1
I found myself at a loss for words for 40 days
I did think of them
But I could not make them stick to a page
I am back now
And they seem to be sticking alright
I suppose I’m just worried
I was so tired
And I’m sure to be again
So many words get unstuck
And then I just have a handful of letters
2
The stubborn tree root
Grown up from eroded soil
Clutches the bare rock
3
Singing with a pianist you don’t know
“I’ll meet you at the end”
Hopeful that your respective degrees
Will get you both there
Somehow
And eventually
4
I’m so glad to be an adult
I can decide to get a chocolate malt
At 9 pm
Walk to the graeters in the downy half dark
A man that talks too loud gives me my malt
For $5.75
And I walk home in the freshly fallen night
Knowing a stag waits lonely in the woods across the street from my house
5
Love bites from the cat
Itch on the back of my hand
My sunburn peels
I cannot help but pick and pick and pick and pick
My tomatoes are wrinkled
And the garlic skin is damp
Making it harder to peel and peel and peel and peel
I clogged the sink with the garlic skins
6
Summer rain pebbles the dirty window panes
The gently approaching night
Swallows the verdant green swath of woods
The summer thunder guffaws
And its lover flashes a brilliant smile
Grey clouds spit
Blacker now, and darker still
Heavy and descending slowly
To rest on the drooping treetops
7
I could write my life story on a book of matches
Each memory burnt away
Every time I light a room
8
The way my nose fits against your cheek
In that picture
You know the one
The way you drape your hand around my neck
Holding me close
My smile
My eyes
All yours
And ours together
In that picture
You know the one
9
A knife called Kindness
10
There is not enough time in this place
Never enough time for me to be ready to say goodbye
Again
11
All the singing girls
They come from Ireland
And all the tunes they hum
From cross a frigid sea
The singing girls with jeweled tongues
And throats cast out of purest gold
Sing their merry songs
And call the rainclouds in
I know a singing girl
With Ireland in her wake
She sings no dancing songs
Nor ballads meant for me
She thrums as taut as piano strings
With rainclouds as her ferrymen
Oh, The thunder o’er the raging waves
And lightning bright enough to blind
All bespelled by the silver voice
From my lovers’s golden throat
12
There’s a building on the corner that used to sing
Alas, one by one the voices left it
But it used to sing
Not always well
But often well enough
Its myriad voices tumbled down the steps
Some loud or soft
Some going silent for many days
When the windows were thrown open
Those anonymous voices reached all the way to the lake
All the way down the hill if the street was quiet
Alas, one by one the voices left it
But it used to sing
It used to sing
13
In a time of lasts
I prepare to make my first
An ending in one place
Sings the beginning in another
14
I leave on my dramatic eye makeup
As I put on my pajamas
To sit in the living room with my friends
(The hair goes in a bun, the bra in a heap on the ground, the look deteriorates but the eye makeup stays on)
Perhaps wiping just enough off
So that I look like I’m in a high school production of Cabaret
15
Flowers are filled with rain water
The streets of the Gaslight are still
And cool with the lingering breath of thunder
I breathe in air laced with lilac
I run my hands across the Juniper and Hemlock
The water hung from their needles
Cleanses my hands of the dirt from the back of the friendly outdoor cat
The Japanese maples droop
Under the weight of the dew
16
I do not know how loud I speak
Nor for how long I have spoken
There is only the crowding of the words in my mouth
And my clumsy tongue unable to get out of the way
17
I am not ready to say goodbye to you
I am not ready to let you go
Though I stand on the threshold of leaving
With a suitcase of memory in tow
I am not ready to say goodbye to you
Even though I have to go
There is a stickiness in belonging here
A feeling I can’t wash away
I have forgotten more than I recall
I wade slowly through a remembered day
I am not ready to say goodbye to you
Even though I cannot stay
18
I am in the walls
In the stains on the ceiling in the kitchen
I am in the scratches on the baseboards
And on the wood floors
I spackled over thumbtack holes
I hung command strips
That ripped of 20 layers of paint
I am in the rooms and halls
Though I go
Something of me remains
19
A woman sits on her fire escape smoking
She taps the dwindling cigarette and the ash falls 15 feet to the ground
She slowly crawls through her window
Back into the dark
20
Hangry is
Seeing red at the deli
Want
Bagel
Now
21
Semi obstructed
View of backsides and profiles
A dancing green girl
22
Pooped in Carnegie Hall
Titties out, Carnegie Hall
Ass out, Carnegie Hall
I am a menace
23
Images from my eyes
Become words tapped out by my fingers
I look at a thing
And describe it to myself
The tearing nets on an abandoned baseball field
Sunlight on the seaglass green Hudson
The silver blue sheen of the city
fading away behind squat, red brick buildings across the bridge
Clouds pulled thin across a heat swollen sky
How can I make the world around me into poetry
What words are waiting to be teased out by my aimless tap tap tapping
24
I cried
For it seems the only thing I can do
I cried
Impotent
Useless
I cried
And it was the only thing I could do
25
I wanna go to bed
I’m fucjinng pooped
And my autocorrect won’t fix swear words
So I’m fucknng wiped out
And I don’t have the energy to fix fusinckg
So I’m just gonna fucjing let it be
Duck
26
I give what I have of my soul
They give what they have of theirs
Give and give until exhausted
And it is never enough
It could never possibly be enough
27
Strauss is a balm for the soul
28
There is a soul that isn’t
But should be here
29
I met god in a water park
He makes the water slides go
30
Sometimes
Singing isn’t enough
And that’s okay
31