that's mrs. mediocrity to you

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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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

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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 Poetics,
with the rhythm of the road.

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beliefs and baubles rain down
from a sky filled with numbers

and i have no cloak to offer

the skin i wear is my reality
broken hands and banged up knees

my gift is the soil scraped from nails

rich with worm and cross-hatched root
held down by your wing driven sky

nothing is wrong in the forest of calm

and i climb into the cave of bear
embrace the bones you’ve buried there

each icon wrapped in fields of feather

loose layers of tender revealed by touch
reflect the season of my eyes

as spring awaits the hunger of your cry

.

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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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you told me once that green was the color of life
and then you left my heart floating in its own red tide

i asked for help and you laughed in ripples of reduction
neon notes of avarice slipping through your yellowed teeth

but you held my hand the day the world turned violet
and didn’t let go until my moss-eyed stare
rose to hold your reflection

i knew right then there was no getting free
of the boundaries we’d blurred between us

you were my cornflower and i was your olive
and everything else was left in the box

two empty spaces perpetually waiting
for someone to turn the lost page

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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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my brother taught the old mariner’s warning
to a chubby-cheeked freckled faced girl

i’ve learned since then that storms come in waves
and rose-colored daylight has no way of knowing
how dark the season of night was

fifty years went by before i gave up on midnight
and sat watching the sun creep through the trees
of my creak-boned obvious dreams

but pink isn’t red and the sun never rises
through a crimson ocean of clouds

light and deliverance can always be obscured
by a hand a blanket a curtain
or the cold blue mask of sorrow’s lost moon

the truth of each star is doused only by dawn
and the slow erasure of a secret last dance
from a card filled with yesterday’s dresses

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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’m not the best singer in the world
(my cats are happy to let me know this)

there are days all i want
is to curl into a ball (feline style)
and wait for tomorrow

or magic or a miracle or even
one tiny moment of escape

but this isn’t fiction
and you aren’t a hero

(things really aren’t that bad and i’m made of iron)

and then i start to wander (wonder)
through characters and words
and parceled-out syllables of time

parsimonious gifts that feed me
for days

(i always have a bruise on my forehead)

my legs keep moving
even in my sleep

i have no destination
and i’ve erased all my maps

(paper disintegrates)

i keep trying to cross the threshold of after

but i’m forced to make do
with this shiny clean
lace-curtained window

(the sky is invisible)

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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 Meeting the Bar,
with self portraits.

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