Category: Poetry

We’re Back With a Big Announcement!

UPDATE: today’s leg of the festival has been cancelled because of the weather. See you all tomorrow!

Hello again! I know it’s been a while, but we’re officially back in business with a new, cute urban design! If you’re reading this in RSS, you should pop by and check me out.

Also! I’m here with an awesome announcement of a new venture getting kicked off this weekend.

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I tried this out during my book event for ‘Pickled Miracles’ — someone gives me any three words, $5 and five minutes of their time, and I will write a one-of-a-kind original poem. The customers who took part were very pleased with the results and I had a great time with it.

This will be available online soon, but in the meanwhile, if you’re in the Greater Pittsburgh area today or tomorrow, I am going to be at the Plum Community Festival with Rust Belt Creations selling these tailor-made pieces of writing in several unique notecards. Stop by and see me!

Plum Community Festival
Friday, June 23rd 5 to 10 pm
Saturday, June 24th 4 to 10 pp

Larry Mills Park Plum Soccer Fields, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15239

 

A Little Something

Trying to sort of organize myself creatively speaking, so here is just something small. A pair of haikus inspired by the nice break in weather we’ve been having in Pittsburgh.

The sun still shines down
But it has become friends with
The promise of fall.

The still-green grass grows
Slower now, preparing for
The leaves’ homecoming.

Draw Your Heroes

I can’t fly or deflect bullets with my hand
But I can put pen to paper and create worlds

I can’t commune with the dead or crush resurrected corpses
But I can draw new beginnings and better times

I can’t wave a wand and summon marvels
But I can shape creatures out of clay and cotton

I don’t have a shield or a belt or a thousand mechanical servants
But I have a voice that can sing or scream or comfort

I don’t wear a cape or a suit of armor, for battle
But I do have comfortable shoes and soft clothes, for getting to you

I don’t have super powers

But I am full of love

And I can’t turn the world back but I can keep people looking forward

 

Kitchen Crises (averted)

A teapot does not lament the soft roundness of its porcelain curvature
Nor does it aspire to the lofty place of honor that is the flute in the cabinet,
The glass never begrudging its harvest moon use.

A spoon does not hate its wide breadth, its unrelenting width,
And a fork never says that it is too sharp, too abrasive,
That existence would be easier as a knife.

The sniffer does not sit and consider constantly its fragile state,
Waiting for the day that it breaks in either an explosion of fragments
Or a slowly stretching crack from the inside out.

Stoneware does not cry.
The cutting board does not bleed.

And the spork does not fear oblivion.

For Every Bad Day

Make time for good
When it is easy to say that you are
Too tired
Too stressed
Too who,
Dare to say that you will give yourself an hour
To be the truest you:

The one who shapes things
And destroys castles,
The one who makes miracles
Out of shoelaces and spit,
The one who builds meadows
And does not part the sea
So much as rules it from the center.

You must allow yourself to be
Who you were meant to be
On the other side of numbers and populations
And formulas and chemicals;

You must be the sunlight
And the moonlight,
Shrug off the hard shell of facts and figures

And shine

Because everyone who matters is waiting to bask in your glow.

Above the Jefferson

The stairwell is blood red
And two figures sit on the plush embrace
Holding hands and gripping
Water pipes that travel up the stories they are telling,
Clad in trenchcoats.

Down the hallway, a woman touches light
Like it is a cautious predator,
And the shadows will be the only things that
Keep her certainty safe
From the man on the bed and his wolf eyes.

In the ballroom, there is the gore
Of a thousand slain dancers who promised
Their forevers long ago to a partner
Who broke their toes and told them
That the world belonged to them and their children.

On the roof there is a scratching,
A tapping of a starling that looks down on a city that is
Worn and covered in scar tissue,
And it counts the sleeping forms in the abandoned parking deck,
Waiting to take the scraps of their clothes and create a tomorrow from them.

Treating Chemical Burns

Smell the morning, like linen and empty notebooks,
And touch the air as it hovers and sparkles, no matter what the clock says,
Spoon the possibility into your coffee.

Cover your ears when the coal train thoughts buzz like insects,
The humming that gets suddenly louder
And stops for a second when everything tenses,
Fleeing and then returning for purchase.

Heed the copper smell of the creeping what-if
That clings to fingers and never concedes to any soap, any balm,
And accept its presence
Because hands still work even when they stink.

The color of the Bad Day isn’t blue
But rather every color and even ones with no name
That are worn on breast pockets and ties
And in flower crowns and tie-dyed necklaces.

Inhale the toxicity of the clenched jaw, the sweaty palms,
Let it linger until you can’t hold it in anymore
And then watch what animals form out of the smoke
As you let go.

You are more than the sum of your beautiful pain.

 

How to Stuff a Rabbit

The first knife cut is the most important
Because it decides whether or not you have a hand that is patient
Or one that will ruin the room, that will torment those around you,

And you must be kind.

You will know everything as you shave paths
Through skin and body
Because you’ve never realized that there is something in between
Life and living,
Because for a person, once you pass the skin, it’s just blood.

Even in death, be particular about the company you keep.

And you’ll never get through it all because when you get to the ends
When you hold tiny hands in yours you won’t go around
But cut through, and there will be a piece of everything that it’s ever held
And you will take it through this final process.

Gently touch those you love as you disassemble them.

Rub and clean and pack and sew
Everything is details then,
Even in how the eyes stare up at you from what remains
And you know that the last requirement of all artists is to

Eat your carcasses.

Behind Glass

It is easy to forget when you stand in
The Museum of Natural History
That most of the creatures there were alive once.
We see them, still, snarling, roaring, pondering,
Perhaps with young at their side that was most probably not theirs,
And we can’t imagine that this could be as strange a thing
As a photograph of a stranger’s child suckling at a woman’s empty breast,
Eyes regarding no hint of recognition
Only glass surrounded by flesh and glue.

It is easy to forget how once these things moved
And ruled the land and ate and bled and died
Because in passing, they seem like art
In the empty sense of art that is supposed to be an impression of something real
Instead of a reality that breathed air and broke bones,
That fell to the ground and rather than be eaten by carrion
Was carried to a land across air and sea into a sterile box
Shaved and styled and filled with artifice

And it teaches nothing unless the lesson that people seek is
How a full existence can escape decay
And offer meaning in whatever form the onlooker desires

Even when there is nothing actually there.

Perfect Day

On a perfect day, the sun may shine
Or the clouds gather in groups to chide the Earth with rain
And the books will gather plentiful like sheep against a hillside
There will be art and song
And shame will be the forbidden words,
The boogeyman stories that are told to frighten but are then laughed at
Because the existence of an idea where anyone should feel
Less or hurt or worthless
For no reason
Can only be fiction