The Artist no. 2
A Poem Came Last Night
When words have left too long
Pressed above life’s little messes
Caught. Undulate in drifts of thought
I leave bowls under the dreaming walls
Through cracks, gypsy words will drip
I collect them. If not contain them
At least place my fingers in their cool reprieve
Their naked witness
Pleasure the places theses words have traveled
The minds touched. A momentary flame
The open talons
An eagle skims the gray water
I know the wait of hunger
The reach through cold the others find empty
Enough, in my limited way, enough
For now, to bed
Enough
Hush
She lives by her dreams and writes
in odd sentences to drown the noise
of her better judgments
her well-meaning friends
Each thought a creation each
creation a making each
making a joining and in
joining the ancestral memory
Night’s desire caught fire
between two solitary souls
since the world was young
Or art would be nothing more
than building facades and paint
dried on stretched canvas and
music would lack the heartbeat
Lullaby of our mothers and no
song would remember the heritage
of our communal words
Blood for ink our secret power
to survive our own selves
safe passage through the stanza
clean sheets on the line
So it goes for those who live
where the watcher speaks her name
Widening
Sometimes I dream myself as dead
And kneeling at the shore of Time
I skim pebbles from the edge
Delight the ripples I can cause
Believe that I have left my mark
In endless circling circles circle
Muted sound of accidental opus
Make waves through your world
The pluck of pebbles float
Disrupt the hairs along your spine
You might wonder if they’re mine and I might
Say yes but I’ve forgotten how
To reach for life below the surface
Writing Space
Between the cracks of my life, I write
Between dishes, missing socks. Between
the sheets at night. Around family fights
Plans with friends. The hopeless ends
of broken Christmas lights
What I’ve failed to share
in words. Always there. Painting colors
hidden hues inside my mind. Failed
to give their longing to live
in the open air. To care
for rhythmic lusts like love or sex
their colors come undone. Melt
in my hand. Crooked fingers
Smoking gun
Sometimes ashamed
of these plastered cracks healed
beneath cleverest words
I’ve ever known. But never sorry
for the chasms I have fumbled
through. The breaths that I have owned
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