January Daily Poetry Challenge 2022

1

I was lying in my bed on New Years

Not particularly reflective

Not particularly hopeful

Not particularly sad at all

The sky outside was snow slate

Not particularly ugly

Not particularly beautiful

Not particularly remarkable at all

I lay there in the dove hued dark

Not alone, or scared, or tired

Not particularly anything at all

2

On this the second day I do not have many words

A smiling chasm widens before me

I smile back?

3

Half a heart here and half elsewhere

Half a mind elsewhen

I hold onto the parts of myself that twist

I release those that tickle

My body trickles through the day like a sieve

4

I cut my feet on broken glass like diamond streets

I wandered ashen through dimly lit parks that smelled funny

I gave myself to those who knew not me

I thought I knew

With eyes open, it’s so much easier to be afraid

5

L is for the way I lick plates clean

O is for the overt lunacy

V is a very hard letter to find good words for

E is for eventually

Not all of these can be a gem

6

I have closed myself off, dammed up my wanting

Laid bricks around the leaky bits

Sandbags do the trick

The torrent of being has been stored up!

Leashed and levied!

The pressure is relieved only by clever siphoning

Giving just enough of myself

This feat of engineering, this modern marvel

Is a measured, calculated system

Implemented when one too many a flood

Swept all and everything away

The dam was fought for

Maintained by a gentled heart

7

No thoughts

Only tacos

Only coffee grounds

Only bed

No thoughts

8

In the blackness stretched out before me

Are pinpricks of brightness

A constellation of upturned faces

I can see my eyelashes

I hold open my hands

A pair of mirrors glinting in the sunlessness

Where am I standing?

Who do I touch?

What light in me is reflected back in those faces?

I stand there, unanswered.

9

In the bleak midwinter

The grass is still green across the multitude pastures

The woods smell of mud and recently melted frost

All the leaves underfoot dissolve as wet tissue

The world freezes and unfreezes,

You can taste the confusion in the air

there is no iron on the wind

It has no teeth

Winter gnaws on bog rotted bones

The fish still swim, unable to endure their torpor

10

Once again I dive

Heedless, perhaps blind

I dive

What I shall learn swims up ahead of me

That which I have races in a school around me

Silvered bodies in freezing water

I look about me in my shoal

Comforted by the nearness

Aware of the vastness around me

That fathomless deep that bleeds away into inky darkness

I know not whether I sink or swim

There is only plunging forward

My lungs burning in the darkness

11

My favorite thing about Louisville is listening to the radio

No one can seem to agree on the pronunciation of their city

A mix of pure vowels and muddy

Gliding through the syllables every which way

There is one agreement

Loo-we-ville is categorically

Incorrect

12

Sitting in the backseat of someone’s car

The sun shines on my face

Flickering between the passing buildings

I close my eyes and put my nose to the open window

It is morning and I am breathing

And the sun is shining on my face

13

Mahler is like sipping cool water

Gluck is like turning over dark soil

I try counting myself to sleep

But 300 year old music winds between the numbers

What a gift it is to have something so old, so enduring

Dancing around in there with my sleep paralysis demons

14

The longest days are of course preceded by nights where my mind just cannot take a hint

Is now truly the time to memorize 18th century music?

Is now really the time to contemplate the calendar?

I glance at the clock

2:30

The longest nights sneak up on me, one usually so easy to fall into the soft arms of sleep

For fucks sake

15

Considering sharpness

A prow cutting water

A blade slicing meat

A vixen scream in the night

Apparently, my voice in the passaggio

16

Those I am loved by

Those who are loved by me

I feel their hands on my shoulders

I walk forward with a bold heart

17

I was born under a starless sky

In the great exhale, I came into the world starless

Snow pricked holes in the eyeless sky

The cold snaps at my heels even still

Me and the cold, forever entwined around one another

As bedfellows go, I can imagine no other so attentive

The cold always trying to find its way in

As if it, too, seeks shelter from itself

A baying creature with claws and teeth that wants only to touch the warmth in which I am bundled

Let heat leech into its frigid fingers

Warm its toes

I wish I had enough warm in me to give the cold

18

I am looking at the bayou

Markers are ticked up the side of the bridge

10

15

20

25

35

The water is so calm, it barely moves

one night’s rainfall, it can drown the city

I fall asleep in the sun on the bank

19

As the building inhales it creaks

And soon to exhale, it creaks again

Like a great, brown toad it suns itself

Contentedly squatting, its blunt face smiling at the street

20

Having always been what I am

And not seeing

Perhaps choosing not to see

I reread the words I wrought

In past lives, in past places

I hardly recall the girl who wrote them

I read the words and so clearly see

That I have always been what I am

The world still has the same sharp edges

On which I continuously bruise myself

My outward eye is not clearer

But the one pointed inward

Sees now that I have always been what I am

21

I gave up on the pursuit of perfection long ago. What a gift to be imperfect in front of people. To be unmistakably human

22

I realize now that what I know is so insignifant compared to what I could know

I have curious hands desperate for the clay

Oh, let me make something

23

I enter into a room assuming I know the least

until I am proven otherwise.

I enter always prepared to learn

until I am given the opportunity to be the teacher.

24

I think on what makes me careful

It is not fear

Or a distrust of those nearest me

I think on what makes me unafraid

It is not foolishness

Or a disregard for fear

I think on what makes me certain

It is not recklessness

Or childish naïveté

I think on what makes me

knowing the mistakes I make are the cobbles on which I tread forward

Ever forward

25

a murmuration of starlings

Shifts, leaderless

precognition is blind to the tides on which they turn

One can only thrust a hand out to catch the trailing tail feathers

the difference between what you want and what you need

Shifts, too

26

When head wars with heart

There are no eyes to see

No hands to feel

My mouth feels full of cotton

Where is my voice amongst the swell?

27

Is it possible to be so overflowing with emotions

That you cannot feel any of them

There is only the miasma

And it is too thick to waft away?

28

I have a room in my heart for fear

It lives with love

It lives with joy

I have a room in my heart for fear

It touches love

It touches joy

I have a room in my heart for fear

It bows to love

It bows to joy

Fear is not such a fearsome thing

It needs only to be tempered by curiosity

29

The opportunity for more to love me

For me to love more

To become undeniable

To become beloved

To hold more against my chest

And then let go and love more

30

Bad luck turns a blind eye to umbrellas open in rehearsal

One hopes

31

I buy my gay little coffee

(Not iced, I’m sorry)

And a pain au chocolat

(Warmed until toasty)

My back itches

(Am I allergic to my soap?)

I have a salad and and beef jerky for lunch

(What a combo)

Is this a poem?

(Yes, cuz I said so)