that's mrs. mediocrity to you

i have a memory of you
in a gilded glass globe

soft baby curls glinting
and denim legs running
in a pinwheel
of red blue and yellow
spinning out
from the color-blocked
tiny
chuck taylors
i tied to your feet
every morning

you were so fast
and i was so busy

the years told me lies
and i looked away

as you grew
into life’s
perfect stranger

the other day
you asked me
to help
shave your head

it was not a surprise
i have done it before
and you always clean
your own messes

but what i saw drop
to the cold tiled floor
was not simply a month’s
worth of stubble

at your feet
was a clock
made from curls
and lost wheels
marking time
with an amateur’s
ticking

you swept it up
and i went to bed

i think that i dreamt
of cracked mirrors

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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all the words you leave
surmised unsaid
will grow wings of weight
forced to cower behind
the lace of an albatross curtain

held by
pursed parched lips
and a fissured fish heart
from a sky that knows only
blind patience

this is your charity necklace
worth only the gold
of your final sunrise
and your bottled up notes
of forgiveness

if you want them
to fly
you must sing

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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wind calm and storm weary
home calls north and a red sun sinks
in the corner of never there

your patience lifts you higher
than the slow measured progress
of orion’s glitter-faced swordbelt

the original darkness-slayer
cold hard viking laid to rest
in a calloused monument of sky

you sleep through rumble snore
and bright bear claw
goddess chair and perfect cross

as i tat patterns on a ceiling
bright with current
dancing dream and forgotten

constellation

climb into my kitchen
and i’ll build you a window

walled by whisper wing
and fire dream

we’ll marry word and wonder
filter fear and petty shadow

press cold noses to the glass
of each season’s metronome

i’ll feed you butterfly and brimstone
bits of light and captured night

with dragon song and maiden dawn
to keep you from flight’s rescue

.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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infrastructures crumble cry and all the trees are lying

i walk through your concrete garden
stunned by lack of growth and claustrophobia becomes
my escape

there is no air here but you keep breathing
wheezing teasing freezing oxygen into clink clank cubes
lining glasses of liquid liberation

what have you done with the flowers? even the weeds
are afraid to breech
your barrier of sophisticated cement

give me your heart and i’ll plant you a memory

give me your disease and i’ll grow you a cure

give me your hope and i’ll bury the bones you cannot hide

lie

down and watch comets race a sky you cannot see
blind yourself with light and reputation
sit in your city white-noise silence

i have your bird in a cage of freedom
every morning we sing you back into existence
though you’ll never find a single luck feather

as you rest your bare head on a synthetic pillow

of down

.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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Also linking in over at dVersePoets for OpenLinkNight,
join us!

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four miles
of dirty-drunk bottles
discarded on the cold shoulder road
you walk
night after night after night
sipping bitter salt and rubbing open
old wounds

four miles
of hollowed out chest
and improper possibility
leaching into land passed down
for seven generations
of food in the belly
no one wanted to harvest

four miles
of fuel for the red-lipped
rage that lines your palm
and marks your forehead with
furrows deep enough for planting
the seed you cannot reclaim
or purchase

four miles
between you and the house
never built
by too many logs and not enough sky
the stars were your compass
before you chugged them
in a toast to disappointment

four miles
of mud-caked proof
and not enough leaving one
last sip for the lean wasted soul
soon to follow your dedicated footsteps
to the same oblivious
abandoned address

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I’m not big on explaining poems, but this one has a story.
On my block, a four-mile-around country block that circles farmland,
there are dozens of discarded whiskey bottles lining the ditch.
Dozens. This has been going on for years.
A sad mystery with its own story,
begging to be told.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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whisper what you saw to the wall of painted protest

the white bear standing lost on a landscape gone green

an ocean filled with plastic pours and printed promises

.

water everywhere

seeping up through the grip of your lost toes

.

your thirst will force you to imbibe

the fish of forgotten

as extinction inches up the corner of your thigh

.

cry foul and you’ll be silenced

by the nownownow

of tomorrow’s impossible exigence

.

grab a brush dipped in gone and wash away

the last canary

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light a fire in the oil that skims every surface

illuminate destruction with a ring of false keep

raise your hands high and tell your last story

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i can see i can see i can see

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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there’s a place
in my garden

no one ever goes
to sit

broken down
skeleton of glider

left hanging
in the wind

tattered flag
of patience

marking time
with rusty creak

and forgotten
expectation

.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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i drove to the mountains once
because i couldn’t leave you from here

i tied asphalt ribbons in my hair
and sang louder than 12-ton thunder

but everywhere i went had already been touched
by the same sky i’d left you holding

in a balloon the color of loneliness
tied to your wrist to mark you

as the strange lost child
i could never reclaim

.

.

A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

.

Also linking in over at dVersePoets for Poetics,
with the rhythm of the road.

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there are 51 ways to leave your lover
but only if you’re good at math

a tree learns early on that survival
depends on your ability to bend

the penultimate beat of a dying heart
echoes perpetually through its last

odd numbers belong to odd people
and we’re all stuck at seventeen

being less than whole takes up more space
than the chance of being well rounded

there are zero degrees of separation
between you and your last neighbor

if you look into the eyes of pi
you will meet eternity’s maker

.

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month.
This post is part of NaPoWriMo.

Also joining in with PAD (poem a day) over at Writer’s Digest.

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