that's mrs. mediocrity to you

i have hands that need to be worried
knitted brows and empty eyed needles
clicking and clacking in time
with a grandmother’s song

she told me all her stories once
from a field of corn and desperation

broken backs and clattered crows
stealing all the shiny bits

i made a choker of her words
red silk knots and sour drops
on the tongue of overdrawn wisdom

she knew everything about me
before i was born

and nothing of the taste
of redemption

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

you can hear the world sleeping

it makes its own sound
bears its own cross
fills its own void

a spiderweb of dream
and nightmare

edged with dewdrop and laughter

spoken words float out
across the horizon of yesterday

tomorrow
someone just waking up
will hear them today

your whisper
is the scream
that stops the hand
that wields the knife

your off key whistle
is the icy finger
beneath the crack
of winter’s window

your declaration of love
is the robin singing penance
for curing dawn
of all color

lie still
in the mirror dark quiet

wait

it’s impossible to breathe
without inhaling
someone else’s

exhale

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

today i don’t want
to be greedy about anything.

forget greedy,
i don’t even want to want what i want

i want to stand here on bare earth
naked and white

beneath this sky of broken promises

listen to the thunder

i want to be cracked open
by an errant bolt of lightning

lit, for one brief moment
from the inside out

fed by a harvest of sunshine
and scolded by the red words
of dusk

i want to be hollowed out and left

opened and forgotten

today i don’t want
to be greedy about anything.

i want to breathe fire into blue surrender

hold everything still and empty

wait for hope to fill me up

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

everything that was broken yesterday
remains that way today

i have fixed what i can and the rest
is the life i have chosen

or sunk into
shoulder high

and i’ve yet to flail my hands

i am still
and silent

i was listening for something
for the longest time

and then i forgot how to speak

this isn’t mud i wallow in
but rather
the exquisite change pain of life

i no longer wait to be rescued

there are stars
or rain on my face

clouds
or blinding blue skies

crows chatter on the line
i used to talk through

there is a bluebird just now
warbling a love song

there is earth pressed tight
against my heart

winter ate me whole
and spring will spit me back out

this clay will all turn to dust
and my feet are already

bare

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

this room is empty save
for that ball of string
standing in one corner
looming tall and multi-colored
all knotty and criss-crossed
with dust and ever afters and
red might be for love but blue
is for everything else
and from a distance
it all blurs into beige
just the way I see your face
when i squint
in the sunshine

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

there are days
months
even years

when life circles around one word
everything you do and think and feel and see
somehow finds its way back to you in
this same combination of line and shape
picking and choosing each step carefully
watching out for the trap of A
the tail of Q
the slithering snake of S

this word will always come home to you
even if you don’t want it
or like it
or imagine it tattooed on an ankle
just in the spot where a shackle would hide it

you tuck it under your tongue
where it rolls around
in a constant struggle to
announce
your infidelity
your use and abuse
of all those other words

the ones that don’t belong to you

this word refuses to be swallowed

catching in your throat and
haunting you
taunting you
with threats to expose

your silence

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

i remember the day you told me
about nothing

and every hour after that was a reprieve

the blue of your eyes
never looked like the sky
or even the ocean

when asked

you called it light azure
thinking yourself witty

but i knew it as aquamarine
all cool and hard and ridiculously
slippery

the kind of surface

you can’t
stop touching

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

i can tell these two crows are teenagers
by their hunger and their recklessness

i feed them anyway and they never say thank you

like all youth
their gift is their presence

they haven’t yet learned how to tell time
or rather, they don’t think about time at all
just the way you don’t think about breathing

until you can’t

i hold onto the edge of this curtain
dusty lace and faded white (or is that my hair)

and smile at nothing but birds and sunshine

because it isn’t
silence that haunts you

and to turn away is the same as standing still,
moving forward is no different than sleeping well
beneath a smoky sky filled with endless flight

stars in reverse

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

.

because every girl loves a bad boy

and the river she watched from her window

never quite made it

to the sea of whiskey

and just once in her life

she wanted to float

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

every day starts the same
a twenty seven step shuffle
to the stove and a kettle
that will whistle me awake
before i burn the house down
and you can count my silence
in teabags and empty spoons
adding up the dreams i try to bury
before i pull my heart
from one last cup
and drag light into corners
with this pencil

.

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