Up!

I couldn't believe it,
but the day came
and I felt like
I wanted to
be in the world
again.
I only hope it lasts
more than a few hours.
If it doesn't,
I know it will come back
anyway.

synchronicities

I saw you walking here, he tells me,
a stocky guy, maybe four months ago.
Bearded? Tall? I say, but I know who he means.
I laugh when he nods.
Day one of an adventure that
ended too soon and broke me.
He mentions a girl he knows
from my neighborhood,
in too many details,
too many times,
and I know we braided
parallel strands of our lives,
only to meet at last in
this Asian restaurant,
eating the best Pad Thai I have
ever eaten.
I'll show you something, I tell him,
with a shrimp in the chopsticks.
I want to show him the path
I tread without saying the
words, but I am still
constructing and repacking
the experience in my head,
finding a story I can live with.
The meaninglessness of my
shattered glass heart
is not fit for consumption.
I take him to my urban forest of tags
and pictures and
He asks me if I am ever afraid to be
in this desolate place.

Parallel Lives

Still in the hole, I suppose,
But closer to the top,
and I'm sweating my way to the finish here.
That may just be the summer.

new math

Sum of my equation,
I got to you through a
series of intersecting parallel lines
and used a shaky hand and
a straight edge to draw
what was in my imagination
out on lined looseleaf.
I want to divide and multiply
by a factor of two,
subtract all the things that
shouldn't be there.
The unknowns are killing me.
Let's not make it so complicated,
because the universal rules are
simple.
I'll be a piece of your pi,
if you'll be a piece of mine,
and when you add us together,
we'll see everything in the cosmos,
perfect assymetrical beauty,
radiating from the dust of stars,
ever and ever.

thank you for my eyes

big eyes, I've got big eyes
and they take in all the colors
of the walls.
the city kisses me a thousand times
with rain that soaks
through my jacket,
through my shorts,
through my heart.
Please get out of my heart already.

hunt

I take small scraps of identities you wore,
and finger them in my pocket,
while I sit at a table, facing a man
who is telling me his life story.
I make conversation from these
cheat sheets, speaking as though
the things I learned from you
were things I knew years ago.
I am profiling my partners
against your standard,
looking for a duplicate in all
respects but the one that matters:
you didn't like me enough.

But don't worry.
This man or the next
or the one after that,
will replace you.
Until I find the one who
has a profile sheet
that I match
to the letter.

mirror

I'm so pretty, I know,
and not very exotic,
but pretty with red hair,
turning white at the temples,
and that's pretty too.
I have big, round eyes,
a thousand expressions
cross my face,
and I've gotten used to
my smile's effects,
on me, on others.
I'm smart and I'm kind,
pure of heart, because
all things are pure
to the pure of heart.
I see the good in everyone.
I have ambitions, positivity,
gentleness, determination,
and I forgive all their
faults, all their imperfections,
and edges.
I love my emotional richness,
and my gifts, my talents,
and my thirst for
doing new things imperfectly.
I am so perfect, just as I am,
exactly as I am.
I am a thousand past lives,
blurred by a finger through wet paint,
smearing all the details.
When they leave, they say
you are pretty, you are awesome,
you are smart, you are kind,
and someone will be lucky
to have you.
Someone.

Anyone?

Tide Turning

Goethe and I, we met through a misquotation,
and when I looked,
I found the wrong man.
But what I found in Goethe,
lasted longer.
On days like today,
or yesterday,
or the day before that,
I put stock in
my boldness
and invite Providence to move
the gates that block
my way.
Marcus told me I only
need throw my hat
over the wall.
Shams, what do you think?
Can I afford to toss this
thing and see where I
end up?

cedar waxwings

jealousy, old friend, we rarely have tea
anymore.
you were a lousy companion in my youth,
cause of a thousand missteps,
each pace until I left you on the road.
When I sleep, though, the herd of turtles
carry me on their backs,
and you transformed them into a flock of
cedar waxwings,
that my lover and his new lover saw
at the point of the island.
She wrote to him in a message
about the cedar waxwings.
How beautiful it was to see them together.
And the next day I realized it was all
you, old friend,
old trickster,
whispering your poison in my ears,
throwing corpses into the well.

