The words house themselves within me,
I am not the words.
If they come
I remain whole. If they do not come
I remain
whole.
I want to be an art critic.
I want to have such a glorious
eye piece, that the thinnest strokes of oils and acrylics
could shine off my lens into your face
when you address me as “madam”
and I grace you with my gaze.
Hold hands with me.
My feet won’t point in the direction
I will them to, they’re on a loop
and my mind is getting dizzy.
Hold hands with me.
I’ve been watching your stride.
Your clean-limbed foot swing
mesmerizes me. How can you keep
so steady?
Please hold hands with me.
Slow down.
Whoa,
slow down.
There is a way to do this.
A way to do it all
without feeling pieces of shrapnel
carving cave lines into the ear bones.
A way to do it all
and feel electricity in the veins,
singular purpose so singular, elephants in the foothills.
That crash could’ve been
an ancient computer tossed from the twentieth floor,
the Hewlett-Packard bricks in vintage disarray,
the collection of hipster hues in the hallway closet.
It was that loud!
The raised voices which follow make sense,
as if a strong-armed woman in her own right rose up to her man
and chucked his grandfather clutter out
that living room window, smashing glass after glass
rainbow-droplets squalling like the cats and dogs
that stalk the dumpsters.
Someone is shouting something and you can almost hear
the foot-stomping, I swear it’s that loud;
don’t they know I live in the apartment building
next to the one
that’s catty-corner from that hullabaloo?
The forest is quiet,
refreshing in silence, solitude lingers
amongst shaded grass. A young rabbit sniffs
at the bubbling creek and takes her chance
on the muddy shore. In the echoing sunlight
the rabbit sips and is remarkably, brilliantly,
a rabbit.
Come here, baby,
show me where you like to put your head.
For a few minutes, just take a deep breath.
One after another
we’ll find that time becomes as endless
as spots on stripes
with your head against mine.
High on a plump cloud she surveys
the red earth beneath her. There are little inlets
here & there, messages of irrigation, she notes
the sweeping river, the dots of farmhouses, the field borders &
she shakes her head
to shepherd away the dips of a friendly cloud.
Her wooden pencil, already discomposed with teeth marks,
scribbles sharp against the clipboard.
Fifteen years from now, a young stag
will look over his tawny shoulder to his mother,
standing pristine in the shadowy meadow,
and wonder to his primitive brain
why it is he feels as he does.
The mottled sunlight shall cast her still and lithe
and his own body will look mighty and strong.
The things that woman can do
with a trumpet—
they say teach a man to fish
but I say, give a girl a trumpet!
She’ll call forth the inside animal to
roar against the trees
and slash long marks in the careful lawn.
Roar!
she trumpets, go forth and roar!
The open air hears you and
raises,
the wind will gust that roar
to the heavens and you’ve
nothing to fear—
Dusty was the mindset I set before me
my jaw so tight my temples blossomed like
children splashing in puddles, my world went
westward, huddled in southernlys I thought
I’d grow old like this, I thought
I’d shrink so little I’d become
the dust in mind —
But the car door opened wide and, with a haze of warmth,
you appeared;
heart clench, baby.
The wind lifts and gusts,
a squeaky whine of bicycle tire on hot asphalt,
she rides the air with bits of dust and street debris
and the cyclist sweats the streets to puddles.
Her lithe body is frosted and at float
his lean frame bends like the letter P
she buds so nearly at the ends
his rusted fingers grip roughened handlebars.
