my cup runneth over with words; they become poetry

i have a photo album
sitting on my dresser
it is filled with love
my Lost Boys and Girls,
smiling at up at the camera
and me, as I walk away.

is this what life is?
giving love and then,
leaving, with one last smile,
a hug, muttered "I love you?"

that's okay, then.
these pictures of my TJ and Danielle,
Maria and Kevin,
all I have left of them,

it is enough to know i loved them and they smiled
back at me, my broken children, born to be left behind
and beautiful.


we humankind
we put up so many shells.
first the shell of our clothes, than our body,
our muscles, our fat,
the red of our blood, coursing through thick veins,
but all this cannot cover our center,
not our heart or our minds
but our spirits, hidden safe inside.
let down the walls.
lay yourself bare.
we do not touch skin to skin,
flesh to flesh,
but truth to truth,
love to love to love to love,
and spirit to spirit.

I'm leaving Oz.

I've been clicking my heels
Since I saw the golden fields
Fade away out the back of our van,
Frances the cat mewing beside me.

It was hard to let go of
Thunderstorms and tornado warnings,
The smell of my uncle's farm,
My grandma's salt licks,
Waiting for the deer she loved.
Every time I thought of home,
I saw the Taco Bell on the corner.
Dillon's, red cursive bright against the tan building,
the D always looked like a G.

I'm still clicking these heels
And it seems I have finally got a pair
Of ruby red shoes,
and as they click this last time,
the Kansas sun catches their sparkle
and I land safe in the flaky Midwestern snow.

and oh they growed up so fast

i looked at my parents tonight
and did not see the superheros of my childhood
or the demons of my teenage years.
i saw a man, in his forties, overworked,
tired, concerned.
a woman, early fifties, worn down,
frustrated.
i saw friends,
my first friends,
who have given themselves
to me, progeny,
and i love them,
human kind,
brother, sister.


i categorize my belongings in mind.
this i will take,
this i will leave behind.
value is lost and gained
by portability,
functionality.
two suitcases and a purse
don't carry much baggage.

all houses have stories

My house was built
On a bed of dead leaves
Fallen in the autumn of '84.
The workmen's' boots crunched in the piles
their sickly sweet cigarette smoke
Mingling with their breath in the fall air
Faces and ships taking shape in the fog
and taking off for a better place.

new world

early morning intoxicates me
like wine nor gin ever could.
my body is alive at the possibilities
existing in the dark out my window.
i can still hear the bugs
gathered like pilgrims on my roof,
i slip out through the window and stand.
no queen, no king,
but a disciple, bowing before the bzz of the mosquitoes
my arms and legs sacrificial meat.
katy dids scream out their methodical clamor
and i bow to that too.
a firefly passes by
and i almost fall off my roof, stretching to pet it.
it's soft glow is all the light we need in this new world.

laundry

regrets? i got a few.
wishes? show me mine and i'll show you yours.
dreams and goals?
they're on my sleeve
and i'm washing my shirt.
i'm washing my conscience, I guess.
it seems like it could come in handy.

Sunday morning, you are my sunshine

I smell Sunday morning in my dreams
Long before i stir.
My blindless window catches fire
With the rising new day
And the birds sing out of key
Warming up for later praises.
Sunday morning shakes me
I read postsecret in my bed
and write poems on my roof.
On Sunday mornings,
a Veil is torn.
And all over the world,
Truth falls, rain from the Sun.

sliced apples
sitting
in the
pink bowl
on the
dirty table
is
summer.

dragons are no match
for my hands,
strong and sharp
on their slimy golden scales.
i go against the pattern
and they squirm in discomfort.
success? yes.

walk down to the chatahoochie.
look into the ripples of the river.
see the past in the bank and the sand.
write my name in the tide
and walk away, back to home.

smooth air of atlanta in the spring
you make my breath smell like rain
and stories and lore
of the southern voo doo land.

Swinging: An Epic

I. The Girl

My hands chafe already
the callous of a ten year old long fallen
into their epidurmal graveyard.
I kick against the ground and rise
rise into the blue sunshine.

II. The Revelutionary

Thoughts gather inside me--
whole armies lined up straight--
and they are itching for battle,
cascading into the boom of a canon
as I decide, once for all,
I will change the world
falling back into the arms of the wind
kicking down the walls of gravity.

III. The Girl, Again

My legs caress the clouds
and my head soars like Icarus and Daedalus.
My backyard is so real this far up
and as I fall back into it
I can see the future.

IV. Last

I rise.
I fall.

at night I am not the owl
but the mouse.
and sleeplessness pounces on me
and swoops down on me
and devours me
and leaves me with no protest.


look at you my generation.
you don't want to know who you are
so you drown it all in the glossy amber glow
of late nights and the fragrant clouds
of afternoons left blank.
I've got a cold bucket
filled with nature's finest
and I'm not afraid
to intoxicate you with freshness.
wake up, kids.
there is too much to do
to lie there...mind gone.

jack and i go way back, son

On the Road
The hands of asphalt snake up
Kraken under concrete
Twirling round my ankles
they hold, firm.
Jack Keroauc set out with twenty
and his name.
I've got a little bit more--
maybe thirty and my hope
in something better
found in tar painted wilderness of America.
I want to wake up somewhere
with my back sore from the ground.
I want to fight for my right to live
on the battle ground of all America.
Maybe Jack was running away.
Maybe I'm running away.
But I think--
I think---
it's better to run to something you want
than to stand still in somewhere you hate.

