Category Archives: Poetry

I do this for you.

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I do this for you.
I am relieving you
Of the burden
Of myself.
I love you too much
To destroy you repeatedly.
Instead, this way, you are only destroyed once more.
Please forgive me.
I know you will.
You’ve forgiven me for worse.
You forgive me
Daily
For worse.
I don’t deserve your forgiveness.
I don’t deserve anything.
I don’t deserve your presents or love or encouragement.
I don’t deserve your tears, your money, your heartache.
I don’t deserve your long-suffering, painful red eyes.
I don’t deserve the way
You just keep bending.
I deserve your hatred.
I deserve blows.
I deserve prison.
But you
Will never give those things to me
Not you.
Not ever.
I will never change.
I have tried and I have tried.
I’m giving up on me.
Something you would never do.
Then again, I was never
Good enough
For you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you feel

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What do you feel
With you delicate fingers?
What do you toes?
What tongue what eyes what ears you?
Your gossamer curls
Anachronistic
Your crooked teeth
Pearls
Who is like you?

I hold you close
I want to protect you.
I cannot protect you.
You are being eaten from within.

Your white face
Your trembling hands
Your eyes wet
What tears
Mingle with mine
We sit knee to knee
And grieve our imminent parting.

Though I hold your hand now.
The shadow of your hand
Memory pressed into my flesh
Will linger long after.

Will you remember me?
I share your fear.
Do you feel this tenderness?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Achievement

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Have you ever met a goal and then felt hollow.
Have you ever attained great height
Only to discover
That the pole you were climbing was the only thing holding you up.

Deprived of our busy
All our razor honed focus
Touches empty time.
We lurch, unexpectedly dizzy.
Vertigo sets in.

It’s the day after Christmas.
It’s a scale reading your goal weight.
An empty inbox.
A renovated house.
When you’re out for a long walk,
but the sidewalk cuts off.

Goals create movement.
Movement ends goals.
Over and over, clunking forward
We struggle like fools
Driving cars with square wheels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I knew a man

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I knew a man,
though not very well.
A nice man
now dead
from pneumonia.

We were all looking sideways at S——
with her regrowing cancer hair
but death came at us
from an unexpected direction.
I wasn’t even aware he was sick
until Friday.

On Saturday
I cut off the tip of my finger.
It’s not often I am afraid
but I was
truly
afraid.
I pressed my finger into my palm to stem the bleeding.
It felt deformed. Too short, too flat.
I didn’t want to know what it looked like.

A reminder of my mortality
too close
too close.

On Monday
we get the office email.
He has died. We grieve his passing.
The office is quiet
with heavy atmosphere.

Somebody has set
a vase of flowers
outside his office door.
They have been placed there
very gently
by honoring hands,
sad hands.

We need
to honor the dead.
We decorate their haunts.
We create ceremonies.
We save mementos.
We tell stories.

I only knew this man by sight.
Another office worker
someone who helped grease the cogs
of our mutual machine.
We might wave or nod.
He had a habit
of muttering to himself
funny, quirky things.
I would pick up snatches of his internal dialog
when I walked by.
How well did he know me?

My finger is stiff with scab.
I worry at it, clean it, unwrap it, rewrap it.
It will have to last me
a few years longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The river

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The river
Runs rolls rumbles tumbles tosses
Yesterday it was just a creek
The rains have swelled it
This is why
The banks are so broad
The usual pebbly islands sunk
Redrawn rewritten redrafted
Underneath the water
Unseen
Beneath the roiling muck
The river rewrites itself
With every passing rain cloud
It changes who it is
It carries garbage further away
It carries new garbage in
It fills new puddles
To fill with new frogs
And new adventures
Because it chose
To flow where the water wants.
It allows life
To alter its bones.
It doesn’t resist.
It relaxes into chaos,
Falls in, falls out.
It dries to emptiness,
Floods to new paths.
It bends.
That is why
The river is forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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