My Heart is at the Window

 My heart is at the window.

I lean with longing on the sill.

I am at the edge of expectation,

Waiting, waiting

to see the future form, the grace

I have wished for, the humble steps

of hope, the whirlwind ready to kiss my cheek.

My heart is at the window,

I have been here so long,

the horizon has been hidden by the leaves’ ornamentation, by pages of years, by my too small courage.

My heart is at the window.

I pray that love sweeps down the lonely road

and breaks open my heart, so sadly patient,

into the seizures of a streaming sun,

shattering me into the light that taunts my vista.

The Scent of Violets

The Scent of Violets

My palms form a tent

over distant cities as I pray

and I want violets to rain down,

and to smell healing oils

instead of sulfur,

and see angels pour the waters of peace

from their place of mythic origin,

no angels on backs of apocalyptic horses,

no plagues, nor rumors of war,

no masquerades of death,

and to hear that myths of sacrifice

are no longer allowed by the laws of Heaven,

the testing of Abraham eased from human memory,

of Isaac in peaceful slumber, no vengeful Lord

waiting to see how far a father will go,

no knife raised above any altar.

no offering of children to slaughter,

no cruel jokes of a jealous god,

not even a scapegoat desired,

and for prayers to rise to Heaven

on the scent of violets and answers given

as rain falls silently to a quiet Earth.

From my chapbook Threshold, Meeting of the Minds Publications

Galaxy Girl

There is a question next to her,

a small dog’s face,

loyalty to what she carries,

a cluster in the sky.

She is a new constellation,

lead by nebula light

and a galaxy brain.  ‘

Shy girl hiding her face beneath stars, exposed with her large naval,

all the dark matter of her belly, the crook of her arm, womanly hips.

I am in love.  I believe she would carry me to the dimensions of dreams,

through the night as minutes pass.  Call her Midnight and be done.

Sad Elephant

  Sad Elephant (seven minutes)

The winged insects flew

in from another world.

My stomach churns diamond shards

but my tears only drop red paint.

I step into the desert half crazed and wary.

I was a dandy but now I am old

and heavy with stars, scars on my skin.

I look for the palo verde and hope for healing.

My tears become little men

who pick the palms.   I’m leaving the wild ocean

for temptations of rocks and yellow sand.

I am blessed to wear elephant shoes,

but I grieve the water wings

I leave behind.  Cacti rattle hymns

for the predetermined God, the One who lives

in arid spaces.  I’ve gone to listen for him.

The ocean was too noisy.  My birth jungle brims

with confusing myth.  My tears speak of the wild gifts

buried within my heart.

I pray erosion will uncover them,

the crazed animals, dear unformed art,

the unknown blessings.

Les Eason, My Dad Aug. 30, 1906- Aug. 3, 1978

Stars Falling in August

Daddy, the stars fell when you died, skidding across the night

Like chips pealed from chrome, carried by burnished wind across the sky.

The creosote was drunk in the dry desert air.

And though I wasn’t there, I’ve imagined how you flew from your soul,

Leaving your daughters like thistles blown over the chaparral,

Our breath thin as the stems of the palo verde that grew stunted in the yard.

The house filled up with uncles.  My boyfriend and I slept on a cot out back,

As we made love, the stars became silver nighthawks,

Fish tails swimming through the blinding air.

I was numb like the space between stars that are too stable,

Refusing to stray from the safety of their paths.  I didn’t  feel the meteors

Of broken glass falling to earth in silent breaths.

Daddy, thousands of stars have tumbled since then,

Streaking through the heat of a hundred nights. Each second

They have been in the sky, these variegated strands of burning air

Have burned open the portion in me that closed

More than twenty years ago.

Now nights stay sober save for the drink of starlight,

And the odor of yarrow and summer grass.

But the sky will never be shorn of star flakes,

Nor the earth of burning sand. The stars fell

When you died, carried by the wind luminous across the sky.

Bastille Day

Bastille Day

 

Resist writing beautiful words if none

are called for. Admit that your knitting needles

click at the bottom of the guillotine. Freedom

is formed from nightmares, made from the messy

soup of the chopping block, in breach births,

and in the haunted souls of the stillborn.

