I’ve been here before:
The futility of wanting
Yesterday, again.
The spider
They are invasive.
Mostly docile and generally
Not venomous.
The males are small and forgettable,
But the females are huge and brilliant.
You notice their webs first.
Gigantic gossamer things, clung to
Mailboxes and trees and,
This morning, my car’s antennae.
A flutter in the corner of my eye and I saw
The wind catch her.
She gripped the antenna with all eight legs
And I tried to slow enough to protect her
And save me.
How fiercely she clung to that antennae
The wind and the road
Rough and unyielding against her
But she held on.
We slowed and stopped and she seemed to shudder and
I wondered if she felt relief.
You made it, I marveled.
When I left work she was still there,
unmoving
Rustled by the unseeing breeze,
Tangled between a metal antennae
And the strength of her own web.
inside jokes
You got this mama.
Great job, mama.
It doesn’t feel like something I’ll get, my baby leaving.
This is the job. First stage complete.
Everyone says it—they grow up. They go to college.
They go.
Somehow I didn’t notice that i would stay.
Here with her blanket and plushies.
What do I do now?
What is it called—sadness for someone you can still see
And smell
And touch?
Sadness for the immediacy of an inside joke
And a huge kiss on the cheek
And a squeezy hug?
She calls and asks if I miss her
And I want to say I haven’t taken
A single full breath
Since I left you there.
Instead I say
I can’t wait until you come home
And keep this sadness
Like an inside joke
That does not have
A punchline
That all who came before me
Already know
But cannot find the words
To tell.
Crumbs
Let us eat cake
If we desire, or perhaps
Fall into bed, shoes on. it
Ends and we are but crumbs on rumpled sheets
happy birthday
Force fed a nightmare
We Die, choked on stars and stripes.
Tempest toss’d Refuse.
Helium
It is rare on earth.
Coveted. Unseen. Once known
You are infinite.
Entropy for dummies
You fall into my orbit and we
Push and pull
So long i think you belong to me
I think I can keep you.
You continue on your journey to
Decay, your return
To nothing.
Somewhere something
Is learning of your beauty and they
See me
But we have returned to the dark
Belonging to everything,
And nothing.
Spectral
We spend our lives looking at tomorrow.
Not now, but then.
Someday.
We tell our children “when you get older”
And lament that they do not enjoy
Right now.
We put aside our meager earnings
For a rainy day
Wiping from our brows drops
From a leaky roof.
We spend our lives gazing at stars
That are already dead
Convincing ourselves that
We have more time
All the while our time is wrested from us
From they who have plenty.
Carrion, we feast on the carcass
Of tomorrow.
Starving ourselves of the meal of beauty
Of today
Of now
For the illusory specter of what we will
Not know
Or see.
the right to choose
I will meet my kin.
Those who chose the sea, before
I’m shackled anew.
grown up lies
When we were small Africa was a country
Overflowing with tiny black bodies
Bent over from hunger
Bellies bulbous with disease.
Eat up, they said.
There are children starving in Africa.
We patched our wounds with strips from
Burned flags
Grew brittle from lead filled water.
I wonder at the vastness of what is now
A continent
And I wonder what lies
African children were told about us.
