Coming Home After Ten Days of Sickness

She came home today with a paper band around her wrist.
The half-moons under her eyes were dark, but her skin had a minty tint to it.
I asked if she’d like some peppermint tea, orange tea with honey, a pill.
No, she said, just a rest.
He helped her to the couch, and for the rest of the day, he, she, and I were quiet.

I’ve seen quiets where the air bubbles, hot, overpowering, and quiets
where the senses seemed damp, gray, full of weight, but I had never seen
a quiet so still.

For six days I only washed two plates at every meal.
We watched one half-hour of television.
We did not go upstairs except to change our clothes.
I wished for rain so I would not have to go outside to water her garden,
and see the wooden house nestled small among the trees, hunched over as if to say
I’m lonely.

I can still hear the haunting sound of Bach upstairs, but none of us
can bear to turn it off.

——————————————————-

Thoughts:  An attempt at something a little emotional.  As you’ve probably seen, most of my poetry is more oriented towards the senses, and this is more for the heart/mind.  I won’t explain it – I find that being told the meaning of something takes away the magic wound between the lines.  I think the only thing I would edit about this is to tie it together a little tighter, because at the moment it’s very disjointed, and re-word some of the lines.  I don’t hate it, though.

As February Nears (not a poem)

Right.  Originally this blog was only going to be poetry, not my slightly-insane and very-much-boring chatter, but I mean… the whole point of a blog is to chatter, am I right?  I won’t be going all emo on you now.  This is still strictly poetry talk (although, as I said, this was only supposed to be poetry, you might actually see me mention some prose or, god forbid, post something I’ve been working on) but I think I want to go in a different direction and actually start mildly editing some of the crap I spew.  I’ll be spewing it daily from now until the end of February, as my pre-NaPoWriMo (don’t know what it is? google it.) month kicks off.  This is a joint effort between me and Lykaios (www.rainingfairylight.wordpress.com (I’m not sure how to post a link on here, but oh well)) because, well, I want to win Foyle this year (I’m going to win, determined-face-activate) and realized that I need to… practice.  A lot.  A lot more.

And once February is over, I’ll have a month to tune it down until April, the official NaPoWriMo month.  Although, if I were really adamant about going to England, I’d be practicing a lot more than I usually do, which is only like once or twice, of that, a week without motivation.  Like I said, I really do need to be writing more.

I’ve been writing poetry for nearly a year (it’ll be a year at either the end of April or sometime in May, I don’t quite remember when I started, but I know it was near the end of NaPo) and I feel like I haven’t improved as much as I should have.  Ah, well.  It’s probably just not my thing.  I wish I could say I have a thing, but in truth, I really don’t, which terrified me.  I want poetry to be my thing, goddammit!  Or at least prose.  I should write a short story.  I just have trouble actually coming up with ideas for shorts.  The only thing that’s been sticking in my mind is about a man named Elroy who has a panic attack when a man starts using the urinal next to him.  Titled The Rules of Society.

I want to write a series of interconnected shorts.

This is a poetry blog.  Shut up.

Anyway, when I mentioned earlier that I was going to start editing my poems, I might have lied a bit.  I won’t be editing, per se, but I’ll be going over my poems and writing down what I, personally, think is bad and good and what needs to be fixed and so on.  So, from here on out, whenever I post a poem, there will probably be a little bit at the end about my own thoughts on it.

Daisy-Days

You said you stomach heaved,
so I gave it ipecac
and let it heave some more
until you were all outside your skin
and I fell laughing.
It’s a pose you know well enough,
from those days
where you would reach up
to catch the bird wings for a hat
but would trip and legs would somersault
around your head until you thought
it was a prank and we smiled
at each other.
I like your smile,
I said, but you thought you didn’t like mine,
too toothy and my teeth were never pretty.
But you didn’t like pretty anyway.
So we sat around and colored sea cows
with pink and purple, and for lunch
we ate a few white circles
that we’d popped from the sides
of our school folders.
Ipecac, mother cried, where’s
my ipecac?
We giggled.  It was all for fun,
and we hid under the dining room table,
counting the dark circles where we’d once
stuck blue gum.
Our hands stuck rainy days
to the underside of the table and we rushed
into the yellow daisy-days, and mother kept yelling about
her ipecac, where the -hell-
is her ipecac, but we’d already begun
to blame it on the dog.

Cold-Water Sensations

If we said our prayers. with our hands
side – by – side, then would god know we were
one?  If we could only. take a glance to show
that. we could be returning to the ages,
and millenia, and eons of every
body, who passed before us in the cold-water
sensations of falling, would god know
us for the untimely precipice that held our fingers loose
?
Where are your questions, your answers.?  Caught
in the back of your throat with a curved finger, or
.hung. .hung.             drowning past the water
line?
The walls are bare now, the ash we dusted
on the mantelpiece is gone now, and all we have for show
is our two hands, puckered up
.you pressed them to the globe again?.
and drawn across with blue and green pen.  You did mine,
and I did yours.
god remembers.
Or maybe he doesn’t want to forget. how. he
…….took us for adam and eve.
mis-
ery used to be loud at night, and now I can hear
my thoughts spinning into yours.

Something About Ages

Oh dual decaying, freeing
with a smell of dew
for each morning paid in yellow pollen dropped
among the mizzy painted
renaissance,
swirling weird divides in elbow crooks

niches where we hung the balustrades
copper-toned and shifting honey between
renegade
infidelity
cross enamored with misery, wrapped up
paper-cuts from all these ashen letters
written with infinitely-stenciled negatives
to hold isotopes.

Unity decays revelations, as the belly
balloons and touches cloud,
as the tadpoles lose their tails, as
reminiscing gains a flavor.