Older, Yes

Each night when I go to sleep

I wake up a different person

Older, yes

Another unevident line in the

Corrugated line up of evidence

A new context of experiences

Different dreams

Than the night before

A fine balance faltered

Stability alchemized to risk

Hope cultivated, marinated

In the circumstance of moments

Folded to fit into my pocket

If I have room amongst

The other trinkets I cling to

Like unfloating life boats

Because stuff always sinks

And birds cannot fly

With backpacks

Clipped to their wings.

Ungrateful (A Poem)

I have two good legsI hardly notice them I love my husband I always want more from him I adore my kids Sometimes I don't like them They are the only reason I know for sure I matter Sometimes I get sick But I am strong And smart and beautiful And insecure I am wasted space A tangled mess of power Pushing without organization Working without focus Deficient of attention Pulling knots tighter Not looser I am angry And I am grateful Blessings Can be curses Hope can do nothing If we don't lean upon it We are trapped Between narrow perspectives Like a tiny ant Searching for sustenance In the middle of a football field Where all directions look the same And he runs Away from the food Away from the others Because he doesn't know. He doesn't know. I don't know either.

Appetite

I'm still learning who I am

A woman

With boyish handwriting

A voracious appetite

Nothing is ever enough

I want to shake harder

Sleep more but lie supine less

Do more

Be more

Dare I say have more

Know more

Write more

Back when I drank

Drink more.

A woman

Open to womanhood

As a map

To joy.

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Empty afternoons

faith flies in / cupping my heart urgency flies away / leaving in its place empty afternoons / pliant possibility

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Great heights

Should I discard the compulsion to do?

Break out from the shell of expectation

Shed this comfort of protection, this belief I'm doing fine as long as I'm moving

Could it be about finding stillness instead?

Like the tree whose great heights come from standing still.

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These Shoes

When I wear these shoes the earth feels soft beneath my feet

the pieces of me that won't be confined are free to be broken.

Frequency of Us

I don't know what I'm looking at anymore We try and try and try again

Some days we get better and somedays we get worse

The sky turns pink and we turn away

The rain falls and we call it a nuisance

The night settles and we go to bed

The morning comes and we waste it away

I don't know what I'm doing anymore

Distractions circumnavigate my head

Doubt settles in my bones

Something isn't right

Materialism Pollution Racism

Sugar Alcohol Gossip Magazines

Impatience Dishonesty Power Wars

I want to jump out of bed in the morning

Drink tea Walk in the rain Salute the sun

Kiss my loves Hold my littles Embrace myself

Write Read Move Learn Teach Love

I have a hunch there's more out there

We are like little ants on one sidewalk on one street

Unseeing past the horizon, unaware of the infinite

The country, the planet, the galaxy, the universe

Matter and energy

Vibrating on the frequency of us.

Birthday Party

Written for Tipsy Lit Prompted: describe a family tradition that has changed over time. Mother bakes a cake and the children play games in the great outdoors. Maybe they sing, maybe they have candles, maybe they don't. Gifts are bestowed upon little dimpled Johnny, the birthday boy, gifts that are handmade with care. A bear knit by grandma. A pretty picture by sister. A picture book by best friend. Flowers from mother's garden. A car built by father out of wood. A car built by brother out of sticks and sweets. This was a good old-fashioned birthday party.

Johnny is now Grandpa John. Allison, his granddaughter, also has her birthday parties at home. Her mother hires a professional party decorator to impress the adults and her father pays a magician to mystify the children. Because children need to be entertained. They suck on lollipops and juice boxes and when her mother brings out the buttercream cupcakes nearly the size of Allison's head, cacophony breaks loose. Every classmate and old friend and cousin within reasonable driving distance runs at top speed in a different direction. But the parents are on their seventh bottle of champagne by then, so they giggle and chatter on.

It's a party for everyone! Everyone but Grandpa John who sits in the corner with his hearing aid turned down, observing the madness with amused, grateful eyes. When Allison finally sits before the piles of shiny gifts, she is so high and happy that she barely stops to look at each present she opens. Her friends, on the other hand, don't hesitate to put the gifts to good use.

When the last one has been opened, the exodus begins. Hugs and high fives and coats and extra cupcakes shoved out the door. Wrapping paper litters the floor like a rainbow-colored blizzard. Little Allison falls asleep upon the snowflakes, lips and cheeks red as cherries.

