Hit me

You offered to be my punching bag when
all I wanted was to hit something.
But you make a far better sparring partner or a coach. I didn't expect to have
you in my corner when I'm curling inwards, crawling away, trembling from fear or rage
or sometimes both. But you're there. Picking me up,
bobbing and weaving, and rolling with the punches.

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I've had more than a few days lately when all I've wanted is to scream and throw things at the wall. But I'm so grateful, to have people in my life who talk me off that ledge and help me fight through the frustration. People who love and support me regardless of how shitty my day might have been.

Sunshine

"I'll meet you in the morning," she said with a quiet smile. "I'll be the one
in gold, surrounded in blue and maybe whisps of white."
And when I woke to meet her, she rose tall and proud. Confident, radiant. I spent a summer basking in her glow. She kissed me sweetly, wrapped her arms around me, for a season she was mine. But she grew distant, her light faded, our love went cold. She left me shivering in a dark and endless night.

But some days she passes through and stops to whisper in my ear. She brushes her fingertips across my cheeks, caressing me, teasing me. And I realize I will never not want her.

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I spent a perfect day in the sun. A lovely day soaking in the warmth and the light. I forgot how much I missed it, how much I needed it. This is my love song to the sun.

Rum and Poetry

Island sands and rum -
dreaming of sunshine and sea.
Tropical daydream.

Peeling paint on old
wooden shutters shaking in
the summer night storms.

I can smell the smoke -
Summer nights outside
with Cuba Libres.

Aaron's Haiku:

I can taste the rum -
it is delicious in me.
Pirates are cool. Yaarrrrrr.

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Tonight we smoked Cuban cigarillos and drank Cuba Libres on the porch. And then we  proceeded to watch Black sails and enjoy more of the rum...until it was gone...why is the rum gone? Here is the result of drinking rum and wishing for tropical weather. Aaron decided he wanted to write a Haiku too!

Laughter

It’s catching, contagious, highly transferrable. 

A ripple becomes 

a wave becomes 

a tsunami and crashes all around, swallowing you up and shaking you silly. 

It may start small, 

a tickle, 

a catch in the throat. 

But it’ll burrow deep and begin to grow. 

Swelling, 

rising as it fills the belly, 

the lungs. 

Bubbling up and out it’ll make you cry from the corner of your crinkled eyes.

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Tonight we watched a Louis CK stand up performance and I was in tears on the floor. The right equation of good jokes, and a quick audience can keep me laughing until I clutching my side and gasping for air. And it feels so good. It's cathartic and exhausting, like a good hard cry. 

Missing parts

I wish I could dump out the contents of my mind, my heart. Shake out what’s 

hiding in every secret compartment, fan out my thoughts and feelings on the floor, take a long hard look 

and say “I know what’s missing!”

Instead I must pick myself apart, 

piece by piece. 

I am a grandfather clock - tired and forgetful, unsure of what’s missing. I take special care to unscrew all the tiny pieces, pulling out gears and springs, setting aside the living things - snails and cuckoo birds. 

And after I’ve dissected this masterpiece, I have to start the process of inventorying 

all the little metal bones and wire muscles to determine what’s missing. It’s a tedious process, 

painful too. 

Some of the pieces are heavy, weighing me down. Others have sharp hooks - no matter how careful I am

I end up with bruised and bloody hands.

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I like to think I know myself pretty well, but sometime its impossible to add my feelings together and decide what it is that I really want. Living on the edge of change, but not knowing what's coming or how to make it my own is scary and leaves me feeling broken and exposed.

Mornings

The sun creeps in through a gap in the curtains, playing hide and seek with the shadows in my room. Her long thin fingers reaching, stretching father into the corners with each passing moment. 

Sleep lingers a little longer, nestled softly in a cocoon of soft down, rough cotton, and warm bodies. But the light is growing stronger, calling out, beckoning. Come out and play. Come stand where I can see. 

I stretch my body, reaching farther into the corners of the bed, slowly unwrapping myself like my mother unwraps a gift - gently, so as not to tear the colorful paper. 

When I open my eyes it is hazy, foggy, snowy. A super fine white flurry - dust motes sparkling in the solid spotlight cast upon my wall. I watch them dance, humming along.

