Untitlable

There are thirty ahead of me
and even the first seven seem impossible
without those letters in blue, like poetry,
garnishing my tomorrow.
Last year, the lines around the days
circled me like doe-eyed children
with stories of Beatrix's bunnies tucked
under the frayed edges of faded pink protection.
But now, each minute, each hour,
my eyes beg the clocks
for a livelier tempo
to balance my pulse.
The lines between the days
box me in as I race
in place through each tick
of every clock in sight.
My watch, my computer,
my cell phone, in the office,
I hear them all, their silence
stalks my impatience, scales my angst.
I make myself breathe in--out,
breath in--out.  Your eyes hang on
each breath that I have searched so desperately
for an honest reason to hold in,
but what I find pries open my throat
and sucks the you from me.
So one foot and then the next,
I step into the next day.
The ticks are a little quieter here.
The breaths, a little easier.
And each hour has a few less
splintering seconds.

Going Nowhere

All winter you spoke of my depression,
that darkness that slipped around me
controlling every non-movement
that even thought about moving.

All winter you spoke of my depression,
as if I needed reminding
that even the idea of the pending spring
could not hope away my numbing freeze.

All winter you spoke of my depression.
“Get out of the house,” you suggested.
“Call your friends,” you suggested.
“Go to the gym,” you suggested.

All winter you spoke of my depression
and for Valentine’s Day, you bought me a treadmill
because I was blah about my weight
but I never wanted to leave the house.

You bought me a treadmill.
Oh, the irony of your purchase!
You bought me a treadmill
so I could walk and walk and walk
in place.

Filled with Suicide - Joyce's Dublin, 1892

The Christian Brothers’ spire soared high, ripping through the passing clouds and he thought about the priest that had rented the room near his and how he used to say the spire was an arm reaching into Heaven. From the second story, he watched as the familiar shadow fell over the graves on North Richmond Street. The darkness still reached across the ground, now looking more like an “X” than a cross, with its passionate afternoon stretch over the rows of stone markers that later would ebb with the moon.

Placed just outside the Gates, a sinking ground empty filled—or so they said. They teased with their reaching hands; they believed in the wine and the broken bread, or so they should, they read. One man looked back on this street and resurrected the sunken faces, inflating them just a bit more with a still-dreary Dublin breath. Revived with only sighs of despair, sadness draped in heavy death.


As a boy, James Joyce lived with anguish just outside his window. Lives prematurely cut by their owners, the devil grabbing each one of them by the ankles as they try to climb up, cluttered his childhood panorama. What a better way to clear all the clutter than to give some of those nameless stone markers names like Doyle and Gabriel. Eveline doesn’t kill herself because she feels trapped in a male dominated world; she chooses her own life over following another. Sure they might be resurrected into a mundane world, but they are still there—living—every time someone reads their stories. Forever discussed in the present tense— ironically immortal. ~G

Your Breeze

I have loved her for two—
two winters, two springs,
two Aprils and soon to be, two Mays.
I understand Emily, Keats—
I understand how they held on
because it is so rare,
this ability to sustain on so little.
Emotion recognizes it, I think;
something that comes along
so infrequently
makes the moments of a breezing
so plentiful.
The simplicity that such eyes know my own
is oddly sufficient—and I would defend it
until all have left,
until all have lost faith in the forces
that too many fight.

Deaf or Blind?

Graphite scrapes through it.
A word cut from another
world, drug into ours dangling
like a cut of fresh meat strung up
a dirt road, used as bait
for yet another generation of wolves.
Don’t look at it! Don’t smell it!
You are not allowed to see it
read it
speak of it!

A tacked label itches
against the century-old context,
its crisp newness echoes
off the trees along the Mississippi.
This "slave" word does not belong here,
but we make it fit to ensure
yet another generation remains
deaf, but not blind.

