Ajax Kallistrate

why does emotional wreckage haunt us?
(i'm always at least a little bit lost.)

we move so fast but do we go anywhere?
or are we like trees, rooted in our lives.

two seeds encompassing separate
universes of potential become
two trees in separate universes,

both uncomplaining subjects of
their places in the world, of
their microclimates, of shade,
sun, elevation, weather,
competition for water.

they don't get to choose where
and when damp soil awakens
them any more than apes decide
where and when to be born
and into what precarious
social networks.

it's the agony of choice that defeats us
moment by moment, the mistaken belief
that no roots bind us, that no walls block
out the warmth, that the open sky alone
determines where our reach meets its
limitations.

trees feel no grief, no loneliness, no despair.
they endure. they live, they grow, they die.
they fall, they sift into soil, decay.

or are we discrete organisms at all?
or are we only entries in a bestiary

manufactured by the neural pathways
left behind by natural selection, by
those primitive shapes that fell one
into the other, by those coincidental
keys that opened coincidental locks,
those streams of particles flowing
through the skulls of self-considering
apes, electrical entities that can't see
backwards into space or time, only
inwards, the master originators who
declare this pool of signals suffering,
enfolding it within a length of
judgement,

this is wrong, a sin, a fault, or
this shall be excused, ignored,
elevated into grace.

trees make no such distinctions.
fill in the spaces between the
branches and the tree becomes
negative.

whatever we are, we exist, we need.
one moment of joy, one moment of
grief. we pass along the dendritic
stream into an unreachable sky.

(suffering dislodged from its context
is never senseless.)

May 30, 2022

Sometimes when two people each have half of something, you don't get a whole when you put them together. Sometimes you still have two halves.

May 14, 2015

The wisdom of the winding path
is that there are no shortcuts.

June 7, 2020

Why do your keys make so happy a jingle on a dull day in March? like a puppy dog at the door, welcome! welcome! it's a good day!
hello! you're home!

Forty-eight years old and I slouch with my knees apart
like a cowboy
if a cowboy
was a middle-aged woman in artificially distressed denim and dirty hiking boots.

What's important? Love and art.

Forty-eight years old and I swagger with my wallet chain chiming against my box-cutter like spurs ching! ching!
like a cowboy
if a cowboy was a rejected product of the unraveling American middle-class.

When did I last watch the sun rise? decoupled from time and space because it can't be rushed, can't be squeezed in between errands and dishes and feeding the cats, because there's no app to replace it, because every single one is unique, because it'll never come again.

Forty-eight years old and I sigh when the weight of old pain and everyday grief feels too heavy on my back
like a cowboy
if a cowboy was a bird-beaked old woman trying to do the right thing without a guide, a tutor, a mentor, a helpmeet.

Who am I isn't a question I can afford to answer when nobody is good enough to earn a living. (The interest would kill me.)

Forty-eight years old and I'm finally the person I wanted to be at fourteen.

If I'm invisible it's because I choose to be invisible.

If I put up with someone's shit it's because I choose to put up with their shit, for love or money.

I don't have to,

I choose.
I survive.

like a cowboy

if a cowboy was more than an old-fashioned symbol of self-reliance, independence, substance, courage, and strength, more than a man whose character, in accordance with stereotype, was honed by adversity, a man who doesn't care about the show but about the story it tells, a man who understands that it's not about the having of it, but the earning of it, a man who lives in no man's shadow, a man whose cares are etched into every line on his face, in his limp, his swollen joints, in every gray hair, every wrinkle, every mole, a man who doesn't complain, but keeps on walking, keeps on working, a man who shapes his life with his hands,

if a cowboy was an American ideal that even a forty-eight year old woman can aspire to in a dusty dry-room shifting banana boxes from one place to another.

It's not that I wanted to be a man, it's that I wanted to live up to masculine ideals.

April 3, 2022

when you're asking only one crisis at a time
when you wonder will i ever be enough
when you're asking can i make it
one more moment one more
hour just today just let me
get through today and that
primal glittering star reaches
through black branches and
it's enough for one moment
it's enough to lift your foot
and take with you those
downy white feathers
layered over smeary
purple bars and it's
enough to get you
in the door it's
enough to get
you through
one more
moment
one more
hour just
today

April 3, 2022

my poetry keeps me company in fragmented moments that slide around like empty tin cans useless used up can't be retrofitted refilled empty moments chained together like shoreline wrack broken shells foamy salt spit hiss and rush whatever it takes it gives back at the end of the day

April 3, 2022

how fast does a sparrow's heart
beat that frantic drum in its tiniest
breast pocket of life that springing
leaping spark chirruping competing
with the roar of diesel brakes and
afternoon traffic in a hungry
frenzy to claim some self-
enclosed space driven
by ancestral flight
feathers to hold
on hold still
remain in
danger a
target
a morsel
for some other
ancestrally driven
pocket of protein dragged
toward the same destination
as the white-knuckled primate at
the helm of the machine one
after another green yellow
red endless march along
a wandering path of
despair and con-
fusion and
con-
templation
and mythology
beneath the frantic
sparrow's heart bursting
with a song he sings in the
name of relief in the name of
one brief moment unbowed by
the crushing weight of natural
selection before the alarm
triggers monday morning
for a dime a dollar a
song a poem
for the
acquisition
of resources for
power for a cardboard
cutout opportunity for a
moist pair of eyes transfixed
by a dancing mobile spinning
spinning overhead tracing
contrast by contrast a
sizzling flood of neural
pathways lighting up
with animal urges
disguised as
heavenly
imperatives in
the hearts of
bipedal apes at a bus
stop for one brief moment
beating in time to bird-
song on the first
of april.

April 3, 2022

I listened and it changed me.
I spoke and remained the same.

April 3, 2022