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Getting up in the morning is hard. But no matter how hard, I relish in that moment between deep sleep and fully risen. Those brief moments when you're wrapped up in the warmth of your bed and the cloudy bliss of a dream you can't quite remember. I have to say that I love that the sun is up before me now, it makes greeting the day a bit...sunnier :)

Haikus as old as time

Tale as old as time
With a few new details, but
They kept all the jokes.

Beauty and the Beast:
Cousin Matthew dancing
With Hermione.

---------------------------

I saw Beauty and the Beast tonight. And here is my summary. In haikus.

Topsy-turvy

Nothing seems to be going right. It turned
left, pulled a u-e and started flowing uphill. It's all turned wrong side
up and outside in between. Nothing seems to fit outside the box.
My wool sweaters are two sizes too baggy after a hot washing and
my whites turned the reds a soft shade of pink.
I guess I like pink.

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I've had a rough few days when it comes to basic life stuff. I've ruined two phones, my back injury flared up, and things at work are super stressful. There are piles of laundry to be folded and I'm still trying to sort out my taxes. Things don't seem to be doing as smoothly as I would like them too and it's driving me a little nuts. But that's life, right?

April

In April everything is new. The sun is shaking out her summer sundresses, the wind has opened up the windows, and the earth is cleaning house. Little bits of life are literally popping out of the ground. It’s a time of fresh clean pages and a brand new start.

Spring cleaning is not a pretty process; a job for overalls and rain boots. I pull out old poems with dusty descriptions and moldy metaphors. I sort through piles of prose and folders of free form junk, keeping an eye out for inspiration. An heirloom idea, just one little light bulb I can plant and grow into a spring flower – something bold and beautiful with the fresh, crisp smell of spring. Something worthy of April.

After I’ve waded through words and words and found my lifeline, I trim away the dead parts. Then I plant that seed on a blank page and I begin.

If free falling is downward movement under the force of gravity only, then free writing is the virtual movement through the gravity of my thoughts. But in order to do either you have to let go and trust that a homemade hug on the wind will catch you. And in this case, carry me safely home to the whooping and whispering of satisfied souls.

I have to admit it’s been a while since I’ve done this. I’ve missed it.

I missed the way the way my hand would flow across the page in a practiced way. As if my hand and the pen and the paper were inseparable friends with so many things to say. Friends who, after a few beers, are closer than close. It’s hard to get them to say goodbye and head to bed.

I missed the way alliteration tastes. The way a cliché wins a chuckle, or a click of the tongue. I missed the way words, when married to an image can paint a picture, or capture a feeling you didn’t know that I even felt, but now you’re feeling it to.

But even after all this time I think I’m finding the rhythm and maybe even a little rhyme. Just like good friends – you can always pick up where you left off. Like riding a bike. The trick is to keep going – as long as I keep pedaling and I don’t look down I can stay balanced. I roll along with the ballpoint of my pen. Over hills of slanted rhymes. Through fields and fields of couplets and triplets and colored tulips as far as the eye can see.  As long as I lean into the wind the words will keep coming, verses flying by faster and faster.

But not easier. Never easier. Writing is like living, like loving. Its sunshine and rain, and bliss and pain. It’s that sweet, deep stretch. The one that makes you groan in pain, but it feels so delicious you don’t want it to stop.

Well maybe it does get a little easier. Easier to keep going. It’s a cycle. Like I said, a bicycle. Round and round it goes and where it stops nobody knows. And hopefully this time it won’t stop. 

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Yesterday I did something I haven't done in a very long time. I performed a poem in front of an audience. And I have to admit it was really really scary. I spent the last few days writing and polishing this poem and then I set down to memorization. After a few hours I had it committed to memory and I was excited to share it with my friends, but when the time came and I got up to the mic,  my hands started to shake and my memory faltered. I ended up reading from my notebook. I have so much more respect for college Marybeth and all my Almighty Ink teammates who bared their souls week after week in front audiences of 20-100 people. How the hell did we do that????

Last night was definitely not one of my best performances, but I did it. And it felt good to create something full and (semi)complete...poems are never really complete...and to prep and practice. It was a project, an exercise. The perfect way to open National Poetry Writing Month. Here's to a spring of new poems.