~unremembering

this you should know

 

it’s almost march
& I’m becoming bluer

 

as restless as a verb
forgotten by the wind
too sacred for
the telling

 

how little I remember
of months with no corners

 

the similarities of secondhand
smoke
& shadows sewn
into scars

 

this naked wreckage

 

my eyes, full of water
full of ink

 

 

lah 2.20.17 ©®

~secondhand

i.
once we were a melody

a slow string of harmonic words
abundant sentences
like flowers in spring

our syllables moved wind
to wheat

ii.
mathematically, forgiveness is
a top-heavy relationship
fraction

and in the sum of reduction
one becomes whole
while the other, a remainder

iii.
I have assumed the shape of water
of air

in a cloud
or a balloon

I must be poetry
I am fluid

the slow blue leak of
sky or sea or hope

I believe it’s a sign
maybe a malignancy
a cancer

iv.
heavy is this lifetime that
rains snow
each day colder than the last
but predictable
the way it falls with certainty
and purpose

and I feel compelled
to cut up the whiteness
like cocaine
and fill sinuses with misery
or all the color of pocket-stains

v.
and then
yellow streamed through my window
slanted, sideways

but I am disabled

numb and broken-winged
before the open sun

lah  6.15.12 ©®

~comely

listen to quiet roots
unfold
a forest in my hair
the thin bones of thickets
& stars pulsing against
my skin
I’m becoming night

~caliginous

night is never
dark enough
to hide the ghost
we know must
be our breath
or the footsteps
of the ghost
we know must
live here carved
out of water
spilling from
our hearts
night is only
the gossip of
hollow bones
the gossip of
ghosts that
become the body
bent in prayer
bent in sin
much farther
than close
waiting for
small deaths
of small moments
night is never
dark enough
to listen to
our own echoes
the thinning
of a voice
like the whisper
that follows a
shadow or the
vowels lost in
a forgotten sky
half-uttered
suspended in ink

lah 2.15.17 ©®

~rote

it’s winter & the night smells of smoke
& ache

I’m alone
in a house full of black ink
a thousand miles from here

searching for something that belonged to you
older than an apology
something quiet
like the cadence in caesuras of
february’s shifting snow

as white as an empty page

it’s always winter & I am not this

when I measure the sound of clouds
moving their darkness like yesterday’s words
& when I measure the thickening air
between us by months
by my shadow’s long bones
sleeping in a bed of separation

it’s the same way I assemble assonance
in a small room with small walls
as it calls out metaphors
until it echoes in my ribs, ghosting
my voice

it’s still winter & I remember forgetting

I’m growing older
colder between these sheets
writing you in this poem I pretend to be
& trying to name this grief
lah 2.11.17 ©

~observations on similarities

there is symbolism
in unspoken words
an assonance in
a crow’s cries
& the winter wind
lah 4.24.16 ©®

~knowing

hush the long
mouth
confession is
a season behind
a river of saltwater
through a still house
a fragile disarray of
veins, heavy with poetry
in a sky colored with ink
tender sways the pendulum
redivides a woman
furnishes her wind
there is no metaphor
to unravel

lah. 5.1.16 ©®

~afterword

this, I’ve learned from the quiet
from the breathing
in rooms where rain won’t reach
in a house built from sheets
of paper
a voice escapes the keyhole
& imagination follows
dismantling daylight & darkness
a calamity of strangled language
& thundering hoofbeats
stirring dust bottled in bluedark
veins
like inkstains of fine wine
if it is born of fire or water or air
it must be poetry
searching for the curve of
a listening ear

lah. 5.12.16 ©®

~unsheltered

I can’t translate
the meaning
of how it feels

there is no noun
for that

in slow months of blues
I am evergreen

a desolate tree, pining
its needles, until they
lodge in the throat
like unspoken
verbs

I am sentenced to
the pressure of
holding still

planking flesh to bone

poems pressed into
the softened cartilage of
this heartcage

the hardwood beneath
comforts me
reminds me I can’t
fall any farther

lah 5.19.16 ©®

~cherry picking

forget the sun
she wants storms
a wild urge to thunder
the season
to straddle the roots
as sky-sweat pierces the naked
slimleaf spreads wetness
penetrates pink petals
inch by inch
embrace this ache, the slow deflowering
heavy air pants like breath
thrusts
until it bursts in sharp release
coming in the garden
an unshy butterfly & her torn wings
a shuddering wind
moving through her

lah. 5.25.16 ©®