She

She holds onto her with everything.  That moment just before waking, when she is still right there with her—that is her best time and she knows that’s just not healthy.  She’ll never physically hold her, kiss her, feel her eyes look at her the way she wants them to.  She holds onto her with everything so tightly that she feels herself drifting away.  Just another fork in the road, she says, but she knows it’s much more than a this-way or that-way decision.  She’ll never fully be without her.  She won’t lose anything except an occasional glimpse of her—that hair, wise eyes, and a smile that could sustain her during the weeks and sometimes months that she’d be too busy.  Their paths will cross, she nods, and the tug will hurt, but she knows her life is already full.  She knows things are as they should be, although she is not past the jumping-off point where knowledge and belief match up.  She still wants the fairy tale—the ups and downs and fights and smiles…the endless miles.  That’s why the moment just before she wakes up is so special.  The woman she loves is right there with her, whether they are walking around a pond on a clear spring evening, reading to each other as the moon shines in through their bedroom window, driving around through the changing leaves looking for the best shot, or just laughing—always laughing.  It’s time and she knows it.  It’s time. 

Even When (long version of "Sigh Lent")

I wrote a poem on Friday,
as I sat on the February concrete
and you floated in the air.

I wrote a poem on Friday
at four o’clock in the afternoon
and the sun hung high.

February breathed into my hair.
I was on my eighth cup
of Folgers Vanilla Biscotti with Splenda.

All I wanted to do was sleep,
but the routine of opening the circular lid,
scooping into the black soil, soothed me.

I want to sleep you away—
just close my eyes
and drift out of love.

But you are there too.

At that moment just as
I’m waking up
I swear I can hear your voice.

So although my dreams escape before
I'm completely awake,
I know you are there.

I want to remember, to be there again,
but just can’t do it
anymore.

You are everywhere, even when you are not.

Damn Line, Where I Live

Growing up, I always hated Math.
Theorems and other logical rules
repulsed me. But today, I want to love Math.
Its certainty. Its Yes or No.
The gray space inbetween
is neither here nor there,
so there’s just this vertical line,
the width of a hair,
that separates the Yes and the No.
I want to break pencil tips.
I want to wear down erasers.
I want to go through packages
of yellowish-orange No. 2s
until I get my final answer.
It will either be right or wrong.
All that questioning and analyzing
and interpretting will be pointless
because the gray is irrelevant.
But truthfully, in my warped mind,
I already know that one plus one
does not include me.
But today, I still want to love Math.
I want to love numbers
because they aren’t words—
Words bring me right back to you.

Sigh Lent

You are everywhere,
even when you are not.

Container

I scale the inside of the dome-shaped climber.
I hang onto her sturdy frame, skipping
through the myriad of trilateral unity.
In front of me, the opalescent sky.
A warming breeze sweeps
the clouds right to left.

And yet the air haunts.
If the budding trees listen,
they hear only themselves.
Through the dome’s many eyes,
Nothing finds me. The cold bars sting
my hands, replacing soft with callous.
I hang freely on her sturdy frame,
but what hangs onto me
is so much heavier.

Wooden Clothespins

Monday was on polka-dots,
white spotted in red.
Tuesday, a pale pink knit
with a few tattered threads.

Wednesday held a black silk,
drycleaned down the street.
Sticking out of the pocket—
directions on an old receipt.

Thursday, a soft green blouse
much like April’s grass.
Friday, her favorite sweater,
blue like coastal glass.

I guess the weekends didn’t matter
since she mostly stayed in.
No one would see her—
those days didn’t have a pin.

But Monday thru Friday
written in black
on old wooden clothespins
from the line in the back.

Her secret clasped safe,
her daily reminders were key,
until I opened her closet,
that dismal day in Tennessee.

Dear Susan,

It made me cry today
reading your obituary
written so long ago.
After we rejoin the dust,
these paragraphs but meager
representations of our entirety
and I'm so sorry for the omission
of her name in your finality lyric,
for I have little doubt
of her significance.
Yet the most quenching
is ingested and secret
to only the drunkard
and I am so thankful for the vat
of "Dear Susie . . ." so that I
may partake as well.
I can only hope violets rested
in the white satin with you
and that an unknown slipped
a few verses beneath your clasped fingers
as companions during the reunion rising.
But it still made me cry today,
the omission, the black veil,
"Emily" written in a pencil
so easily erased, so easily assumed
that our eyes too
would be afflicted—
that our realm too
would be forfeited.

