Category Archives: Poetry

Waking Wake

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Flayed to the bone
Skeleton exposed, oxidizing
I am Cain
Slain
At my wake by mistake
Whetting my weapon upon the table
Unstable
I try to stand tall
I stumble I fall
I go through it all
And you all
Watch me fall
With glass eyes negligent eyes eyes like microchips eyes like calculations

Reduced to a sideshow
I tumble, fumble, mumble
My skeleton exposed
The things they think they know
They try to describe
Right in my face but who are they
Someone gave me steel file joints
A cruelly placed arthritis
Hobbles me
I stagger to the door
I try the lock
Locked
Locked
I think I might be here forever
Forever under scrutiny
In this living autopsy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barriers

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She was drunk, struggling to articulate

Lengthy pauses before each sentence

Halting, frustrated speech.

I’ve seen this before

 

She fights to be conscious, despite the sleeping pill

Her mind heavy

Her body stubborn

Her tongue a lead weight.

I’ve seen this before

 

She is deep in the throes of neurological degeneration

Lips uncooperative

Forcing thoughts through the thick walls

Of her solid-shrunk brain.

 

All of them demanding to be heard,

To be understood

Willing their selves past mental barriers

Deliberately balancing simple words

Like a child stacks blocks

With their fullest effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gains and Losses

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Life is full of gains and losses.
We live, we love, we lose,
We find new loves to lose.
Sometimes we pull away from them,
Sometimes they pull away from us.

People ebb and flow
In and out of my life.
I want to keep all of them
Forever in my arms
But I can only hold
This many
Off the ground at once.
And if someone struggles to be put down
It wouldn’t be loving
To refuse them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

going up the hill to the house, we

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going up the hill to the house, we
saw flowers that she loved, and picked them
black eyed susans, sweet williams, daisies, columbine.
we gripped them in our plump warm hands.
by the time we made it, panting,
having stopped for toads and all the small things,
we presented them to her half-wilted.
“ragweed gives me allergies” she would say, plucking one of them out.
the rest would go in a vase of honor on the kitchen table
a small token of each others’ love.

going down the hill to the creek, we
see flowers that she loved, and pluck them
dandelions, sweet williams, violets, asters.
at the bottom trickles clear water
over mossy gray rocks
and we tip her ashes in.
they are white
like her hair
pure white
like her devotion
white like the sugar in her blood
white
like the angels she adored.
they swirl the water opaque
atop it we scatter the flowers
a painter’s palette of Missouri colors
blackberry, butter yellow, sap green, slate.

the sandy ashes sink.
it takes a full hour for them to wisp away
grain by grain into the gentle landscape.
we’re used to waiting for her.
no matter how we tried to rush,
she always did move slowly,
tasting her fine wine time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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