am me
and only one of us knows that that is truly splendid.

lifes not made of jello (childrens poem)

we never know what is going to happen
its funny in a way
we never know what will happen
it changes everyday.
our minds have expectations
of just how things will unfold
but life is not made of jello
lifes not from a mold.
things are wishy washy
stuff we often don't expect
but this is really lovely
not something to reject
for image exactly how boring
if we never got surprised
imagine if we knew
before we ever tried.
its interesting to not know
how things will unfold
life is not made of jello
lifes not from a mold.

mother

Mother
Whose life gave me life,
Whose blood became my blood,
Whose earthquakes have no fault line.

mOTHER
Whose breast I did not feed from, so that hunger pains strike steady
to this day,
Whose circumstances created my own,
Whose childhood fell forward like an endless maze of dominos, creating
parallels I do not care to draw upon for fear of recognizing the
obvious.

motHER
I can not reach you.
Holy grails rest inside,
Just let me in,
Just breathe them out.
Ive come to your door with sledgehammers and love,
Dynamite and honey,
And still,
There is no answer.

Each month the possibility of life passes between my legs,
And as the spotted white chips crash forward,
I make the promise that every generation dares to make:
Let not history repeat itself.

I know there is peace at the coast, near the dark edges of earth where
all life began,
One just has to go there to find it.