Follow Me

There is no time, shouted the wrinkled man with a folded spine, wildebeests running across his eyeballs. He wished he were one of them. Getting the hell out of there. If she gathered everything she wanted from her cabin, they would be sacrificed to the sea. Anna took a long gaze at her jewelry box and gilded picture frames from the doorway. The old man hissed at her as he hobbled towards the exit. Really, her hesitation lasted the smallest of moments, but a split second becomes eternity when you can hear the ocean gushing towards you, when you're already in the belly of the ship, below water, practically daring the ocean to swallow you whole.

He wasn't ready to go home to the angels. Though he'd lived a long and full life, he couldn't ignore the feeling that he had many more good years on the planet. He had great grandkids with full heads of red hair and the most achingly beautiful granddaughters an old man could imagine. He had no wife, he hadn't had one for a while, but he had children and true friends and a house down the street from a deep blue lake where he fished every day from May through September.

The girl stepped back into the room. She was drawn to her things like Sleeping Beauty to the spindle. She had gold in her eyes and the devil on her shoulder. The man yelled from his belly, stop! You're going to drown! But the sound came only from his throat. Spindly and quiet. He'd run out of that kind of power decades ago.

He hated her. She didn't deserve to live if she believed pretty things to be bigger than a life. What did she think would happen if the ship went down? Did she fancy herself a mermaid? Did she think she could outrun the ship, the weight of the ocean, the force of God? He staggered towards her, purple fingers stretching for her ivory neck.

Follow me now, or you will die. 

And then he turned and fled. He wanted to look back but he feared this would kill him. He did not see his life flash, rather the faces of his children hurtled through his mind at an alarming speed. With each face, he climbed another rung of the ladder. He was the last person saved from the ship.

Photo Credit: born1945 via Compfight cc

Wanted

The days of his life
Pass
Each one like the last
Partly sunny
Chances for a storm
A cyclone
A tempest
To spin it up and away
Into neverland
Quicker than it came
Upon the thrumming
Of time
Illusory yet predestined
A dream from which
He will awaken
With some relief
Fused with grief
Because he will never
Know his zenith
Not under these
Conditions
Working backwards
Lost in the details
The crowds
The jealousy
Of what he thought
He always
Wanted.

Climax

Perhaps we have reached the endForsaken by everything trustworthy Starved by our own prerogative Festering into odious spunk Never mind the shelf life lasts Forever. Our toes point behind us Our fingers point somewhere in The distance, an arabesque into The future, two uneven halves Divided with nothing left for the Now. We mow our grass though It never stops growing, we pay For superfluous insurance just To be safe. We spurn safety For money, we declare war on Life by spraying verdure with Poison, we hedge the present With gold and still moments captured By the lens, immortalized by the Screen, because we matter and Those smiles will someday climax And though we prepare for it, we Will never be ready for it, so what I pray is the point in trying?

Silk

Written for Trifecta. He squints because he is nervous, examining the silk sweater, which is finer than white sand. Usually, he judges silk only by touch. The eyes of a saleswoman rest on his back with intention. God made him a thief, but at least he can trust his intuition. He sets down the shopping bag and glides to a rack of silk dresses, rubbing the slippery fabric between his thumb and middle finger. Underneath his designer jeans, he wears three pairs of silk boxers.

The first time he discovered silk, his parents were on a cruise in the Bahamas. He'd woken up minutes before sunrise and padded into their room while the nanny slept. At five years old, his mother's dresser held treasures more precious than the doctor's trove of lollipops, comic books and plastic horses. He rifled through her top drawer, inspecting each item as if looking for flaws.

At first, his favorite was a thick, shapely bra, red and lacy. He wanted to take it into bed and cuddle with it, he didn't know why. Then he found the silk underwear, which he did take back to bed, rubbing the material between his thumb and middle finger until he fell asleep. When the nanny found him in bed with his mother's lingerie, he didn't know to feel uneasy. But after she scolded him, he did.

At age eleven, he stole an eggplant-colored silk robe for his mother. She thanked him, but never wore it, so he took it from the hook in her bathroom and threw it under his bed. He would never give her another gift. At 17, he opened a shop on eBay selling silk items. He got $75 for the eggplant-colored robe. At 20, he is richer than all of his friends, including the ones who work in construction.

The saleswoman continues to watch him, so he catches her eye and asks for a fitting room. When she turns her back, he disappears.