it’s not the dying that’s so hard –
but this incessant surrendering o a life
you’d expected to beat.
against the odds we made it.
drenched and exhausted on some metaphorical shore
on an island of nothing.
we made it.
thank fucking god you were there too!
otherwise i would have swam back out to the sharks.
just said “eat me, cruelties, i’m through.”
But you were there –
reminding me we made it –
then this.
another round of chemo or fires or loss –
grief like a beggar lady we’ve simply let move in.
charming as the crazy and the sullen and the gone.
when i first met you
we had longing by the balls –
and we dared to cultivate everything –
desire, freedom, innocence –
loss. buried underneath honesty –
all of it true.
now this.
my awakening is thick like maple syrup
and dark like greed.
borrowing Medusa’s eyes
i sank the ship.
and again
you save me.
Tag Archives: love
#70
yesterday when i died –
the black sky parted its lips
and said nothing.
what i hadn’t finished was my hellos.
and when that black sky refused to speak
and the eerie silence
made our insides tremble –
the everyday suffering people of the world
prayed for us.
they prayed for us.
it feels like there are less soft places
to land –
yet here we are –
living through our deaths
like the octopus.
a camouflage here –
hiding in a crack there.
i wonder how many arms we can live without?
#69
sometimes staying in bed or just disappearing
feels like a better option
than one more pull on the bootstrap
or half-hearted acknowledgement
of just how silver the lining really is.
we are tired.
it does not seem fair that while children are starving
simply because they are not our own
and people around us are ailing and dying
simply because its “part of being alive” –
that we should have to also put up
with some hack job politic or crumby job
or even a hurt of our own.
we are really that tired.
i’m hoping it will be okay someday
for you to tell me how broken you are
and for me to just hold you
without trying to fix you
or telling you how fortunate you really are.
and i am hoping that once we have all admitted
we are worn to the bone
by all this busy-ness of being alive
we can go back to feeding people
simply because they are hungry
and caring for people
simply because they are ill.
i’m not sure there is much more to figure out than that.
maybe feeding and caring
would be enough to change the world.
Sunrise
Your death is an angry wasp –
a hungry bear –
desire turned on it’s side,
blue.
I always wanted to tell you
something meaningful like god.
As if words could summon a heart –
a tiny rainbow of hope –
taking its cue
from some other side.
You were a Diva who understood dying
well before you were sick.
I was a poet
who traded my name for numbers
and lost my death
in a life half-lived.
Both of us always running
to beat our own lovely fall.
Your falling was a quiet farewell –
no more talking our way out of this one.
I said good-bye like a broken drum
while you commanded that heart to stop.
It seems we are both still trying to speak –
Me – a mad pen, tired bones, an ache –
You, a deplorable sunrise
another moon
the light.
london
We arrive sleepy and bent - a crumpled wad of desire for something new. These wet hot streets - a vistors reckoning - grief. But that is what you carried here my dear - packed neatly in your bags - folded, creased, alert. I tried to find the thing that made London her own. But, belonging to everyone and spread so densely through street upon alley upon court with flesh, she's a union of nations at once - scurrying about in search. The homeless prefer, it seems, to sleep in broad daylight beside a riot of words. There are no shoes, a tired beard, an altar of water bottles left at his feet. I thought about quitting marriage when I couldn't summon joy - as if London should ring that old bell back into awakening. But it was dinner time again - and every other door an open mouth for feeding. So we dine so we sleep so we rise once more and when you say good-bye i love you at last.
#66 Grief
grief is a quiet color - gardenia who lost her scent - a reckoning. grief is without an hour - has no second hand - the face on a clock, gone. there is only space and a vacuous ledge to lean into. my fear - not of falling but that i will jump. when i am a whirling dervish of doing i can only be one way - productive. my heart sits on the sidelines cheering us both on but would never dare to interrupt. i come here to be reminded of the color: magenta fuscia aqua marine blue a light yellow blouse carrying bones. flesh and heart held up in the mix. i come here to celebrate even though i do not recall the occasion until I am here and sometimes not at all. i sit. i admit. i pull away from the ledge enough to breath but not so far as to pretend it isn't there. my grief is a yellow tricycle - empty basket - under a timber of sun. my grief is a magical final good-bye i was not there to make - with all the busyness of being busy. the doing of regret. they say that is a stage of grieving - as if recognizing its components could allow for some dismantling - but it is intact, i say. as certain as a two minute timer. this is how we are given a reprieve. maybe even forgiveness. the landmark for time.
#65
at union square
i always carry tiny wads of cash
to give to men in doorways
for whom no doors are open.
they are always much too gracious
considering the cold
and the ridiculous wonder
that while i was enjoying the theatre
they were begging for heat.
i am embarrassed sometimes
for how much i have.
2 healthy boys a husband
my friends a job
a home.
there are not enough ones or fives or even twenties
to make the kind of difference
that matters.
where you are no longer alone
or hungry or cold.
and i am no longer looking for someone to feed.
for Yvonne
i cannot say why it should be okay to have faith drawn out on a limb hanging mid air as if some sort of reconciling could warrant what's broken. there is no word nor sign nor even prayer that might at once undo the ruddy ache of having and losing and finally losing heart. what is terrible then is that we love. and our loving, like balloons in a hurricane, is torn from us - even as we covet the softest sweetness inside - where only his aliveness has touched you - where only he has been for you. i imagine though that he finds you - even now, through crooked slumber and honest despair - where if your eyes were closed you both could see and even if you did not touch you both could feel - there where your loving has allowed a living and a leaving - and both as honest as a thousand migrant winds - back and forth forever undoing and confirming what we think we know about life about death about love.
