For Want of Words

Billy Collins told me 

and two hundred of my friends

that most poems, once begun,

are not worth finishing,

and I have been paralyzed

I wish you would go quietly.

I would not hold this intrusion against you.

I’ve shown you the cat,

left the door open,

sealed up the food,

tried to stop this house from

feeling too much like a home.

But every day now,

you make noise.

You make eye contact.

You chew away at what is mine.

You take the poison I leave,

and you do not die.

And I am afraid that you are not going

to let this end without me

getting my hands dirty

I knew that upon

reading about writing

poetry on Death and Grief,

I would suffer a signature seizing

of my throat

and want to turn my eyes upward to

roll tears back to whence I seem

to think they come.

I did not anticipate how quickly

I could snap out of the murk

when tears spilled and my immediate response was

to wipe them away so that they did not

ruin my developing fake Tan,

a whiplash-inducing vanity

that felt so honest and differently human that

RULES: shuffle your playlist and list the first ten songs and then tag ten people everyone

1. “Bad Memory” by K. Flay

2. “Ides of Fall” by Jared & the Mill

3. “Black Mambo” by Glass Animals

4. “Here with Me” by Susie Suh & Robot Koch

5. “You’re Mine” by Phantogram

6. “Keep that Letter Safe” by Highasakite

7. “Kings” by Tribe Society

8. “Oh My Dear Lord” by The Unlikely Candidates

9. “Waiting Game” by Banks

10. “Bellyache” by Billie Eilish

I refilled the birdseed

while he watched through his mask,

a red relief on green woods.

I can’t know what he chirped

once we assumed our places,

on the feeder and front porch respectively,

but as I picked up my book,

I said, “You’re welcome,”

We say we named you for our heroes:

Sparrow, McCoy, White, the rest

(Yes, even Skellington

Hence the white fluff we call Zero).

We hoped to give you

brave and just and creative and curious

shoes to fill.

But I also know my Golding,

and so I

do not

There are other

bluer

eyes

in which

Even in the bright morning hours,

a fist slips

through the bones,

clutches the silk

that encases the heart

The bottom is mud.

It is decaying leaves and

Erosion and

Darkness,

And a foot seeking purchase

Is sucked down into it.

The pull is paralyzing.

Seconds drag.

And almost inevitably,

A foot kicks free,

Goes on propelling a

Body in motion.

But under the water,

Where the sun doesn’t see,

The mud clings between toes

For so long it’s forgotten.

And almost inevitably,

The lake is left,

And the muck of the bottom

gets the chance

To walk around in the world

Until it dries and flakes away.

The surface sparkles in the sun,

Promises weightlessness

To those in desperate need.

The water holds up

What cannot hold itself.

The greatest insult of all

is that the sky is

no less blue