Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? Yet that's what these are. I'm lucky enough to have some great people look over my poetry and help me improve it - my mom, my sisters, a poetry grad. student, and my poetry professor, who is also a poet. Each one gives me additional perspectives on ways in which I can improve my work. For them and for those who just love reading my poetry anyway, I am re-posting some old poetry in their new and improved (hopefully) state. To see the old ones, you'll just have to search the archives; it's not that hard to do. Enjoy!
The Earthquake
Perhaps there was a jostling of the heart
that I didn’t notice.
Then, while I waited to be served,
my mind in a book, the book in my hand,
the hand relaxed on the edge of an old table,
the table may or may not have moved.
The waiter asked if I had felt it,
the echoes of the earthquake,
200 miles away, past twisted rivers,
and battered mountains. He told me
boxes shook in the back room,
though nothing spilled: no broken
bottles to clean up or fires to put out,
though closer to the center,
buildings cracked, pipes split,
water and gas gushed
into a street muddled
with a mess of panicked people.
But we didn’t mention it, couldn’t fathom it;
we forgot it,
and laughed about my lost
chance to experience an earthquake.
Nearby, another calm customer still read,
unaware and absorbed in his bubble blue letter
from a place I don’t know,
a place I can’t even imagine,
a place that doesn’t exist.
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Death by Conviction
Even in dreams you can be stabbed; I’ve tasted it:
the cold dagger sliding into your breast
from a person at the door; the anger different than
the blade, less confined than steel, yet larger
than the house, or the trees that shroud it.
But the anger also is the blade, hidden inside
a dusty cloak, as suddenly revealed as it is buried
within your tired cage. The deep shock throbs
in cycles of sleep, a wound that kills you
once, and then the dream repeats.
Each time, you cannot stay
dead for long; there is a mission to fulfill,
God’s truth to share, the reason for their hatred and
your many deaths. Your mind begins to learn who
to trust, when to speak, and when to flee.
Awake we don’t recall these warnings.
The dream leaves no photographs,
only watercolors stirring in the memory that
recall a sting, a frustration to escape, and
a betrayal of faith. Of every detail lost, I fear
one: the face of the enemy.
A man or a woman, young or old, stranger or
familiar? I observe them all now; I sense knives close
to their skin, coiled against threat. I know also
the weapon beside my own heart and resolve to
melt it away, or lives will be lost.
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To Take Your Place
Your room drags me in: a vacuum, grasping my body
like a shaken child.
I see a bed to sleep in, shoes to walk in, and drawers to open,
all lit by the blue glow of the alarm clock
blinking on the floor.
When you left, all this remained untouched, tidy, anxious
for your return:
the unruffled bed, lines of shoes, and folded clothes
(as if obedience could make people
stay).
And I, standing in the midst of it, split
myself in two to take
your place.
I could wear your white hat to hide from the sun, your polo shirt
to protect my lungs.
Your work pants are covered in the dirt of trying
to build a life
away from the endless hallway in our apartment,
the locked doors, the cluttered corners
where my books lie half open beside my winter jacket,
another skin I shed.
If I could put on these remains, what would it be?
An armor? A disguise? A mockery?
I’m not older than the clothes given me
nor stronger than the wall I lean on.
Your voice won’t form in my throat;
it’s stuck deeper, within veins of memories
unable to bleed.
I can’t even cast your shadow,
taller than myself
and more whole than either of us.
I am heavier for trying to hold you in my mirror.
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“Only The Words Remain, Floating In The Air”
In the passageway of his home made of broken garage doors,
northern Mexico, on a ditched dirt road sloped off of Main Street,
his daughter, recovering from live wire shock, twitching at his legs,
he told me this of unkept promises, and I whispered it in my heart.
I imagined airplanes that never touch down, that circle
with whale shadows, that sweep through the saline sky,
and swim between the gathering clouds of more gray flights
and jets of smoke. It’s all I can do to hold my breath
when I’m a return passenger, stuck where air thickens inside.
But other marbled days I’m your childhood balloon man
who handed you the red and green ones at the fair.
Parents buy so many balloons; it’s not out of the blue
to hear that one more child has floated away,
clutching the thin strings of a rainbow cloud.
The wind shoves and some days I don’t come home either,
rocked in a silver current as cold as winter streams.
At times my feet pounded down a steep green hill,
but more often I forget the grit of dirt and the strike of gravity.
And the words remain, floating in the air,
static charges waiting to connect, to return to earth.
This truth is as strange as the dark side of nature:
these clouds rising, the ensuing crash of rain and thunder,
the light flashing blackness, the explosive echo.
Across the world, lightning leaps the hollow chasm
between abandoned wires hung high in the dusty air
and where we stand, as proud as trees on a crimson plain.
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If you made it through all that, congrats to you! You win "awesome" points. Thanks for reading and, as always, let me know if you like something or if you don't and why. Or also, if you see a change I've made that you don't like, also let me know. Thanks!
