The Base of the Hill, Inspiring

I find the growth at the base of the hill

Inspiring

Tangled as it is,

Vitally green in the hue of a rainstorm

Ivy tranquil curtaining the wall, and

Pine bushes like grazing herbivores, limp-limbed

Beside an abundance of thick, pouty greenery

Which withholds its name from me

From my view, a pair of trees

Which we called eucalyptus in our pre-school days

Stand ankle-deep in vegetation

With swaying hips and open arms, as though

They wish to float into the fog above

All of it is deep and alive and eternal

I will filter through this school next to nameless

But always these will have their place, always

They will be here, nesting

At the base of the hill, inspiring

A Sudden Storm of Hail

I heard the sound of the sky tearing over my head
And on my hurried way indoors, I exchanged smiles with strangers
All of us caught in the sudden hail and deluge
The rush and retreat of the weather of late

Devotional 9/17

There are cherry blossoms in my heart
On a black branch extended over pale blue sky
And when life has occasion to rage through the trees
The petals float free in a delicate downward spiral

Not Having

This girl, she

Has never been kissed, she

Has maybe held hands, maybe

Felt the warmth of two arms

But she has never been there, at

The point of looking and locking

And leaning

Oh, the leaning

And then you are thinking

Thinking about lip on lip and

Nose on nose and

Brushing cheeks

Thinking about hands

On necks, on backs

Everything is small and cozy and close

Close changes things, close

Is always wanting for more closeness

More of the leaning, more of the thinking

Long after you leave, that smile

That smile, reserved

For driving home fast at the close of the day or

The dawn of the night

For remembering, hours

And hours hence

As you pack away the dishes

As you toss clothes in the hamper

As you pull the sheets up over yourself and

Grip the pillow tightly, perhaps

Put a hand on your waist, close your eyes

Watch it all over, memorize every whit

Every sound, smell, jump of the stomach

This girl, she

Can make no comparison

She has done many things, granted, but

She has never been held by that particular moment

Never felt so exceptional she feels she may burst

And yet, I

Am the one now alone, in my chair

Penning poems of death and miles away

Things I know next to nothing about

And she

She is free, of

The missing, and the wanting

For that moment, for

The looking, the locking

The leaning

The closeness that follows you through the door

She is free to float asleep in peace

While I lie on my side and long,

Grip my pillow, set a hand on my waist

That is the worst, I think, perhaps

Worse than not knowing

Is the knowing

And the not having

That is the force which chews a hole in your chest

Makes you pine for people and places

You have never met

For once you have had,

All you have not

Becomes sharply defined

And you are sure

That if you could just try it, all of it

For only a moment

You could call back the closeness

And give it a home

One that lasts past the season,

Unlike so many things

And, because you are lucky, because you

Are the exceptional one

It all makes room, so it

May shelter you too

Small, and cozy, and close

And smiling that smile all the way home

At the close of the day, or

The dawn of the night

New England

She wants her eyes to open to a watercolor sky

Sunlight white and watery through a filter of gray

She wants to throw back the covers to a closet full

Of boots and jeans and coats with collars

She wants to leave the house and step onto a street

Lined with other small houses and wrought iron fences

She wants to walk down the way beneath limbs of great trees

Dripping with remnants of the overnight mist

She wants to stop by her café—hers

And leave with a cup steaming the smell of cocoa

She wants books and soup and history

Tall buildings, old buildings, and a piece of the sea

She wants to rise in the morning

With New England wrapped in her arms

Cool and cozy, independent, unabashed

She thinks she might find the future on that rocky shore

Death is no destruction

Death is no destruction

Death is a fleeing

A bid for freedom on the part of the soul

Death is a migration to higher ground

As the body succumbs to a mortal tide

Collapsed like a bridge upon weak, rotting struts

The flesh is brought low beneath weight of the years

And the soul, from a precipice crumbling fast

Springs on the wind of self-preservation

Soars on upon wings which are dormant no more

Hand-Holding

There is verse in the warmth and the shape of your hand

The stiff supple roughness of each fingertip

Contrast between your joints and mine

Is the difference between knots in a tree limb

And the slender angle of the bird that grips it

That is poetic on the level of Frost

And I am secure on the perch of your heart

Today Has Been Something Else

A few little short ones from my manic mind.  It's been a looong day.

