parking

no tickets at least
but i wonder
if I leave you to long
it will cost me
dear

Shams, someone stole your name.
I heard it in the plasma,
not whispered but spoken
so casually just as if there were
no shame at all in this
interconnectedness.
Shocked again at how we braid,
perhaps born of the same star
cluster.
That must be it.
Does he even know just how
long you have been with me,
Shams?
I am haunted by people,
but not interested in drama.
Sometimes I think I am carrying
the seeds of a child in me,
and he says to me,
don't be afraid, choose whatever
gives more life, not less.

twitter poem o' the day

every morning i would miss your hands and socks and when you kiss
my eyes closed and lost in sleep, open to find time's merciless creep.

you wonder how the hell you got here

fucked the dog
so they say out east
can't seem to get myself
to sit still for even five
what the hell is wrong

twitter poem of the day

plagued by the itch, it's not a crime to wonder if I waste my time,
more to do of no import, a talent drained and torn for sport.

I'm With the Band

My mother told me marry a businessman
Marry someone who wears a suit to work
and will buy you a two thousand dollar watch
for your third anniversary and doesn't buy
his plates at Ikea.
But I'm with the band, still, apparently,
Still a kind of cool that I never realize I possess.
I sit cat poised in short skirts
and long boots near the merch table
because the heels are killing me
watching the birds fly by.
Not young, but almost four lives in,
not as young as these kids,
whose faces are without
real fatigue and who are okay with
Ramen noodle breakfast, lunch, dinner
for a plane ticket to
South America where they will
royal for a semester.
I watch the goldfish, thinking of that other
life when I was always with the band,
and kept like a pet, sleeping on floors
and curled up on bar benches,
my ears ringing for days.
(It wrecks your hearing, but the world is
mercifully more quiet and peaceful
ever after).
Girls in tight jeans, tight boots, black
tank top uniforms, each tattooed on the shoulder,
hair asymmetrical, flocked by
boys who talk too much and laugh.
We are not like that, the girl with the band,
otherly and furtherly,
because same is no muse.
To be ten years ago. But I drift to the
future even in this moment,
ten years ahead. I am not anchored
in the present as I once believed.
Drunk men never cease to amaze me.
"Are you with the band?" he asks,
"And what do you do?"
I hug him because
I never have to lie.

i am smaller than i remembered
and i am shrinking
fast
sometimes I need your
shoulders to see
over obstacles
over and out
across the plain
looking for enemies
circling us
Injun tribes
dirty Injuns on
dirty grey horses
the cat knocks over a glass
and I am too frail
too small
to get out of this
please
the phone is out of reach
and I can fit in my own pocket
I can ride on a cricket

11:11

time for wishes,
i wish for you.
i wish for you to say
it again:
i love you.
no wait, i am in love with you.
there's a difference,
right? Shams, right?
i can never remember
what you say to me
never
remember.
damned memory
i'm so old.
at least i heard it
before it was too late.

why am i so old?
knees what say you?
and back?
allergies dripping out of
my nose out of my eyes
onto my shirt because
i didn't think to take a tissue.
there's all this pain in me
from years of waiting
or just bearing up
with a kind of Canadian pleasntry
and my head some
kind of crowded closet
cluttered with
no particular idea
no coherency in there.
does one get a day off for
feeling old in the bones
old in the heart
old in my feet?

rise, new york, rise
they say the aliens are coming today
according to norad.
Norad? what's that I ask.
I don't know.
But this I do
A cat, a dog, a quiet kind of life
here, a quiet kind of
existence, and the taps don't drip
and the shower has pressure.
These are little things I care for.
My life has become better than
I imagined
and in my film, it is ten years
later and we are still kissing
as if those intervening years
were too boringly perfect.
I'll take that now until
the sea calls me again,
like Odysseus away from Ithaka.

Technophilia

Thinking you'd write,
or say something,
smile, wink, nod, poke,
whatever it is you do,
I opened up my gmail
and hoped you would
appear and say anything.
Your name lit up.
I waited.
Then it went dim.
I waited.
I waited.
Sometimes I write our
names together in
the bar of the search engine.
It just looks good to see
them together,
because,
we are not.

my apologies

Dear readers of Shams' Muse,

It's been awhile. I know. There's no excuse for leaving off my poetry project. I am sad to have abandoned it, especially since I took a look at it and was surprised how much I liked some of my own poems. Granted, there's a lot of junk in there, poems that say nothing or are so self indulgent I want to hide them under a rock. But, all the same, I think it might be a good idea to revitalize this as a creative outlet.

Rachel