1/12th

If I am a honey bee,

I am a honeybee

with a hollowed out heart,

where I keep everything that stings.

I fly heavy in fear of myself and

in fear of the people I don’t want to sting.

Then you pour in,

singing honeybee honeybee,

soothing the stinging,

and I want to make room.

in my honeycomb heart–

like your honey comb bones–

and finally have a sweet place

to call home

(inside myself and with you)

But the average honeybee

only produces 1/12th a teaspoon of honey

in her lifetime.

I want to give you all of mine–

and be full too–

but it takes a lot of sweet

to occupy the space of this sting

and I am only one bee.

and I am filled with empty spaces.

smoke stack resurrection

I love the smell of cigarettes before they’re lit,

sweet

acrid

and dry.

smell of smoke that

clings and lingers

on fingers,

in clothes,

smell of smoke.

old leather.

wintergreen.

smell of smoke with coffee and grilled cheese.

I flash back three times daily to smoke-yellowed walls

I call home, though not my own.

more than once I’ve mistaken a smoke break stranger for someone who loves me.

you always told me

“never smoke.”

I never thought I’d be the type.

eight years is far away though

and now,

even your bad habits

make me feel close.

at the beach

I am confounded by grief –

an ocean infinity pressed into earth

unfathomably deep –

grief that squeezes as you sink

by grief that grows like trees–

stretching out and taking hold

more vast beneath than what is seen.

I wouldn’t belief such grief,

but I’ve known people living

in deep see trenches,

orchards,

leagues,

people living in redwood forests of grief,

great bell jar divers,

stay alive-ers.

brave arbor day saints who refuse to fell their trees.

standing here in disbelief,

between forests and the sea,

I ask –

how do you do it?

how can you still breathe?

I grow wiser,

watered by grief,

knowing mine is just a drop.

still a seed.

Rock Collector

I carry lake-shore stones in my heart

because sometimes I get so full up with the wonder of every day,

I swear I can feel my feet begin floating

and I’ll do anything but stay.

 

there are other times too,

I am so profoundly filled with

nothing,

I grow certain I’d never existed in the first place.

 

so I’m sure riverbeds can spare their stones,

whose clacking promises to ground me

either way,

and sing me songs

that even with a heavy heart,

I’ll be ok.

Bless the life-lovers. I’ll stay.

bless the star-gazing porch-sitters,

chair-rockers,

and leaf-collecters–

the life-is-beautiful-singing squirrel-watchers

with patience in their lungs,

who teach to breathe-better the air of rain:

smell of outside and slate.

 

thank the gentle breeze-voice singers,

the bend-backward kind speakers

with spines like flower chains.

 

praise to the spider-sparing life-lovers

with fire-flicker hearts

who remind me what I’d miss

if I ever looked away.

 

They are the flower-growing plant mothers

who delight in all things daily,

smile-making mountain-lovers

with joy in all they say.

 

camping under my full-moon heart,

backstroking in my sunny-day-veins,

in every t00-loud laugh and rain dance

they remind me–

stay.

Please stay.

 

on being seen

I wonder why I don’t need to speak english

to the bugs that love me,

because other people seem confounded

even when I’m speaking clearly.

and why the trees stand firm and understand

in the spaces where the sky listens through the leaves

but other people seem overwhelmed

in the white water rush of my iniquities.

spiders bite but stick around

and let me be–

so long as I’m still enough,

they build me in the web they weave.

The sky changes, but never the subject.

the ocean shares me in its reflection,

and even on cloudy nights,

when the moon takes leave,

the lightning bugs fly close

and insist I be seen.

Tough Body

it’s tough to be a body.

tough body, to resist all our efforts against it.

they say life is fragile,

but I’ve got a body like a battlefield–

I rage duality, destruction.

but body wants life, the skin says–

while it mends.

body want life, the blood says-

while it pumps out poison.

While I wage war on living, body says–

peace.

some of us, we have battlefield bodies

testaments to battlefield minds.

still body says peace.

I say thank you, tough body.

I learn from the way you keep living,

from the way you save me.

forecast, channel 3

savor this
the forecast of relief,
rain like baptism–
gutters rushing iniquities
breath deep clean slate
holy as of tuesday
but thumb through tic-marked pages
brace for weather change.

drought like sin–
sweat collect,
gathered–dirty creases
heavy hot small spaces
wiping hands
of dry-rot rubber
sticky hands
and shame

cry your eyes the sun says
kissing skin and breeze
tic on toes and fingers longer days–
counting callouses and scars
barefoot thorns and longing
stomping sticks impaling soles
don’t even bother check the forecast–
ground gone cold.

Losing Extreme

The first years

I read it all and obsessed and never slept 

and I burned with intensity. 

Extreme isolation,

conversing with professors and trees

manic frenzies,

but now it’s year three. 

I succumb so easily to gluttonous impulses, 

and I sleep. and sleep. and sleep. 

and every half hearted attempt at productivity resolves itself, 

dissolves 

into head on desk for hours

languishing in guilt quietly. 

 

neither panic nor passion grips me. 

I mourn passively–

the loss of my extremes. 

Mathematics

That she sees the scars on my arms and I see the scars on her heart

and neither one of us ever says a fucking word.

 

It’s too easy to stay quiet and smile

and reduce our doubleness to an echo,

mere mimicry–

and we’ve heard it all before.

 

We play our lies on repeat–

vinyl records of pleasantry,

throats sore and voices scratchy

God forbid we sit in silence

and listen to what’s really there.

 

Sometimes when I get headaches there’s this ringing

and I imagine I can hear the screaming silence

under all the stupid sound.

 

I don’t want a diagnosis but I have to believe there’s a cure

because Hitler loved animals and gave goldfish bigger bows to swim in

while he systematically wiped out millions with unfathomable cruelty.

 

And the sight of a squirrel dead on the road

could make me weep,

but when I see someone upset

I don’t care.

 

How can we claim detachment from any one outside our scope of caring

when anything human belongs to us too?

And how can our scope of caring exclude

when we are only the sum of us all?