that's mrs. mediocrity to you

outrage is the new black
and offended is breathing
down freedom’s neck

swimming in a sea of authentic
epic
mindfulness

and the people that rule us
are confident in anarchy
or ambivalent on war
or curiously human

and the sun keeps shining
insecure and self-conscious
thinking we expect
something more like moon’s mystery
or standing still
or tenderness

when all we really want
is (r)evolution

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A poem a day for 30 days, in honor of National Poetry Month: Day 10
I’m participating in NaPoWriMo, and the Writer’s Digest Poem a Day Challenge

Today’s theme is PAD’s pick an emotion.

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talisman of time
unbreakable memory
society’s weapon

you can always
refuse to choose but
you will be followed

return to the mountain
live with rubble
carve your freedom

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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.

Today’s theme from PAD is three (fill in the blank)

.

or

forever

as long as you

never

touch

.

.

.

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Alice holds a doll in tired hands. I want
to smile each time I walk past,
say hello,
but tears always well and my mouth
turns down with the pain
of perpetual forecast.

“This feels like prison,”
someone whispers, and I
don’t think it was me but
old Joe’s eyes dart straight up to mine
and hold me with watery challenge,
though neither one of us knows
who spoke.

I don’t want to walk this gauntlet
disguised as hallway or write
these words
pretending to be poetry,
but here I am
scooting by with my purple sharpie
concealed in one hand.

Hope sits in my purse
next to car keys and kleenex and
crumpled receipts,
though I’ve paid for nothing
and everyone here
will be sure to testify.

Proof.

Of life and legs
moving,
always moving,

away

away

away

to places already been
and never seen.

Away.

.

.

.

i wanted to tell you a story
but all these words
cracked open and bled off the page
all viscous and slippery
and dark with age

i wanted to hold them in the cup
of my oddly-marked palm,
or i wanted to hold you and stand
before that blank cracked distorted mirror
and i’ve forgotten

i wanted to give you something
called everything
but that box always comes up empty
no matter how many times i trap-wrap
and rosette with sincerity

i wanted to line your heart
with soft mirage memories of joy
but there was wool, only wool
all sharp and dry and scratchy
rubbing permanence raw

again

and again

and the ceiling

the reflection

of holy

.

.

.

She bent down to pick the cat up and tweaked her back again. Another reminder of age, or humanity, or carelessness. She’d never quite mastered the art of physicality, ever clumsy, always stumbling.

Bumbling through life.

Even so, her mind was always dancing, one minute tango and the next ballet, one day a waltz and at night, samba. But it all looked like shuffling to the world outside her body, and she heard the sky’s mocking whispers, even as she pretended ignorance.

Her mom had told her once she was a diamond in the rough, and she’d snorted at that one. She knew what rocks looked like, and what they felt like, too, hitting her body as she cowered in the schoolyard.

Trapped.

That’s the way she’d felt her whole life, and she laughed at the word as she stood at the counter, dishing cat food onto plates from gnarled fingers as she held herself steady on crooked hips. Her mind, flying free, knew it wasn’t true, but even so, her body went still for a moment, long enough to feel the cold seeping up through the floorboards, long enough to see her silhouette blocked out on the back wall, long enough to view the hole that bloomed in the center of her chest.

She talked to her shadow that morning. Sang to it, really. Songs about love and disappointment and remembering. She stood still as the sun shone through the window, through her body, through her music.

the grey cat melted
and stretched in light’s warm puddle
spreading claws and hours

In time.

and we bask in the silence of solitude

birds and branches

sky and ice

that gate that holds nothing

in

.

.

.

.

i search for beauty in the bones of every skeleton

architecture is the art of building frames

i thought i was a writer once, then i became human

the sky is a cage built for starlings

i am the ghost of my grandmother, re-contrived

.

all the leaves have fallen now and the wind has moved on

we stand naked in the weak winter sunshine,

refusing the invitation to bend

.

.

.

.

I stand on these acres of history, long fallow fields of tears forgotten and brittle reminders of years blown by, remembering how once we grew green shoots of conflict and the next spring plowed them under, making food for the forest of memory we drive through with broken blade, always turning earth, always searching for what we’ve buried. But the worm always works alone, adding air and rich casting to this hard-baked, clay-caked soil, choked with rock and seed and ancient bone. This is my home,  this place where dinner is served at noon and the sky is always hungry. I pose on one foot in the shade of a tree that neither of us ever mentions, a scarecrow of deliverance for the red cardinal who lands on my shoulder and feeds me the coldest hour. Our nests have become identical, and you laugh as you toss broken frame and bent missive in a fit of tidy redemption. There are no berries here, no reward for existing. There is only wind and the silence of everything, whistle warning us through each night.

my skin crackles with
growth and tick tocking question
unanswered roots entwine

.

.

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Joining in over at dVersePoets for Haibun Monday.

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i just want to say that i see you

pouring love onto
the sidewalk
doing your best
every day
to fill in all the cracks

i see you standing there
alone and afraid
and giving
and giving
and giving

burning bright
not just at both ends
but in a circle you’ve drawn
all around us
keeping the darkness at bay

you’ve outrun the odds
and the lot of us
beaten strife down
with the soles of two feet
always moving

taking you places
you’d rather run through
valleys of burden
and pits
of responsibility

and i want
to carry your heart
to the top of the mountain
feed you sun and
silent breezes

wash your blisters and build you
a sky-high fire
to throw enough light
for you to find
your own reflection

i just want to say that i see you

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for nana

.

.

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Today I am hosting Poetics over at dVerse Poets
with a prompt to write a poem telling someone you love all the things
you want to tell them, now, before it’s too late.