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. 

Diabolical Devices

In this universe I welcomed you to the world

And, convinced I would leave it, settled into despair.

I did not behold you for an eternity or a day

But this was the celestial event

And the diabolical device:

There was a world where your name was uttered

And in agony for all that would not be seen

Or known

Nothing more was said.

She did not see you babble

Or cry

Or wonder

And she does not view you now

Woman grown

And also and perhaps always

A baby.

It is odd that I should think of her now

And i wonder if I should thank her for taking that side

Of the event

So that I could have this one.

Of Tiger Balm and 9 O’Clock Bedtimes

Fortieth winter.

Still cold. Sad. And poorer now

Than I was last year.