Trying to Understand Is Worth It
my imperfections i place in your hands.
with you, i can’t idealize myself –
for what i am, i open up to you,
and strip away far more than simple clothes
connection & acceptance are my hope;
to feel you’ve brought your whole life here with you,
and that you may, on knowing who i am,
move off, in finding me not to your taste
but here, withal that may be put at risk
i ask your imperfections show, as well
your sunset was my sunrise. all the same,
you laughed to see the joy you thought i felt.
there was a bit of irony in this:
but i was in my taking phase, and so,
took you for granted, and your grace as due.
i know, because our roles are now reversed:
not times of life, but just how free you are;
although you’re rapidly approaching night,
you’ve found your grace again, and i can’t help
but glory in the wonder of it all.
for you were my first heroine; behold,
a time beside the waters, when you were
a dark young woman, with a tiny child;
whose life was stretched before her, like the sea —
as fathomless as any distant sea.
but now, our conversation breaks into
a strange, disjointed type of décollage;
like sunlight dancing on the waters edge:
a fading into something more than light,
and something less that turns into a song.
There was a final time: the stall set out,
With jewelry and fabrics in a line —
The next day, and thereafter then, no more;
No more, and soon, no one with memory
To paint in images or words the scene
That once was daily, year on year on year.
The mundane, the quotidian: our lives,
Not big events, but habits of our days,
They soon lie empty on a sandy waste —
The firebird heads into the unknown,
High o’er the mountains, just past where we see,
To leave behind our stalls for someone else
I’d ask you once again, but Lord, I know
How everything arrays itself on you:
That’s friends, and troubles, dynamite, and dust,
That’s beauty, glory, gratitude, and grief,
A multitude, a plethora of all
That makes the world seem bigger than our hearts.
So by the painted water sit awhile:
There is a smear, a smudge, a drip, a stain,
And many other patterns for the soul
That’s come unmoored, that feels itself adrift.
So think of how the music sounded when
The truck rolled by in summers as a child,
And feel how kind can be delivery,
And why the chasing’s worth it, after all.
If I could bring you gusts of winter stars,
And Christmas lights across a frozen lake,
Then soon to warm and blanket we would go,
And love would be the only thing we’d need.
For though the nights grow long, and heart unsure,
I think, together, we could find some peace,
And build our fire out of simple things,
Like paw prints, and like crayons wrapped in string,
The gentle lights would blink as we’d draw close,
And love would be the only thing we’d need.
the queens of meritocracy, who sing of shortness in the lifespan, and the fall of capillaries once encumbered flush, the way that halls for Kostelanetz filled, when everyone who knew was frozen red. hereby the wind, afraid it might be late, takes bits of snow with it, to reassign a crinoline escape to stalk and stem, a baritonal escapade in frost, and caravan of jesters in the snow.
The last two out the door, and off to school,
A silence comes, as deadly as a flower,
That though he welcomes it, perfumes his mind
With poison, bringing sleep or even worse.
He calls so many things by other names
Than those most apropos. It is a curse:
To feel inside the marrow of his bones
The emptiness he won’t admit pervades
The water circulation, or the heat,
Or air that flows within the kitchen walls.
He will not say; and though he reads and writes
Of all the things that minds these days attend,
He dares not say the word. For life begins
In crevasses and cracks where shoots can grow;
And also ends, when light cannot get in,
And seals form over openings too soon
