Category: poetry

• what it feels like to be sick

  my eyelids become
  yellow walls,
  tiny swirls of paper peeling
  at the corners
  pasted so many years ago

  each effort
  to open them
  brings me closer to the hardwood

  floor

  as i fall
  the red bowl on the coffee table
  swallows me down
  with a smirk.

  June 16, 2011

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• where children live (alice b. johnson)

  This is the house where shades
  Are never straight,
  And children swing upon
  A broken gate,
  Whose groans beneath the weight
  Of bodies, three,
  Are lost in childish shouts
  Of wildest glee.

  When autumn comes to call,
  And summer’s gone,
  Then piles of dusty leaves
  Lie on the lawn,
  While parked against the steps
  A bat and bike,
  And all the countless things
  That children like.

  I’ve often seen the folk
  Who pass this way,
  Raise eyes and noses high
  As if to say,
  “This sort of place is just
  No earthly good,
  It spoils the looks of all
  The neighborhood.”

  The house may look a wreck,
  The yard forlorn,
  The awnings on the porch
  Be sadly torn,
  But if folk should become
  Inquisitive,
  Just say, “This is the house
  Where children live.”

  ~title poem from Where Children Live by my great-grandmother Alice B. Johnson

  June 14, 2011

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• to be quiet with (haiku)

  love that man to be
  quiet with; that man who can
  understand silence.

  June 13, 2011

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• untitled 100 (heat makes the city old)

  and the city
  becomes immersed in
  a heat that
  steams hair to curls
  settles in with
  one heavy
  harumph, such
  a grumpy old man
  his joints
  reacting
  instinctively
  to oppressive air
  with a crackle.

  June 10, 2011

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• turn the other cheek (haiku)

  you can find out why
  when the night smacks you around
  … you know, you know… begin.

  June 9, 2011

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• Socialite on a Ferris Wheel

  lambent dress laps
  carnival lights
  glowing in colors of a diamond
  she rides
  high above
  spooning honeysuckle and
  wearing fireflies
  flippant.

  and in Denmark
  they pour another
  Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.

  June 8, 2011

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• insecurity

  it takes a quiet
  tear
  to track the ways
  silence
  highlights every
  wrinkle

  these insecurities
  are
  the way fog rolls
  down
  from the tops of
  mountains

  June 7, 2011

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• online stalking

  the keys
  allow my fingers
  to stroke your
  face without
  you knowing,

  finds me watching
  every twitch
  the phone makes
  each post a secret message
  to decipher

  each click click
  a gentle massage
  and oh the tap taps
  the best type of 
  caress.

  June 3, 2011

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• the desire to be thin

  only only only
  if i could
  look like you
  it would be
  so
  thrilling
  what it must be like
  to have
  those stares
  those flowering words
  those bones
  so
  light as air.

  June 2, 2011

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• traveling around the world

  my first time around the world
  i had short hair
  and packed every lotion and anti-wrinkle cream
  till my white t-shirts
  stained brown
  and i had to leave
  a piece in every country.

  my second time around the world
  hair had more split ends tied back
  and my pack held what i learned
  from those
  wandering souls on the
  road more worn than i had
  ever originally guessed.

  now… i am wandering, hanging out
  and my hair is a wild kingdom of creatures
  living quite contently with me
  barefoot, light weight as air
  each step
  leaves an imprint
  till bit by bit i’m gone.

  June 1, 2011

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