For Bharathi Veerath

A woman perched on a pendelum,
she lived.  Breathing bravery across
a world where women are newly
human, no one stops
to think about how
the revolutionized are hurt
by change. All warrior women share
your thoughts, we should have said,  
but she has given in,
given up on hanging on.  

If Not But for the Stars

i somehow ceased to amaze you,
and now i dig round in the aftermath,
looking for my little hairbrush–the one
with the bristles like your face on my face.
remember? you were all vibrant, thriving
and pushing and striving. you hungered,
and you hungered for me. i blushed, all
piqued, and responded rather kindly.

and now the pears are sizeable

two blue grosbreaks make the item.
plunged up from corn, like swimmers
come up to breathe. im sorry i am
no match for the ghost from your past.

                                             Boring

What does it mean when I go to the bathroom
(like a child escaping boredom)
during a restaurant meal
just to get a break in the tedium.

In the bathroom, I’m chanting
boring, boring, boring.

You might ask why I subject myself
to this.

And, doesn’t she probably sense this
and feel the same?

                     for jib jobson

On my computer screen, first thing this morning, this gift.
Disturbing and enticing, like a dream. I was alive
when this happened, but I never knew the blood, the pain,
the noise. I was busy making an almost parallel life
out of grease, of family, of familiar pepper trees
fifty miles away. I practiced with a rifle when I was twelve,
quit the first time we went hunting jackrabbits in the hills.
My father made a bow for me of fiberglass, an orange streak
like the sunset over the Pacific’s molten mirror,
and I practiced till the blood rose from my wrist
where the string hit as the arrow passed. In rage,
I hammered an innocent elm tree instead of his
shiny head. Still, I didn’t get to climb rock faces.

People died nearby, bloodlessly, the news delivered
in wives’ walking round the corner. Joe Abbott’s
older brother suffered a divorce after a bullet
scarred his handsome face, a policeman in
the wrong place at the wrong time. His wife
rebelled the only way she could. I wanted
to leave the stinking neighborhood, the reckless
life, the chickens running round without their heads.
I wanted to free my heart to beat wild for that sun
sinking over the ocean, so far away, so present.
Of course, I never got away. It’s everywhere,
violence gathering in a quiet, perfect storm.  

no words for 
stars too big 

heard and not heard 
let us all call down 

this startle of death 
a heartbeat of stones

one silent question 

Blood feathers fall to the ground like ash
Blanketing a grave of hopes too high
All the things I gave and would have given
Disappear into a blackened sky
Entering your castle clearly defined
A two-sided mission, live or die

My mistake was to never take up the sword
To let you go without offering a fight
Even in those final months of life
When the end was constantly in sight
But I couldn’t imagine life without you.
How else would I sleep at night?

So soft was our destruction
It did little more than leave me with cracks
In turn it failed to kill
There were no knives in our backs
For you that was fine because
You’re not the one the darkness attacks.

So once I was back in your glorious presence
It was a fight to be something more
Or failing that, an excavation
Try and rid you from my core
And with the latter as reality
I could not comprehend the hurt in store

For I could never come home with you alive
Else the gravity would keep me forever close
To the poisons eventually spread in my soul
Evolving into the pain no one else knows
And in my struggle for death, I found
The dagger that you chose

A secret kept as we were slipping away
Shows how little I could know of you
And in every potential branch of the future
How little I’d ever be able to trust in you
Except in the necessarily miniscule miracle
Of you convincing me, of this sin, to forgive you

But that’s neither here nor there anymore
I speak only this time of what you chose to hide
The relief of pressure that helps me survive
The shit that always gets trapped inside
In some time I will heal and face tomorrow
Knowing you and I have at least died

While our essence remains
We can go our separate ways
We coexist and consider
What else lies in future days
And at last I can hope in tomorrow
From the ash, my soul to raise.

lie listening to 
rainfall on sightless
ferns and stones

or is it nightwind
high in the pines 

listen to  darkness
as it slips into day

into silence and elegance