Poem a day 2015: The last one! 30!

How It Unravels

You come home from a trip to find
the dog's mouth is bleeding and it
won't stop.

A pile of papers grows
like moss from the dining and kitchen tables,

then a cluster of jackets appears as suddenly
as mushrooms after a storm
over the chairs, and piled against the window,
and slung across the dog's kennel.

The cars run out of gas.

That pain in your ass slides down
the back of your leg and around
to grip your knee.

Standing becomes difficult, and walking --
forget about walking,
because your shoes squeeze your fat feet
until your brain feels the need
to explode.

Bacon grease infects the air, smears
the griddle in the middle of the stove,
dots the linoleum around the dog's
bloody kisses.

Somewhere in the house, a cat
calls you -- a loud, plaintive cry
that means he's trapped himself
where you'll never find him.

Now even the words in the books
that line your walls
begin to disintegrate,

and your signature on the check for the cleaning lady
dances into meaningless scribbles,
your eyes swimming in super glue.

Finally, your AARP cards arrive
in a big red and white envelope
and you pull them out to discover
they've gotten your husband's name wrong:

he's now Donald rather than David,
how the hell does that happen,
could it be that your handwriting has gotten
THAT BAD?

or did you somehow, in a twilight zone
twist of time, a pre-senile fugue state,
write your grandfather's name on the form
four weeks ago

when you decided,
in a moment of geriatric resignation,
a flash of precognition
that revealed, as in a bolt of lightening,
the many ways that time
is already unknitting you,

to abandon any pretense of avoiding 
this fate

and to jump, with the rest,
off the metaphorical Titanic of
middle age in America
into the future's freezing ocean
and be done with it.

Poem a day 2015: 29

The Poem Won't Write Itself,

you know, so you're going to have to do some work.
but first, eat that dark chocolate you've got
stashed in your desk. feel better? good.

why not start with some invention work?
you know -- a freewrite or something. and
time it. there's nothing more annoying than

typing blah blah blah for like twenty long minutes
with your mind half on something else and a
quarter in the ether. five minutes seems about right.

get anything? aside from the fact that "freewrite"
autocorrected to "ferret"?  (twice) no? still thinking
about that chocolate? well, it's gone now. you ate it.

focus on the task at hand. maybe you could dip
your fingers into that word box you've got and
pull something out, like "plaything" or "fabulous."

(forget about "sleep" -- you've done enough of that.
your mental sloth has become "habitual.") what can you do
with a fabulous plaything then? oh, come on,

get your twelve-year-old boy-mind  out of the gutter
for once.  no poem is going to come of that immature
hubba hubba shit ... so what what sorts of things

are fabulous playthings? nature. the mind. children.
how about poetry?  oooh, now you're going all meta
on the poem's ass, poetry as a fabulous plaything,

when you know that no one sees poetry as playful
anymore, not really. and by "no one" you mean you don't,
you who know the hive mind or at least write about yourself

as if you know what everyone is thinking. maybe if you
eat more chocolate, or go in search of more, you'll get
inspired. or maybe while you're gone, the computer pixies

will enter like the elven shoemakers of old and hammer
together a poem from the scraps you've left on the cyber
table, and the poem will essentially write itself.

Poem a day 2015:28

We're Back in Town

And the air is crisp
clean and clear and cold

as if it's been waiting for us
to fly back over the mountains

with the night on our tail
and land here where the maples

have budded in our absence
green lacy puffs over the roads

as if trying to match the green
of the forests we've just left

all the animals are glad to see us:
the cats follow us through the house

yodeling
and sleep on our faces as we nap off

the upright dozing trip
all those dreams that don't get to stick

and the dog's celebration
involves twirling in midair

even the sunshine seems designed
to compete with any wanderer's lust

to head out for territories unknown
to fall in love with foreign places

Poem a day 2015: 27

Fears

All those lives pressing up
against me in the market place,
unknown faces and bodies hiding
a thousand thousand stories
I will never know, some of them
dark with molasses hate

