poetry

Plutonian Sympathy

In loping circles, orbiting distantly
here, I am alone most
often in observation
of all of you, together
ticking like watches and clocks, so synchronous
your system of celestial bodies, laughing
over dinner and waltzing through a grand scheme
while lights twinkle like dying stars
in your eyes, intimate reflections
cast shadowy freckles on your lovers’ cheeks
as you spin and sway, willing wisps of scarf-silk smoke
to follow then settle on the floor below
and you’re laughing, laughing
at a joke I long to hear
but can never quite make out
and am not sure I’m privy to, even now.

Dear Rose, or a Poem About Happiness and a Little Bit Relief.

Dear Rose,

Depression didn’t win today
and yes, I know
you’d call that phrasing cliché,
but you left your house
and enjoyed it.

You assembled a shelf for shoes
A WHOLE SHELF
FOR YOUR SHOES
and Nick’s shoes
and any shoes, really.
You cleaned your apartment
upgraded your phone
signed on a new client
and made calls with confidence.

You’re close to tears
well, close to welling up-
we both know you don’t cry much,
but these waterworks are joyous
because this is rare for you, I know
and your brain is saying
“This too shall pass, remember that”
and you’re telling your brain to fuck off
because that’s depression talk
and you’re going to ignore it
for today, triumphant
shining like a sunbeam from your
toothpaste-spackle-free mirrors
and freshly disinfected countertops.

Remember that this is possible.

Steve

A friend of mine gave me the prompt “Write about a person you lost as if they’re an object waiting to be found.” One of my best friends was murdered last spring, so here goes:

I hadn’t thought about you
for longer than I care to admit
it just wasn’t the right season
but you were always there
waiting for me to pick you up again
when I had the time
when you weren’t in use
and I don’t know
if I regret or cherish the comfort
of knowing you were right
where I left you
but others, they needed you too.
I’ve always been one to share
and most of them treated you well
but some of them didn’t
take care of you they didn’t
put you back safely
where you belong
broke you like you weren’t
one of a kind
and now I can’t find you
but I see you everywhere
your outline pressed on
cold carpet fibers
a shrine for a deity lost to time
but not to I,
disciple of sorrow and longing.

Let it Snow

I am white noise, so
fuzzy, so consistently rearranging
my million parts into the same
indifferent chaos, trapped
and buzzing, behind a glass
display of outdated
technological wonder
and the brilliance
of planned obsolescence.

I have tried to change
the channel, twist by god
damned twist
only to drone
on, forward and through
time in the same place.

Pull the plug.
Let the silence be deafening
only to me
falling, soft
slow,
on ears that won’t notice
at the return of their reflection.

The Bigger Picture

This beckoning death taunts.
It is a wicked encroachment. Medical
authorities flitter indefinitely
between legal boundaries and
insurers’ definitions
of a balanced budget
versus quality of life
and the differences in value
between hospice and respite
care of a man better
than all before him
in the eyes of a woman
who taught me
how, not who, to be.

And she calls me crying after
being strong for everyone else,
I stifle my resentment
of her nightly wine-slurred words.
Some things are more important
than teaching lessons,
and there are some exhaustions
no substance can begin to touch
for either of us.

Springtime in Moscow

It’s a temperate day in the end of April.
We’re in the car, an A&W drive-through,
the morning downpour has reduced itself
to a light trickle and synthesized
beats of the 80’s are pouring
out of my phone’s speakers
into the air surrounding
us, inside the vehicle,
you are an obsession
as the yellow and red tulips are dying
pink and white sprout up
all over town, this transaction of colors.
The only beautiful things I can name,
born from grey skies, like all
that I have come to love
and lost beneath heavy-handed clouds.

Committed to Memory

I’m not usually a “trigger warning” person, but this references abuse pretty specifically so read with caution if you have a hard time with domestic violence and things of that nature.

 

He appeared again in my dreams
speaking through my current lover, his antithesis
a phantom dimming the gaslights
and in unconscious moments
confirming sinking feelings
that haunt me when awake.

And I bury them deeper
further down with every hour
every day, my hand
on the shovel unearthing
layer after layer of dirty
laundry, from a growing list of things
unclean.
He made me feel filthy;
tarnished like second place metal.

Fuck your chicken soup,
I need lava soap for the soul
and skin I don’t want to crawl out of
every time someone looks like him
looks at me like him
walks, laughs, crosses the street
smokes a cigarette, gives a hug,
dismisses an opinion, gets too drunk,
says, “I was blacked out, how
do I know that even happened?,”
puts their hands around my neck,
my head into a wall,
and flashes through my memories
taking me back to somewhere
I never wanted to go in the first place
a broken home and a sick nostalgia
the blurred lines of consent transitioning
from dream to nightmare.

Sifting

Is this an implosion or a collapse?
The nuance is currently beyond me,
lost in the subtlety without a map.

Against the door the shadow raps,
through the crack, begins to seep.
Is this an implosion or a collapse?

Leaving sooty, wispy tracks
deceptive and merely appearing to be
lost, in the subtlety without a map

Deftly, swiftly at my back
digging, all it knows, is deep
is this an implosion or a collapse,

the unavoidable, all hushing snap
of it or myself, I can’t discern
if this is an implosion or a collapse.
I am lost in the subtlety without a map.

 

 

I don’t normally write in form of any kind, but I had a sudden and inexplicable urge to hammer out a villanelle, so here it is.

Questionable Decisions

She sat up, an apparition
on the edge of my bed and rose
white, wispy, semi-transparent
hot breath on a January morning
where everything begins again
before fading away
into microscopic droplets.
She disappeared into the air
through the floor of my apartment
deep under the soil beneath,
returned to being
such a part of everything
that I can no longer separate her
from the rest of it
though I’m not sure
if I’ve ever been able to
for more than an evening.

I think she likes being that way
an indiscernible and indefinite lover
choosing the indiscriminate, so far removed
from feeling anything
as to get a leg up on pain.

And in the brief moment
after her departure
I’m left with an ache
both for more and less
which is all she’s ever claimed to offer me.