ALL RESPONSES |
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Bagpipes in bedrooms,
droning over textiles
discarded on bloody fields.
Dead thongs await burial.
Something terrible has happened here.
The solemn task of cleanup,
looking for those lost beneath pastel piles.
Friends, companions, weapons of youth,
slick mags sliced into past.
Boys pick their way across pants.
Queens would have thought this finest cloth,
shocked at disarray, but the chambermaid
has not been paid, she retired years ago.
There is comfort in this field of weeds,
of poppies, sage and clover.
No trimming required, no water.
With gate closed, no one knows.
Soon, we'll watch it melt away,
and clothes wash up on shore. |
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the debate rages
for forty days,
nine hundred & sixty hours:
we must be willing to repent
for all our sins
or for none of them
the earth grows weary
from such weight & even the simplest
room seems to be in a constant state
of upheaval
our graveyards are willing to take in more
than the usual but the dead beg
the young to turn around & pray
for a little more time |
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There’s no glory in what I do best--
implode. I’m the terrific blockade.
How much dreck after all
can you put up with? How much
will keep you out of my room?
My daily problem is how to build
the wall higher, you who might
capture me, might make me
into one of your own.
My filthy privacy is my very own
handwork. Hot trash, dreck trash;
my comfort objects, stashed.
No sorting; that would make my wall
too obvious. Too artificial.
I’m the queen here. I reign. This is
my mountain. My disorder steams.
You’ll find no guns, no guards
at my borders. They’re patrolled
by filth. If you dare to cross over,
you’ll never walk out, clean and alive.
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wind is not your friend,
it is an annoying acquaintance
who comes and goes, swirling,
changing direction like--
well, you know
no one is elated with more
wind than needed, just as no one
wants all of the earth or too much fire
around them
it’s like having too many personal
items in a small room, causing havoc
in trying to return everything
to its proper place
wind always greets you
at the wrong times, disturbing
the reading of the news,
or a family picnic, or when
whispering secrets to a lover
wind can be evil on a winter day, chapping
bare hands, chaffing cheeks of children,
or not leaving when it’s supposed
to leave, like an unwanted dinner guest
still huffing at midnight
people tear in wind at funerals, lesser
saplings are loosened, bending their dark
shapes over cold water, loosening their roots,
scattering their leaves like so many
love letters of soldiers, promising
a return in the spring
wind is the hardest lesson--
learning to let go of something
that cannot firmly be grasped |
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There is a place in the Alaskan coast
where remains of trees fill the footsteps for miles,
washed by furious reckless tides; further
along the way, trunks bend without wind -
the surprising offspring of a winter ice, that,
melting too soon, ceased to exist
sending rivers of warmth up the roots of unwilling trees.
Water, it seems, moves through undetermined smiles
branching within rocks, running over shadows, mending with itself,
caressing the surfaces of the stranger.
One knows nothing of certainty underneath the current, nothing
of deliberate action on the earthen floors, nothing of careful planning.
Youth has the nature of water.
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This is life
The way it is
Soiled linen to each corner
Some clean in the mass
A disarray of colors
Her person revealed in each scrap
Too much time would fade
In the short era of youth
To filter all the excess and dirt
Before it finds its place
In the jumble of all
That has created her
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Interior Decoration
I, a separate being
independent seed of willfulness
lay claim to earthly space
Wrested from parental control
though not yet knowing
how to fit the larger world
Confusion spills
kaleidoscopic
colors, shapes and moods
shift and scatter
into emergent patterns
amazing symbols of
newfound range and virtuosity
Celebrate this rise
of conscious spirit.
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The girl
in springtime
listening to Green Day
after the skateboarders
have left the
redstained picnic table
where the girl
reads Vanity Fair
(not Thackery's
which the girl
would find more boring than
laundry)
in spring and summer also
after breaking up with
her room -
the room was always getting messed up and
she regrets sleeping with it |
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