Author: poetryfest

Dear gerald ford i love you forever and your wife too and there’s a lot of people who die everyday and i’m sad about it and i am going to think about you and visit your presidential library and there’s a lot of presidential libraries too and i will visit all of them too and i going to visit your grave too and i will visit exhibits too and i am going to deliver a speech too to every autism event too and i have autism and im i hope i can meet you when i die and i will be buried not next to you but in seal cove next to my mom and dad and my brother coby too.

I. The poem if you’d left after skating

I flailed at you in skate tag.
How perfect the chase, you
always faster, me always
more passionate,
the ice way too thin at the edges and
bumpy at places—cracking in places.

Fun, fun, fun: pun play as sharp as
the scraping skate blades.
You witnessed your itness—
our breath full and necessary and cheeks red,
bodies warm in the cold,
your smile, your smile,
the inevitable love arising again as my thighs worked,
the sky, white-grey as it prepared to snow,
big and soft enough to hold the love,
the trees around the pond
silent witnesses.

The ice right where I needed it after I hurled myself at
your ever-evasive self and you somehow didn’t move,
and my cheek smashed into your shoulder.
I wanted nothing but what was there:
laughter, love, ice, breath, health, warmth,
you, you, you.

You’re it.

II. The poem if you had left after the meal

Dharma buddy, I see a pattern.
You attack any new teacher’s description of the dharma
with your own. Sometimes it melts down to nothing:
you glimpse emptiness, I see the smile that comes
from that: a smile of ease and satisfaction:
your whole face opens.
Sometimes, your brow twists as your mind binds
thoughts around each other. Sometimes your bullshit detector
gets stuck on like one of those highly sensitive smoke alarms
that need to be moved farther from the kitchen.
Today, in the living room, I loved again
watching you as we conversed
dualism and nondualism,
trying to remember and know one
from the state of the other.

As we often do, we took sides.
We read to each other from
Thich Nhat Hanh’s Teachings on Love.
How I love your mind, your spirit, how I love being your mirror,
to show you what you can’t see of yourself when you’re just being
oppositional, like the mirror shows its right hand on your left side,
and any decent friend would hold up her right hand and call it left,
to leave you less confused. We mimed, we talked,
and meanwhile fire burned hidden in the woodstove,
warmed us.

You love to try to figure things out, my friend,
that the mind is inherently incapable of understanding.
And yet, you say, from here, there are the laws of physics.
From here, I say, astrophysicists have spied through scopes
so far back in time that they found an era,
just after the Big Bang, when the laws of physics
did not exist.

Every once in a while, one of us would get up
and peek in the stove,
an eye on the fire.

III. If you had left before the foot massage

My love, I said, please don’t drive yet.
The snow is wet on the road,
and the partiers are starting to party.

Yes, you said, but it’s only going to get worse.

IV. Up until I said please don’t leave me now

You were as beautiful in the twilight
as the giant snowflakes behind you through the window,
floating, hovering, surreally suspended in thick thin air.
It was too lovely to turn on the lights, in a room
with windows in four directions, a space within space
warm inside cold, dark within light.
I lit a candle so I could keep peeking
into your eyes, careful not to stare too long,
one eye on the fire.

You were smiling more. I peeled your socks off, massaged
them with lotion, hands, elbows—going slowly so as to not
beg the questions—you often are happy with just a massage.
Hands, elbows, eyes, listening to your voice,
your laugh as always spinal in me, rippling.
I pulled your feet, pushed them, bent your knee
and leaned in, Thai style, my weight towards your heart,
stretching your legs and back, our happy bellies…
Now what?

Why or why not?
I can’t help loving you, you know that, the only question is
what kind of love. Is it always mixed, the unconditional
with the confusion of desire, the errors of attachment?

No.
I returned to my practice, to my breath,
pacing passion by letting it rise and pass again and again,
the stove closed down tightly
though I let in enough air to keep the fire alive,
for a slow, full burn. Steady love beams like radiant heat.