Under My Dreams There Are Dreams
Foghorn coming through my window
midmorning birds calling to each other--
"come away I've found food come away
I've found you"--
I am asleep.
I put my clothes on asleep and I eat my breakfast
asleep and I look in the mirror asleep and I see
the dream in a little girl's eyes.
My alarm clock is broken
and I am do not know how to fix it.

can you see my black emo roots? dagum, cuz HERE THEY ARE

i threw my running shoes into the give away box before i left.
they were too big for me. and i wouldn't need them in georgia.
i keep wishing for them.
i want to put them on and start out slow in the rough paved road in front
and then let speed catch me up as i move further and further away.
i want to out run emptiness and loneliness and a good many other nessess.

who waterloo?

My father can make few things in the kitchen
the whirl of hard counters and ripe fruit sensory overload
to his engineer's mind
but on Sunday's when my mother has
fallen fast and soundless into bed
he strides through
Napoleon in a white shirt and tie
first the bread, thick and brown, lathered with sweet cream butter
The cheese now
sliced by sword and his determind shaky hand
the smell of the dirty griddle rises through the house,
last weeks' sandwiches now burnt on
he slaps his babies down, like spanking the griddle for some misdeed
it sing sizzles into the afternoon air
and calls us in.
We have never heard of Waterloo.


the later it gets
the hotter my room
it's my early morning bath
in the moist sleepless humidity.

yes, comrade?

when you get passed my American smile
and american fat and american dreams,
my belief in democracy and father capitalism
you find something far more red.

red not like the stripes on the flag
nor the firecrackers on the fourth of july
but red like freedom
and equality.

i'd rather bleed red than green,
my america.


(prose poem attempt. it will be bad. because that's how we do it. i mean i. that's how i do it.)

after the clock ticked tweleve she sat up and threw the covers on the ground where they lay like a pile of trash unwanted now, made obsolete by time and sweat, from the greater blanket of sleeping atlanta like an owl on the hunt ready to find it's nightly reason to live she opens the laptop to type type type. the sounds of the cat in the kitchen come in from the vent he is loud her mind is loud at night all the tiredness of sleep repacked until the time will come for sleep but not when there is much to be born onto the white deep.

i push i push i hold on i push.

and finally it gasps. and howls.

time already got that nightcap

time has stopped moving.
she hung up her cap and apron
took some tylonel pm and went to bed.
i can her snoring the bedroom over,
through our closets, back to back.
she snores like my father
and mutters faintly like my mother.
i'd go wake her up--
but the air is so still with anticipation
it has lulled my legs asleep.


the art of everyday movement
is as complex as a sonnet
and gentle as my child hood creek.
my hand holding the cordless to my ear
the cool feel of plastic on my cheek
and against my fingers.
my feet slapping against the hardwood, too--
also simple, also filled with the cream
of power and purpose.

early morning after (late night movie)

the wispy halo of significance
floating over lines in movies
setting them apart
transforms them from the writers desk
late nights and empty Rockstars
into punches of languages
hitting the air like spilled wine
and falling fast
into my conscious
staining my conversation.
mm. purple scented lips and words
are as good on me
as they are on the writer's desk.

how to paint a self portrait

first
wash the make up off
watch it run down the drain
black eye liner
and concealer
layers of who I am not.
next
unzip the sweater
shrug arms out
first left then right
put it on the ground
next
pull off jeans
the hole in the knee will tear more
ignore
throw on to bed
next
mix paints.
black and white
and aqua for your eyes.
stand in front of mirror.
open&thenshut eyes.
look at self
for the first time
baptize self in glance
up and then down
scan body,
notice scars
notice blemishes
notice belly
notice anger
notice fear
take brush
dip in paint, first black.
paint legs, paint toes, paint
the tender skin inside the knee.
paint underwear. paint shirt. paint arms.
wash brush. watch the black paint
follow the eyeliner down.
dip in white.
paint hands.
right with left
and left with right
close mouth
paint face paint cheeks
spread paint like rouge.
close eyes.
dip fingers in aqua.
layer on eyelids,
open eyes,
keep painting them
until you can no longer see.

i choo-choo-choose to be awful. mmkay?

so i begin.
it is the summer of perfecting.
start with my excess ten pounds.
end with my unpolished poetry.
by the end, maybe i shall be
a literary bombshell.
or possibly just happy.
(and that is good.)


my brother sticks out of my family
like a strawberry in a blueberry patch.
he is handsome and charming
easily making people comfortable
and fall in love with him.
he is lithe and atheltic and goes to the gym.
the rest of us--well, we're certainly not pretty.
one sister is 19 but is really 10.
the other 10 and cries in the room next door
hoping that someone will take her hand in this new place.
i'm fat and awkward and can't catch balls.
my mum can only see shadows
and my father is even more awkward still.
no wonder that when he who thinks himself perfect
comes to see us
he feels so superior.
(at least we are learning to love ourselves for who we are.
not love how well are what others want.)