Tug of War

I am right here and you, right there.
My iPhone holds my hand at night
when you call to say “Good Morning.”
The joints between us ache as they pull
inward, desperately wanting
mountains to muster, oceans to dry.
The second hand never hesitates;
the miles won’t recede an inch.
If the ground, like a magic tablecloth,
snapped out from under us,
here I would still be—
there you would still be.

You’re awake. I’m asleep. You’re asleep. I’m awake.

Little Alek eats breakfast
on the placemat you sent him,
the map of the world—
your picture there;
our picture here.
He doesn’t understand why
if he can fold you over—
if he can crinkle our continents closer—
why can’t you come home
to just have breakfast with him.
“I promise after we eat our eggs,
he can go back to his war, Mommy!”

The Collision (1994 version)

This poem was written back in 1994 for a Creative Writing class (Scott Revis was the teacher--if you know him??)--when I was a senior in high school.  There are definitely errors and wording issues, but I chose to post it as-is.  Once I revise it, I'll post that as well.  The poem is a response to the picture shown (a Pulitzer prize-winning shot taken back in 1958).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Collision

The lonely red wagon
lies quietly on the pavement
with its companion several feet away
awaiting the glow of twirling lights.
Their color slowly fades

as the heat from the sweltering sun

beams down on the frantic town.

It was just a mere truck peacefully traveling

down the road.

Horns were heard miles away.

Shouts and screams rattled near-by windows.

Now their color pales as mothers cling

tightly onto their childrens’ innocent hands.
Weeping spreads across the town
as the lonely red wagon waits
for other children to swipe it
from the eyes of death.

Twain Remains Unseen

"A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read." ~Mark Twain

I enjoy the atmosphere of Beavercreek’s Barnes & Noble; the academic hustle of college students in the café has drawn me in for over six years. However, and this could partly be due to my homage to all those “Shop[s] Around the Corner,” the more I learn about big business, the less I frequent the chains. Sure they are still avenues for learning, but what exactly is this mega-store teaching? One could say that big business is all about sales and I agree—kind of.

Stay with me…

So sales—we all know that George W. Bush and Sarah Palin both have new autobiographies out. What an easy sale these both will be this holiday season; Fox News should get proceeds for all the marketing assistance they’ve offered. I definitely plan to read both. But the reason for my most recent trip to Barnes & Noble was to purchase the Mark Twain autobiography—the new one—written by Twain himself with the direction that it would not be published until 100 years after his death. Personally, I find that mere idea fascinating…not to mention the contents that patiently let WWII, The Great Depression, “I have a dream . . .,”etc. pass through it, remaining unaffected. Now I knew that I’d be swarmed by the Nook salesperson. I knew that the still-alive, conservative authors would wallpaper the entrance. But I also thought that Twain’s book would have its own display, proud—like Bush and Palin’s. I couldn’t find it. Hmmm…perhaps it was sold out. After all, the New York Times did make known in a recent article that it would be hard to find “in stock.” Again, sales…yes, I know. But folks, this is a book (the first of three volumes) that will be studied for centuries and we are the first to touch it. Well, I did get to touch it, but only after I had to ask a salesperson to help me find it. Oh and yes, she had to look it up. !!! I don’t like the world I live in—that knows about the Twilight series and not Twain.

