Category: Uncategorized

Lay me down and easy
And let me down slowly
Forgive me for being weak
May you help not to hurt too many stead
I beg that you give them my best memories And none
of the bad

Shield them from my transgression Give me solace in
your embrace Leave me not in disgrace
May you not think me stupid

I was very wounded
Let me see you in heaven

I’ll be dead soon I reckon

Your last case of Diet Coke will
never be opened, you lose specifics of who I am.
Your last birthday gift to me, the words
I know you love me.

Gregorian chants in the background
facts fall away, organs
stop working, history between us
ceases to be events, just elongated
moments sitting together in late
summer sun, warming us
to the inevitable transition.

Your mind a patchwork of past memories
working in a newspaper office, childhood Iowa green pastures
I follow the trail as long as possible, but
know I will watch you, my mother, journey
as I stay behind. Until that moment arrives,
I feed you popsicles when you forget how.

There’s always something on the jaded skies
That thumped the wavy spiral of my balloons
And that is death.
When we shut our lenses behind curtains
And our breath stiffened, our patches rigid
Our lips are stiff, and we can’t smell or touch
That which makes us feel like a living flower.
Ah! The dark oceans cleared when my tower kissed the soil.
He was my breath, always spitting white morsels
Into the potholes of my acidic well.
But he had been suffering from the sharp claws of tumours.
His bark has grown lean, crystal balls sunken,
A chubby self grown into a flabby tassel.
I was always at his four feet boxes
Cuddling the hairy strands of his palms.
On August 25th, 1998, however, the blue skies
Turned into a mirage of dark dust
When he muttered and breathe his last air.
A misty sweat drained through my spines
Flashes of thunderbolts ravaged my circles
Is this how bats and spiders lay on their graves
Fed upon by ravaging vultures?
Ikhenoba,
I guess so.
As I stood at the mound of his dune,
My balloons burst into photons of dust
Knowing that the black sickled Hades has poached,
The encrusted diamonds of my soul.

I always referred to Steve as the guy on the couch, but Steve was my mom’s friend, enabler & celestial companion.

After she passed, he claimed the living room as his own

In the center of this cosmic dust covered space station was his rocking chair that when reclined, shot him into a vortex vacuum of Judge Judy & Jerry Springer.

Suspended in an ozone layer of ciggy dust clouds, he snuggled my mom’s blind inbred pug as they both snored into the radiant depths of this astral abyss.

He only left this Star-studded dwelling to stand in front of the fridge, hairy belly out n boxers drinking milk out of the container Ohhh so Good…

Light years ago, he was a Love Canal factory worker & motorcycle drifter that pretended to know how to fix cars

It wasn’t until Steve got brain cancer that I began to understand what his birth in the crab constellation really meant. Like mercury, life is fluid & ever changing & poisonous to the touch

When we signed his DNR all he had was a meteor for a mind & all we had was his ashes

Ethereal waves shoot him into the layered darkness of forgotten Steves

I just came home at 4:47 pm
My head was hurting
The kitchen was a big mess
Food that has been left out
Just for couple hours
Looked like it has been out
for a couple of days
My head was pounding as if I got knocked out in the ring just like a boxer
My eyes were red from all the crying I did
Even though I wanted to cry more
All my tears got wasted
Just like a water fountain that has stopped working
I remember his smile that stretched for miles
That will make a thousand of people smile
Feeling a lingering sense of regret
Still appearing like a shadow
that never fades
That day was different
But all I did was pray
he’s in heaven

You go there each year holding flowers
To clean the gravestone with love,
Caressing his photo with shaky fingers,
And lean to kiss him one more time.

You talk about him every day,
Keep his portraits on your nightstand,
Your eyes watering even after fifty years,
Reviving the story of your fears and love.

You wear your ring on your left hand,
And his one always around your neck,
Like a comforting weight that reminds you
Of the short time you had in the same world.

On lonely summer evenings
when she cannot stand to be
there are three owls who watch my
mother from high up in a tree.

Three small owls like gray thumbs
perched, eyes round as silver plates
they hold until the light is gone
and watch her smoking cigarettes.

Three beings gazing far into the dark
as though prepared to swoop and dive
to hunt the spreading bruise of grass
and then return into the sky.

Suppose they know that she is tired
of sleeping sick throughout the day
they know she locks the bedroom door
and will not listen to her name.

Her pale athenaic statuettes
of bodied smoke and hidden leaves
sit mute and solomonic
almost too still to believe.

Three small owls watching her
depressed headaches, her spirit hands
that rise to catch her falling face
as softly as the locusts land.

