that's mrs. mediocrity to you

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.

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Folding grey in upon itself and shouting color back into the world.

I am listening for grace and finding bits and shards scattered in puddles of mud and the still deep pockets of winter’s coat.

Moving through hard things and surviving them.

Watching lines of geese form arrows of forgiveness. Connecting the dots, but lightly, in pencil, in case I want to start over. Drawing my way through a book named 2016.

Yesterday pretended to be summer and I spent the day with dirty hands and a warm, warm sun, as the mockingbird reinvented his own story. He tells me everything and I laugh in all the right places, knowing we need each other—performer and audience, though I’m never quite sure which is which.

I feel myself growing. Older and lighter, wiser and taller. Heavy-hearted and ever-surprised.

I think about compassion. I think about flowers. I think about endings and beginnings, comings and goings, cycles and seasons.

I think about flight and freedom. I think about the day when both become impossible.

Geese fill the air with a frenzied, raucous melody. Fighting for space and survival. Smoothing ruffled feathers and thinking about dinner, or gravity, or both.

The horizon is always an illusion, marking time on a map filled with moments.

I find my way with blind fingers and broken pencils.

I find a feather in the corner of redemption, and think how floating and falling are simply different speeds to the same destination.

I find benediction.

Here.

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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

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watching shadows dance

in a cinnamon shaped room

recording silence

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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.

she walked to the end of a drive half frozen
and stood beneath the tallest tree

a single crow announced her presence
in a tone of calm resentment

and the smile on her face grew wider
than the patchwork quilt of magic

wrapped around
one fragile

shoulder

in the pine
the mockingbird whistled

cat-call face-small arbitration
filling the air between them

earth moved by tender greeting
recognition repetition new rendition

as the wind attempted to whisper-woo
a smear of color from the bone

of each white cheek

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Join us over at dVerse Poets where we are honoring the passing of Harper Lee
with a prompt to write a narrative poem.

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I spend hours each day doing nothing but thinking of things I should be doing. Because February is a time-thief and I forgot, yet again, to lock those oh-so-precious hours away somewhere safe. I forgot because February is also a memory-thief, and a whine-maker.

And my body refuses to do anything but semi-hibernate.

My mind burrows deeper into the cocoon of warmth, refusing to venture out unless there’s sun. Unfortunately, February and the sun are barely acquainted, even though I am forever inviting them to come for tea, sit at the table, get to know each other better. I even make cookies. But somehow wires always get crossed and they show up separately, alone, too late or too early, and me, my tea, and the table watch snow fall and birds struggle and ice form. And, of course, it’s all beautiful, because otherwise, how could we survive?

By now you can tell I have nothing to say, really. Words spin through my mind in a storm of tease, and mostly, I ignore them. I have things to do, or rather, things to think about doing. I cook and eat, sleep and read, work and build fires. I leave my house more often than I used to, because there are people I love to help care for. I do that at least. Care.

It’s Leap Year. I wonder how it is that we couldn’t somehow manage to add that extra day into June, or October? Still, an extra 24 hours is always something to celebrate. Also, it will be the last day of February, so there’s that.

Also, there’s politics. Everywhere I turn, there’s politics. I have so much to say that I just keep quiet. It’s a parade (charade?) I can’t look away from. Mother Nature seems so tame in comparison.

And look, the sun is shining. Through super-cold, frostbite-inducing, blue-as-ice air.

I’d better go enjoy it while I can.

Perhaps my face will freeze in a smile, or at least something that resembles one.

I wouldn’t want to frighten the lion.

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winter rides through

on a white

white
horse

promising mud and wet

ever afters

i stand in the rain
and the cold

runs rivulets

down the hollowed out
hollow
of my back

arching
with forgotten
electricity

as i grow a mask
(transparent carapace)

made from sky and hours
and the fallen echo
sound

of grey hooves

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.

in a wedding dress frayed

by the rust of time and

the things

you could never give up

.

i offer you

a window

an ear

this year

but i know you want

cake

and the taste of

love’s sugar

.

and your body

keeps telling

your story

betraying your hunger

with the constant motion

of silent

antagonized

lips

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the way a tree holds up time for everyone to see

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i ran on the side of the road to a place i can’t get back to

a stranger asked if i was lost

and i wondered how he knew

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peace is always an illusion when the default is chaos

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the red-winged blackbird wears his heart on his sleeve

and i follow his lead

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regret is the stepping stone of forward

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crooked is the path that gets you there

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