i remember
only
joy
October 30, 2024
Month: October 2024
My back is only half
broken; they have
the other half
yet to
go.
October 30, 2024
This
is one
of those
perfect moments,
sitting at our kitchen table,
safe at home with you.
I
treasure
this perfect moment
even
knowing
I will forget
to remember,
maybe.
Or remember only imperfectly
in some distant moment
this sensation of
belonging, of
this
self-enclosed world
that begins and
ends with us.
Tomorrow has no standing here,
now.
Now is only for this
perfect moment,
here with you.
Home.
In perpetuity,
until I close my eyes.
Until I close my eyes,
tomorrow remains at bay,
an unrealized idea,
potential only,
transparent,
insubstantial,
subordinate
in all ways
to
today.
And so
I will not close my eyes.
I will not yield. By force
of gravity alone
will this be
taken
from
me,
lost. Spun
away, it fades
with consciousness.
I write to remember.
October 30, 2024
Is it a limitation
of the English language or of our own understanding that the active part of 'do as thou wilt' obscures the choice not to do?
Absence
is bounded space that can be filled as much by 'I may yet' or 'I will' as by 'I do' and takes no umbrage at 'I do not' or 'I will not' or 'I will never.'
The power of negation
can reverse reversal and so restore to a natural shape that which has been perverted, corrupted, or misaligned by devious agents.
'No' is an elixir of liberation.
'No' is a root in rotten soil.
'No' is a grain of sand in the track of the machine.
'Do as thou wilt'
and so, choose.
October 30, 2024
I can only be what I am,
a barren poet,
a mother of none,
an unknown know nothing,
a solitary sad sack, a fool
for optimism's despotic twin,
a gardener without a garden,
a pedant servant of liars,
a double bearer of
insufferable
substitute
smarts,
a
loser lost,
and the child
of ancestors so
disappointed in my
unconquerable weakness
that they turn their faces away
and petition the gods for redress,
for a redistribution of the accumulated
wealth that in a moment of over-
weening familial pride they
bequeathed to a daughter
so frail, so unused to
the weight of duty
and obligation,
that she let
slip
treasures
dearly bought
between knobby
knuckled fingers,
and only now, at the
setting of the sun cries
out at their melting gleaming
glow, and grants them only
a timid glance, too late
to be wistful, and
without saving
grace,
the only feature we share
is the angle at which
we bear our
shame.
October 30, 2024
As the liberty of my body contracts,
the liberty of my mind expands.
I restrain both to survive, here.
It is another form of madness.
October 26, 2024
age with grace, age with humility.
age like a writer, age like a poet.
October 21, 2024
Prosperity never follows on
the heels of servitude.
October 9, 2024
We are the sons and daughters
of the kings of the earth.
In the ruckus of the bluejay's croak
dwell the old gods.
In the swaying of stormy branches
dwell the old gods.
In the hoofprints left in a muddy field,
in the whirl of insects caught
in a shaft of sunlight,
in the reflection of autumn leaves
on still water, in the smell of
pine needles crushed
underfoot,
in the gaping mouth of a leaping
trout, in the scattering of
stars across the vast
firmament,
in the blood that sanctifies
the hunter's arrow, in the
blown bloom
of the dog
rose,
in the crash of the sea over
bladderwrack, in the
reverent silence
of new fallen
snow,
in the bright sweetness
of blackberries, in the
trembling flash of
an aspen
leaf,
in the shining globe of a grape,
in the billowing colossus
of a thunderhead
dwell the
old gods.
Their voices are our voices.
Their footfalls are our footfalls.
They walk with us, hoary mountain
men long dead and still full of mirth.
Titans crowned with thunderheads,
blanketed with cloaks of
new fallen snow,
their eyes
the
piercing stars,
and at their sides
the golden shafts of aspen.
Behold them.
Honor them.
Drink with them.
Avow our kinship.
For we are the sons and daughters
of the kings of the earth.
October 9, 2024
Bludgeoned by the hammer
and sickle, I yet look up
into that streaky
morning
sky
and wonder
at ancestors who
looked up in the dead
of winter and did not know
if they'd see the morrow
and yet felt neither
hunger nor
despair,
know-
ing
only
that they
were mortals in
the hands of
the gods.
October 1, 2024
