My friend is more than a bird:
courier of dawn,
wind maker,
music in deafening silence,
but she is still all of that.

Her featherless skin gives it away
and the missing wings
— not that anyone notices.

Performing alchemy is what sets her apart
when she reaches for the dark bits
in the soil
and air
and lifts
them to her chest
then permutes them
into shine;

that is not of bird,

but that is like a bird too.
Ingesting and scattering seeds,
the nesting and queried peeps and
long sight, yet in a flock meant to fly
instead has feet which walk the earth

like a forgotten breed of ostrich
that fell out of fashion or evolved,
she was found roosting near my tree.

8:17 pm  •  16 February 2013  •  3 notes

If your pee flows too
freely, please be a sweetie,
and wipe the seatie

11:22 pm  •  27 October 2012  •  1 note

haikuforromney:

Your forehead is what
I fear the U.S. will be:
flat, white, cleansed with cash.

submitted by ismelllikegarlic

4:39 pm  •  24 August 2012  •  4 notes

My grandmother’s hair
is like a sea storm: charcoal,
sterling, brewing wind.

9:23 pm  •  23 August 2012  •  3 notes

I joined a poetry forum in an attempt to poke me into writing more and get some critical judgement. The forum seems to be mostly 17 year olds that use poetry as a soapbox of “I NEED TO TELL MY FEELS!!!” which has caused me to react in a number of ways.

Terrible Love Poetry

You left me that night
I drunkenly called you a whore.
Our arguments were pyrotechnic
by then and escalated to grease fires,
slippery showers, home invasions.

I remember the night
we ate psychotropics under magnolia
trees to watch blooms wave
and burst like campfire embers.
Visions of you, a deity
among the stars, called me along
the trail like a pilgrim
into your hands -
cupped hands - as if an oyster
was gathering sand.

There are times I still wake up  
caught in the muscle memory of one arm upon
your abdomen while the other rests in the space
between a pillow, your neck, the mattress.

2:08 pm  •  28 July 2012  •  2 notes

theparisreview:

“There’s a very deep strain of existential gratitude that runs through a lot of poetry. It’s certainly in haiku. Almost every haiku says the same thing: it’s amazing to be alive here. There’s a little haiku: ‘A cherry tree in blossom / In the distance / I hear a dog barking.’ Those two things have nothing to do with each other, except the fact that the poet was there to see and hear them. So the haiku is saying, I was here. ‘Kilroy was here.’ To appreciate the wonder of that, you have to imagine the absence of that, of not being there, of nonexistence, right? I consider poets to be a part of a larger group of people who don’t have to survive major surgery or go through a windshield in order to feel grateful for being alive. It shouldn’t require such traumatic experiences to feel grateful. So I think a love of language and a sense of gratitude would be two ingredients in the recipe for making a poet.”

—Billy Collins, The Art of Poetry No. 83

12:54 am  •  24 July 2012

every woman is a victim of the feel blues, too.

Soft lamp shinin
       and me alone in the night.
Soft lamp shinin
       and me alone in the night.
Can’t take no one beside me
       need mo’n jest some man to set me right.

I left many people and places
       tryin not to be alone.
Left many a person and places
       I lived my life alone.
I need to get myself together.
       Yes, I need to make myself to home.

What’s gone can be a window
       a circle in the eye of the sun.
What’s gone can be a window
       a circle, well, in the eye of the sun.
Take the circle from the world, girl,
       you find the light have gone.

These is old blues
       and I sing em like any woman do.
These the old blues
       and I sing em, sing em, sing em. Just like any woman do.
My life ain’t done yet.
       Naw. My song ain’t through.

1:59 pm  •  20 July 2012

A.R. Ammons was born and raised in the town I live in now. 

Hymn — A.R. Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth
and go on out
over the sea marshes and the brant in bays
and over the hills of tall hickory
and over the crater lakes and canyons
and on up through the spheres of diminishing air
past the blackset noctilucent clouds
where one wants to stop and look
way past all the light diffusions and bombardments
up farther than the loss of sight
into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth
inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes
trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest
coelenterates
and praying for a nerve cell
with all the soul of my chemical reactions
and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

You are everywhere partial and entire
You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum
has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut
and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark
chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down
and if I find you I must go out deep into your
far resolutions
and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

2:39 pm  •  10 July 2012

Holding Hands to Sincerely - The McGuire Sisters

Ekphrastic poem

Oh yes,
sincerely hold
my hand.  Weighing my thumb 
with your finger pads, caressing 
the mounds

under
my knuckle joints, 
sincerely ask to read
my palm, cross the dimpled trails there,
oh yes.

Lace up,
intertwine, slide
skin, nervy sweaty skin,
sincerely. Oh yes, sincerely
skins press.

My love 
line says you’ll leave 
me, but be mine tonight,
sincerely, under the dance hall
limelight.

10:32 pm  •  8 July 2012  •  1 note

Buddha,
Buddha, a man
who the cosmos told, “Shhhhhhhhhhhh—
I am discontent fidgeting
with you

like change
in my pocket
jangling when I walk
always clamoring to be used,”
so it

laid him
out like a map,
flattened his curled edges,
kept the landmarks, changed the rivers,
and left.

12:36 am  •  7 July 2012

The Many Uses of Sodium Bicarbonate

 

Undervalued baking soda
relegated to laundry and cookie ingredient aisles,
delegated as detergent booster
to scour grime, tubs, and tiles.  

Light, airy, fairy dust of chemical alchemy
transmogrifies into carbon dioxide breath.
Raising dough brought you celebrity,
yet once you cleaned wounds to stave off death.  

You birthed soap in ancient Egypt
through the miracle of alkali saponification
but could have saved the Library of Alexandria
had they known you could be used for fire suffocation.  

Essential to sixth grade science fair volcanoes,
your chemical reaction is now a sophomore prank
to terrorize restroom patrons as the toilet flushes
with you in the bowl and vinegar in the tank.

1:36 pm  •  6 July 2012

Come spring.
Persephone
spat out pomegranate.
The land is sewn. A pollen breeze
flies by

Green Man,
bristles pistles,
and his caught breath becomes
a sneeze. Trees shiver down their spines.
Leaves come,

kindling
for the dinner
Prometheus prepares.
Wine soaked loins roasted in fire,
he calls

Easter,
busy birthing
eggs, “Meet me at the feast
where we will frolic like bunnies
making

babies.
The Moon is high.
The Earth will touch the Sky 
and raise seeds to worship the Sun.”
Spring comes.

1:37 am  •  6 July 2012  •  4 notes

How to Eat a Pomegranate 

Finger the navel,
undress red, leather-bound skin
to honeycombs,
compartmentalized beads of royal jelly
ready to be inhaled.
Scrape your lips on yellow pith,
unceremoniously stain fingers
in tart juices of god folly.
Your teeth are pestles
grinding flesh and seed together
as you serpentine your tongue
to catch pellets
as a handful escape this trap,
spite a hungry mouth,
dye clothes, and color the earth.

9:22 pm  •  4 July 2012  •  2 notes

These spiritual window shoppers
who idly ask, “How much is that?” “Oh, I’m just looking.”
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment
in that shop.

Where did you go? “Nowhere.”
What did you have to eat? “Nothing much.”

Even if you don’t know what you want,
buy something, to be a part of the exchanging flow.

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

- Jelal AdDin Muhammad Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

9:36 pm  •  27 May 2012