Friday, July 10, 2009

Bean

In time-lapse,
our flowering bean pokes
narrow helicopter blades
through the earth
and looms suddenly
lush and curling overhead.

We watch her
budding love affair
with the sun, sped up, trembling.
She opens
like a smile when he
touches her, unfurls her fruit,

and shrivels
when he pulls away.
Days rotate in seconds. We
are amazed
that such a simple
dance could keep the world turning.

Crook of the Arm

To ache is to remember our old home,
how ocean air would fleck the cliffs with foam
and whip the cove into a frenzied fit.
This town, of all the places to forget
forever haunts. I brush my teeth with sand.
I comb the seaweed through my hair and find
the carcasses of horseshoe crabs in my bed.
The shallow pools of sucking mud turned red
from years of rusted fishing hooks. The din
of gulls that swoop to grab your hot dog bun.
Cicadas keep the dogs awake at night.
Raccoons tip over garbage cans and fight
for scraps. The house next door holds someone new
each summer. Vines climb over the canoe
that we used only when the moon was full.
(My mother used to joke that she could pull
that pearl from Heaven with our tiny boat
by navigating her own secret route:
the bridge of light that stretched from shore to sea.
It would be hers if only she could reach.)
To feel is to remember how the grass
would squeak a dying note when firmly grasped.
It's mine, this town of green-head flies and bikes--
how could I possibly forget when nights
in dreaming I return to touch our porch?
Caress the graying shingles and the door
that's always open, weathered, letting through
the low-tide stench? The scent of evening dew?
Beneath our roof I move, nostalgic lust,
to climb stairs aging, warped with feathered dust
and from the salt-swelled window of her room,
I watch my mother wade out to the moon.

Your Absence

It's a quiet
that squeezes into cracks
and holes in our conversation,
gooey, smothering. We nod
when your name comes up, explain
to others, shrug, smile a little. The gap
that follows eats us whole.

Energy powers motion. We keep busy
and talk often, press ourselves together
at night, forget.
They call it a defense mechanism
but we like to think of it as
staying sane.
You swim behind every man we encounter,
pieces of you lodged in their faces
like bits of light. We fight the urge to
shake them
touch their shoulders
and remind ourselves.

Found some old poetry...

Don't you love going through old papers? I recently found a series of my poems from two or three years ago that I thought I might share here.

Next few following posts are of that old stock.

Return of the Sparky II: Electric Boogaloo

It seems this is my first entry since the new year began.

This is an old pattern of mine; were I to go through my bookshelves I'd probably find dozens of journals with feverish beginnings, dating back to third grade. I write frantically, in spurts, and then grow distracted with everything else in my life and forget. It's a shame, really, for I dearly love jotting my thoughts down.

I'm not even sure where to begin the update. I've finally opened up LuLu Massage Therapies in the trendy part of town and now have a small --but respectable-- handful of regular clients. I've been seeing a naturopath who has done wonders for my problems with nausea. I'm in love with a man who, despite all of our old demons, respects me like no other.

That's sort of it for the big stuff. The rest involves things like, "I bought a new shirt the other day," and "we really need to go grocery shopping."

...I promise to write more. I'm back at a point where I need an outlet, and poetry will always be there to swallow me up.

Stay tuned. I've missed you.