good-bye

good-bye

we say it every day, streetcar after streetcar, practice, practice and then I am saying it to air. please no, we were still practicing. I'm not good enough yet.

an apple you cannot bite into more than once without kissing the tiny toothmarks of the last good-bye, tasting the lipsticktang of the lips that got there first.

still practicing after the bows and curtseys, the set has been struck. good-bye is at our backs, tomorrow and freedom whipping just ahead, but oh here for a minute we turn around, turn back, bury our wide-open mouths noses eyes in the musty pillow that is good-bye. hold it with both hands.

your snaking oxygen tube. your skinny aggro. your shaky release. the boys. the babies. my own own body.

still practicing. in my pyjama drawer, on the coffee table, next to the morning grapefruit. good-bye goes with you and stays with me, precarious splits, I am left holding it, practicing it, eating it. kissing it. 

I know all the words but I'd rather not say them.

I know all the words but I'd rather not say them.

Parade of syllables, ancestry, somersaults. Stop the parade.

Too rich the cake too fat the popcorn, noisyboots,

So deaf this tired ear now, turn off the house.

The way I sign my name, thinking the loops

The way it's twins, twins, twins, where nobody'd think

The diamonds repeating me blind.

***

There isn't a key. There isn't a secret.

There is a parade all loosey-goosey she taught me.

You stomping the continent, megaphone proudly mute.

I know the words but what if they are not sweet?

It's all right now, the cake, the mangoes, the beginning

It parades itself it predicts itself it hums.

There's no bus coming, there's no bus gone. Stop the bus.

We're only human.

We're only human. We are made out of heads and bellies,

coffee tables and croquet sets, doughnuts and leashes without dogs.

We're only human. We are made out of typewriters cowering in basements,

rocking chairs without babies, constant noise, and resolutions.

We're only human. Only bones and mistakes held together with our own hands.

Made out of oatmeal and repeating alarms, standing in our tan lines.

                                             

We are human. Only human. Every dream has feet and more chocolate.

Bodies hiding in stairwells. Absolute truth makes us go snicker-snack.

Only human. We are that girl with ups and downs. We just remembered something.


We never really know.

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(Two days in a row the online Bibliomancy Oracle gave me "We're only human." I decided it must be a sign.)

Where We All End Up

Place is where we all end up. Living.

Living is a motor that won't stop, won't start.

Start water, panic is a luxury, start water

Water to carry and spill, boiling and disappearing.

Disappearing sundrums splashing our boney feet.

Feet old on the ground where bricks are piling

Piling broken into the shape of this place.

***

Place becomes time if I stay still enough here.

Here I am where my feet rest on each other.

Other bedtimes collapse, other time zones gather

Gather the islands so we can hop.

Hop the stones, leap the rocks, rest in the shadows

Shadows boiling fast slow slow

Slow living. Slow stopping still. Slow building this place.

Quatern - I sanded the red cabinet

The next phase in making the Barbara and Donald Deer Memorial Little Free Library:

I sanded the red cabinet,

the little red cabinet, down

and painted it chocolate brown

today, a deep chocolate brown.

In the red hammock, above where

I sanded the red cabinet

I lay, on my porch, counting down

till I could close the garage door.

The paint fumes are gone now, I guess

I've mostly cleaned up all the mess

I sanded the red cabinet

and painted, and cleaned. And got dressed.

It might not sound like much right now

but I'm not much of a Hausfrau

and I'm awfully pleased with how

I sanded the red cabinet.

http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poetic-forms/types-of-poetry-forms-quatern