Poetry

Creeping Fear

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“Creeping Fear”

Women sit in the padded beige chairs, glued to phones.
There is no eye contact.
There is no fear to match possibility.
Nurses in pale pink uniforms sing out surnames
And whisper “this way” in the necessary languages
To assuage the tightness in our shoulders.
Fear makes my answers sound hopelessly dumb
I am suddenly ignorant, thick-tongued, and demure.
I settle in and strap down into fear.
Let it stretch my stomach lining,
Poke my kidneys,
Cramp my guts,
Tingle the part of my spine in my neck,
Until I cannot see anything except possibilities,
Looming, turning into solid, horrible, truths.

Sounds I have not heard

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Sounds I have not heard
 
In stillness my ears fill
With all the sounds I have not heard.
The tree falling,
The waterfall crashing,
The whale singing,
A silence so profound
I cannot hope to quiet it.
Perhaps this is why in stillness
I must shift and pace –
So that I may not hear
All that I have yet to hear.
I take the sound waves passing through me
And translate them to keyboard clicks,
Stovetop fans, and loud swallowing.
Anything to contribute
To the cacophonous silence around me.

My Name

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My Name

My name is proficient, businesslike.
It has the ability to be punctual.
It requires little effort.
Yet when sighed in pleasure, or called in happiness,
My ears gloss over the familiar corners of my identity
And turn my name into a new conglomeration
Composed of unfamiliar vowels and consonants.
I cannot hear my name spoken in joy.
It sounds foreign, a strange sound of exaltation.
That surely cannot be my name.
You cannot be referring to me.
That would mean that my name has other capabilities
Beyond my standard identifiers.
Who is this person you speak of?

A Mother’s Day

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A Mother’s Day

Honesty politely asks I remind you
How often we fought over absolutely nothing.
How I held the needle that brought you pain,
But also made you laugh in the face of the Reaper
Who sat politely by the bedside, waiting.
Love was the undercurrent under our arguments.
We did not live in flowers, we did not bring hearts to each other.
We clashed as Amazons, and snarled like lions.
And when you left, I could not bear the joy of others.
Their sentiments made me wretch.
Their sugar hurt my molars.
Because they denied the truth of love,
Which is it survives and thrives in the blasted furrows
And binds the sharp edges of broken hearts.
Yet in the passing of time, I can take their flowers and hearts
And recognize our truth within them.
How we fought.
How we loved despite it.
Happy Mother’s Day.

Four More

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Alright – here we go.

I’ve got one day and too many poems to write. Here are a few, and I’ll post a few more tomorrow.

4.17

I’m working with a calm heart and hot hands.
I’ve got undressing on my mind.
I’ve got skin to ruin.
I’m collecting my thoughts sequentially.
I’m breathing, breathing.
I’ve settled my actions.
I’ve unleashed my mind.
I’m calm.
I’m ravenous.

4.18

Putting a rhyme in the middle of a sentence
Throws off the time and the beat of the poem
Stuck hitting lines that create expectations
How the brain pines for that matching set of sounds
Sensing a path in the rhythm and the cadence
Facing the wrath of an uncompleted couplet
Perhaps without knowing you’ve already discovered
You’re already flowing making breaks of your own

4.19

On the banks of the Tsurumi
Fuji fading into shadow
I’ll let you listen to me
Dream about tomorrow

In the Stillness / Climb

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In the Stillness

In the stillness of an early morning pre-sun
One eye opens halfway
To ensure you are still there
Resting as you were the night before
Sleep smoothing life’s tensions
Limbs bent and wrapped around the blankets
One eye opens halfway
Ensuring I am still here
Resting next to you
Undiminished and whole
Before the demands of the waking sun
Remove us both
Both eyes shut
In the stillness of an early morning pre-sun

Climb

I told my muscles, “Upward!”
They responded, “Not inclined.”
I chuckled and climbed.

Not far, I promised
When muscles asked for rest
That was just the first crest.

Second ridge was harder
Nothing but stairs into the stone
Muscles took accusing tone.

Pushed us further onward
So close to the peak
Muscles cried out, “We are weak!”

I cheered them “You are strong!”
We hit the top
And had to stop.

Then the horrid moment
Muscles shaking, scared and bent
Contemplating the descent.

Upward, I had cried
Muscles knew from town
What goes up, must come down.

Muscles win the argument
Once I’m soaking in the bath
Facing their knotted wrath

They don’t know my plan
Of going out with a friend
And climbing next weekend.

Fell behind. Must catch up…

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Well, ok, I got sickish.

Then I had work and it all just started tumbling away from me. I’m nine days off, but I have nine more days to make up for it. If I do two or three a day, I should be caught up.

Luckily for you readers, I have been scribbling poems down on paper!

Also I’m working on an epic poem as a bit of joke for a British friend of mine. More on that later!

4.13 Bitch on a Train

Your instincts told you that the foreigner wouldn’t know to pounce.
Safe in your prejudices.
Fool.
Know what you did not anticipate?
This foreigner has been riding the rails for months.
I’ve lost my fear.
I’ve lost my patience.
That seat is mine.
I claimed it ten stops ago.
You may want it,
But you won’t get it.
Sorry, Junior.
You snooze.
You lose…that seat.

4.14 Sakura Philosophy

Sakura season is but a breath of spring
A flippancy, a dalliance, the barest floral fling
Two weeks tops of cherry blooms under which we dine
Staring up at flowers while drinking sweet plum wine.

Such times seem held in stasis as though to last forever
And yet the trees are stripped with the barest hint of weather
Seeming snow-capped branches shaken by a forceful gale
Spring begins by shaking off the prettiest of veils.

Perhaps that is the lesson that we are meant to learn
That we are the like the buds that bloom and fall in turn
So take heart, my blossoms, that spring will come and then
Upon our fall new sakura will burst into bloom again.