So there it was and regardless of the fact that it was buried among about two dozen random biographies, when I picked it up, it took my breath. Now I guess I should have prefaced this article with the fact that I’m not a historian. I’m not an academic; I don’t even have a Masters degree. In fact, I have a business degree so I understand the basics on how these businesses stay afloat. But there are (or should be) certain holes where these masterpieces are able to surface, regardless of whether they sell like hotcakes. So who fits them in the holes? I can only hope that the powers that decide this bookstore’s marketing strategies are simply ignorant. Perhaps they don’t really know who Mark Twain was—and no, he’s not just the creator of Tom and Huck. But shouldn’t “the powers” know? Aren’t they part of the link that connects knowledge to hungry minds? Yet how much ignorance can this society accept, especially when as of today, Twain’s book is the #1 best seller on the Barnes & Noble website! I’m strangely feeling this twitch, this need to quote from one of his essays, “Corn-pone Opinions,” but I’ll resist. Why oh why is this book not out for the world to see, instead of buried—disrespected—on a wobbly table in the back of the store, with several biographies that will end up at the bargain bookstore across the street in a few months???

I will conclude by telling you that the salesperson who helped me has been working at the store for as long as I have been a weekly (sometimes even daily) customer, but I am aware that such a large store requires the help of high school and college students that might not be completely…in the know. But the managers—and their bosses—and their bosses, folks this is a trickling-down effect. Learn one. Do one. Teach one. Spread the wealth and by wealth, well...you know what I mean.  ~G

Unfolding

The ages turn,
burn through her worn fingers,
each bottom corner slightly stained
from her tarred finger.
She unfolds a few edges
of her life like origami,
insistent to relearn how each fold
shaped the whole.
I read to her her words
about The Great Depression,
WWII then restoration;
civil rights and gender oppression;
progression then regression.
She sometimes points
to a yellowed photo,
a fold she thinks
she remembers.
But her head just shakes
as she buries her eyes
back into the ages,
the pages
of her life.

Impressions Passed

(this is a work-in-progress)

I held it like an infant,
my hip sharing the weight
of the days that passed through it--
     this fossil planted in our bedrock;
of the revolution that passed over it
     like cool fog over a southern riverbank--
     unaffecting its centurial calm.

I held it like an urn,
the remains of a fallen star--
     that discusses the origin of Tom,
     that philosphizes Finn,
     that just might have their maps of the Mighty.
I caught myself constantly looking back
to ensure nothing spilled out.

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage

over the man who can't read them."  ~Mark Twain

A Room in Virginia

The paving under her feet
jagged and rocky;
the air, October thickening;
the background, briefly fogged in;
the foreground, uninviting.
The leaves chanted and stopped,
chanted and stopped
their haunts and howls.
The brass knob twisted
in her sweaty palm.
Her wrist turned it;
her grip held on.
The door opened
to a suffocating lobby.
The smell of dirt seeped
through the creaky boards
beneath her.
The open door led to more
closed doors.
She reached down
between her breasts,
where one metal key hid,
warm and protected.
It was the third door on the left;
black paint splintering
revealing a warm chestnut.
She opened the door
to her empty room,
sat the blank pages down
and opened the window.

Held

He lifts her up;
her arms stretch out.
Her bare feet grip--
her small toes clutch--
the anchored beam.
Her body--her mind--intersect.
She gulps.

After repetition, he binds her eyes
with pale pink fabric, still
urging her across
the straight and narrow.
"If you do exactly as I say,
I'll catch you if you fail."

This becomes mindless--
walk like this -- put your arms like this -- look up--
be proud of who we are molding you to be.
This is a Follow-the-Leader game--
think and do as we say...
and we'll always be here.

She blindly points,
positioning one foot in front
of the other.  The tie keeps
her needing him.  The tie keeps
her focus on only his voice
and direction.  Is it Faith or fear?

This is a balancing act--
pick what you will carry.
Adjust your own gravity;
weigh its weights.
Pick carefully--
you can only take
so much.

ABC's

I slid my fore finger along the underbelly
of the decaying playground picnic table,
the one underneath the atrophic ozone
underneath the Henny Penny sky
the one underneath the afflicted ash
and felt a moist squishy blob of chewing gum.

I slid my fore finger along the underbelly
of the decaying playground picnic table,
felt the goo
and suddenly noticed the seasoning leaves,
was rekindled by the sun,
and regained my appetite for the spice of change.