Then you let us kiss.

And once again, we are skating on thin ice.
This is where you usually say goodbye.

But you took me by hand
and led me to bed.

Remembering literally takes my breath away: a big “huh”
spoken on the in-breath and gone.
I feel my womb contract
and the energy hidden there flies up through my core
to my way-too-open heart;

the energy skids the big screechy shush of a sideways skate blade,
gets lost in the trying to let go, gets stuck around the periphery
of my chest, under the collarbones, in the remote corners
of the heart itself.

My love and my passion at odds,
because as soon as you are inside me
you want to stop. I want to honor you but I hear your mind
and spirit and body telling me different things. Passion wins,
I grasp your hipbones.

But you cannot stay.

V. The poem if you’d left without talking it out

I need you to finish pleasuring me. To ask evokes your shame
but your hurt comes out as hurtfulness and I
succumb to that as well.
I don’t realize this at the time.
I allow you to shame me, and not until your side
of the bed grows bone cold will my gut say:
I will not be shamed.
Heart adds: nor will I shame.

VI. What really happened

I was coming up to a peak of passion, had let go the guard,
flown open the woodstove doors,
it was beginning to roar and then,
blocked at the flue,
smoke filled the house,
smudging us with anger, aversion,
and you asked me
to stop feeling pain, desire.
I couldn’t but stopped asking for more.
Then you asked: please honor
that I don’t want sex like you want sex.
Of course your no trumps my yes.
Besides, I want yes-I-said-yes-I-will-Yes abandonment.
You want to teach me to accept No.

The golden rule does not always apply:
true love is not giving what you want to receive
nor what you have handy to give, but what the other needs.
You see this and ask me for what you really want:
for me not to want to change you.

So out with the old. The old dream of healing,
that I could fall back in love a third time (or is it seventh
or eighth by now? Depends on how you count fires:
if there were still enough coals to start new kindling,
was that new? or maybe it doesn’t count if you banked the coals).
Here I am, water, water,

stirring the hissing ashes.

Yet I refuse to starve the love its air.
That would mean stopping breathing.
Instead, I will I tease out sex-passion from love,
conditional from un-,
truth from attachment,
aversion from letting
go.

VII. Sleep’s koan

No shame,
No blame,
Just change.

VIII. If you had stayed for breakfast

I wake up, recalling your sweat from the night before,
how fine it was, all over you,
how you opened the window, and let the cold
pour all over you, how I’d had to climb
under the covers. I tiptoe past the room
where you slept, see your mouth open,
vulnerable, trusting, keep walking, open the stove, peek in.
Tiny redness peeks back out of the ash-dusted coals.
Snow dusts the trees (still silent),
the fields, the cars, the road.
Pink and blue streak the sky, and where night’s wind
already blew off the dusting,
the icy crust on the field shines lavender.
I dust snow off wood, carry it in,
build a new fire. It doesn’t need a match.

At breakfast you are smiling again. You are forgiving,
I am forgiving, but we still have
no clue how to love each other well.

I imagine this poem from bed.
Pull the covers to my neck,
too cold to build a new fire.
I hurt like a 17-year-old girl in a 47-year-old body:
losing the same lover again.
I sob my letting go, fully, for good
this time, for real. Out with the old.

IX. If you’d come to the woods for the ritual…

…it would have been very different.
Maybe you would have liked to see
my soul-sister smudge me,
pray for me to let go of the old attachment
to failed love and make room for the new.
Maybe you would have had something else
to say to the goddess, who we invited
to clear our spirits and bring us
new loves and skillful means.

You might have been shocked to see
when the smoke touched me and
my sister’s words made it through my mind and through my body
to what had lain asleep in my solar plexus,
how it looked like an orgasm. How I made a similar
sound. How the energy burned up my feet from the snow
and rattled out the crown of my head, how I got it.

I think that was a yes.