#63
people are dying - and also there is cancer like a maniac bully breaking our hearts. i wanted to feel something - one time for itself - without another something to hold it up against or toward. but what's so is the tragic beauty of everything we love - dissolving in front of us as we become.
#61
#59 for margaret ann
your dying is a lazy mountain waterfall without an end. i am looking under rocks - in between the manzanita and madrone - under moss and lichen - hands deep in a hollowed oak trying to find the empty. but there is still too much. an overwhelming overflowing of your aliveness - a certain surely still at home i am here about it. a lie. or not. you left me a ruby rimmed with diamonds - a crimson and aqua rug - some china and a desk. ee cummins,david sedaris,the best loved poems of jacki o. a life of scripture, "everything that is yes" love. we pretended to bury you yesterday. but you were there at lunch running the show. and now i am thinking about what is lovely and there you are again and me and we.
#55
for a minute i forgot you. or maybe it was a week or a month or any time really - that is longer than okay - until suddenly something leapt from a quiet divot in my chest and, remembering, i raced to tell you that i am still every minute and week and month so much enamored with you - my friend, my heart, my gift.
#54
i jumped off the bridge last night in my heart and now some twelve hours later i still haven't hit the bottom - the immeasurable depth of being, too terrific to slam up against with something so simple as flesh. so i wait. think about the crawling out - the accent - the way back up to where things are indeed okay even inside the darkness. even with it. the frailty of being human - a hoax. i know the clouds are grey for a reason - that there will be more rain and disaster. but also i know, from it will come new growth and this is where i rest against the walls of a weary heart - pull myself back out and up - where i can dare again for joy.
#52
when they forgave me - for words i had not spoken - i hurried to use my voice again, for forgiveness's sake itself. before i changed for the better, i broke things. a stampede through time unaware of the china - a hurricane of doubt in a trusting heart - oblivion on top of indifference - and the tiny riot of fear. people said come back - there is room here - in-between the pictures you left, are all these blank pages upon which to show you care.
#47
i spoke to an old friend today who belongs at the beach but lives somewhere else. and i wanted to erase time for him and destroy space so he would be here again in a town that loves him. "they have no idea who you are, do they?" i asked, thinking how absurd you can be famous in one town, and a total stranger in another. "No they don't," he said and i wanted to cry for what they're missing. we are these little worlds to each other meaning so much depending so much on each other for our rotation. i think when you remove one of us from the solar system - all of the other planets wobble. or, at the very least - i mean to say - i miss you.
#46
when i was a child i very much wanted to be famous - so that everyone would know how special i was. at four i decided when i grew up i would marry johnny cash so i could make him happy. they seemed such useful goals. now,as an adult,i only want to be more reflective - so that the people who love me can see how special they are instead. and if i could - i would marry my husband again - this time not trying to make him anything different than he already is. i know i got a much better life than i deserve. when i go to bed at night, i try to think of new ways to pay it forward. sometimes it's just shutting up.
#45
i don't know how i became a stranger here - walking the worn aisles of the market - recognizing no one. i found myself - where mount tam meets the pacific - at a point in life up until which i'd only ever tried to lose. it was something. being found - instead of found out - at the beach in a quiet town with a loud heart. i almost raised my hand as a visitor - at the same meeting that had saved me - when i had nothing to inherit but undeserved grace. instead i took a token - a marker of sorts - to remind me that i belong here with the wind and the salt and the sea where being recognized is trumped by being known. you can feel home in your bones, like marrow carrying breath to the heart.
.
#44
i don't like mean people as well as i like the nice ones. kinda like it's better to be healthy than barfing in a bush. some things are simple like that. still, life makes you suffer a bully or two before you get your free slurpee. eventually, if you don't let the bad stuff get you down, you'll own the whole 7-11. start with a few good friends.
#43
my pen is broken from too much thinking. where without the soothing curse of love - i might be bored. someday my friends will find me asleep in an attic at noon. curled up in a pile of cards they sent through the years. there is a chocolate cake pillow and a little a little cup of tea.
#42
i dont drink but tonight i wore a missile toe and mimosa t-shirt with the arms cut off to qualify for the ugly sweater party. all of my friends are beautiful. they donned their santa-riding-a-unicorn sweaters and acrylic reindeer shells and tried to neutralize their exquisiteness with Tacky - but it is just impossible. one friend showed me an app where she could wipe her screen with her index finger and she swore it was erasing our wrinkles. i could not stop laughing. not because i couldn't tell the difference but because i thought it was so damn funny that she would try to erase the wrinkles on a photo of something so imperfectly perfect already. plus it was the way her finger rubbed back and forth naive almost, the finger, i could barely take it. friendship cannot be measured in cocktails poured or hors d'oeuvres served or even sweaters worn. but little fingers on screens and white elephant re-gifts and the magic of reading the bill held out three feet in front of you... one eye closed for squinting the other shot full of love. girlfriends are just the best. there is no other way to say it.