A blustering vision
Derailed by calm
Ambitions abandoned
When blood called me home

Gone are June butterflies
And fear of the known
July brings stardust
To reap what I’ve sewn

 A ladybug flies off my middle finger

My mom asks me if ive named the fire

-fly that’s been stuck to my shirt

for the better part

of a day

I say No, I wouldn’t be so bold

but I would be so bold

as to swat the shit

out of a beetle

after it bites me and then

anything else that touches me
            

 Buzz has gotten out

and the assault is on

as I type this

on a bugged computer

jade butterflies dance
to a magic ballet
of secret song

I always knew
that deep down
I had a spirit of a wolf.

All beasts came from the wolf.
Man, and dogs.
Distant relatives. This fact

is only known to those
taking pilgrimage. Those
whom have seen me eat meat

like a hound.
With hands, and mouth red.
No offerings to the gods.

                                                      Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
                                                                The dizzy dancing way you feel…
                                                                                             – Joni Mitchell

I saw the squinty-eyed blonde at Starbucks,
Told her my Dad was Hitler, watched her calculate
birth years, death years, and raise an eyebrow
before saying something bland to indicate she knew
that I was nuts, I with my tira misu frappuccino
on a coldish day in March.

Once we were graduate
teaching assistants; she’d carped at me
for leaving my classroom to smoke.
Now, she bends over her syllabus; I tinker
with words on a page—I must, at all cost, appear busy,
but, we both know it, my life’s filled with puffy clouds.
Could I invite her and her businessman husband
To dine with me and my wife? I could tell stories
of psychotic exploits, while they sipped the wine
I can’t have because it might make me loony
(some say. Truth is I just don’t want it).
Then a voice in my head says:
“Fly free, before she makes a point of leaving first.”
So I shut my notebook, grab my enormous
caloric drink, having told her I’ll show up
at the open mic on Friday, to read my stuff.

Friday comes, and, delusional, I read a poem about delusions,
then launch myself into the ether, saying Hitler
is Charlie Brown. It’s part of a tome I’ve begun
called “Hitler, A Friendly Life,” from which I read
some paragraphs, stopping right before the sentence
that says he was a monster, actually. Some giggle,
some murmur, and my mind moves to quick exit.
On my way out the door I hand the blonde
(who’s come in just in time to hear me read)
Rumi’s Book of Love, to pass on
to the trickster, the one who’s always said
the things I think are not “reality-based,”
(but I know my life’s been acting in cartoons,
waiting for my thought bubble to fill with sense—
or maybe she is waiting for that, too).
I feel, anyway, like Snoopy, dancing down the pavement
to my car, making a getaway, hoping I’ve sparked something.

At home, I’ll find a block of stone to chisel,
and see if the result is a sibling, and archenemy,
or just someone who does not have time for me.
There are many of the latter, yet still I dance.
I dance until the spirit seeps out of me, then
I sleep the long sleep of one who knows upon waking
I must revise my life story in significant ways
or the world will cry foul.

oh my baby, little 
girl with my lipstick on
what 
I’d give to go back
crouch down, hold you
little kisses from tiny lips  
so sweet, soft little arms, tangled hair
everywhere you are so small!
one more hug
you smell like that baby I couldn’t
believe was mine
clutching two of my fingers
you lurch into your wild joy-run
your shoe flew off
you let it go so
I could go back
get it
for you.

The rain on Sideling Hill
fell like an ocean out of the sky
making the cowbirds and grackles wonder
which was greater?
The ocean with every drop of water,
or their single mountain
like a big gnarly giant up close
unfurling with leaves, then bare trunks.

The ocean always changing
between the tides and through storms,
but under all that rain
the hill is always stagnant
for a hundred layers
and a billion years.
One mile away
all the birds see
is an earth rainbow,
black ribbons to violet,
and then their blue mountain
with not a thing after it
except them and the sky.

And all the houses and planes and boats
but not an eye past the trees on this one.
This one is only familiar with the stars
coming out with the flies and the dark,
so dark it’s transcendental,
all of it is.

TILL MORNING

Do not hesitate. It is late. Some

of your proteins have been misfolded.

Sleep must sweep your cluttered cells.

 
A dream will find you at the turn

of dark stairs, in the seam of Night’s

arm. You are not shown the road.

Could be a well, could be a tunnel

between worlds. Music keens a path

if you sing. If we were you, we would

wear our boots. Here the way is velvet,

yes, but farther on, demons leaving

their armchairs. They eat fear. Do

not feed them. Feed breath.

–George Ella Lyon

Four little biracial boys
In a roomy old kitchen
In a very large house
On a long island
In 1973
One sleeping
In an infant seat
The other three playing
In the pots and pans

All four grew to adulthood,
But only three remain.
Still innocent,
The oldest was carried to Paradise
On a bullet from
A cop’s revolver.

Sofiah Sexton
June 30, 2015