Observation

There’s something about the way
the light falls this morning,
pouring itself like honey over everything,
coating me in a yellow sheen
of sweet disposition.

I know I’ll try to save this moment,
eyes blinking, taking sequential photos,
forgetting that today is no different
than yesterday, remembering
that today I’m paying attention.

On the Menu

She looks thinner today. For the past few days, she has been a little protestor, fasting for a cause I still don’t understand. She cannot tell me her reasons for refusing the foods I give her. She’s distracted by the computer and books and toys.

Or maybe I am not offering the food she likes, the sustenance she needs to grow her passions freely. Adults can uproot weeds, unwanted behaviors of children they don’t understand. Unbridled dreams of children, wildflowers in disguise.

I’m reminded of my own childhood. I cried when my needs were killed by their pesticides. Tears watered tiny seeds of hope sprouting inside, beneath soil trampled upon by adult footsteps.

One seed still grows. Sweetheart, blossom as you must. How do you want to grow? Break the fast. Do not speak through starvation. What would you like to see on the menu of your childhood? What do you want to say?

Questioning Definitions (revised)

I've never had sex the traditional way,
the phallic way
and actually enjoyed it.
Semen filling a hole, as if it would
dry like cement, the pothole repaired.

I am that damn pothole-
bump in the road, asking myself
when construction will begin, when
I will conform to a straight course,
intercourse.

But his tongue, wave
breaking against labial shores,
breaks tradition.
And passion is a torch I use
to burn the books of my past

the ashes of old words my ink
to write another book of poems
questioning definitions.

(original post 5-22-07)

The In-Laws

Despite my disagreements with them, they gave birth to a son. He taught me that a man does not enter a woman. The door between lovers swings both ways. Each can enter the other. It’s a lover’s choice.

They raised him with high hopes. They raised him to love me. Numbed by my own arrogance, I could not feel their sacrifice – the loss of their only son for my education.

I love them now. I understand them now. They only want to be a small part of the bliss they conceived over thirty years ago, to know that in a world of chance, they gambled and made the right choice.

Unspoken

Her best friends are Soma and Vicoden.
They’re faithful. They’re easy.
She tells them her neck hurts,
and their round faces agree, without question.
They’ll sacrifice themselves three times daily,
dive into her stomach, to their acidic death
for her pain, her cause.
She begs me for a prescription,
a ticket to buy more friends,
and asks if I’ll be her doctor.

I tell her my practice is full.
I don’t tell her she’s full of lies.
Her best friends are really Addiction to Pain
and Aversion to Truth.
I write the prescription anyway.

Maybe I am full of myself,
fat with my training and assumptions.
I think I know her before I’ve even asked
the tough questions, before I’ve given her
a chance to really speak.
Our fifteen minutes are up.
I’m wondering if I am any better
than Soma and Vicoden, if
my round face will ask
what they never could.

“Why are you hurting?”
I would ask.
Maybe then she could tell me
where she first met Soma and Vicoden,
and how her pain began.

Youth

her skin feels like silk
the soft edges of life
yet to be fossilized
by an old skeptic

Sometimes (Revised)

Sometimes I fall asleep alone at night
dreaming of you on the moon,
our faces lost to each other
in the distance. All I have is
a sliver of reassurance that you
are near.

I cannot hang on this hook that you give,
this partial promise of your return. I’m
dangling from a slice of love, a piece of you
that is not enough to hold me.

Or maybe you are the moon.
If I waited long enough for another phase,
a whole you swallowing the darkness
to reach me, would I let you fill
the space you left behind?

(original post 7-16-06)

The Writing Life

What if I told you a book, holy scriptures
guide your writing, your beliefs, your ways?
Would you believe in its promise to
save you, or would you burn it and
write your own?