The unexpected

             “Oh my god,” a voice said behind me.  “You have a German shepherd!”

            I turned around.  A head belonging to a youngish woman I had never met was beaming at me from the other side of the fence.  She had her brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, and sported baby doll bangs, the kind you might see on a toddler girl.  “I love German shepherds!” she told me.  She reached over the fence and snapped her fingers.  “Here, puppy, puppy,” she cooed.  “Come give me a kiss!”

“No, don’t,” I barked, but before I could finish my dire warning Max bounded over and obligingly began licking her hand as if it were made of ice cream.  “Okaaaay,” I said, bemused, but the woman laughed delightedly.  “He knows I admire him,” she said.  “He can tell I’m genuine.”

            “Great.  But you are...?”

            “Oh, sorry!  I’m Angie, Suzy’s cousin.  You’re Matt, right?”

            “Right.”

            “I’m sorry for bothering you—Suzy said I should stay out of your way.  But I heard your dog and just had to see for myself.”

            “Stay out of my way,” I repeated.  “Why?  Do I bite?”

            “No!  She just said you work from home and you don’t like to be interrupted, that’s all.  But I keep interrupting you, don’t I?  Sorry!  I’m going now!”Angie, Suzy’s cousin, told me, and just as randomly as she appeared, she disappeared back behind the fence.  Max whimpered .  “Some guard dog you are,” I said to him.  “She could have been a stalker for all you know.”

The final solution

The defense has become the obstacle
I cannot give it up

it is giving me up
it is waving goodbye
it has become boring
please please please
I look out of the bus window and I see
houses and a golf course
not ready
keeps rattling at the gate
let me kiss you goodbye

just wait
just wait
just not ready yet

The defense has become the obstacle
there is no turning back.

Through the glass darkly

I've been thinking about you today - 

I've been wondering about you today.

You were like a sewing needle in the jugular

but I missed you today.

I Fly in the Clouds

This one last time                    come along with me                you run so slow I lost you centuries ago                     now is not where you said you would be               leaving me alone and out of breath                    this breakdown in the making                        where are you love      where are you sleeping            I am awake I am all aware      that I am here and you are there                         you do not belong to me         you do not belong to me

Whose truth will be accepted             as war rages against my memories                  I cannot say for certain what I expected          or even what I thought I believed      but I am jumping off the cliff into this pillow of air              while you are a voice warning me from the canyon floor                   because this is where you disappear               and where I wish for something more

for you to send a message please        to shoot me so far and so wide           how do I survive now love     how do I feel alive          when you call to me from an exploding star               when you sing to me from the briny deep                  how am I supposed to hold onto you      when I have nothing here I am allowed to keep                    

Because he was a vision in snow       

the carrier of my fears             he infected you with my reality          he melted you with my tears               he held out his hand as I looked for you             he was the last of my projections            this hologram I could not see through     the carrier of your rejection    

So I left you near the valley stream                I left you on the greenest hill              I left you in the hardest rain               I left you standing warm and still                   I left you there in front of me             thinking I had been too kind                 the guardian of all my dreams                        a slow motion horror to unwind         now this torn frame is the only clue     of what I can never again find                     what does forgiveness have to do with me    when I am the one you left behind                      

You were a picture in a book                    nestled between a cranny and a nook             where I could close my eyes and see       but the library locked its doors        and I am prostrate on the floor                       you do not belong to me               you do not belong to me

Waiting

             “I get jealous just thinking of all the fun you’ll have while I’m stuck in this dreary old house.”   His mother bit the top of the pen and squinted at Camp Geronimo’s paperwork.  “Oh, to be 11 years old again!"

            Jonah’s fingers curled around the seat cushion.  Already he could feel that funny tight feeling in his chest, and it was only March.  “I don’t want to go," he told her.

            “Of course you do.  Do you want me to sign you up for woodworking again, dear?  That bowl you made last year was wonderful.  I get compliments on it every time I bring it to one of my bridge meetings”

            “I didn’t make it.  Jack made it for shop class.”

            “It works so well for salads,” she answered, and checked the box next to crafts.

If you could grieve

if you could let the 

trickle turn into

a roar

then could you 

tell me what this 

loss was for

Above the waterline

April 2014

She is obviously crazy.  No proof.  Not even a tiny bit.  Just a fear of dolls and baths that won’t go away.  But that’s probably just part of the crazy.  Lots of people are afraid of clowns.  The dead panic inside is probably a recognition that here sits the laziest person in the universe.  Lazy lazy lazy.  Crazy crazy crazy   They rhyme!  What fun.

There is nothing.  Just endless football stats and baseball schedules.  Nothing to go by in any of the endlessly dull letters that could induce a coma.  The girl must not have liked him much.  She always left the baseball schedules and football articles inside of the letters.  I wonder why.  I guess she didn’t care who the Twins played.  I feel bored just thinking about it.

She is screaming to be heard.  She is screaming...what?  That no one cares about the Twins.  All of those letters.  Thousands and thousands of words saying nothing at all.  We know how to do that, too.  All of the millions and millions of words we utter, each one leading into the same gray room, the words all piling up until like a slag heap they kill everyone in a mining disaster. 

It’s a family talent.  The vacuum’s logorrhoea.  Gifted and talented, woo hoo hoo.  No one will ever be as clever as us.

you keep me wandering between 

the promise and

the threat

so I stay where 

I am 

with all of the questions

I never thought

to ask

The hardest word

It means nothing to be sorry,
not when tomorrow will cry for the
yesterdays I betrayed,

Still I try for the
atmosphere breaking
the sun the moon the
wind for this rending I caused.
For what is a little uglier now
a little more fragile
so much more wronged.

Touch me with your forgiveness,
go ahead, shame me some more.
Because never you worry --
disappointment is catching
catching and never letting me go.