Wednesday, August 3, 2016

when poetry began 
to make me sad —
I stopped writing it

I stopped reading it
and instead I began to paint and
take photographs of places and stuff
I loved a lot

Occasionally I do write poems 

snowcapped
hills and green trees
and the unwinding
rivers — what is dense and dark
leads me in

what I know about becoming calm

paint —- the colors across the canvas
are language — the fragments of me

“The Great Gatsby” still has the power 
to break my heart and make me wish

for a different ending to that story


I am used to feeling broken.
I have been through things.
Your ashes spilled onto my shoe.
Ashes, Ashes — 
In my closet, the ashes of my brother.
Rosy Doyle’s ashes in my closet.
The post man brings your ashes to my door.
He rings the bell.
I sign to receive what is left of your body.
Your ashes —
My oldest brother’s ashes on my dining room table.
I tell you, I have been through things.
Sometimes  memory is a lot like rust.

I have spent nights on a tar roof waiting for stars to fall.
I pretend to be brave.
I like being different.

When I was younger I fell in love
with the idea of kissing him.

My fear refuses to let my mind be honest.
My heart fears to release.
 I tell you, the truth I understand is too vibrant.

These three things I trust —
But I don’t trust enough to tell you
 what three things they are.

Color on canvas is like separations of me from me.
 Only better than.

I love that a poem need not have meaning.
I won’t explain.

 —  I keep waiting for some old wounds to shape shift into scars.
I love sparklers and the evening star.
Silence and the dictionary.
Sometimes I settle for fragments.

Someone asked me this:  are you valuable?
I think I said too quickly — no.

I don’t journal —

It never was what he said
but rather how he looked at me.
We were not about language —-
His eyes told me all I needed to hear.