Poetry

A collection of original poems in no certain order



The same wind blew so I closed my eyes and remembered 

We grew up on a rock farmhouse
My sister and I would play knee deep
In the creekside with heart and soul
The little divots, bumps, beaches became islands
Sometimes we were pirates and sometimes we were soldiers

You can make jam out of violets- all colors
moth green and high color pink
Even a transparent, lucent clear
(From the pure white violets)
Every spring there was violet jelly over toast

We weren’t hard wired farm people
We lived in a little house in the hills, brush, mess
But we knew that sometimes you had to do what needed done

Sometimes there were brothers
Cowboys and Indians 
Friday nights we stayed up late
Someone was always singing or singing too loud
Shouting out to cut it out
And then someone else
(Sometimes there was a lot of us)
Would carry on a new song

My father worked computers
But somehow always came in smelling like
Diesel grease and earth
The pipes were always bursting
 summer there was always work to be done
My father will dig holes and disappear up to his neck in the backyard
My mother would stay in bed for hours

There was a winter we had oatmeal for breakfast, 4 months
I had a brother 6 years older and one 4
My mother says she cooked us breakfast-
but I only remember the brothers, one brother standing at the stove.
I complained at eggs
But they were made for me, by someone taller than me, and it wasn’t oatmeal 
I can’t choke down either anymore
And I don’t have two brothers anymore

In the creek we made necklaces
Of black snail shells
Pear peelings
And clay
Red sand, yellow clumps, grey smooth
You had to work for it, and it melted away
In the rain
But we kept trying
Adorning ourselves and hiding theses hopefully
Under rocks and in tin cans

In the spring it rained and I would lay in the warm gravel road
You can lay in the mud and you won’t be run over
 when you live in the middle of no where 

My mother always says we live in paradise
When I used to have two brothers
the little one
Was the only one who could play the piano
and it rattled the attic
We threw pillows at the tall one, hard
I don’t remember him doing anything worse
Than tossing my sister and I, with one hand,
Onto the worn brown couch
But you couldn’t throw pillows at the little one

I think we started to melt away from each other
When my dread became greater
Than my need to get the love held at arms length

I came back home to write poems
And be fed for free
My mother has started rattling the piano
But the creek is dry.
There were first violets today-
My mother says we live in paradise.
I used to have two brothers
And I’m not sure I can do 
what needs to be done

A Walk In Winthrop 

Frigid Moss of lush cedarsmell
Climbs into my knowing.
I am salivating with half thoughts
In an overgrown wood
Slateglass of pond, please onwards
Beckon; I will answer.
More; I will be open
To throatless music

Spring Irises

Spring, on the farm
And I realize them, thick stalked
Hazy blue purple from a dream of wild green

I think to myself
I hate irises but
If i were married here in the summer
They would by my bouquet

It’s a strange swear to make
But what could be more romantic?
To take what is there
And promise to make something out of it?
To call it beautiful as a whole?
To take it as it is?

Parched Midnight

Dipped into night
Wedged between the two soft
Dark fingers of God
Who finally
Grants peace to midwestern soul and
Bathes me in the cool darkness
Of cicada summer
Gone too long astray
Among the red rocks of a spit and sizzle
Landscape
He understands the needs of frogs and
Girls alike
And cools me by a deep descent
Underneath pools of night
Full of Whispered breezes and June rain
And mist of moss and all alike
Descent and dunk
Duck under deep quiet
Peace beyond
The shallows

In August

August, the dark
Mother of a month who only brings
Along a message of a brittle summer and
The overstayed welcome of a sun that cannot speak for itself
August is not wed to corn harvest, bright
Knowing silver of spring, but only
The rich emptyness of full moon filled
Nights, when you wonder how hard the
Air conditioner will have to whir until it
Shatters, shudders, scatters pieces into
Hot dead of brown summer just another
Tool to cut your heart with

The heat only presses on open eyes
In August
The heat only goes on until you are dead
Or want to be
In August
Everyone goes back to the cool brick
Of the university building and leaves you
Behind, in August

Summer Afternoons And A Cold Stove

Tomatoes

It’s home
and that’s the worst part
Rotting vegetables will forever be tied
to my mother
And if course the memory is more than

I’d like to hold the new woman’s face
(One week, I’ve known her only-)
In between two hands
(My two small hands)
Yelling into her
I’ve lived in an animal house
Walking on two legs is a miracle for me

More than tomatoes
Mildew, slime, retch on
Butcher block countertop
Also daffodils.
Sea spray lilacs, Van Gogh,
Tearing up (tearing up) at the thought of her

I could write 200
Very bad poems.
At the end of the day
it’s tomatoes and my mother.

Deep Song, So long

Soul balled into a perfect fist
Curl I now like fired paper-
Soot marked, dirty, hot with anger-
And I need a little of the deep prescribed
Soap would take off a layer-
(A start, if not much)
Shuteye could take another-

If I lay here in my dust
There’s a hope I become it
And the wind can carries away another soul
Gone fallow with too much wondering
Too much worrying