when that which harms feels right

The years
have lined up my spine,
traced its route
from heel
up to where
neck meets head,
where my hair is fluffed,
innocent and unaware
of this injustice.

All this time,
I thought
this stiff cord
drawn against the length
and the loss of my soul
would hold me up,
suspend me,
make me the iron warrior
I thought I wanted to be.

Did I want to be a warrior? Yes.
But one with heart of duck down pillow
and purple irises.

This yardstick of titanium
that works so well in the movies,
has broken my creative hand,
my freedom of thought,
my ease of Spirit.

Since it was implanted for me
when I was a child,
my back, my will have been broken.

to want again

To Want Again



Funny how it
desists flowing for excruciating periods,
and depression is then something,
an awful real thing.

But then some conspiracy of things,
like a book,
or a new coffeeshop
or the vision of a lady
with legs bare in the harsh cold of near winter
literally dragging two huffy beagles down the street
outside said coffeeshop,
or…like a book,
strike you flat on the head.
And not only can you write again,
but precluding this,
you want to write again
and you want oh so very much
to read again, to read more and more.

But quite simply,
You want again,
For want is of the heart,
And your heart had been closed –
To friends, to self, to the hope of ever finding love again,
And not least of all to poetry.
And now you want, just want, not a thing
or a circumstance, but wanting like the impetus
that rises us from bed in the morning, from the womb.
Maybe you just want to sit and give thanks.

sunfish

leaving
town;
leaving it down the road,
down the
down
into the ground,
grave thoughts,
grave graves,
buried,
I am buried alive…

yet on the other side
I see reason
(hope)
mope toward the light,
reach with full spine,
into the future,
into now,
touch what is not possible –

it surrounds,
permeates you
like the ocean beguiles a sunfish