Childish things

What if 
instead of his color

we saw first

the two arms,

the two legs,

the two eyes 

of a man

Or a kid
just like us

trying hard 

to be big,

trying not 
to show doubt

What if

the hardness of trying

became a defense
of what our families
had filled us with

What if

instead of his color

we saw our own fear
and alienness
reflected back
like a photo's negative 
held up to the light

What if the shock

made us throw up 
our hands:

caught,

chastened,

shot through
with pain, shame,
mercy

What if #blacklivesmatter 

were #whitepeoplesproblem

What if poems were cover

What if games of pretend

were the law

and empathy became 
policeman to all

Wassailing

(Photo by Paul Rockett)

Beneath the crust
of first December

I went yawning for
some inspiration

when I saw the ghost  
of Glenn Gould's hands

and felt the echo of
a reflection of Bach

run across the roof
of my mouth

to make of me
a church 

Out of Time

While cleaning recently, I came across an old cd case from my college years. Half the sleeves were filled with R.E.M. albums. It made me stop and realize something.

I rarely listen to R.E.M. anymore.

But I used to, obsessively. Michael Stipe was the one person in the world who seemed to understand the yearning that squirmed inside of me. And if that thought makes me smile in self-condescension now, it really shouldn't. His voice was my lifeline. 

Art is sometimes a lifeline. 

After college, I moved to Athens, Georgia for a year. Ostensibly for other reasons, but I wasn't fooling myself: I was there for the band, and the mystique conjured around their hometown. I was there because of the kudzu-choked cover on R.E.M.'s first LP, Murmur. I was there because I was searching blindly to know who I was, and what I wanted, and I followed the only thing that felt true to me. 

I wasn't any less lost in Athens, Georgia than I was in Athens, Ohio. In fact, I moved back home after 9 months. It was my first real-world experiment in trying to make a fantasy a reality, and I failed, miserably. 

But I don't regret the trying. 

I still love that music. It still blows me wide open. But I can't hear it now without also feeling trapped by who I was then. I remember an unhappiness so complete I didn't even know to call it unhappiness. I didn't know. All I knew was fear.

I'm not that girl anymore. 

Eventually, the band broke up.

But this blog owes its name to them. And that time in my life when the kudzu began to clear. 

Four corners

His hand
on her arm

the blood reacts

She is now other
than what she
appears to be 

A tree that's moved
from day to night

the moon 
quickening
through darkling 
veins

Foxfire,
she almost thinks,
breathing through
two paper legs

sipping her sips
of tonic water
with her radioactive 
lips

She hits the
target

his mask
slips

She sees ice
beneath

and likes it

While deeper
yet

darkness

Suffuse me
before you're gone

I am small and
winter is long

Words
running circles
around a rectangular
room

fall down in a flock
at the end of the day

Exhausted by what
they couldn't say

Used To

I used to wear pink. 
Now I wear red.

Like a leaf 
no longer hiding,

Like a silent 
solid yes.

I used to hang 
on others' ideas;

now I make 
my own. 

Deleted

October

You are an old soul masked
in an adolescent's body

ripping off the pages
of a recycled diary

and setting them 
to flame

Before tossing the ashes
in the eye of a lake

and whispering your psalms
through the pine-bitten dawn

That Time is a phoenix 
with unfathomable wings

and we are the chlorophyll
draining its veins

And The Record Skipped

(Close-up of unidentified Rothko)

Intimacy lives
in that band 
of skin

above a man's
collar

beneath the
draw of his
barber's blade
   
Where Summer's
burn slides

into a white
Winter bed

And in the passage,
a woman's Fall

100 Words

In her mind, they meet in a clearing, conscious of the cliché, but captured all the same by the beauty of their bodies beating in the sun, the electricity swimming on their swollen tongues, awareness dipping into some peasant fold, so that he moves—and she moves—and they move—as leaves move.   

Like a bird she will dive into his mouth. 

And oh, the sky, and aye, the clouds, and yes to the weight of his body being on her own, yes for the felt and fleeting clutch of an immortal light, in all this blood between the legs.  

Taxiing

All week long,

I've left words 
alone,

and they seem fine

out there 

on their own

Exchanging my pen

for a Nikon lens

and the sawing at clarity

for the sensory swing 

of encountering a thing,

before shooting it

still

I like the beautiful things

more than I like the true things,

but I like the beautiful, true things

most of all  

And that is a photograph's
exquisite appeal,

being all right 
there,

magnified and married
at the speed
of light     

While words have to

struggle--

always this struggle--

and always upwind, 

us and them jawing 
to get our gears
to bite

Starting, 
then stopping
before finding--

blue