When raindrops hit the sidewalk

And the leaves shuffle in the trees

That is the sound of a kiss.

i say i don’t look like myself

they all eye me slantways, give an incredulous laugh

but look, in the mirror and

who is that?

not me, no sir

not me

I have gone in so many circles today

Like a slow-flying bird in warehouse rafters

I shall go to sleep with my head

Spinning on its pillow

FaTG

The yellow bricks were wet with rain.

I slipped and stumbled into a nearby hole

I swear I saw a pair of ears on the way down.

When I landed I discovered

The sky was huge and open

Expansive, marbled like a temple ceiling

I wanted to pound my fists into the mountains holding it up

Just to feel the roar of them cracking.

Every room, every face is an empty box

I am in someone’s attic, pawing open every one

Labelled dishes or winter clothes

What shall I do with my coat, I wonder.

Every place is so far away and feet are the only way to travel

So I reach in and grab a handful of the chain

Winched tight within the confines of my ribs

And I haul myself forward like an anchor floats up. 

Every step destroys a tiny town

I think I placed a nose ring on my bullish heart. 

Watch me walking through this battlefield

With a spinning head and stardust under my fingernails

And puppet strings on my hips. 

Issue a challenge to my skull, I will meet it head-on.

Take me to my bed, I tell my feet, but they would rather see the world.

When night falls and they are ready to rest

The corner of my room will be empty

Except for a twin-sized piece of carpet bordered by dust bunnies and lint raccoons.

My bed will have gone off on an adventure

And it forgot to leave me a note.  

Snapdragons

In many cases I wish it were easier to forgive and harder to forget.  But that is an individual matter, I think.  I wish peace for all who have suffered because of what occurred that day, American, Middle Eastern, or otherwise.  To the families of those who lost loved ones twelve years ago, and to the men and women who serve our country as well as their families, my heart goes out to you.  Thank you for your courage, your sacrifice, and your legacy.  You have this young woman's utmost love and respect.  Your service to this country inspires me to contribute my own.

I sit across from the snapdragons

Under a rain-white sky

Hear sirens and fire trucks somewhere north, behind me

That sound is powerful on this day

I fixate on the ground and for a moment

Take myself and this patch of concrete

Place us in New York City

At 9:03 on a Tuesday morning

Quintuple the sirens, trade the misty clouds

For an all-encompassing whitewash of dust

And the thought occurs that death is only a part of life

That in all moments, in any moment

Life is the rosy peach and gold that sprouts

From the dark soil that frightens us so

The deeper the stain of mortal passing

The brighter the life that obstinately grows on

We are made strong by the strength of others

That is universal, on all shores, in all tongues

I am moved to pursue my grandest of goals

To the end of building up others

The rain-white sky comes sprinkling through

Chilled and clean on the backs of my hands

From the darkness of loss and difficulty

My colors can and will bloom

For the good of what yet lives on

In the name of those who have bravely gone

Axis

I need someone warm-chested,

Strong,

With arms like walls

And a face that looks good against the sky

I need you to help me onto the roof

To watch the stars

I need you to carry me

To bed when I’m up too late

I need you to lean your head on my knees

And let me rearrange your hair

I need someone who smiles,

Often,

Especially when I can’t keep it together

I need you to take the tunnel of my vision

And lift it away from my eyes

And broaden my sight to a scope that makes me gasp,

“Wow.

  This is special, this is life, and life

  Has meaning when you

  Are the center of my world.”

Show me your tears

Share with me your laughter

You are all I need, already

We just don’t know it yet

My Lord, my God

Could not think of an appropriate title.  I rarely write poems about spiritual matters because no matter what, I feel they are inadequate.  But this one holds its own, I think.

My Lord, my God

In the terror of the night,

In my sorrow and my smallness

I will roll from my bed and fall to my knees

With tears racing from my cheeks to moisten my pillow

I will cry to thee, in my fear and despair

And such a cry will warily push open the door

Embark on a trek through a cold starlit hallway

Ever so long, ever so silent

Come to rest at the foot of thy bed

And in soft supplication, request comfort of thee.

