Sunday, June 30, 2019

Poem: Ponder #the100dayproject Day 90

Ponder

I am left with a question and hallucinations, 
a prognosis of the past tense. 
A memory gone sour with doubt. 
If I am a person in other people’s lives, 
when I leave them at a coffee shop, 
do I cease to exist in their eyes? 

Poem: Scenario #the100dayproject Day 89

Scenario

If I wore a veil, it would be white lace. 
Not stiff taffeta, but softest cotton. 
It would smell of moth balls and dried rose petals. 
Through the lacework, I would watch the world unfold. 
Past its stitching that gathered into flowers, 
I would see the eyes of everyone on me, 
intent to idolize me as if I walked on water, 
or if I was the lady of the lake 
holding my bouquet as if it were Excalibur. 
But all I would be is separate, 
this pale barrier like delicate lichen 
cascading from my hair. I am other. 
A creature hidden from view, 
as if this man I walked towards 
had never seen my face, or heard my voice. 
This veil like a box disguising a commodity 
that may or may not be what everyone expected.  
When he brushes away the veil like a cobweb, 
he will find a moon woman, my face the shapes 
that form the night into silver shadows. 
He will find a still life, a painting of fruit, 
he will find hands chapped with dishwater. 
He will find the futures that he couldn’t contain, 
nor could he grab hold of, all escapes. 
He will find the music and the elegy  
that will follow his dying breath. 
He will find a woman unveiled, 
someone familiar, but not unrevealed. 
She is not a thread to be unraveled. 

Poem: Forward #the100dayproject Day 88

Forward

You’ve lived so long with the dying 
you’ve forgotten how to live. 
Each minute has been a setback, 
a change in condition, you pause, 
his every cough, twitch, bowel movement. 
You breathe when he breathes, 
you eat only after he has his food. 
When he’s is gone, no one will be there 
to watch so carefully, to mimic. 
When he dies, you will die too. 
Yet, in the space he leaves behind, 
you have a choice: to fill it, 
or leave a space in the shape 
of both of your silhouettes. 

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Poem: Beginnings #the100dayproject Day 87

Beginnings

My creator used music to send me into existence; 
the hum, breath and rhythm of her heart beat, 
my cells divided to her symphony of strings, 
to the pulse of her lungs and vibration  
of her blood shivering through her. 
Those veins taught like violin strings, 
ready for the bow and dust of resin. 
She was always ready to make me out of music, 
with her ocean sounds, her tide pools receding, 
in utero, I pressed my ear against her belly, 
just how I press my ear against a conch shell. 

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Poem: Ramblings #the100dayproject Day 85

Ramblings

I am always looking for a fight, 
a way to write about my mist. 
I have a need that won’t stop, 
a pulsing in my deepest guts, 
the shiver and jerk of the leg 
in my half-sleep, involuntary, 
my body functions in smells, 
lives and breathes into noises. 
Pain, time and my wrinkles 
all tell a story within a story, 
as a reflection in a mirror 
tells a tale of this person 
who must be me, or a me; 
I am a something in this glass 
an image of existence, 
or maybe this body exists 
as an acknowledgment 
that I am more than  
the sum of my limbs, 
breasts, nose and eyes. 
I am a movement, shiver, 
millions of electric currents, 
I am a not a coiled spring, 
I am a string pulled taught 
waiting to be plucked  
to play a staccato music. 
I am that string that waits 
for a bow to transform me 
into a vibration undefined, 
into an involuntary design.