cold

these things i wanted to say
bouncing around in my head
beautiful words that were seeping out
in the cracks of my eyes
as tears on my cheeks.
But then,
when it came time,
and I saw you in front of me,
and I opened up,
from my heart and
out came the sounds,
You put your hand across my face
over my mouth.
You were stronger,
you were bigger,
and you were cold.
The residence of my former lover,
was now occupied by you,
and you'd trimmed his hair
and I didn't like it.
The words I had stayed caged inside,
fluttering around and banging
hard against the walls of my mind,
furious at their captivity,
furious with their captor.
My words belonged to another man,
who died when plantmania did,
and I am glad you never got to hear them.

normal life

feels so good to be in my skin,
to have comets in my solar plexus
and stars in my spine.
feels better than a rock concert,
or a trip to the moon.
I am all of you.

steer the ship or else she sinks

This ship is crashing every day
and I can't seem to steer her right
just yet.

make peace

And indeed, I closed my eyes,
and even while with someone else,
I was with someone else.

why you should never try to figure out what your ex is doing

Best to let an ex be an ex, with a question mark
left at the end of his story,
and write down that he has gone on to live
an ordinary life and do ordinary things.
Tell yourself he is up to the same things,
night after night,
day after day,
just playing video games or drinking,
and forget the fact that he's in love
and he loves what he does
and was another version of your better self,
taken from you without your consent.
How did you manage to think alike, yet come
to such different conclusions?
Best to forget him and get on with your days,
and fill them with cannoli cream,
and sprinkles, and chocolate chips,
because if you figure out he is happy,
and that you didn't matter,
and that he is in love,
and you aren't,
and that he didn't care about you,
and you cared about him,
and that he became everything you hoped to be with him,
while you remained mired, angry, frustrated...
I can assure you it isn't going to be a good day.
So don't even bother to look any which way but forward.

The Patron Saint of You Are Loved More Than You Know

you are loved
much more than you know.
much more deeply
more widely
more evervescently
if i could kiss your
fingertips with
the grace of a butterfly
even those would
penetrate through you
and live on your body
like a shadow
following you and putting
down a carpet of stars
for you to walk on

Wait

I am waiting for your letter,
just so I can run my finger
over the stamp that you placed
carelessly and smell your
words up close, words you
wrote, words you never said.
In my mind you have become
something you never were,
and I am afraid you are a better
man to my mind that you ever were.
It's funny, Shams, what has happened.
You're laughing at me and my
dramatic way of taking a hit
on the side of the head,
or a quick knife in my ribs.
Shams, stop it, stop it, stop it.
You're right that I need to stop
this moping about over a boy,
and hiding like I will never get over him.
Oh, Shams, I just want him to
send me that letter and love me again.
He was illiterate in love anyway,
what could his stupid letter have
possibly said to capture my heart.
I should have run like hell when he
first made his case, instead
of finding all kinds of justifications
and using my mildness, my gentleness,
to force myself to make his excuses
for a half lived life.
I did it so well, I believed them myself.
I convinced myself that he
could be something he was not,
the right man for me.

if you can feel it, you can heal it

He wrote messages to me on the walls
of the buildings, and if I climbed the
fire escape of the tenement I knew
the kids in the too small blue shirts
would be playing on the fire escape
by hanging off the sides as if they
never fell.
I walked onto the roof and crouched
down next to the words he had left
for me there, and pressed my cheek to
the wall where his hands had been,
and tried to press his ghosts into me,
as if it were a substitute for the real thing.
The message was a map to the heart
of the jungle, and somewhere there,
I would find exactly what I was looking for.
I was either going to fight or let it go.
A sparrow landed with a sprig of olive in its mouth,
from the far off island of the blessed,
and I knew the clouds were never able to
alter the sky, only obscure it,
temporarily.

