May un-

glue you,

leave you

pieces

of who

you were.

 

Sometimes

it dissolves

pillars

from under

you, leaves  

you ruins.

minimal 
lepidopteran 
I crush it

The priest on NPR

called his terminal diagnosis

the best thing that ever happened to him.

My brain was on airplane mode,

slipping into hibernation.

That kind of talk.

Cheery hospice propaganda,

easy to avow in a radio interview

with your leukemia in remission,

before the steroids, before the final

failed marrow transplants.

 

But  he said something more,

something from a long haul

working with street gangs

that pulled me back, set me spinning:

“Death is a punk. So many worse things  

put death in its place–make a list!

You’ll see what I mean.”

And, I have, and it’s true. 

 

The list is an endless descent

that spirals back, a Mobius strip.

You end up where you started,

but it’s not the same.   

Where the descent takes you, no one

wants to go. But, after you go there,

anywhere else is Up.

 

Try it.  Start with the same diagnosis

for your child or lover.   You immortal.

 

            Envision different fates,

airplane crashes, tsunamis, death alone

in the street, an addict, by murder,

the indifferent or aroused eyes of your killer. 

 

This happening to your child or lover.

It gets graphic.

 

Let’s skip for now the gruesome

TV scenarios, but if you’re having

trouble, tune in, any channel. 

 

Vary the theme.  Someone you love,

some awful death, but your fault—

you ran the fatal stop sign, drunk.

 

For a deeper twist, imagine

the flip side, intent.

You’re the killer.  Alive alright,

your own empty eyes in the mirror.

Or your grown child, the pedophile. 

Wake up to that pure grain despair.

 

And, still, this is the easy stuff.

Try imaging the world without trees,

No shade, no twigs, no leaves fluttering.

Or, without birds, nothing alive in the sky,

no sudden bit of song, no wings.

Without rain, an eternal drought

 cracked and brown, only salt

where there was strand—the beginning

of the end of the planet.  The real deal.

For everybody, not just you.

 

Now come back to you, ill, in a clean bed

with pain pills, people to care for you

not a hero, but not without honor

one headstone later, on a rainy day.

It’s alright.

 

I’ve been scooped out,
hollowed out.
There’s nothing left of feeling
except the emotions that 
Tear me apart,
Scrape clean my gut;
anger
indignation
ragefury.
They’ve lit me on fire
from the inside out,
burned me up.
I’m ire animated,
anger walking.
I’m afraid that if
anger’s passion didn’t
Give me bones,
I’d have nothing left
To walk around inside my skin.

We learn to apportion
alone and together time–
letting one feed the other–
so that we can breathe
in both worlds.

She prowls libraries
hunting those dusty books
with clean slates
and checks them out

Happily strolls
art galleries
contemplating canvas strokes
eagerly dismissed by others

Picks up the penny
long dead
even the dog
will not stop to sniff

As rock and rap spill
from open car windows
she is the one sitting in the park
listening to the church bells chime

Outside the wooden box of roots,
the trees rise above the clouds
in a mindscape of open space.
Yellow leaves tumble down
like butterflies or shredded kites,
brittle and light but slave to gravity
strings pulling them down.

Fall trunks, shed of wings, stretch
higher and higher into something
we might look up to, where context
and roots are weightless
and treeholes in the box below
shine starlight in the eyes
of hatching moths.

When she was 5
she said “I am going to be
a poet and an artist and I am
not going to change my name”.
If anyone was listening
it wasn’t obvious.
When her third book came out
her father said her poems
were just lists
and her thank you list had people in there
she had never even met. (she had included his mother and father)
Her mother said she didn’t know that
she had written enough poems
to fill a book.
She had started publishing at 15.

Slowly
Holy
Cells replace
Those damaged
By missteps
Along the pathway.
Stumbling
Falling
Sustaining injury
Submitting to
The Healing Hand,
Though painful,
Infuses the red blood
Of the Earth
With the white
(Or clear) blood
Of the risen Christ.

Sofiah Sexton
June 30, 2015

Poem 30, June 30

My Voice

 

I have no notion that I can take a cruise

to the Bahamas & invite you to go as well.

If I can disguise the invitation as a rhyming

poem, with a scheme you do not know,

 

I have a notion that I have nothing to lose.

If you refuse, I will not mix words. I will tell

you the Bahamas are too flat for rock climbing

& leave it at that. I have a notion you would go

 

on a ghost walk with me in Harrodsburg,

or watch the moon rise & line up with planets

or leave your mark on the world behind a falls

in Madagascar.

 

I have no idea just how far

you can hear my lonely calls

echo along a valley of granite

& return. Not to Harrodsburg…

 

Not to the Bahamas…

Not to Madagascar…

Not on a ship…

May you lift up my voice

 

to the Appalachian hills

when you read my poem.