Green Thumb

Should have walked away when
we started comparing scars,
when you told me time and again
about the same one on your knee.
When we ran out of things to say
and you never liked small talk anyway
but our candles still burned
and you turned your wick away from me.
Should have stopped when you said
I was too intense, not a compliment
but a challenge to make me small.
Should have thought again when
I asked you to be happy for me
and you said it would take away
From all you wanted to do for you.
Unresolved and sad.
I still fell in love.
Could blame it on the stars and say
it’s because I’m a scorpio.
But it’s because I like to garden
and watch things grow.
I guess I always fall in love with potential.

Love is a verb

Love is not an action based on convenience.

It does not hold to suit the suitor

at earliest or latest hour.

The flowers do not choose rain

or sun,

or what kills them.

Let love maim or heal, but heal first.

Broken love is worse than death –

Heavy dragging hands. Long labored breaths.

Love for one and none for all. No matter the cost

it is always too great for some.

To give love away only to those deemed worthy.

Reach in your pockets and produce

lint. Maybe gold.

Offer both or not at all. Lint for a fire

to warm someone’s soul

or gold for a meal to enjoy between

eyes and hands.

Reach into your chest and pull out your heart.

Give it away in its infinite replenish,

for our hearts are the only thing that grows

when we share.

Throw Down in the Old Leather Chair

Thrown down in the old leather chair,

in the learning fields,

rattling of love and nature’s bones.

And the seeds are strewn around.

Dust and mud, the path is clear and messy

Wishes sent to the clouds, feet stuck in the ground.

Skeletons of endless Springs wrapped in winter’s hold,

nails dug into foundations worn and familiar.

Fingerprints lost.

Listen, listen to her sing.

On a bare mattress

warmed only by breath,

the steady thrum of hearts, fingers playing spines.

I have to go.

The King Tree

The king tree blossoms over

his deep rough scars

and under eternity –

Beauty that will collapse slowly

at the hand of gravity

and the endless blues of god.

Fruit to bear and tumble down

to rot, a mess that feeds the mother –

His offerings will leave him bare

and gray.

But he will never stop,

even with rushing river below

that licks his roots patiently,

loving,

a constant chime of the inevitable.

The king tree continues to bear his fruit.

He drops in symphony,

bright red-orange hue,

delicately to death.

Continue on and pay no mind to the river –

the river always wins.

Meeting my Soul

She carries me, my soul.
My aching, tired bones wrapped in weathered skin
that sheds and thins and fades like pages torn.

She will carry me along the curvature of the earth
until there is nothing left but my spine.
An infant in her infinite arms,
she swaddles me like the mother
I knew.

I am her, my soul, but I don’t know her, not entirely.
She has been bare breast and firm chest
with traits of Eve and Adam.

She has sailed over thousands of seas.
She killed and was killed and watched die,
so many.
She is both Lilith and Virgin Mother.

The apple and the worm,
to eat the sweetness of life and consume its sugars until rotten,
feeds the dirt only to return again, same soul.

I have only a time to learn her ways,
to reach out my hand and touch her face.
I will sail seas and die to become her.
My soul, my mother, me.

Deep Black Green

I cannonball into the deep black green

suspended.

No noises like my dreams, nothing to be seen.

I listen only to the water to drown out my head,

the cool kisses of salty brine surrounding me.

Below, the sticky tar-like silt waits

for the final bubbles to leave my lungs –

Please gasp.

Please try to breathe.

But I breach the surface once more, the black green

rolls over me and parts again for reality.

Just a moment’s peace. Just some time in the nothing.

My eyes wander the skies to find my bearings,

some familiarity.

They stop upon the oak tree,

waving.

Dearly departed

Yelling out,

Where are you,

doesn’t make the dead return.

Yet you convince yourself

that the tingle on the back of your neck in the black

is more than just the ceiling fan.

You want to tell yourself that they returned through the steel veiled doors

but remember, you and yours,

When you’re kneeling –

Screaming –

Pleading –

On all fours –

They left in September and they’ve never left,

Always in the urn.

Funeral Flowers

She was dead long before she stopped breathing.

Her sunken, empty eyes

held no hope as she sat idly

on the deck or face-down on the beach as the sun

breathed her in.

She seized her moments of clarity around their necks

and submerged them, whining in ether.

She starved her body of loving embrace

and recoiled to touch like she was toxic

and contagious.

And when her eyes fused shut when life burnt out,

she reached towards the ceiling for God to hold her.

Open-Ended

I often wonder what moment

for you was the pistol

and what moment

was the decision to pull

the trigger.

It’s usually a split

decision that moves like

an indiscernible

brush stroke, uniform –

An obvious beginning

and end but no sign

of the climax.

I often wonder what life

you would have led

if you didn’t stay –

If you didn’t say yes

to a rock that was below

your worth –

If you didn’t measure

your life in poorly

assembled dominoes –

A uniformity doomed from the moment

you began self-medicating.

You were never meant to fall straight.

Would you have

remained

in the Native Land

with red clay to call

home and ground yourself

to ancient beings who never fell from the sky?

Who would you have become

if you stopped

holding on so hard?

I may have never been

but I speculate the sacrifice

would have been worth you knowing

old age.

Untamed

In my grandmother’s kitchen my mother told me,

You will never get a boyfriend

with your hair parted down the middle.

Her cigarette burned down as I burned down to a pile

of inferiority.

Clearly, naively, innocently, I listened.

I heeded the woman

whose hair was frozen in Aquanet since 1984

that my romantic endeavors were reliant on where my hair

fell from the top of my head

and how delicately my hair sat atop my shoulders

and how I should probably brush out the curls because they look messy

You look messy.

Sloppy.

Knotty.

Untamed.

For years, I concerned myself with the aesthetics of my coils

rather than the intention of my character and the intentions that fell

from the bottom of my heart

and how loud my heart beat on my sleeve

and how unimportant my hair was but I could not see —

Could not see past my hair

past what I needed to be for my mother

in order to be loved by another.

That I was raised to be thin

to diet

to move

to try

to critique what I was

and not who I am.

To be thin and pretty God forbid I be a fat child and love my middle part —

Because we need to be thin and pretty.

My mother was thin and pretty

and blonde.

And tall.

And had sky-high hair and box dye status.

As an adult I could be fat and pretty but not pretty fat and ugly

and only after I found someone to love my hair placed delicately to the side

could I be fat and pretty or ugly and thin

because at least I’d be thin.

I could let myself go only after

I placed my intentions and the messy heart on my sleeve

delicately to the side.

I could unravel like my mother did and stand behind the kitchen island

and treat it as a podium and tell my daughter,

her granddaughter

You must change before you are loved.

So I walked the line of my middle part of

black and white —

Of judgment —

Of hope someone would fall in love

with my placement and one day I woke up too many years later and realized

This. Was. Dumb.

My hair coils and curls and speaks for itself

and spoke for me before I found my voice.

My body moves and grows and shrinks like my mane

and I am ever-changing

and always speaking.

Some days I may feel thin and pretty

or fat and ugly and now instead of dwelling

I release my hair

I appreciate the entropy

and whoever can love that entropy will love everything

I’ve come to love about me.

Hold the Space

Sit until the words run out.

Tag: poem