that's mrs. mediocrity to you

and coming away with a handful of air.

Isn’t that they way of things, always? But we never let it stop us, and that is the magic, the miracle, of living.

To be human is to struggle, and it’s an ongoing battle, this existence, even when skies are blue. And that’s what keeps us going, that’s what makes us whole, the dark and the light, night and day, sun and moon, babe and crone.

It’s so easy to forget that we need all of it, the shade and the shadow, the hunger and the hurt, the fear and the frustration, all the parts we’d rather hide or ignore or bury, because nature, human or otherwise, will always strive for balance.

And we, as humans, would like to think ourselves out of the equation, we want to rise above, to banish the things that weigh us down, without accepting the fact that these are the very things that keep us grounded. Without them, we would simply float away.

The size and the beauty of the bloom are determined underground, in the darkness of the soil that anchors us.

Roots, air, water, light, earth, growth. It’s a package deal.

And just look how beautifully it’s wrapped.

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the moon kept me awake last night
or perhaps it was the clock-tampering
or the book i couldn’t put down

outside my window
shadows of branch and ice
looked enough like a forest
to quieten my mind

and i wandered
through fields of forced memory
wildflower whispers telling stories
long ago named forgotten

in the silence never silent
i listened to the music of this house
a symphony of survival and
companion

keeping time with tapping toe
and misplaced sigh
tracking half a century of hours
offered and removed

buried warm beneath a quilt
stitched pretty by restless fingers
tracing pattern and loss
joy and forgiveness

worn thin at the edges
by sandpaper hands and
the scrabbling ghost tempo
of tender perennial continuance

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Everything around me crackles with electricity.
January would be silent, except for your anger.

When the whole world is frozen,
even a white flower becomes prism.

Last night I held a piece of glass to the moon,
hoping for eclipse.
The dead of winter whispered giggles of mockery,
and I walked back inside, bruised
but never broken.

I keep reading about survival.
Already, we’ve forgotten so much.

It used to be that everything was relative,
but now, everything is virtual,
and you can’t fake the smell of narcissism.
(I meant to say narcissus.)

Our collective soul is starving,
and we feed it the new truth.

Suffering was always meant to save us,
and laughter is a sky
filled with birds.

it all hangs in the balance

of what we’re never quite sure

and color leaks
through everything

touching edges
still hoping
for the grey of silence

heartache rolls round
in great waves of destruction

i bleed
you bleed
we all bleed

and you can’t staunch the flow
of life
with an easy off bandage

any more
than you can breathe
when the air
fills with constants

this chair
that tree
a quick flash of smile

memories are never
sincere

nostalgia
always wears
the wrong dress
for the occasion

but underneath
the pulsing river
flows on

the currency of friction
driving us
forward

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half is half and whole is whole
and open is never closed

the sky is unconcerned with your welfare
even as it paints your evening red

silence is impossible to silence

full or empty
black or gold

drink it in with your pessimist’s stare
pour it out with an optimist’s grin

overflow

and the earth will take your offering
run it downhill to the pool of purpose

gather
mingle
transmogrify

despair and hope and courage

and puddle them all
at the feet of fortitude

an elixir of entropy
reflecting

cirrus clouds
and broken blue

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keeps me tethered to the anarchy of fortitude
and i am calm most days
as long
as no one looks behind the curtain

the robin sings at dawn and dusk
celebrating light and darkness
with the very same song

and i wonder
how any of us make it
through a night
that lets us

slip

through the grasp
of reality’s fingers

even dogs dream and
no one
ever told them they couldn’t

every morning
bird call becomes bell or music or
shrill-strapped screaming

but i always wake up

to this tree
this red breasted thrush
this half-hearted thrashing
against the weight
of a twisted
damp-mouthed

sheet

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quenching the thirst you have for impossible rivers
carving hunger from hand-picked bones

runner roots spread beneath the blanket you wear
when you can’t bear to see stars touch your skin

earth’s heart beats slowly below your body
bleeding echoes of discarded remembrance

as you press an ear to the pulse of antipathy’s vein
singing softly for razor or retribution

or just one answer in a galaxy of question

dawn always feels like a reprieve of silence
the last inhale of guilt holding on to lost breath

but these tears of tree sap and mountain
climb your sleeve with the tread of expertise

rivulets run rapid in the canyon of clavicle
flooding sound from the cave of the voice you carried

washing stone and pounding words into the stream
of every moment and hour in between

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

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.

.