This has never been my fault.
At least not to my knowledge.
I’m much more likely to leave too early –
To pull up my stakes
Just in time
To shake the dirt off of my roots
And dance off into the sunset.
I once quit a job two weeks after I started
(for me, that was holding on, I wanted to leave as soon as I arrived)
and when I told my boss, he said, “Alright. Get onto your horse and ride.”
I was a cowboy hero
Making a grand exit and even the man in the black hat
Knew it.
But like a cowboy, I didn’t really have a home –
I was more at home moving and when I stopped
I had to figure out how to stay
But I have yet to stay
too long.

No, not this time.
He won’t make this show.
Or the one before –
Though he did come to New Jersey that time
To see that one
I was so unsure of.
There are shows
That I wish he could have seen
That one across the country
The one on that Tuesday
But this time, I don’t mind him not coming.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t mind
People not coming in general, this time around.
I used to measure friendships and love
According to who turned up to see my work.
It was a kind of emotional blackmail for ticket sales
Either turn up to see this thing I made
Or I will take you off the list of my heart.
I don’t do that anymore. I won’t. I can’t.
People who want to see
Will see.
Here will come the people who could make it this time.
Here will come the people who can.

Aren’t we always only ever giving advice to ourselves?
Sometimes, recklessly. I have given someone counsel
That crossed a line
Because I believed it so passionately for myself.
I wanted him to find a better way
Because I so desperately wanted a better way for myself
But he already had a voice
Whispering to him to find that better way
Mine only pushed him further into the shadows of fear and stasis.
If he were to have said so
To have pointed out that truth to me.
I might have deflected it simply.
If he’d offered up the truth
I might have flippantly said
He had nothing to fear from me.

An aphorism that never took hold – tried, though it might.
Imagine, a mother in a house coat and curlers
Shaking her head at her moody teenage daughter
And bemoaning ruefully these words.
Ah, that old saying!

What is youth rebelling to itself?
Youth rejects its youth
And starts wearing cardigan sweaters
And combing its hair in the middle
While watching its soaps on the TV
Before taking its meds, and
Wishing its grandchildren would visit.

Fear, like a straight jacket,

Will certainly keep you from actively hurting yourself

Or the people and world around you.

It can keep you from running

From dancing

From singing

From getting booed off the stage.

It can keep you from loving

And lord knows that’s a good way to be assured

An avoidance of devastating heartbreak.

Certainly, certainly, let fear keep you safe.

Arms tied to your body

Never reaching out

Never holding anything to your chest

Never letting rhythm or melody

Steal into your limbs

To wave them or shake them

Or beat them on drums.

It is very safe

To sit very still

Letting fear keep you from harm.

Wow. Synchronicity.
I am
Intensely wary today.
Not about love, per se.
Just about everything else though.
It almost feels like
“BE wary, then!” as in “Fine! Be that way!”
Because there’s no eliminating the wary.
Last night today the day before and so on
I felt a nasty storm was coming. I didn’t know what direction
It was going to blow in from
But I could feel it threatening,
Tightening up joints
Squeezing the air
Darkening the skies.
I know the wary
Does me no good –
It only pulls my body in to tight places
Stuffing it into corners – but I suppose
From my wariness today
I’ll be glad if the storm comes.

That the morning is a particularly vulnerable time
For contagious blastments
Is news to me, though the vulnerability of morning is not.
Waking, bleary eyed, I curse it, quite regularly,
Unable to fight off evils or sharp emails
That might not slice me open at another time of day.
Coupled with my moans and grumbles,
Perhaps my breathing is deeper
Perhaps the things that are bourn on the air
Or in it
Find more open door
As the sun starts its ascent
As the dew dries on the grass
As the light stretches across the ground.

Okay – this has been punctuated with a semi-colon
And my little rule is to have these lines be full sentences – but I break it because
I just have to deal with these buttons.
These curious buttons
Disclosed
Closed
Undisclosed before disclosing.
Are infants of the spring, flowers?
I imagine so
But do flowers have buttons?
And button, button, who’s got the button?
The button of the belly
The button of the shirt
The pants
The clasp of a bag
The leather strap of a shoe
The rim of a cap
A jacket
A coat
A sleeve
Buttoning
Unbuttoning
Hiding buttons
Then revealing them.

Perfection ain’t sexy.
A spotless surface seem unreal, untouchable, distant.
It’s the dabs of mess
That really highlight our humanity.
Virtue without calumnious strokes
Is not virtue at all
But a fantasy
An ideal, chiseled into rock and polished out of form.
I fall harder in love with imperfection every day.

Oh moon
You do your fair share of corrupting.
I come to you for all my darker purposes. I’ve stood
On a large rock, perched over the sea, face upturned
Hoping for you to help turn someone’s affection my way –
Growing the trickle of romance in my blood
To a river. Breathing in moon beams
Breathing out vapors
Moist helpful breath
To run forward through the world
And work romantic magic.
When I’ve pleaded to something,
It has always been to the moon. Bathed in mother-of-pearl light,
I feel holy and profane. I will confess desires –
Put a wedge into them, widening the edges
Til they rush through like rapids over rocks.
I will dig my toes into the sand and long and long.