Week of 4.27.17

Sore Desires

You don't see that I grind my teeth all nights
So that my morning spit is tinted red
But I smile instead

I want to be like Roethke and Bishop--
painting with ink
If the pen bleeds freely
maybe my gums won't



America's Children in ENGL

I am a yellow apple writing poems in your class
A slowly dripping caramel voice glides over my cracked skin
I glance to see if it seeps into my neighbor's soul
as it does mine.

But we are in crates to be shipped to factory-less Washington.
To be eaten or displayed
So my classmates sit silently and stoically,
dazzled and bewildered
As they watch the caramel flow in this touch of paradise


I am better

Only once or twice or trice
Am I filled with loathing glee
As teasers from my past-in public- recognize me

Week of 4.17.17

On the page

Words.
Three words
Now five
Equal to the ink. Indescribable to the soul.
Like blood of an alien kind
impressed on our parchment.

This sharp mystery of life abounding from our fingertips
Onto empty space.
That held nothing
and is
Now full
to you.


Look at me

I wave a hand
  and you do too.
Yet off you go to count your shoes.
Perhaps they're green or red or blue.

But I shall never care or know
  You dropped your fingers
much too slow.
And thought to turn around and say--
but then you went the other way.

Week of 4.4.17

"Write down your thoughts"

professor instructs as the time ticks by.

My heart throttles in my chest
beating as a racehorse, ready to leap.
Jetting out this thick black ink onto paper
I describe..... my thoughts.

The task before my hand-and others too.
Contemplative, energetic scribbling,
puffed nostrils frozen in midair.
Brains scrambling for verbiage to dispose
on their cool white sheet.

Each thoughtful soul composed of history in shadows,
the tongues and twists through the pen.

Who me? the one to read your poetry?
My fingers flit as I beg for a cloud of rain
to drench my inflamed mind.
Not wanting to reveal the ice storm within.