Blue Jasmine

I used to know all the words

But now they’re all a jumble. They ran

Away so long ago, vanishing into paragraphs

And pages too sprawling and small to track or read.

Then it seemed the hieroglyphics exploded,

Leaving no syllables, no compound sounds—no meaning—

Just consonants and vowels, an alphabet where as pieces

From different puzzles no two could be

Tied, jointed, paired. In the end all one could do

Is make piles of them, a pre-adamic sorting

Based on size, color, character, awaiting the day

When language returns, the day God walks with us again

Through the garden, blessing an inflorescence of speech

And a fruitfulness of poetry by which we no longer stammer,

Gape, hungry for the well-spoken breath, but are sated,

Glutted with penetrating, uttered love,

A healing that soothes the soul’s desperation. Such

Longed-for and long-awaited messages are never

Negative but imbibed with peaceful potency that could last

A thousand years’ drought.

I am still in the desert.

I have been here a thousand years.

I have labored; piles stand.

I will wait another millennium for just one more word to come.

That word will be my last.

Dirt Road IV

I urgently shout

I desperately run

I wave my hands

To get a ride to town.

My mothers sick

The broken gate,

The funeral to which

I know I’ll be late.

No matter how mad and disappointed
My black eyes and bowed stance be

You don’t stop,

You never stop for me.

Housing VI

I hear the voice of my mother.

She cries loudly from the temple mount

Of the contentment of stolen water.

Without looking up, I listen, but through my tears

I have no words, no rebuke, no comfort,

Only wisdom, always dressed in black, sits with me.

Among the mountains I hear the call

Of a silent spring, hidden and blue

Under fir and spruce, awaiting the summer

Toll of its feast and unveiling.

Housing V

At first I ground my teeth

When asking myself why I was gone.

Later I would wake up to clenched hands

In the dark, next to me a pillow--lonely.

Do you ever discover fists

When sitting, walking, thinking?

As if this divorce would be over

If I could hold onto her breath’s air.

Left Behind III

As your excitement bubbles

A wrench knots my innards.

With each item you neatly packed in,

Undone is my social sweater.

There is no exaltation without a sundering below.

I am left behind as you are freed.

A sentence of solitary freedom.

As you fly away I’ll take a picture

To touch that assoiling wind

In captured film, my instant shuttering.

Left Behind II

Sounds of an electric toothbrush

Ring at the sight of crusty outlines

On porcelain sink.

Drawers only half empty from packing

Done too slowly, of a broken e-reader,

A family portrait, used paintbrushes.

A colorful collection of permanent markers,

Bottles of empty beer in a line up against the window,

None looking me straight in the eye.

A half drawn plot plan, like the final walk and goodbye,

We rushed to avoid the end by sitting around. Now

The course to come is left to intuition.

It doesn’t take a discerning eye to see

I’ve been left to clean up their mess.

Left Behind I

This place hasn’t changed. 

My space remains constant

While yours has been vacuumed

Formless and void.

I bump into traces drifting around all morning,

Specters of a world forlorn and lost.

If only they weren’t real, horrid reminders.

Birds you named continue to fly about,

The handmade beehive still buzzes,

Fish swim gaily, trusting your hand

To feed them at the dimming of day.