X. Another kind of yes

I smudged my sister in the new light of the open sky
above the old maple, which had died and fallen
almost all the way to the ground.
It was easy to pray for her, golden-rule easy,
to wish her what I wished: a new lover, as soon as she is ready,
one who’d love her well and deeply;
that she will know she deserves this,
as she is so loving and giving and ripe;
that spirit fill her: fresh, full, nourishing, clear.

Over by the oldest living maple, where a half-frozen vernal pool
covered the living green of a hardy violet, and a spider
walked across the water, a miracle,
we prayed for all earth:
Clean air, clear water, and plenty of healthy food for all.

I would have loved to wave the lavender and white sage
into your whitening, wild hair,
with the snow on the maple bark behind you.
How the tree would have framed you,
held you in love as it did us.
How the bits of snow alighting from the canopy above
would have moistened your cheek as they melted, cool tears:
how I would have loved you.

But would you have loved the new prayer that keeps singing?
Or would you have imagined we kept the loss at bay, outside
the circle of our snow-lit hope?

Could we have been as open to spirit as we were without you?

And would you have let the goddess shake you free,
would you let her touch you like you had, the night before,
let my fingers at your nape
awaken your spine?

You’re it.

The day is dark and dreary,
The wind moans on and on as thunder booms with fury,
It rains and rains with no sign of halting,
It seems to me like the world is stopping,
As nature slowly sheds its tears
For the past when the world was not so drear

I too, long for the days of the past,
When the world shone and the people laughed,
But alas, my aspirations wash down the windowpane,
Carried along the never-ending current of rain

Enough! My heart must cease its mourning,
For behind the dark clouds, the sun is dawning
The sun will always be in the sky,
And with it, our resolve and ambitions flying high

So in every life, some rain must pour,
Or what would life be worth living for?

Do you remember this Rooftop?
when we would sit
right here
on this ledge watching
the world going
‘round the circle below?

Do you remember
playing that card game?
when you threw
the cards off the roof
in anger? as if I
were the one cheating?
Oh! The irony!
*snicker*
we call this

foreshadowing

in my discipline.

Do you remember
when I realized
the window to
that little vacant rooftop
apartment
had been unlocked the whole time?

I remember.

Do you remember?

that one night
in that little rooftop apartment
it was cold and you were
straddling my trembles
in the bed
of that little apartment?
to warm up you
buried your head
into my chest and said
“Cozy! Cozy! Cozy!”
and I’d never felt
more loved.

Do you remember that?

I do.

Right now, I am here
on this Rooftop looking
through the locked window
of that little rooftop apartment

I see two little ghosts playing
with each other

I see me
I see you

I see what was

I see what could’ve.

I smile.

I’m leaving this Rooftop.

Two weeks before you died-
You were joking, laughing, and seemed alright.
I thought you would be fine.

We talked and joked and watched the skyline-
From your hospital bed at half-light
Two weeks before you died.

As the day wound down, I saw no sign-
And when we finally said goodbye-
I thought you would be fine.

When we left, it seemed to be benign,
I knew you would put up a fight
Two weeks before you died.

I believed it wasn’t your time
Oh, how I wish I knew your plight,
I thought you would be fine.

I got a text on the phone of mine-
That it would be your last day and night;
Two weeks before you died-
I thought you would be fine.

Death comes swift,
Death takes fast;
At your doorstep,
Death doesn’t knock.

Instead,
it seeps through the cracks and in the windows left ajar.
it bleeds into the words of those around us.
it keeps over our loved ones when they take their last breath—

Death is a friend,
Death is an ally;
At your side,

Death doesn’t wait.

But,
it sings in a chorus of whispers.
it showers those hurting with eternal mercy.
it strengthens those in grief.

Death doesn’t knock.
Death walks in.

Mrs Tom to Ground Control
Mrs Tom to Ground Control
He’s left his packed lunch on the draining board

Mrs Tom to Ground Control
I was watching Countdown when you rang
What’s our position if you don’t bring him back?

