tracepoetry

[tracepoetry]

(at the end of words)

where things make sense, where i stop trying to say anything and manage to say something

i always try to skip to the good part. not the shift of pressure but the lightning - the clear blue morning, not the flooded night

[tracepoetry]

(all the bats)

i'm not so deep in fear i can't escape and have a little joy once in a while

how close am i to being who i want? to being who i thought i'd come to be -

another twenty years dancing with you, if slower and more awkward every time

the earth exhales a soft beating of wings. how long was that breath held?

[tracepoetry]

(for pacing purposes)

i will be ignoring the inner hemingway and adding several thousand words to every project - yes especially the finished ones - they could use the breathing room

[tracepoetry]

so few words are necessary. what makes a poem better than silence? you deserve more quiet than you are given.

[tracepoetry]

as though everything matters equally - my attention, spreading love and time like fog on the landscape, a little too thin, evaporating

[tracepoetry]

(bitterhope)

someone is still alive here, in my place. in my skin. behind my mouth someone is screaming

saying: enough quiet! enough giving up. the world is already all graves. find something else.

[tracepoetry]

(become)

take the thing you fear and hold it close 'til it spills light, until it casts a shadow in the shape of your whole life

[tracepoetry]

you might as well learn something from the unpreventable - i'm tired and tripping over my own feet. rhythm lost. all up in my head again. but i think, for a minute there, i lived in my body -

the good things have never felt mis-timed, always enough grief on either side. what was the lesson? do i remember, now i'm sober? i remember dancing. did i say i love you? did i say it enough?

[tracepoetry]

(two of cups)

your lungs filling under my hand. your heart moving fire and light. in holy thirst we are tension waiting to snap.

[tracepoetry]

(a love poem without birds)

autobiography falls short of the way you talk about the things you know, like another language. like the way i talk about another language, greedily. there are never enough words to explain. oh my heart, there beating in your mirrored chest! i'm afraid to say it, but nothing has been so clear. can we be silent together?

there's a new way of sleeping, in your arms. a new way of breathing, between your lips. what i say when i get the words out of my way: that the soul is a moment of awareness, understanding the interconnection, complete and inescapable. what are you thinking about? you first. the end of the world is me without you.

[tracepoetry]

(for the white bear)

In dreams the bear tell me his stories, but never asks me about mine as we walk through a labyrinth of worries and completely lose track of the time

A city of song lies inside the well, deep in the place I can't stay. This is what grief is for. Stories to tell and memories which get in the way

Silent in diners we sat face to face over breakfasts that weren't worth the name Or silent on highways, the radio played and the road curled away down the plain

Someone will hear when I sing out our song. I hope it's only the birds. They know the melody. I'd get it wrong. They never remember the words.

[tracepoetry]

(yearning)

after the interval, up from the ground in screaming crowds

[tracepoetry]

(my world)

hold me in your infinite arms and explain how loneliness is a lie i keep believing, and gravity is love, too, a dance.

[tracepoetry]

love, again, again, and why should i write about anything that isn't your hands digging into my hips, your mouth turning me to sounds

and light flooding through the window in late morning onto the bed where i stretch catlike and blink slowly at you

even if i tried, it's love again. asking you - look at the water across the yard, low and mossy, and the kingfisher on a wire, his exaggerated shapes -

your shapes, your angles splitting light to color around you.

[tracepoetry]

Here is what I love: the itching scent of dust and cut grass drying by the road, and firefly-lightning nights comfortably spent serenaded by cricket and toad.

Here is what I love: this thunderstorm, its bullet-raindrops stinging on my skin, the water flowing through the streets, still warm. I'm barefoot on your doorstep. Let me in.

[tracepoetry]

(wonder is a way)

Some secret truth will unlock everything, if I look hard enough - I'll understand the root of every wish I blow away while crushing dandelions in my hand.

If what is gone remains in memory, I'll find the missing circles of my sphere - the facets that explain the shape of me - my misplaced marbles. they were all right here.

[tracepoetry]

(briefly, on what matters)

i'm never sure exactly what i saw - the heron's silhouette against the grass, then startled up into its awkward flight.

from water here to water there. i'm sure i've disturbed spiderwebs, each humid night. somewhere out here, the clover and its bees -

and everything i need is here to learn. that furious need to make anything, to turn my hands to clumsy small machines.

the paintings piling up against the walls, the stacks of notebooks thick with all my ink. the desperate outpour, then the quiet month.