poetryforplebs

[poetryforplebs]

Commit the sin the cardinal sin of disappointing your parents Dyed hair, new and held boundaries, stepping into your own self

It will be hard they will not like it but you must remember:

You are not them nor are you a doll Who are you? I think we shall find out

on the other side of the shiny new boundaries you set with trembling hands

[poetryforplebs]

“we don’t laugh the same anymore,” she says.

“no,” i agree. “we don’t.”

the sun is coming through the windows. it catches the dust around the radio. we love this house. we love that radio. but we don’t laugh the same way we used to.

[poetryforplebs]

Spending the Lottery

"So listen," I would say, "I won the lottery."

I'd have to start with that or you would say no from the get-go and that would be no good.

"I know you have student loans. I would like," I would say, "to pay them off for you."

You would probably argue, but I would persuade you. I'd cite our years of friendship, and all the times you helped me with stuff. Really this is the least I could do. This, I'd say, I basically owe you.

Or maybe I'd find out where you went to school and call them and pay your loans directly, and then you'd just be surprised with no more payments.

That could totally work. If they'd let me, anyway.

I'd do other things, of course, with my lottery winnings. Redo my kitchen and add on to the back rooms and buy a new car. Something sensible, good gas mileage and a long lifespan.

But the first thing I'd do would be for you if I won the lottery that I never play.

[poetryforplebs]

impatience

The brownies are crumbling in my hand, too hot to eat too hot to touch and oh, so sweet as they burn my mouth

[poetryforplebs]

people often say “my prayers go unanswered” and that God is silent.

and sometimes i wonder if maybe their prayers have already been seen to maybe God has been speaking all along, and they just didn’t know it.

maybe we are born with a question and before we know how to form it the world is there, already, as an Answer.

[poetryforplebs]

I liked your post, sent you a picture, gentle nudges to say "hello."

I never closed my door, not to you. You just don't come over any more.

It's like running into each other in the virtual grocery store, and you say things like, "Oh my goodness, they're getting so big!" and "yeah, life is trucking along." and then you say, "Well, I should be going." I'd hoped you'd say, "Let's grab coffee." (I didn't suggest it in case you said no.)

but you didn't, so I say, "Good to see you, say hi to the family."

And I go home, and I make my steak the way you did that one time, seasoned and seared and really good.

I should've risked it. I should've asked you if you wanted to grab coffee.

[poetryforplebs]

“Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”

No one cares what Esau did, in the time between. Jacob, the thief, was stolen from and gained two wives for it. Jacob, who closed his eyes to the sacred, wrestled with God and was given a new name. Jacob, blessed and blessed and blessed again. Jacob, beloved.

No one cares what Esau did, in the end. The only thing they remember is he forgave.

No one cares.

So I open my mouth, with smiling lips, and I forgive.

[poetryforplebs]

Golden Rule

My son is six months. When he cries to be fed, he must be fed now, too small to brook any delays with grace.

I tend to procrastinate feeding myself, which is admittedly, something of a problem. And caring for him kind of makes me wonder:

There's wisdom in heeding your body, wisdom in meeting your needs. Oxygen mask on yourself first, yeah? So why do I delay the care of my own self?

[poetryforplebs]

"When will you be home?" you asked me, and I started to answer how long till I reached my house. That wasn't your question. You wanted to know when I'd be in your town - my hometown - when would I come for a visit?

I realized then that isn't home. Not anymore, not since all the changes and growth and new ideas. People talk about outgrowing places. I just never really thought it would happen to me. Not till you asked when I'd come home.

[poetryforplebs]

i want to be happy

and i am, i think 

but i keep trying to capture happiness

and it tastes strange between my teeth 

[poetryforplebs]

“I want to chop all of my hair off,” said the girl. It was an announcement made casually.

The old woman said nothing.

“Did you hear me?” The girl lifted her chin. “I said I wanted to chop all of my hair off.”

“And where will you be,” the old woman said, not exactly kindly, but certainly not unkind, “when your hair is in pieces around you and you hate it because you stayed so patient, year after year, for it to be long?”

“I want it off!” shrieked the girl. “I want it all off!”

For everyone knows that the best thing, when you don’t feel beautiful, is to make yourself feel a little strange, a little new, a little not yourself. Not ugly perhaps, but putting on ugliness like a brand is preferable to having it come upon you as innate as your own existence.

“Your hair has been short before,” the old woman wisely said. “And you hated it.”

“No, I didn’t,” argued the girl. “I didn’t hate it. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t hate it.”

The old woman said nothing. She was probably thinking about how people choose things they know they don’t like, just to have the chance to choose at all. She would know about that, as an old lady. Really, people aren’t so different in age. They make the same decisions, they just look different because the choices are grander, more important, more agonizing if wrong.

The girl had gone quiet. A smooth hand slid between a gnarled one. They didn’t look at each other.

She said, quietly, “I wish you didn’t hold your sadness close to you. It makes me feel like I’m not here.”

There was a wry twist of lips. “I can still hear you,” she told the girl amusedly.

The girl was nonplussed. “I know that,” she said. She swung their hands back and forth. “But there’s a difference between hearing and listening. Sometimes I feel as if you stopped listening.”

“That’s how I grew so old,” the woman said softly.

The little girl said nothing, but nodded at her with companionable eyes. They patted each other’s hands.

The sunset fell, a red one that made the world seem scarlet; objects and stones seemed to pulse, as if this new energy was the true world beneath the commonplace. For now all was to be seen, at least until twilight cast her gauzy veil upon everything and all that was strange would become commonplace again.

That’s me, thought the old woman. That’s what I am.

And, because twilight had come, she sighed and went back inside, patting her own hand.

[poetryforplebs]

It is a slow drip from head to page, no matter how riotous the mental fountain of words.

Ah well. I will not complain. Even a slow drip can fill a cup with time.

[poetryforplebs]

My Lover Dies For Me

There are no good men left, they say. And I look at them and laugh.

My love dies for me. We have no bullets whizzing through, only the deaths of a thousand paper cuts: chores stacking up, the everything at once of children, bills, life, sickness and health.

My lover dies for me, taking on the weight of the whole world, while I fight to take it back (or at least half of it). This is why we fight: to make the other rest, to outshine the other's care.

My lover dies for me, the best of all who live, my sanity, my safety. My lover lets me live; and I, without my lover, would be lifeless.

[poetryforplebs]

Do you know how I love you? You have ruined me for any others. The bar set so high, they don't even know to try to pole-vault it.

[poetryforplebs]

"This house you bought," they told us, "was a house of love. She was a good woman." Friends and neighbors alike united in their praise.

I think we sensed that, when we walked through the house. Family pictures everywhere, the trappings of her ended life, her faith and her music and, in one room, the penciled heights of children.

This house we own now, I tell you, is a house of love. We have a legacy to uphold with friends and neighbors alike united in our home.

[poetryforplebs]

On top of the unending everything else? Tonight i have a hangnail.

[poetryforplebs]

theology

It feels like everyone's just arguing about who's in, who's out, who counts as loved. But I just want to play the childhood game and bring you under my umbrella