Friday, January 28, 2011

Not a poem, just a thought.

Today I was going pee. 
On my own toilet. 
At home. 
Bill had just gotten new toilet paper. 
It was "angel soft."
Five years ago that would have hurt.
I would have been mad.
But I put it on the roll.
I went to grab some.
The pattern on the white tissue was butterflies.
Five years ago I would have sworn.
It would have hurt like being stabbed.
Anyone who would buy that, fuck them.
You knew I might come over.
Fuck you.
My baby died.
You know that symbol is butterflies.
You know I reluctantly put them on her walls.
You know I got into that.
That's just how it felt.
Worse than being stabbed now that I write it down.
But not today.
Today I saw the butterflies.
And I remembered.
And I had a secret.
And for a split second it was nice.
It was our second.
And I've felt that way in other bathrooms.
That special moment.
It's still a recollection of my baby.
I rustle the tissue with my thumb and fore finger.
It is soft and perfumed and powdered.
(Nevermind the wiping with it.)
Whether you know it or not.
Thanks for buying that tissue.
Thanks for never changing.
Thanks for believing I'd come back.
But better.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Magenta.

Magenta is all long legs.
It is knees and lipstick.
Magenta is teenage confidence,
and that feeling of giddy soaring.
Magenta is invulnerable and
smooths over the fissures
where crimson will crack every time.
Magenta thinks itself sophisticated,
and wants to be taken seriously.
But magenta has a lot to learn.
Nothing that ever lived
stayed magenta for long.
Nothing that remembers
or bleeds true red or
forgets to breathe sometimes or
stares off at blue calls itself
Magenta. Not for long anyway.
Because magenta is the color
of the thin veneer of youth
that wears off no matter
how often we dress ourselves
in contrast to crimson.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Debate on Breathing.

The breath takes sticky hold in my throat,
like something small and hot living there.
Must breathe out to keep stepping,
need that flow of oxygen and other gases
for moments to tick by and to make it
to night, to make it to sunrise, to make it
to night again.  And then another sunrise.
But could I hold that fiery, tiny thing--
keep it lodged in place radiating
my innards with its reminder of
the short and sweet and what burns.
In the cradling I might ignite from inside,
but would it be blazing and would it hurt just right
and would I finally remember dying in there.
Or would the last scraps of playing it back wake me,
and I'd fall and scrape my face on the pavement,
embarrassed and caught holding on too long again,
and forced back to the old breathing.
The questions and the diaphragm ache and
are too much invisibility, pulsing, themselves.
The debate on breathing is natural
as once was the breathing itself.
But I exhale and let the holding of it die hard
and the hot curl scrapes as it leaves.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Be grateful.

Up late again.
            Tapping and switching.

Buttons.
Thoughts racing.
               Grateful.

Grateful.
        Be grateful.

Meerkat Shanty

shanty town living room
tents of blankets and wood chairs
meerkat blonde heads peep

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Auras

we wait for those days
we think moments hurt like hell
but auras linger

Trail

cold trail through windows
slithers between us in bed
lies in cracked nuance

Eyes

Eyes like round caskets
Gaze like stillness all around
Though these will wake up

Monday, January 10, 2011

Smoke

smoke brings thoughts of her
incense and cigarettes both
reparable trails

Catching up.

Hello all.  I am here, catching up.  My laptop is (yet again) on the fritz and my kids are (yet again) sniffly.  Rather than going on a tirade about the brand, I'll just say I've been writing on (gasp) paper, albeit snot covered.  So, over the next few days, I hope to type out my backlog of poems from the last four days.  As always, thank you.
Catherine

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Still Water

people talk about angels
and it makes me wonder
because it seems impossible
that the slow immoving life
after passing could be better
without the joy or sadness
or the growing that marks
the passing of time
those things are absent
but imagine time lazily
licks by as the sun drifts
through the sky
over very still water
imagine being stretched
and under that sun
as warm as you've ever been
like moments and temperature
just don't exist
 and your breathing
even slows to match them
and you're tiny
and your fist balls up
and releases rhythmically
in the only gestures you know
you've been swaddled
your whole life
and rocking slightly
that movement becomes you
you've never been alone
on still water.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Bats on Wind

A bat catches a bit of air with its lightness,
like nothing else around.
It is small and fast, despite its stubbish nozzle.
Its size is like those stress
spots that darken the periphery of my vision.
When it flies into my eyeline,
and between two rows of top-heavy trees,
it is gone before I can turn
or focus my eyes, or maybe it's slipped between
my right and left eye and
the space where their trajectories weave together.
Something so small that
my lazy eyes like short fingernails at an itch can't trace it.
And the less I see the bats,
the less I know to look for their black against blacker.

Monday, January 3, 2011

For the first time in my life...

...I want to write a love poem.

Recipe Books

I need something as I stand before the shelf in the mass market book store.
These tomes are too shiny; they are too new.  Don't even smell like books yet.
On the covers are depictions of new age recipes, each one seems to be sprinkled
with goats' cheese or drizzled with some mottled, red puree. 

These are "cuisine," nothing like we used to make.  I don't see ricotta anywhere,
unless it's been "clarified," a process I've always found mystifying.
I need something, I'm looking for something.  A book that smells
like the basil pressed inadvertently between its pages. And when I turn them,
I need to wipe the flour from my fingertips, or let it mingle inevitably
with the contents of the new bag as I rip the paper.

I need to remember something as I pay for the book and try out the recipes.
I buy all these catalogs of memories, and I flip through them on repeat,
hoping I see one that will stir something in me, one I will buy for good.
And I will rip the pages from there, and stroke them as I eat the product
of their instructions.  It's been too long since I tasted you or touched you,
so my tongue and the pads of my thumbs will be confused and electrified.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Rim Standing

I'm standing on the rim of a drinking glass.
Or possibly it's a canyon, dusty and buckskin.
If I jump down its edge, curling my back
to ease my slide, I may hit icy smooth,
but I may hit boulders, and deep breathing
and bravery won't do.

If it's a glass, will I make that symphonic whine
as I whip around the inside perimeter,
buying me time and slipping easy like sharp needles,
or will I whoosh and gasp and struggle, flushed and flooded.

And if it's an earth shelf rim where I teeter--
ball, heel, ball, heel, ball, heel,
will I be crunched from the bottom up
by rock that will slit my gizzard.