about Sunday morning

The way I feel now, I did not feel when I woke up two hours ago. I woke up, ashes for eyes, marble head. Now signs give me an all-clear. I’m here now—not in waiting for something else, not in service to tomorrow.

 

a note for a Saturday in spring

His ears filled with teeth that told him what to do.

 

The boss to beat to go to the next level. Beat him a little dead to get there. His body comprised God numbers. God-like he was not.

 

Do not talk to friends, do not join dying conversations. This works. Drugged, pharmacy never cared, left to live a life seeing the air move. Security failed if you are alive and for employment with nowhere else to go. 

a poem, sort of, for a morning in winter

Sunshine in the rear-view mirror in your eyes breaks lines on the wave. Scolds coldly you on the rooftop for time though you are only a victim of sunrise and its move to reverse space. Down how many stairs and salt lakes on landings he steps into. Routine trap. Cutting you down and to wish south where one can be reborn.

Nobody talks to you, it's just how people describe you after you shuffle past. Outside with dormant sedans, see stars float like fall’s leaves in the creek.

No more people are knowing about you now. Who lost everything could always return and hug the trees like family.

The list is thousands long. It will follow you all the way. Tell me about breaking your will and what needs to happen, what you belong to.

 

something about placelessness

Bending off the highway is an unremarkable, two-lane road that aims toward the river. Going that way you pass a guileless elementary school; a fire station; a frayed church; a pasture (often harboring horses); and another church (this one sturdy and featureless). Then you drive amid woods, turns, and threats of deer crossing. Driveways that draw up to the road fall between these filmy landmarks, and my attention flits down to the houses as I speed this way. House after house withholds the greeting I wish would welcome me, and a low-scoring shame fills the void of no warm memories.

about resilience

The door leading from our offices into the north-end hallway always slams shut when someone passes through. After conditions in the hothouse finally wilted my ego, the latest slam shook my petals off clean. I paused and considered all the posters on the walls throughout the building. Cautions, reminders, notices, promotions. You become inured, indifferent, then unnoticing, and, finally, illiterate. Those posters distract from what really matters. The time had come to go to the beach.

A three-hour drive and the Atlantic shoves up against the continent. This late in the season, a sandy crowd of mostly mature folks who sit under beach umbrellas and sun hats do crossword puzzles. These people are literate. And none of them test the waters. They already know what I am only just learning: the ocean, reliable and unceasingly self-assured, beats you every time.

about dehumanization in routines

The day after my birthday, I grew sensitive to all the things that flash at me and beep at me, and I felt I did not have time for these things.

about needs

Threads of pain drape from my spine, fold and disappear under my shoulder blades. What do you need?