The roads unwinding in front of me
path after path leading
perhaps in the wrong direction
where hearts beat into dead ends
that fist them into submission

The crash of thunder rocking
the handles on the dresser
shivering the wood beneath our bed
and the crack of lightening
splitting the night wide

That cancer will worm its way
into someone I love and blossom
and blossom and blossom

Fiery car accidents
in the middle of nowhere
The dog loose and running toward traffic
Floods in the basement
Zombie apocalypse
Pandemic
Meteor invasion
Any sort of war on home soil
Memory loss and mental illness
Dying alone and unloved

Poem a day 2015: 26

Slow Burn

For months now
a muscle in my right buttock
has been burning, a deep hot paralyzing fire

that drills down into my soul
and scoops sips of it out
until I feel flat as the devil

a paper woman in a muscular conflagration
Hell on broken wheels
limping through the streets now

of Portland, gimping up
the humps and down the hillocks
of the Oregon zoo,

standing in line at Voodoo Donuts
with the slow smoldering melt
disintegrating my hip bone

into a low murmur:
shitfuckdamn
jesuschristontoast

If I were a Barbie doll I'd beg you
with my painted eyes
to pull my plastic leg out of its socket

and let it snap back
or just twist the thing off and
throw it in the bushes

Too bad I'm alive
a living breathing 50 year old woman
in what appears to be

reasonable health for her age
who needs this damaged leg to stand on
for another 35 years or so

Poem a day 2015: 25

Green

Here in Oregon
the green is aggressive
popping out against the eye
in moving shades
that climb low mountains
and jut up in reaching pines
as thin and coiffed as
someone's amateur painting

and the azaleas and rhododendrons
explode into lush bunches
of delicate wet flowers
purple and pink and fuchsia
that hang in voluptuous clumps
over emerald patches of grass
that butt up against small houses
with peaks that match
their miniature pines

Everywhere life seems to be
thrusting up against the cracks
breaking the pavement with
fecund urgency
and the feeling infects the wet air
like pollen

"Everything smells fresh," Lizzie says
and I have to agree
though for the moment I feel
as ancient as the hills that surround us
wrapped in a furling blanket
of creeping cloud

Poem a day 2015: 24

We Are Flying

Lizzie and I are flying today
leaving Green Bay and lifting off
going west over mountains
toward the coast
where soon she will make her
new life
without us

already I feel my insides
rising
the air inside me expanding
and pulling me up
molecule by molecule
beginning with every root
of every hair

minute by minute I'm getting
lighter
as invisible parts of me detach
and evaporate
dissolve into the future
the past
transformed into weightless
memories

perhaps this zero gravity
explains the queasy knot
at the pit of my stomach
or maybe
that's an echo of my
melting heart

Poem a day 2015: 23

Waiting for It

I’m waiting for the poem to come to me,

looking out the window into slow moving

clouds over the gently waving branches

of a still-leafless tree, marking two pelicans

as they dive from the white into the blue,

flapping in tandem, tracing big circles

across my vision.

The birds this morning

shouted from the bare trees, promising

warmer weather, the eventual arrival of

summer: silky hot skies, flowering shrubs,

the hiss of cicadas stretching the air wider.

I’m waiting for the poem to come to me,

stretched out on my chaise under two

layers, skin still vaguely chilled by the

retrograde weather, the crisp wind,

frozen mud flavored by yesterday’s

mocking snowflakes.

I’m waiting for it

to burst onto the scene with trumpets

and tigerlilies, with explosions of leaves

and clusters of cottonwood seeds borne

in puffs across the river trail, with dandelions

like punctuation marks across every lawn --

I’m waiting for the naked summer poem

to arrive and demand we strip off all these

heavy clothes, run across hot sidewalks, and

dive into each other with sweaty abandon.

Poem a day 2015: 22

Dreaming of You, Dad

Amazing how, now that you’re gone,

I think of you more and more often,

and you enter my dreams with some

regularity -- a strong, slim presence

such as you were in the sixties, before

the stresses of academia and fakery,

the pressures of fatherhood and family,

inflated you with anger and despair.