J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, B, Alpha Bets off

This is Mrs Tom to Ground Control
I’ve had the papers on the phone
They seem to think he’s been wearing my blouses
Have you reminded him it’s time to take his capsule

This is Mrs Tom again, to Ground Control
Reporters at the door
No weight to their peculiar accusations
What do you mean he’s stepped out of the office

Here’s me
Sitting in our parkland trailer
on top of the hill
feeling very blue
now I’m earth bound without you

I’ve thought through one hundred thousand times
words that we exchanged
and I think my instinct knows which way to go
I know you love me but do I still love you

Ground Control to Mrs Tom
Have you told him yet, that you can’t go on
Can you hear me Mrs Tom
Can you want me Mrs Tom
Can you love me Mrs Tom
Can you

Here I lie in our parkland trailer
on top of the hill
Ground Control’s here too
and there’s nothing we can’t do!

the winds of depression billow within my rib-cage,
freezing my heart and tainting my mind with cold darkness.

the frostbite around my heart eats away pieces of me, bit by bit,
making me less of a person than i was the day before.

my days are as gloomy as the ferocious rains bathing the amazon rainforest,
hoping to remove its history embedded in the drowned roots and stems.

my nights are as erratic as the waves on a stormy sea,
and in my mind, i sail on a punctured, rickety boat,

listening to whispers of voices that i now find intimidating to ignore.
there is a jury in my head debating how best to seize my presence from this hollow earth,

and i harken to them with razor chains around my wrists
and a crown of thistles atop my head.

though my heart burns with the freezing of this cold, dark depression,
i lay awake every night, staring at a wall,

wondering if my mind will ever win this battle before i am saved.

I watched as the flesh ripped.
I watched as one frantically tore through ligament and bone.
I watched as one meticulously cut through the layers of skin, peeling them back to expose pulsing veins.
I watched as the insides became exposed to the outside.
I watched as they picked the rib meat delicately off the bone.
A flimsy fleshy noodle, they held layers of me with childish delight.
Opening their monstrously wide mouths, catching the tentacle end, with the tips of their
flickering tongues.
I watched as they salivated.

One maliciously quiet, her eyes granite, fair knuckles and cherry red nails.
One viscerally drooling, unable to contain his hunger, clammy blond strands, slick.
One sitting in relief, in fat grotesque pleasure, he was gluttonous and gorged and swollen.

Silently I grieved my story.

I watched the one who I knew so well, pull the organs out.
Wild dilated glances, I saw my own thick molasses blood reflecting off blue eyes.
The blue eyes that remind me of nightfall. Not daylight blue, yet not quite the night.
Blue, but once bringing relief to the day, knowing tomorrow was near.
I watched and I said nothing.

Primal screams bulbous in my throat, caught in a razor lined maze of anxiety.
Humid air drifting its way through the crevasses of my body. Whispering to my nerve endings.
Filled with hopelessness, I turned my head.
I couldn’t watch anymore of this feast.
My body, my being, a quick relief for them.
I knew these creatures who found themselves delighting at their fleshy trough would satiate.
The feeding frenzy was ending.

I pressed my fingertips into the packed dirt.
I felt rage. I felt animalistic. I felt empty, like them.
My nails lifting off the beds. Keratin shards, breaking and cracking.
The ending was near.

Dreaded dark, constricted vision.
My breathing, more and more hollow. Gulping.
Instead of screaming and thrashing to an ambivalent God I never believed in, I gently looked at the
horizon.
How beautiful she was.
That space, where the earth meets sky.
A place never fully present, as there is always more.
The moment between the then and the now.
Horizons never change, never settle, never bargain in beauty,
my sunset.

Escaping my body, floating through the untold.
I stared at the line between unknown and the known.
And in that moment, in that shift was elastic elation.
Because what was now, will not always be.
And who I am, is not what they see.
And what I love,
will always.

I can’t cry to you.
There’s no space in the ocean
you’re drowning us in.