Ripping the Cosmos

I'm tearing strips out of the sky,
Ripping down stars and comets,
In great ribbons.
I'm trying to get to find
someone out there,
anyone out there,
who can hear me.
With both hands I grab on
and yank at the fabric
of the cosmos.
I stand up to my knees in peelings,
because this seems to go on,
unendingly, like the universe.

seeker

I keep asking the same questions.
I keep getting the same answers.
I KNOW ALREADY.
I KNOW.
I don't need to ask anymore.
You're not coming back.
It's been a week, and not a word.
I KNOW ALREADY.
I KNOW.
How did I find out?
We were so different to each other,
but not so different from each other.
I asked myself what I would do.
I wouldn't even turn around to glance.
I would be setting my watch for the next time zone,
skipping my way from here to there,
singing aloud and swinging my arms.
One week, it's been. One long week.
I am seizing my weeks.
Tomorrow I will drag myself back on
my feet and out of this hoodie.
I will make myself go through normal life.
After awhile, my life without you
will be normal life.
Though it may take me longer
since I'm dragging my heels.

climb

I start in the hole every day,
with a ladder, a ration of food,
and the day ahead.
It starts like a riddle,
with a shadow of a man,
and a broken lightbulb
only its my heart instead.
What happened?
Puzzles aren't my thing.
If I ask the right questions,
I'll get to the solution.
But my questions are off
track and I don't know
the ones to ask.
And when I climb up the
ladder, even on the top rung,
I still can't reach the surface.
The more I struggle,
the deeper the hole gets,
such is my perception.
The less I struggle,
the deeper the hole gets.
As long as I hope, I am trapped.
Equanimity now, Shams, equanimity.
Because
hope
is harder than diamonds,
more eternal than
space.
It can not be destroyed, only
changed like energy.
One form into the next.
I need to hope for something
else.
But, every day, the hole fills
itself, and the race is on,
and I'll be on the surface
before I know it,
but I can't get there soon enough.

not a poem, but a profile thing that is poetic

I've got a nine hour drive ahead of me and the radio's saying thunder showers all day, the whole ride down. The New York state throughway is flying by me on either side, not that I drive fast, and my attention floats between the cars ahead, the cars behind, and the little yellow and purple flowers bobbing their heads as the rain hammers them. The grey sky brings out the technicolor richness. The clouds are moving in herds across the horizon. I haven't skipped through the songs on the CD player, just let album bleed into album. I shouldn't be so broken hearted over this, but I know it will take me a few weeks to shake off the grief. I feel as though someone just swatted a fledgling who fell from the nest, killing it before it even had the chance to sing. I'm such a dreamer to think I could have saved this bird when it had such a faint heartbeat and its first feathers started falling out in my hands.

silly shally

I know I am a silly girl wanting silly things
when I want you to
come back.
But, if I could have things my way,
you would come back,
and beg.
And I could say,
I need to think about it,
but in reality
I thought about it
and I would say yes.
Then you would be back,
and we would be able
to go on a picnic
or go camping
or do all the things I
thought we might do together.
I'd even play games.
I wanted you to ask me.
I was waiting for you to ask me.
I think I would like that.
I was waiting then, like I'm waiting now.
You never asked then, so why
would you now?
I've asked everyone,
but everyone is pretty
sure that there's nothing
to be done about the
matter.

As soon as I stopped adding water
to your powder,
I was no longer able to reconstitute you.
You were the memory of a flavor or
of a smell, and I could not bring
you to my mind any longer,
as a sensation in words is just an
intellectual exercise.
My sadness these days is not over you.
You did not even exist in my life.
I will bleach you from my memories,
and you will fade, nameless, faceless.
No, my sadness is for the things I have wanted,
for the happiness that came out for me,
and my delight and my hopes,
that floated me through the day,
like a thousand balloons tied to my bed.
I soared up and up,
in full command of the world below,
and nothing bad could touch me.
I was mighty mighty up on high.
I was in my best element, the air, the wind,
and I felt secure and safe and free.
That same happiness is still in me,
but it seems to be locked away,
and its absence makes the
days seem so dreary and long.
So don't worry about my tears, Shams.
Frustration always makes me cry.
I just need to find where I put that box,
when he startled me and I dropped it.