His mother taught him
when punched – punch, to raise
not a victim, but a response
He’s such a good student
the first step could be skipped

His friend taught him
at sixteen, to tie his shoes
that had mimicked the bow, the knot
but unravelled not at a tug, but a touch
gentle as his jokes
about parents, teachers, strangers in trucks
their fists, their rulers, their school rides

He claimed not to know how he learnt
to sleep open-eyed show a sliver of whites never wide-eyed
enough for clear sight.
But as not a fool, but a child
he jumped from the third-floor balcony for fun
for days not knowing
the arm was broken
for years not knowing
someone should have noticed

He taught himself
to think – right in front – of me:
in the hallway to the kitchen, not moving
with the seconds, a beginner
speaking not with curiosity, but with apprehension:
Would you like a glass too?
Stepping into water I had never thirsted for more.

He taught me
how little one needs
to know to keep someone
beautiful, how his hand curled in
my white-knuckle grip, marking my tongue
when he moved northwest
giving not a warning, but a vow
to share not a word, but a place
with the mother, the truckers, the friends

He said he had learnt
some fucked up love
so I guess his warmth to me
was a lack thereof.

No matter where I live, It follows;
The Ghost of His extant soul.
I have moved so many times,
lived so many lives,
but I can never seem to
bury Him (or the hatchet).

Like the beat up box of old formal plates
thrown into the back of a truck,
He always comes with to the next iteration.

But when they inevitably break,
no good luck is offered,
and they are cast aside as we once were
(does that make us broken too?)

I liked those plates;
they had a nice gold rim.
Not practical for everyday use,
but rarely brought out
even when company came.
(Much like His smile.)
Once displayed in the high cabinet,
Now lay forgotten at the bottom of a landfill,
somewhere in the Midwest

I think the plates were His wife’s;
passed down along with the Melancholy.
A bitter side dish.

I’d like to believe She bought them to bring the Sun inside,
And that she bequeathed them to Him
to dispel the clouds behind His eyes.
But the clouds only got darker,
and We were all caught in the torrential downpour.

Is that why His face is so blurred in my mind?
Why the good memories are so hazy?
Did the rain-flood wash Him away?
Did He try to join Her in an early, watery grave?

who decides when we are truly dead?

You wish me happy birthday each year,

But it only began three candles ago.
Each year I blow them out,
and wish that I knew how to respond.

I know in my bones that You’re trying
Though it doesn’t feel fair, doesn’t feel true
But for me this reconciliation must be fair,
because this is a war of love.
Is it a love of war for You instead?

If so, when should I raise the white flag?
Give You my pride as a consolation prize?
What were we fighting for, all this time?
(I don’t even know how it began)
will You help me end it?
Or will You turn Your back once more?

I call for an armistice instead.
I grab a shovel, and start digging:
“thank you. i miss you, too.”

do I mean it?
God alone knows.
(though He too, is a Benedict Arnold)
how do we know when it is truly over?

When We see Hyades in the sky.

I’ll make my last wishes and
meet You where the roots of the (family) tree grip tight,
where Our transgressions are washed away,
where We are all equal as fungal fodder.
And I will have finally found my forever home,
will pack my bags and move no more.
We’ll sit side-by-side on the porch-swing,
looking out over the freshly planted Poppies,
and We’ll watch the Sun rise, together.

Forget a jury of my peers,
I’d rather we planned for a
handful of peers—six or so—
to carry my coffin to the grave.

My grandfather could have gathered
a team of old woodsmen, children
of the Depression, their horses
tied up at the rail, big men
who talk slow and mean every word.
Eyeing the stand of timber at cemetery’s
edge, talking of boardfeet. A place
to bring in a sawmill. Men who knew
how to put an edge to a crosscut and
how to rig a spar tree. Dip some snoose.
Caulk boots so no one slips carrying the box.

My father could have counted on his
dairyman neighbors—Bud, Joe, Norbert
and Jim. The service held between milkings.
Sunburnt men talking corn this high,
hands in pockets in their dress clothes.
Tractor deaf and carrying the coffin,
swaying like cattle, single file.

For me I demand a scrum of poets,
easily found, I’m sure. I’ll provide
the drink as they flit and bother,
each composing a sonnet, a requiem.
Oh, dear death, ink like tears as
another book is compiled, each
lamentation treasured and sung.
Pity no one buys the volume,
despite rich imagery, slant rhyme,
semicolons galore. Argue what verse
is to be chiseled in my stone.
I don’t care.
I know I’ll never get planted, ever,
as a herd of poets, wailing and wan,
can never be coaxed to order.
Not made to work together, no,
not even for one of their kind.