cherokeeghostwriter

[cherokeeghostwriter]

suddenly i feel august. a sensation not unlike the one toward the end of a very good book. this, unfortunately, is not a good book. the protagonist seems a bit lost, and the narrative meanders.

my life needs editing. i've finally quit imagining myself as a character in a movie. those small moments lost in daydreams. the stories i could tell you of feats, never accomplished.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

someone i used to know

i do not write the poems i used to think would come. i've gathered words, like autumn leaves, yet don't know where they're from.

they settle in forgotten rooms or drift between my days, like echoes of some distant self that's vanished in the haze.

i try to catch them, now and then, as one might chase a breeze- but meaning slips between the lines, and leaves me here -with these.

still, sometimes in the quiet hours, a fragment starts to glow- the half-remembered ache of love -someone i used to know.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

summer slides into august  like a tune that settles in the back of your mind softly humming to itself -unnoticed  leaves you curios how it got there playing on a loop

i’ve missed a beat while the sun raced circles i swear - i only looked away for a moment and the moment has passed

coercing my heart toward interaction  scribbling my secret name in the book occupied without reservation  this virtual feast consumed, but never sated 

[cherokeeghostwriter]

My young Hoya finally bloomed. It's a clipping from the original plant that my great grandmother had in Norway, and subsequently came to the U.S. in the early 30's with her daughter, my Grandmother, who then gave it to me.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

Walked out on my porch yesterday and saw this.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

someone

she reminds me of summer smelling of earth, and sunlight of vibrant color the taste of the ocean on my tongue she is, a desperation of distance of desire gathering in visions of imagined lives and a road untraveled

[cherokeeghostwriter]

Soon is a place in which you and I never seemed to arrive together. I grew old there, a child amidst the reaching branches, a girl along the swelling banks, a woman against the crumbling walls of history. They told me I’d just missed you.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

looking up

forgot to write about June. I'm the worst at keeping up. struggling to work with what I've got, but its become a limited palette these days.

they want you to forget the stars. stay lost in simulated promised lands. but June skies will not be denied, bleeding through the vault of heaven, reminding us to look up.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

birthplace

i grew up in spaces too wide for one child’s voice. a backyard that swallowed afternoons, and solitude that never answered my call.

i remember silence- how it lingered after my footsteps, how it folded itself into blankets, into stars, and the spaces between unanswered questions.

somewhere, i began to bury things before they were lost. as if loneliness could be planted in the ground, in the dirt. -hidden.

…

i returned once to my birthplace- years too late- hoping the earth might remember me, that the ground might open up and welcome my misplaced soul.

but everything had grown unrecognisable without me.

my memories were there, but that place was gone. the trees, stripped of their sanctity, and the house, with all of its resemblance, no longer knew my name.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

i'd rather say beautiful things, than say things beautifully.

give me a crooked line that limps toward meaning, faltering -in the attempt.

i don’t need clever, i need sincere.

words that -tremble to unfold.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

after the blink

i always thought i’d know the moment, the exact second when i’d cross some invisible line, and become the version of myself i've been pursuing-

but nothing happened. no trumpet call. no enlightenment. -just me again. still here. still circling. like a bug trapped between panes of glass, only one of them is me, the other, a reflection of who you think i am.

i don’t lie, exactly, i just leave things out. the way some people skip meals when they’re too tired to chew. that’s how i’ve handled the truth. just… left it untouched on the plate.

there was a better me once. he wrote poems in margins, and saved voicemail messages because the sound of a voice meant something. he believed in things, or at least he believed in believing.

i don't know where i left him. somewhere between a goodbye, and an empty room.

and now? now i live in the pause between explanations and silence. the door is open. the lights are off. and if you blink- you won’t hear the sound of me leaving.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

the vase

i never sit down thinking, now’s the time for poetry. no. it’s more like a slow leak- a thought drips out, then another, then a goddamned puddle on the floor.

so i gather it up- the scraps, the cigarette ends, the busted shoelaces of meaning- and start sorting. it’s a mess. it’s always a mess.

i try to make something decent- like arranging roadkill into a parade. or flowers -sure, we’ll call them flowers. but they’re bent, with missing petals, some still stink of last week’s rain. and yet i put them in the vase.

every time i do, there’s always that one that doesn’t belong. a tulip with a knife in its stem. a daisy that screams. a weed that reminds me of you and your unbearable forgiveness.

i try to pull it out but somehow, you like it there. you say it makes the whole thing honest.

and god help me- i believe you. i leave it in. we call it art. we call it love. we leave it to rot on the table.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

So, this went past my house the other day. This is about a mile from me. it tracked north of me and took a bunch of stuff with it. luckily not my house.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

This planter has only had moss in it for years. Came outside the other day, and now there is this. does moss do this?

[cherokeeghostwriter]

soft as regret

somehow, i find myself in belgium, photographing chestnut trees.

not on purpose- not with a plan- but as if drawn, by some quiet gravity, to these narrow streets and onto this vacant square -shaded like a held breath.

i get lost, not dangerously so, just enough to forget what I was looking for -and there they are chestnut trees impossibly still blossoming, with all the time in the world.

i raise my camera, not to remember- but because something in me needs to hold what has already been expressed.

in may, they bloom. -and i bloom.

the shutter clicks soft as regret.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

I made a ring today, first time in a long while. I pulled out the good stuff, and made it for a server friend of mine here in Alabama who is struggling right now. I hope all of you had a great mother's day. Hug yourself for me.

[cherokeeghostwriter]

adrift

i have a vague impression where my timbre used to breathe a vestige, for an appetite a nuance left, of need i have a thread hung loosely laying lithe along my skin a tentative touch remembrance that aches to live, again