Liberty is written as the mad harlot’s song,

rising with the smells of the boudoir

as she gives birth to the blind child

who will one day cast silhouettes of hope.

 

Lies must be digested and shat in the gardens

of darkness, decomposition igniting light. Resist

all beautiful words if none are called for.

Do not trust overlays of light not yet explored.

Go free. Ring ounces of pretension

from your nakedness. Kill the aristocrats,

and then have your enemies as dinner guests

in rooms purged, made spacious enough for light

to filter through high arched windows. Resist

beauty if you can not find it in despair,

in the clenched fists clung to barbed wire, on walls

upon which the graffiti of limits are written.

 

Resist beauty if it is false. If it remains in palaces

instead of on the streets. If it exchanges terror

for cosmetics laced with lead. Your sole may leave a

bloody footprint as the baskets filled high with heads.

Offer yours.

 

Resist.

It’s still July 14th on my side of the world.

I wrote this poem a few years ago for a reading I did at Cafe Arrivederchi in San Rafael, CA.  Subsequently, it was published by THE DICKENS, the wonderful literary magazine that Copperfield Books put out for a several years.  It won the Eugene Ruggles Poetry Prize, sponsored by the magazine.

 

Hashtag, Handle, Bitly Register

So, since I’ve started this blog I’ve written about everything but my book.  I’ve been shy, I guess.  Or because this place has been a wonderful  to fheave stuff on to it that fills up my brain and life.  And that has a purpose.

I want to share an exciting moment in the life of an author.   I could pretend this is a found poem and title it “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”:

• did u figure it out?

• you put the tweet that you want tweeted in as a comment

• you have to follow that format

• you pick two hashtag words

• then put your handle in

• then your books name

• then the link has to be shortened

• you do that at bitly

• there is a link to bitly on there

• you go to bitly and register

• or you might not even have to register

 

Open House and Wild Things

We were hard at work making our Wild Things when news came of Sendak’s death.  This is first grader Braxton’s poem he wrote the day before:

I am a wild thing.

I look at the cheese moon

That is bright and hairy.

It chases a star squirrel,

And then Max came along,

And Boo came with me,

And Sam did too.

Here are all of the Wild Things,

some animal conversations,

and, finally, a couple of our habitats.

The Moon Man Falls from the Sky

The stars pinched

as I tumbled down,

Their sharp little edges

cut me from heaven.

My sad eyes blossom

under my mask,

seeing how far I’ve fallen.

My heart blooms hard.

I’m no longer in your sky.

My round dreams once raised the tides.

My body is awkward at rest.

The Mermaid Lucia

A picture I drew long ago and a poem that went with it.  For some reason wanted to share them tonight.

The Mermaid Lucia

 We are in Italy, two priests stand behind us.

On the bridge, the farmer and his sons

pull the yoke of an ox unwilling to cross over water.

 A dog barks somewhere in the distance.

Painters captured us with wavy lines

that stream from brushes.

 

 

 They formed me leaning against you.

 I’ve stretched my legs from beneath my dress

so that the sun can warm them.

You said nothing and handed me a pink petal.

 

 

The petal became a ruby,

and you read to me from The Inferno.

I didn’t understand Italian, but I wanted to.

That night we stood naked beneath the moon

and called to the gods. The moon floated

because the oceans had filled up.

 

 I wondered if I would dissolve  like a pane of sugar glass,

or if my name had become Lucia. There was silver in the trees.

This was the moment I became the mermaid.

Moon rays flicked off me like scales from fins.

 

 

The bridge is still there, and if we ever

saw it again,  it would snag us, pull us to the past. 

Remember how the dog ran up to us?  And the lowing of the ox?

How the priests murmured about something political? 

There was a song bird whose name I wanted to know.

 

 

Lucia became a witch and burned sage

in abalone shells.  Rocks were particularly potent.

She sought dakinis in clouds and claimed

the color indigo, Both of her lives are here on canvas.

 

 

By day Lucia’s fins are feet split apart. She conjured them

to walk with ease. At night she swims in the sea,

her legs meld into a tail flicking at the sound of dreams.