Changes

And then there’ll be an anchor!
So that’s the end of the poem –
Let’s get it out of the way.
Good, now we can talk.

I was at home yesterday
In the morning –
Didn’t grade any papers until afternoon.
This life seems strange to me,
I like it, yes, but there are grays and shadows
I’m not used to –
The kitchen is so much more desperately alive.
Another dinner crowd, no time,
Suddenly the magic erupts.
You know it is up to you,
The others who can do it are in other kitchens,
Doing just as you are doing now,
Something special, something that
Looks like everything else but isn’t.

But this is good,
Getting to watch the young grow,
Helping them when you can.
Such young lives, so unprepared for the
Restless rolling, the searching and finding,
And finding you need to search some more.
I remember this innocence
And how hopeful and frustrating it was.
The hope always leading into
Contradiction rather than answers
And the contradictions and frustrations
Being loaded with answers you can’t peel away
And enjoy them separately.

Life is such a mess of stormy waters
And calm too – time, yes but all rolled together –
Present, past/future –
Papers, un-sortable,
Magic, still somewhat out of reach,
Got to find it so that things don’t stay the same
So that life is not just another day
No matter how others think it is –
So that I can give something to these kids
They will always be able to use –
Words that find the chance of describing
What it is they will soon
See and feel, so that they can tell their
Own kids so that when the storms come
And everything seems so fragile,
Insubstantial, changeable -
So that there will be an anchor.

Ruined Choir Exit

This is that day we’ve been dreaming of
This is the day when all words rhyme
And are such sweet music,
When the sleeper next to me is
No longer lost between the canvas of the mattress
And the landscape of my dreams.

Ends, now, the morgue of the cloudless sky
And the tyranny of perpetual rain.
We will not pull from our pockets
Odd dust balls and hard, rolled bits of paper
On which were written the sad truth.

Step now into the kitchen, laboring with our minds alone,
Sleepwalkers on the prowl,
As Morpheus bakes a cookie.

can’t scratch that

summer on my skin
prickly dust baked with sunshine
simmering, itching

The Poetry Carnival

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Cezanne’s blank spots

white tension black
laughter time sigh
story memory truth

what is the substance
in between things

trust hurt help

In Control

She is the queen of continuing sorrow,
Tragedy has a nickname,
Tears a leash,
Doggy sweater for despair,
Mercedes and driver for misery.

That beehive hairdo is for her burden,
She will not go out until it looks correct.
High heels click the tattoo of iron rain –
The sadness of city isolation.
Hollow homes on hillsides perfect her wail.

There are other places she could live,
Other towns without glass mountains.
The sea is glorious when subdued by a window,
There are things that must not be remembered.

I have been sitting at my desk for hours; I have been drinking in information – my soul and spirit are numb – I have been dealing with the growth of others but I feel shriveled, dying. I am overloaded in plainness and painfully dry of rainbows. My mind has been subjected to regression as it thinks backward into the norm. I hope to spring the trap, unlock the doors and set a bunch of students free from the narrow boundaries and plain words of the skills that bind them by being small like little rooms with almost no windows. My sorrow compresses me – I’m boxed in until I can work the locks. I ache to be free but carry my prison with me. I am the cat asleep under the car, in danger but I can’t wake from some crushing dream. I long to peel off skin and find a poem.

Who taught them to play like this?

So all the little children,
All the dusty little children,
You see them lying there -
Mother’s milk spilled.

The television has a hole
In the dark, cracked tube;
The crumpled swing set only has a
History of motion and rhythm.

The house to run home to
Sags skull like and roofless;
The blown up kitchen is cold and laughless
Like the dusty, limp hand

That stretches out to the parents who should
Have known better about indiscriminate killing.

Collateral damage made real

(For Ash and his birthplace)

Within the rubble,
Child’s face, doll’s face, unblinking
Blushing in red dawn

dazzle

fuzzy friends with car seat memories
pears that blush but do not apple
axe sharp life
to fell a cactus
the dirtier dog is mean

in his eyes
sharp images stick like pins

tears are natural
in such bright light

Electric Friends

Songderella ever turning
half-life living
half-dream hoping
music is playing
waiting to waltz the prince.

TV is playing
dark room
newly dead snore on the couch
the happiest moment of her day
she is watching -
flickers show her grin
breaking into an unshared laugh.

Nightmare ghosts of happy people
haunt evenings of the lonely.

Sorry I'm so busy!

Second summer session has started and I am developing a new curriculum for and old course -- please bear with me. I'll start to post more as soon as the load lightens. Meanwhile, go to the Somethingkaty button on my sidebar and check out the Ringing of the Bards (2) poetry carnival. Katy has done a great job of putting together some wonderful reading!