The Death of Plantmania

I saw it coming like the 6 a.m. from Halifax across the flat plains of
Southern New Brunswick, steam and the steady rumble filling the bay.
Lying in my bed, under three blankets, and hood pulled up,
pillows around me, dog at my feet, books crashing down on either
side and pens and paper.
I didn't know what time it would arrive.
And I was too happy to care, even though
I was a destination station.
It crashed through the wall, and squealed to a stop,
Inches from me, and I was pinned in place, lights in my eyes,
As the facts were laid out.
The facts.
Just the facts, ma'am.
Tell me again, I said, because I was too stunned to hear them once.
Wasn't the train I expected.
This one was driven by a ghost,
and I can't fight the supernatural.
I am flesh and blood, my feet touch the ground,
and stars leak out of my spine when I walk.
My angel wings only come out on special occasions,
but I am always capable of extraordinary grace.
My love was onboard, demonically changed,
a ghost himself.
I tried to remember him as he was before,
Was he always just a shell with no shadow?
No, no, in my memory, he was a cryogenically
frozen plant that stopped growing,
when it was put into the vault.
For the time he was in my care, I warmed him in
my two hands and tried to thaw years of ice,
never took a pick in hand,
but drew on the heat of my heart,
the faith I had in my ability to bring the dead back
with patience, with love, with the ever renewing source
that is my essential self, that is all our essential selves,
if one can tap into it.
I am a gardener, after all, and bring plants back every spring
from their winter deaths
with deft gentle fingers and an alchemists' knowledge.
WIth time, I would have succeeded and he would blossom
flowers he never knew were there,
perhaps by late summer, or next year.
I would wait, holding him in my two good hands,
caressing every leaf to unfurl, drawing water up through
the roots until the branches were stronger and taller than my touch,
and his leaves and tendrils would fill the house through the
chimney and grow out across the bay,
bigger and more beautiful,
than any plant ever known before.
We create the future, just by imagining it.
So I imagined for him a best life in which he could
be anything he wanted.
No, I imagined a life in which he was better than he dared dream,
cosmic dreams that could ride the ripples of galaxies.
I just had to break this thaw, coax the life back in,
and I heard his first grasping breaths, shallow but unmistakable.
I could imagine him alive again, good bones,
strong heart, free to stay, free to go.
One more wheeze, and then he was silent,
a motionless corpse again.
Healing takes many suns, many moons, many tides.
I took it slower. I had gone too quickly, tried too hard.
I started again more softly.
The train got him first, called him with a piper's song,
and he danced a Bacchic reel,
infused with its supernatural energy,
transformed before my eyes.
He rode atop the car with his legs on either side.
He smiled at me, a bloody, toothless mouth,
fingers thin to the bones, leper's flesh
green and red and stinking, his organs in
canopic jars beside him.
He laughed in riotous madness, hypnotic and haunted.
I waved at my work's failure, smiled warmly,
wished him safe travels, and a happy life,
wished him the fulfillment of his desires,
and sent him the love of my heart.
But even I knew where that train
was headed. He would be killed again.
Ghostly skin on a mortal man does not grant him undying.
All bread eating men ultimately descend to Hades.
Even Zeus was powerless
to the Fates' decree for his son Sarpedon.
As the train pulled away,
only then did the tears come.
I cried for my lost efforts, cried for him, cried for me,
oh how I cried for me and cry still now.
I cried enough tears that to turn his ashes to mud,
and even when he dies,
my tears will water the earth so he will be reborn as
something else.
In his new life will he remember?
I took good care of you, baby. I took the best care.

New Endings

Schrodinger's Cat, that's what I am in this box,
Both alive and dead at the same time.
But even with the box open,
I'm still both.
I want to and I don't.

poem of Lucy the Dog

Throw that Kong, buddy,
and I'm going to find it,
bring it back,
drop it,
roll on it,
push my teeth into it,
and show it to all the other dogs.
That big stupid lab
is going to bound over
with his rolls of skin,
and try to take it from me,
but I'm not letting go,
not for that doofus,
with his stupid name,
and his stupider owner,
and her high pitched ear splitting
voice, as she's telling
everyone about her wax job.
Maybe I'll let him have it,
just for a moment,
because he has to live with her,
and hear her talk about her
wax job at least five or six
times a day for the next week
or so.
Here, take it,
or maybe you got it fair and square,
you big dumb lab
big dumb doofus.
No, wait, changed my mind,
because you're getting that
Iams breath all over my Kong
and the doberman, that bitch,
will take it from you.

Akira

Every dog has its day,
so I am told,
but I am more certain that
every dog has a day of death
and we all die too young.
Don't be afraid, old girl,
you can wait for her on the
other side, so that when her time comes,
her best friend is
waiting.

July Project

So, I've decided to give myself a new poetry project for July. I managed to keep Sham's Muse going for the month, so time to spread my wings. July's project is to write poems that come from other people's heads... In other words, I'm going to write poems as if I were someone else.