Poetry

I think this
is the life I wanted 
               all that time, the one that held itself

away from me while I kept choosing
lovely cups and creatures, circus-like 
               and therefore real 

in all their shining. A man at the meeting 
says at least today I’m not doing anything 
               that’s killing me – I think, apart from living – 

yes, this is the life 
I wanted, 
               suddenly livable and

sometimes lived. 
Even when its shape is distant, this life feels closer
               than the walk home from the shift 

trying to not stop at the corner 
to do anything other than turn 
               myself out for the rest of the evening – 

walking to the end of the road 
I make myself turn 
               in the direction 

of the house 
where I go inside 
               where I am not at the end 

of a park’s shadow, looking up at a bruised moon in the sky 
and down at a baggie appeared in my palm thinking
               the two were the same.

last summer’s strawberry syrup sits in the fridge
my shoes should have been cleaned before I left them for you to ship

the truth turns so quickly
i find myself lying

the murmur of people sing a different song
our semesters are cursed to different timelines

maybe that was sell by
we aren't the first or last to try

pinky promise
being honest
syrup down the drain

Couldn’t see the moon 
til the damn barn burned down. 
Ooze of light beaming milky silver 
over the bed’s leftover sheets – 
like strips of a tattered slip, 
or ribbons stitched to pointé shoes 
spinning in soot. Ash clung to the walls, 
seen best in the residual lack of darkness 
after a fingertip strokes the hips of the rafters. 
The bones clung to solidity. We took 
a canister and burned them too, made sure 
nothing was left behind, we wanted to shine 
so bright, wanted some part of us, 
after all, to wind up living.  

Those were the longest nights of summer—
the small-town airplane hanger 
used only for two-props spraying poison over 
corn and wheat and us until November.

A new pilot, eighteen-year-old learner’s permit,
he sailed endless Kansas sky, much farther
than the fields barren of timber:
unclouded eyes and thoughtless, an explorer.

At sixteen, I’d never been kissed, his neighbor,
then I dissolved under his hands, darkness no longer
as our mouths crimped together like pie crusts in the larder.
Paula Abdul sang “I Need You,” and I wanted no other. 

Too young to date, I asked permission of my mother,
who loved him because of my dead brother, 
born a week apart from him and us in October.
His mother, weeping, walked the ER corridor to see her. 

We’d fly over the fields, through the ether.
What youthful evening could be finer? 
Our small lives filled fully, kernels of grain: our hunger 
for more life beyond this and one another.

We’d land, then lie in his Dodge Caravan, naked upon the leather,
mapping our fragile ankles, spines, and necks with tender
kisses and the hands so grasping but still lighter 
than the air, the plane, the summer.

He left in fall for college to become a preacher.
I write him a long, then longer letter.
I wait until October, crying harder.
I drive out once to the hangar.  Nothing hovers.

Ignorance remains
the steadiest path to mistakes/errors
“hey I didn’t know” is slightly
superior to “I was drunk”, or that
chestnut, “it was a long time ago,
things were different then”.
Don’t fall for it.
To hit your kids is as wrong
in 1970 as it is today, as
wrong as princes in the tower
or cigarette burns on a toddler’s back.

Night, the anger rises.
Rage, rage, rage against the
Perceived slights of today,
not paid enough, not promoted,
night shift chain smoking
by the hour, this job deserves a
walk out, but to where?

Later, a hit down, swing low
to meet your self esteem,
those little shits need to learn
to shut up.
Survey the wounded.
Bathroom door, photo frames,
dog cowering by the door.
Patch the sheetrock, make
apologies with pizza, toys.

Research reveals that the abused
so often become abusers in turn.
Poor fools, quick to anger and
quick to self delusion. Poor excuses.
Social Services knows your family name.
The same smile, bad teeth,
good with their hands.
That one was a star athlete.
Dark rivers run strongest at night
as owls regard the trailer with
wide, wide eyes while the moon,
Uncle Moon, looks away.

                                 Tiny one bedroom flat
                                 space heater-warmed 
                                 with a phone booth closet 
                                 that could store meat - 
                                 a kitchen with southern 
                                 view of tattooed 
                                 John and Rose’s porch
                                 from where he’d flick
                                 his Camel butts
                                 into the seven clumps
                                 of withered grass
                                 trying to be a yard
                                 sans noticeable success.

                                 Residents from the
                                 local sheltered home
                                 with a labored walk
                                 shuffling to work
                                 carrying a Thorazine high -
                                 off to bag incense
                                 eight hours a day 
                                 without complaint -
                                 but needing to stop
                                 at the corner store  
                                 for their morning 
                                 sugar fix of candy and coke
                                 just to feel alive.

                                 Seven years of fun and games 
                                 with a revolving door 
                                 of friends and lovers –
                                 teaching reluctant
                                 urban teens by day
                                 who taught me
                                 all about the blues 
                                 I sought out each night
                                 up and down
                                 Lincoln Avenue bars
                                 where legends
                                 like Dixon, Wolf, and Waters 
                                 laid down the timeless licks 
                                 that everyone listening knew –
                                 then drank too much
                                 as the nights wore on -
                                 just like the rest of us.