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Writing
A sampling of my writing.
Verses swirl in my head. What an inspiration: no matter that its a strange
engine, shaking out the dust from my thick heart. I search the world web over,
needing rustoleum for my old tools: forms and meters, dictionaries and
even Roget's. Can I pull off a double acrostic? I don't know if even at my
zenith (am I approaching apogee or perigee?) that I could find two
unique words that end in "v." I rummage around, a packrat for words.
Earn my keep doing this? It'd become a job. I know I do this for the
love of words themselves and the dolphin-leap of inspired verbal
acrobatics -- I do it to amuse myself and others. Give me a seed: a
neat, tidy, unlikely packet, and I'll run with it. Remember how
bonkers I get if I have a word stuck? I use it every way possible to
exhaust the word, wear it out, use it up for a time, to get it out of my head.
Allegory and metonymy aren't my strong suits, nor is iambic, in any meter;
vers libre, free verse, is best for gently penning my tumbling thoughts.
Early on, I trusted you with my writing, my words the guide to the labyrinth: a
ravel through the maze of me, in a way. You find me, time and again, you
choose to follow me into me; I'm in awe at the thought, for I do still pay
heed to the wisest words I know: love must be free to choose where it goes.
Erato would laugh to see me fumble, the familiar tools strange to my hands, so
easily softened from lack of use. I forge ahead, determined to find forms and
strangeness equal to the seed, a fair matching, as it were. A blister, a callus: I'm
earning my way back into the garden of possibilities. Make way for the furrow.
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Sharpen the Plough
Vegetables, fruits, flowers: the lush promise of bounty on the cover of the packets. No
easy feat to charm me with the throbbing picture: the unlikely seed picked me first. I've
nearly prepared the bed: after sand and peat moss - a corduroy coverlet of furrows,
even and dark. The sprouts come, as do weedlets. I weed with an unnerving
zeal; sometimes I fear that in my passion to eliminate the choking arrivistes, that I will
uproot the tender seedlings I seek to propagate. Its not easy telling them apart at that
early stage. Is this the strangling morning glory, the crowding cowslip, the jealous
lashing thistle? I guess, and hope for the best result. My tender shoots struggle to
answer the sun's calling and the rain's falling; through dirt and clay that I've leavened and
nurtured (and sometimes I've let the lot lie fallow for a time, back-building the soil). I'm
blistering myself on once-familiar tools, insistent calluses return to protect my yielding
eager hands. Once started, I seem to itch to feel the dirt, the sweet crumble under my
avid hands and wriggling toes. I can't help but be barefoot; a slow walk in this garden
verifies: warm enough for planting; wet enough to germ; loose enough to sprout. How
else to tell, but by touch? It was a dry season that had me leave the plot untended and
rife with vines and pokeberries. I'd go past and tug at a creeper, remembering previous
colorful glory gardens. Now I watch these quickening seeds turn into a soft green
haze of sprouts, furring over the ground. I run my hand over them to feel the sap and
energy in them, a spring epiphany in each shoot. All this from a hard kernel of a seed,
engendered in a fertile, ready bed. I gather my sweat-salty tools to rinse them off at the
spigot, along with my muddy feet. The garden had been left fallow long enough, it was time.
Even planting the tools would have brought me a crop of steel beans and wooden melons.
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Planting & Weeding
Dial tone.
I swear it leaves
a sweeter ache
than before you called.
Late-night
conversations,
two hearts pressed
against phones
200 miles apart,
some sour copper
intimacy to it.
Do you remember,
you ask me about 4 years ago
bright moments together;
do you remember,
you ask again,
wanting to know if it was
as important to me
as it was to you.
Do you remember
you ask, wanting to know
if I would do it again,
throw over everything in my life
to spend time with you.
A luminous dinner,
everything sparkled, even me.
I felt lit from within --
you opened doors and twinkled at me;
the crows' feet stamping
at the edge of your eyes.
The next night out, with too much beer,
you called a cab and I remember
the brightly colored lights of Old Town:
impressionist-myopic-drunk blur.
I felt the wind on my face
and was happy
just to be with you.
Do I remember?
I remember:
the restaurants and the bars;
wandering flea markets and estate sales;
and visiting grungy seafood shops for the
best deal on crab cakes.
4 years ago, and
I'm still having to cruise on
memories of you.
There are times when I wish
I didn't remember
how wonderful
it was.
If I could forget a little of it,
if I could take the
iridescent sheen
of manic joy
in the face of despair
and fold it up
for another time,
I could almost bear
the going-without.
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Toll Call
You pour yourself into me
telling me tales, telling me you.
The first thing
you ever gave
me was the gift of you.
I've heard you rage and
weep, laugh and
sigh;
a whole life on the phone --
oh, what ma bell would say
about the grave joys and
exultant griefs?
I hear you sip
from a glass,
hear you rummage in the freezer
for ice, and hear you exhale.
A smoky sigh, and you're pulled down
and back in time,
telling me stories of you,
a you I never met.
Do you celebrate
or do you drown sorrows --
or is it just a night
for whiskey and ice
and a long-distance kiss
goodnight?
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Toll Call II
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