I Arose

I arose from the dust
surrounded by the graves
of my forefathers.
The ghosts of tradition
threaten me with mortality
should I persist.
We were not meant to rise,
yet lay low
among the prayers
and unpainted halls.
Do not rise above your fathers, child.
Do not shame them with your pride.
And they whispered the names
of all that came before me,
names that are forgotten
from places I've never been,
and I wondered if those places were dust, too.
In the photos they sat together,
two corpses in shades of dust
staring at me
as if they were alive.
We buried them,
and we burned them,
and scattered them to the winds,
back to the places they came, and
I trod over their bones.
I dreamed of the praying hand,
pressing me back down,
and when I felt you passing my way,
I arose from the dust
and followed.

Lies I've Told

Last night
I held the thunder
in the palm of my hand
and stirred the sea
with a gun.
I leapt ‘tween the dreams
of a thousand screams
and hung shadows
on the sun.

Stars

I was dust when you were born.
My mother was but a child,
and I steered the universe
from a star.
And when I had emerged,
I moved through the chaos
as in a lucid dream,
experiencing the pain and turmoil,
yet moving toward
some forgotten purpose.
My life was a poem to you,
and I longed to make you
smile one day,
should we ever meet
for the first time.
And when I found you,
like a grain of sand
that finds another
particular grain of sand
on another shore
in another time,
I remembered everything
about nothing,
and we rehung our stars,
I let you drive the universe,
and we were our own
constellation,
the envy of planets, moons,
asteroids, and even
the damned Sun.
The days are a stream of
perpetual nows,
and distance is erased.
You are, and I am,
And We.
Nothing else.

What It Feels Like Without You

nothing beneath the skin
no flesh, no bone
empty pain
with no origin
coursing through a life
with no destination
vacant stare
screaming silence
yellow music in cruel discord
I curl into a ball and
lick my disease
how could I be this way
how could I not care
i gave you all that was within me
and now I am empty skin
blind to the sunrise
crawling through the dirt
only the earth can save me now
dig me up when you are ready
for immortality

Fallen

Last summer
the crows flew over
as I was lying
face down
in the mud.

You said
that I was not
the most important
thing and I said
goodbye.

I wonder if hell has trees
or if all trees
go to heaven
when they die.
I’m a lot like a tree,
I think.

I cried and you cried
and I laughed
and I cried.
and you put together
an apology,
and, trembling,
we kissed.

I don’t have a soul,
I don’t think.
for a soulless person,
I feel too much,
and I walk with heaven
in one hand
and hell in the other.

Wrestling with Conscience

With a long heavy sigh
he sat down in a chair
next to the bed.
The small girl opened her eyes.
“What is wrong?”

“I feel I am greatly misunderstood,” he said.
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, for starters…
people blame me
for acting too quickly,
for being harsh,
for interrupting their lives,
and separating them
from their loved ones…

“…among other things.”

“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Separate people from their loved ones?”
He shrugged, “Not by choice.”
“Are you harsh?”
“Not at all. If the knew me, they’d understand me better.
But… isolation comes with the territory.”
“Do you think you react too quickly?”
“Never a moment too soon.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
He hesitated. “You had to go and bring that up.”

“I suppose…” she said, “if you’re here… then it must be time.”
He looked sad. “You’re pretty smart for six.”
“So what are we waiting for?”
He smiled gently. “Just wrestling with my conscience.”
With a deep breath, Death stood up.
“I guess we should get going.”

Shoebox Poem

With only a breath
between my song and tears,
it would have used up all the stars
to soothe my soul,
leaving no light
for the little ones.
I have no power over you,
so do as you will.
My pain is but a phantom
because I gave my heart to you
last summer.
So here dies this dream of mine.
Here love lies buried
in a small shoe box
containing a song you once gave me,
a pair of chopsticks,
and the penny for my thoughts.

To My Valentine--

DoI really smell the rain?
How should I know if I feel pain?
Do I hear a sound much like a ringing
or is it simply my brain is singing
a crippled melody?
Do I really see you lying there
between blades of light and spikes of air?
And something caught in shadows gleam
next to a crayon river scream.
Whose hand is that outstretched from me?
She tumbles out, laughing free.
What is blue and who knows red?
And does it really rhyme with dead?

Winter

Written at the end of a chaotic summer...

Perhaps I was never meant
to be truly happy.
I was more than just a little relieved
when Summer walked out,
dragging of all her demons with her,
leaving me free to
perch among the crows
on this naked branch,
gazing at the austere beauty
of my winter,
and lamenting the winters past,
knowing, too, that this time will end,
and yet, the snow seems to fall forever.
My desires ravaged by silent frosts,
my agony as apparent
as blood upon the snow
or shadows in the sun,
I walk alone;
for who can know Winter's heart?

Red

Again, when I was six...

The dress I wore to get my picture taken with the rock
was red with ribbons and lace.
I was six years old when I found the rock,
shaped like a dog’s head,
next to the new fence
where I cut my toe on a twisted shard of steel
and crimson stained the carport.
And I remember laughing in a dimly lit room
while the doctor sewed my toe.

The fence surrounded the back yard,
and once held a dog named Ralph
who dug his way out and ran into the street
where he was run over by a motorcycle...
The back yard where I walked into a frisbee,
got a bloody nose, and passed out...
The back yard where my brothers and sister and I
ate popsicles and slid in the rain-cooled mud.

Behind the yard, where the maypops grew, was the levee,
the long stretch I walked every day to a school,
and a boy whose name I did not know
bloodied my nose when I said he couldn’t touch me--
his hate and my blood forever leaving a stain...
and where a boy named Billy kissed me on the cheek
on the Valentine’s day
when I wore my red dress
with the ribbons and the lace.

The Hole

When I was about 6, my brothers dug a hole...

The boys kept digging.
I stood poised on the brink of the abyss,
which was now twice as deep and wide
as I was tall,
red sand slipping from beneath
the hard soles of my shining black shoes.
With every shovel full of dirt removed,
it was trying to get out,
rising up through the
thinning layer of crust
as the sun died in the blackened arms
of the pines.

Beyond the fence and the water pump
was the house, and, within it, the old woman,
sitting in her wheelchair
with an afghan thrown across her knees.
"E'rebody knows that the devil lives
at the bottom of a hole."
Not our house and not my grandmother.
All the same, we lived there.
And when darkness came,
the wheelchair idle in the small boxy hallway,
she slept, snoring loudly
behind a curtain stretched across the room.
I lay choking on the stuffy night air,
full of breath-sucking shadows,
and stared into the black slab
that was the doorway,
solid and palpable as the wall next to it.
The closet door hung limp on its hinge,
and the thick soupy darkness
leaked out through the cracks
and muddled together
with alabaster moonlight
that found its way through
wavy panes of glass.
Moonbeams were trapped, quivering
in bits of flaking paint on the windowsill.
The thin wall was
no more security than cheesecloth.

Standing at the window,
I pressed my cheek against the cool pane.
Lavender and indigo hills
rose and fell in the moonlight,
undulating all the way back
to Neshoba County.
Somewhere out of view was the hole
my brothers had refilled, laughing
as they closed up the dread,
unaware of what lay hidden
beneath the loose grains of red sand.
They had walked away,
leaving what to them had been just a hole.
All I want to know, brother, is
how long will it hold?