I can’t quite recall your words as you

offer casual opinions about world affairs

and my ongoing place in them, or advice

for navigating a position in administration

with a modicum of grace, despite the

hidden snakes and the open haters

(you’ve figured out, it seems, that

I’m slated to move into it in August),

but I do remember your sweet smile

and the shine in your eyes, warm now

with love and appreciation. I can even

reinvent, like the afterscent of smoke

soaked into my clothes, the feel of your

strong arm around my shoulders and

the rub of your hands down my skin

as you pull me in against you.

These dreams reassure me. It seems

you are indeed in a better place. But

they also make me sad -- to know that

some of us have to die in order to love.

Poem a day 2015: 21

Lately an Odd Calm

lately an odd calm

possesses me

settles my insides

into perfect order

stills the thought whirl

that once agitated me

so that i fit perfectly

inside my skin

-- it’s a strange feeling

this equanimity

as if i’ve finally found

the proper orbit

around the proper sun

and gravity has

found me

at last

Poem a day 2015: 20

Poem for Lizzie

a long time ago

you used to bull your head

against my ribs

press your feet into

my backbone and

bend me like a bow

from the inside

you were so big in me

i couldn’t tie my shoes

couldn’t get behind the wheel

of my car

strangers in the supermarket

stopped their carts in front of me

to shout: don’t have that baby here!

and 5 year old seth asked:

how’s your baby

going to get out?

i wondered that too

of course

woke up with every fiber of me

on fire with you

and wondering

how the hell you were going

to get out of me

hard to believe you’re now

a woman

and taller than me

ready to launch yourself

into the wide world

beyond our house

fixing your sights across

this country

to a western state

we’ve only visited once

every day i wake up

with the truth of your

impending departure

pushing behind my eyes

and i have to find you

look at you

to make sure

you’re still here

that your story hasn’t started

without me

Poem a day 2015: 19

Spring Cleaning

I’m incompetent in the garden,

digging up flowers or raking them,

when they’re tender April shoots,

into chewed bits. My neglect

encourages three foot high thistles

and nightshade and skunk weed,

and the Snow on the Mountain I planted

under the cedar over 13 years ago

has colonized half the backyard.

I let dried leaves take over the beds,

am indifferent to pruning,

have no idea when to plant bulbs,

and allow squirrels to transplant

the neighbor’s daffodils to our lawn.

My surviving flowers and shrubs

cling to life despite me, struggling

in ragged non-rows, competing with

dandelions and three year old mulch.

About once a year, I head out and

tackle something with haphazard zeal.

Today, I raked beds, retrampled

mulch, rearranged the puffs of leaves

around the bottoms of the bushes,

got something stuck in my thumb

that’s still bugging me, pulled a few

weeds and left them piled on the porch,

couldn’t get the weedkiller to squirt,

pushed some bent metal “holders”

around the incipient peonies, and

then put all the tools away before

noting the pile of leaves on the back

patio that will no doubt remain there

for another twelve months.

Poem a day 2015: 18

This Neighborhood

With its postage stamp lawns, row

after row of them,

the grass now a mottled green and yellow

where years of dog piss

have burned past the roots,

and the arching maples,

some splitting in half, rotten

at their cores,

roots gnarled around themselves,

suffocating under cracked concrete,

maples spitting whirly seeds

into our clogged gutters

and down into our weedy flower beds,

here and there a fresh stump

in the middle of sprayed sawdust,

and our houses -- peeling stucco,

faded plastic siding,

ripped awnings

banging against front porches

in a wind

that pushes dried leaves

and half built robins’ nests --

crowded up against each other,

knocking elbow to elbow,

this neighborhood sheds another

winter skin

and blows it up

with dust

into the still-cold sky

where planes fly low

and away,

dragging their silver bellies

over our roofs

like missed wishes.