Without hesitation, thou will be there

At the edge of my bed to ease the darkness

With a listening ear, with a boundless eye

To see the first strains of dawn which are not so far off

To describe them to me in a tongue of silence

Which sounds like knowledge and feels like peace

To kiss my brow and lift me into bed,

Keeping vigil over my sleeping form

When morning arrives I will meet it fearless

Triumphant in the courage granted me

By my Father, my God

the days go by

I had a short phrase pop into my head this morning, which is often how my poems start.  But this one I felt like was a poem in and of itself, only it was so short that to write it on paper would've been severely anticlimactic.  So I tried making it a more visual representation, and I really like how it turned out.

Tribulation

Where is the grit—

Blood ninth circle red and crusted

Dust sent sailing along with the smiles of starving people

Lipstick, sweat, and tear stains

Open your boxes for me

Loose the dogs of oppression, segregation

Speak to me in tongues of constant danger and mortal fear

Tell me of the soldiers, of the camps

Of the jeering leering faces

Of the whistle and smash of bombs in the night

The immolation in the streets outside

Show me the scars on your skin and on your eyes

Those tendrilling down through the lump in your throat and pricking at your heart

There is a burning inside you, every soul of you, I see it

With the instinct of humanity, I feel it, even here

In the safe confines of my computer screen

And the warmth of my brand-new bedclothes

Many tonight will not sleep well

Many eyes will never grace the light of dawn

Lay the cruelty before me in photographs, in memoirs

In a procession of haunted visages

Grant me a shard of each heart broken by the camaraderie of your species

I will bind them together and carry them in mine

Well

I am not a mess.
I am well, well-adjusted, well put together
Except, well, maybe
That acute corner angle at the base of my heart
That very well may be
A stubborn, simple mess.

This Rainstorm

Somewhere in this rainstorm

Maybe, is you

Running up the walk with your coat about your ears

Foremost tendrils of your hair dripping

cheerily over your brow, in your eyes

Puddles leak through your sneakers,

You’ll leave them to dry by the door

You’ll say hello to your roommates, who are busy

You’ll go down the hall to your room

Before anything, you raise the blinds and

tug the window open

Maybe, like me

You look in the glow of the streetlights for the cold coagulated

mist that means

A downpour, if you didn’t know

I put up my hair and wipe a droplet from my nose

Thinking of the canopy of thunderheads held up by sonic booms

and lit with raw fluorescence

It warms my heart that maybe we are both underneath

Heartbeats like housecats enticed by a lion’s roar

Looking out the windows at the same rain

Safe inside and waiting, waiting while time

slows its pace for a while and walks

Leisurely beneath the dripping trees

The House Is

In the trees, the house is

Big and small,

Without and within

When the wind blows, the trees speak

And the shutters make as though to leap

From the borders of the windows

And inside he is

He is, that great marvel, he is

In his chair, with a book in his hands

With a dictionary on the arm,

Doglike, faithful

The windowpanes thick with years are his lampshade

The clouds are roaming onward west

The sound of his pages turning, the sound of

Small, soft, quick hearts in the forest

Downy feathers in the trees, and

Hooves on stones framing riverbeds,

Audible from the kitchen table

The foot of a page marks a change in the wind

Circling through the halls and the rooms

He lifts his eyes and his obedient head follows

The wild is in his hair like the mane of a wolf, but

He is ever gentle, ever in touch with

The soft things, the grass lying flat on the hills

From his chair he rises, the dog lifts his trapezoidal head

To watch his movements toward the door

The light through the window, the clouds in their migration

Stop, pause patiently like cows in a field

Await his return,

Countrymen camped in waiting upon their king

The floorboards creak beneath his feet

He comes to the kitchen with

A smile on hand, a murmured word

But no express objective

A clattering in the kitchen, a ceramic clinking

Water, then silence, then

The smell of warm, spices and autumn

He comes to the table

A mug in the calloused life of his right hand

Which he sets to the upper right of my papers

Hung with charcoal gray cursive streamers,

A celebration in their own existence

He fills the chair next to mine the way sunshine fills a valley,

To overflowing, to chills on the base of your neck

To thoughts of God and potential

And he asks how it is going

And his caring bleeds through the thin of his shirt

And the house is full within, and without

The clouds move on like wandering cows