that's mrs. mediocrity to you

who are you
to break my name
when you’ve never held my hunger
or bled my flame?

who am i
to step on these black borrowed stones
drowning in this pond
of hollow bones?

there’s a space between stars
filled with wing-shaped answers
and the ladder
hangs from clouds
strung by bees

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 4
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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yesterday i cut the tall grasses
cursing and creaking
just the same as every year
all complaints and mess and
blisters

i thought of you as i snipped and gathered
wondering why i bother
with these spreading earth-takers
clucking at the way
their roots
have broken the box i built for them
and thinking perhaps
it’s time to dig them up

plant some dahlias

maybe

but then i remembered
how much i love to listen
to the sound they make in summer
each tiny gust of wind
whispering ten thousand secrets
in a language i don’t understand

i thought of all the times
i’ve used them for shade in late august
pad and pencil recording streams
of words i can’t quite hear
and that day a black striped dragonfly
landed on my knee
with a message i still can’t
decipher

and then i gathered up my tools
and walked inside

no decision but my thirst
to let them stay

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 3
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

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is always hiding something

you think it’s the truth
sitting there in the corner

blinding the crowd
with the blunt edge of honesty
and the tall maleficent glare
of guilt

but the real story
is tucked in a fold
packed in a trunk
trampled down
beneath one
wrinkled knee

you tried painting over her once
sky blue skin with purple clouds
yellow elbow and dotted cheek
smoky eyes and faux striped tail

and then you started over
using camouflage and collage
picture frame and paper tchotchke
knitted throw and burnished rug

in the end

your hands
were stained with fiction

one thousand pages
you will never wash off

and you stood naked
in the shadow

of your story

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 2
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme is secrets.

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so much living out loud
these days

so much songbird singing
and restless hand wringing

so many rules to swallow and
pills to follow

and offenses taken to
deep down places

so much sleep to lose and
outrage to booze

mirrors to crack
or pick up the slack

erasures and silence
muzzle and roar

whispers to settle
behind locked door

but i say
let them stand

all those words
to be banned

all the phrases
that offer no praises

words are the drones
in the war of lost bones

our last strong shield
in the cracked force field

of tomorrow’s glinting
freedom

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month. Day 1
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge.

Today’s theme is resistance.

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your eyes are the sea
i’ve never seen

bits of sand and salt
mixed with horizon

and i stand
toes wet
on the shore
of submersion

thinking swim
and float
and maybe even
butterfly

wanting to dive
into the heart tide
aqua league

crash myself back
against rocks
grown jagged

smoothing over
soothing wound
polishing our scars

etching fern
into your landscape
of stone

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the power of lost

possibility

armored over and
bitter coated

speckle-pretty and
color faded

trapped

in time’s musty
closet

or is it hope

redefined

pale protection
roundly painted

and preserved
in smooth treasure box

waiting

for polish and
jeweled key

to crack wide open

The things I’ve forgotten, the messes I’ve made,
the dried-up, brittle-boned detritus of survival.

Perhaps I left it out as a reminder.

A forecast. A prediction.

Or a testament to who I really am,
beneath the soil of wasted hour and wanted nutrient.

Root-bound. Buried.

Parched or drowning, depending on the weather.

Somehow, even so, I will bloom.

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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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years ago
i planted two poplar trees
side by side
out front
in the corner of the yard

and one grew taller than the other
larger
thicker
stronger

and i feel like that’s probably
a metaphor for something
or at least it should be

but all i see are trees
and words about trees
stamped across the sky
in a tangle
of branches

all the meaning i prescribe
comes from within
me
or the trees
and what i choose to name
the one on the left

my cat
can zoom straight up the trunk
leaving scratches
and cheshire grin
in a weathered trunk
time map

but i like to sit
beneath the canopy
and listen
to stories
told by dancing
flicker leaves
in the shade
of yesterday’s
summer

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.

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it was your dream and it shouldn’t
have been in my head but there it was
all memory and miniseries
claiming sleep in a gold rush
of measure

the audience laughed when i landed
and i thought perhaps i was dead
but you took my hand and lifted
til i stood three feet taller
than the mountain you sang
and could see each grey hair
on your head

in the hallway air-brushed footsteps
creaked out their endless
time-frame pattern
step here miss there hush now
tiptoe past the door of dragon

and the wind came howling
through the crack
in my window glass scar
left behind on a night when i dreamt
of forgetting and clambered to follow
the pale scratched trail
of prints in the snow beneath me

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