Baby

In a fit of rage, I slam my door.
Why can't she just leave my things alone?!
I begin to furiously clean the mess she's created-
there are photographs everywhere.
"I just wanted to look at the pictures, Mommy."
I wonder again: do I have the stamina to do this thing alone?
Sifting through the images, I see the guilty party smiling up at me
from the stack.
Six years old, standing in front of a white spray painted Christmas tree in the gym at school-
she's wearing her little red dress, matching santa hat with the white trim,
and mismatched ankle socks.
She is minus two teeth, her bangs are crooked, and I wonder:
How can I help but be in love with her?
I stand slowly, go to the door, and open it.
And she's there, with a long face and red eyes,
waiting to be let back in.
My arms encircle her, squeezing out the gigantic space I created in my anger.
She's my baby, and the pictures are for her.

Conundrum

I’m paralyzed, moving just enough to convince everyone I’ve got
complete mobility. What an act. But bit by bit, I let drop both the things
that matter and those that don’t. Functioning ceases to have an attraction
when I find myself so utterly absorbed in the activity of wondering
that prescient thought becomes a mystery beyond my grasp.
How I can give myself over completely and then not at all, remains a
puzzle, a conundrum. The solving of it is pleasant at times, onerous at others. The contraction of my pumping muscle-that heart which seems to betray, allay-provides constant proof of confusion of illusion that my mind seems to craft.

Chaos

My need to create far exceeds my need to sit still.
Have I reached that point when I can relax?
There are many empty spots waiting to be crammed full of memories,
like the hall closet, whose sole purpose is to collect
games of chaos, strings of lost chances, and coats of anguish.
It’s a repository of disorder: something small to control.
Chaos of one’s own making is so much more
liberating than the nascent depths of hysterical
despair lurking in someone else’s closet

Black and Blue

Black and blue: colors can combine to meet
the grip of love unbound by lonely fears.
The pattering sounds of blind hearts and feet,
guided by a deluge of sea-salt tears.

Eyelids close against the false hopes of my
designs on your time-bruised, semi-clenched heart.
Onward I plunge, dragging away from shy
smiles, and towards the salt sea that must not part.

Divide by divide, the waters slosh out
of ducts used to abusing exercise.
Eyelash grips cheek, lips dribble into pout,
I careen from blind hope to knowing cries

You must be mine, with your eyes upon me.
Squeeze out the salt, float away on love’s sea.

Cage

My heart is a cage inside my chest, with a wild animal lunging at its bars,
trying to dislodge whatever impediments block the nourishment it seeks.
Desperate hungers leave furrows there, deep clefts dug in the scratching,
clawing attempt to find the end to my search.
It’s not a quiet kind of pain; it’s a ferocious, raging, feral animal that has to get out now.
Occasionally, a tamer comes near, but either loses interest or falls in the fight.
Is the animal a devourer? Where is the trainer who will smooth
tangled dreams and ragged breaths of wishing?

Explosion

I feel so pressed down inside
I need to explore
A hot, metal magma
Burning everything it touches
With its red intensity

I want to flow
Then harden
Then burst some more

Leaving time and experience
In my wake
Leaving visible traces
That others may walk on
Walk through-
Those hard places
Left behind

As I swirl
Onward
Toward my next--

Divorce Blues

Angry despair and desperate hope
strangle each other in the violent dance
my heart does when let out of its cage
for any amount of time to do its damage
to my thinly-wrought facade of design and function.

Confluence

Confluence of colors-
Greens, blues swirling, flowing, then ebbing.
Reds, golds, oranges washing intensive energy.
Sweet amber, lightening with swiftness, ascends.
Emotions once numb are now alive with screaming purity
Where should my fingers go?

Free Fall

My nerves are screaming-
screaming in fits and starts.
If I can’t crawl out of my skin
soon.....
What happens when you fall over the edge?
It’s still a finite existence.
Isn’t there a set of walls
to careen into?
Bruises are preferrable to
that suspenseful gasp
which comes with the start
of a free fall.

Mother Nature

They begin so innocently, all yellow fluff and sweet peeping.
Beaks and claws are not so apparent in the
incubator, the shelter of baby chicks.
A new batch arrives; it contains a deformed baby-I call him
"Brokeneck" because of his awkward, angled neck. I think he’s cute.
The other chicks don’t seem to mind.
They live their happy little existence, his
differences unmarked, all of them clamoring for food and water.
I don’t understand nature very well.

Time to introduce the latest batch to the coop comes quickly.
Feathers fly amidst the straw: bits of offerings too often
cling to the bottom of my shoes, waiting to take vengeance for
collected eggs and backyard barbecues-someone’s got to be the main attraction.
I wonder how my special chick will fare in his new environs.

Soon enough, I discover the true nature of things.
One day, when the dog is sniffing around, hoping
to catch himself a fat one,
I see the difference has been discovered.
Pecking order-beady eyes, cocked and loaded,
ready to eradicate differences-is a reality, a nature thing.
I’m angry to discover that my poor little broke neck has been pecked to death,
and left to rot in ignominious fashion as ants and other insects do their job.
His little eyes bulge and the feathers on his neck are bedragled-
a sorry indictment of the cruelty of nature.
The head biddy trains her beady eyes on me, but I’m not afraid of her.
I spread out some feed, then launch her into the air as the toe of my
muddy hiking boot connects with her feathers and fluff.
She squawks indignantly, flutters about in a furied flurry of feathers,
then returns to her perch, ready to re-establish her dominance.
I am disgusted with the cruelty of survival-conformity, sameness required.
I hate chickens.

Untamable Progression (or Stupid, Cheesy Sonnet)

I look out my square of unbroken light
To a strand of the Charles flowing below.
I also see buildings further upstream
Filled with myriad people I don't know.

To meet them all would be impossible,
it would take more lives than I have to live.
It's like the ideas I try to master,
streaming through my mind, seemingly a seive.

A careful straining of all of life's lumps
produces a richer understanding.
Of what I'm not sure; it seems to elude
me-series of thoughts on so many strings.

They're pulled through my mind, evading but linger-
ing long enough to make an impression.
The great understanding I seek is this:
learning's an untamable progression.