play possum

i’m fine

nothing’s wrong

i just really love this song
gives me the blues sometimes, is all

a snake, a possum, a doe and fawn
on the roadside killed, again, i saw

i heard the breaking news story
i’m awfully raw, so please ignore me

this world can be so cruel and wicked
of course, my tender heart’s afflicted

glistened eyes, lump throat, and quiver lip

you think they’re for you?

well sir, or ma’am: that’s rich.

all lies,

but also, all true.

the sea of inez

i feel the gravity
the love
the loss
so close || this close
almost, almost, almost

buoyed then anchored

an internal saltwater aquifer suffusing me

with congestive heartbreak

swelling and stiffening my limbs
i cant walk to you or anyone
beached in my own body

my eyes filling my mouth, my throat
i can’t talk to you or anyone
muted by our illicit drug

swallow,
swallow,
swallow

that sea inside you

or else,

drown, drown, drown

in it

i am not a mermaid
i am a human woman

yet my belly’s pregnant
with an ocean

she’s y/ours

Continue reading “the sea of inez”

sleep

sleep keeps you from me

you, unconscious and at rest
with my newfound enemy:
the Succubus
she eats your dreams of me, love
that’s why you can’t remember them

then, this great Lake
like a cold floor
between our warm
twin beds in winter
get out of bed, love,
come, sail to mine,

risk it

simpler, open your hazel eyes, please
thumbs, please dance in the blue light
say more, tell more, please
anything satisfies, love,
everything does

Continue reading “sleep”

someone

i feel like someone
you last loved on a wednesday,
earlier this week

i feel like someone who was once your intense singular joy/ now and again, an invisible naturalist, poet, neologist and crone

i feel like someone you forgot to mention the Hilma Af Klint show to

i feel like someone losing our intimacy
exponentially, by the second, against a shot clock in an un-united center

i feel like someone whose forehead you won’t kiss; whose hollows you’ll never touch with hands, tongue or tip; like someone who’ll never truly climax again

i feel like someone who upset you with
Dream[ing] and that’s where it ended; someone who never listened to your diatribe about Waco, or heard of your plane rituals and four-part fruition

i feel like someone whose mystery you’ll let be; whose content was consumed without gnosis; like those cold “leftovers.”

i don’t feel like someone you will walk across a frozen Lake or Lake bed to get to anymore, during the apocalypse, Station Eleven style Continue reading “someone”

dream[t] poetry: Visitation

A man who wore a kelly green shirt
Surprised me in my dream
Crashed on my grandmother’s couch
swathed in blankets, soft and deep

I don’t ask him why he’s there,
It seems we both already know
This room’s exactly where she died,
This Oakdale house, sold long ago

Still, worried that as she ‘rived “home”
He’d given her a fright,
I go to wake her, see her, touch her . . .
What a beautiful, strange night.

He says, “No need to wake her now,
she’s a gem, it’s all okay,
she didn’t seem to mind me here,
I inferred that I might stay?”

I shush’d us, not to rouse her then,
Sound asleep in her old twin bed,
In disbelief, I hear her breathe
Has our connection stirred the Dead?

I feel wondrous, but then remembrance
forges space for Cardinal guilts
Smiling devilishly, making room for me,
he pats the couch and parts the quilts.

Continue reading “dream[t] poetry: Visitation”

Something Gold Can Stay, Mr. Frost. (Respectfully)

image

Something Gold Can Stay

True, nothing gold can stay,

If nature has her way.

Yes, Eden sank to grief,

And Ego is our thief.

Pure gold’s not beheld or crowned 

‘Tis within true aurum’s found.

By Gnostics’ purest measure

Self knowledge, our sole treasure.

October 2013 

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

“Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leafs a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay.”

 – Robert Frost 

The Yale Review (October 1923)