Category Archives: poetry

Nursing Home Hallway

I turn to leave
and watch my grandmother,
dressed gracefully in
white slacks hanging
loose over thin limbs. She is tall,
regal,
looking at me from the middle of a
tan hallway that stretches
into a deep florescent
lighting, nourishing
the hazy limbo between us.

I walk straight,
past pictures of Christ
and metal crosses that hang
on the stripes of wallpaper
and fish circling in a dull tank,
past dark hollow rooms
where white-clothed bodies
watch TV,
past the chapel
that is now empty and waiting for
tomorrow morning’s mass.

I stop abruptly after a few feet and turn.
I watch my grandmother, her
thin frame easing into the hallway shadows.
She knows,
turns,
waves goodbye.

The light gets bright at the entrance.
I pass
white-haired women
who talk of President Roosevelt
and I hurriedly
push open the door.

no meds

Little poems are soul food~
you will feast as long as you
don’t let em get ya, don’t let em ever get ya.
You’ll live the colors that create life.

Don’t you let em lock ya up
with their nonsensical ramblings of ordinary thought.

Tell em: no meds;
you were born as stardust
and don’t need nothing more than that.

agoraphobic

An old man with gray mustache
deplores the light when peeking through the green door
of an unmarked bar
on an unmarked, unremarkable city street.
He wears
an argyle sweater vest
that matches nothing, and stands in stark contrast
to the dark pouring out from behind him.

I saw him.

And I saw a 1-800-call-Jesus billboard bus sign
for a quit heroin half way house
sprayed with graffiti.
I saw porcelain hands praying without arms
confined in a windowsill, in front of blinds dusty
with neglect.

I saw all those others
rushing by and those passed out on the benches
that boldly boast: Baltimore, the greatest city in America.

I did nothing but stare.
My heart beating
loud above the sirens;
my palms wet with sweat.

ghost

I am a cold vapor, a whisper— I feel
nothing when I walk. My
loose skirt gliding gently above the
wooden floor.
The dust stirs slightly in my presence
but that is all.

I want to be the spirit who
throws china with a heart-breaking crash.
I want to be the memory that
raises hair on your arms.
I want to be the phantom
you call to in the night, when no one is around.

But silence is mine. I leave
the light on
with tears that
won’t wet my cheeks.

almost twice my age

This was written back around age 20. I was introduced to Zeppelin by my ultra cool friend Ashleigh, when she came to my house and played “Heartbreaker” as loud as it would go (until my parents yelled to turn it down) in 6th grade. Since that moment, that song, I’ve never quite been the same. I only wish I could have been there to see them live!

almost twice my age

So good and looking at me with shaded eyes
soulful,
under hot lights and sweating.

There, in the midst of Zeppelin blues and the crowd,
is the ageless anticipation, the complicated thought of:

Screams from bodies trembling, hear those
soft six string moans,
those microphone inhales and stifled words,
those fevered hands grasping air and
heated timbre,
harmonica cries in crescendo
until the volume is unbearable, until consumed.

I don’t remember who I was before.
He doesn’t speak but for songs,
kisses my cheek before I vanish
into the clamped mouth of another world
where my parents would disown
if these ephemeral moments ever came true.

We are so far; I know nothing of him.
We are so close; I see him there
leaning darkly beside the stairs.

house clean

Nothing quite like the feeling after a long volleyball tournament; ah the aches! Half hour to USA hockey, perfect time to post a poem….

House Clean

When I die
will you go through my things?
Fingering papers
and smudging your fingerprints all over my photos
even though you might remember later
that I hate that.

And making a mess in my kitchen where I
always wished that you were but
you weren’t.

Tossing out this and that; the this and that
that I saved purposefully
all those years.
Hoping to get it all done quickly,
hoping to find
that million dollar antique
that you already know I never had.

Then, in one corner, finding letters,
letters of deep secret
towards
self, family, love;
diaries of thoughts you never knew I had.

Will you throw them out?
Yes. Suddenly, in one moment, I am no longer
who you
want to remember.

when life imitates art~

In the little known gallery,
I smiled and surprised him into watching me as
I watched him work,

The exciting little things he did for me,
when he finger-painted my belly like an early
Jackson Pollock.
Showering me with volatile reds, blues
that swirled and wrapped around my naked back
like lava
or glacier rivers when his hands were cold.

The words he said,
when we talked in tongues on an Austrian balcony
and the stars were hiding
from the excitement, the fear, and
the thought of flight back home, that blue period
when night dissipates to light.

He captured
the flame from my bedside candle in his arms
wrapped it ‘round my shoulders and sketched in the details.
Those fine lines of
late nights and stiff drinks
leaving their lasting mark.

Somehow it happened that
we can no longer stand to stand apart
and I must have him so
to see my belly rise and fall,
and he must have me to complete his vision
of what it means to be famous.

Finding Robert Zimmerman

It is late afternoon time; you are at me again—

I swear I never really knew Robert at all; I never
knew what he was all about.
I was every bit the lone hitchhiker on the highway
that never went anywhere; the stubborn patient
convinced of my own sanity.
But it doesn’t matter now; late in the afternoon you don’t believe me.
You still interrogate me
with pointed questions—poking, prodding—did I remember
anything about Robert? What plaid shirt was he wearing this time?
What kind of mustache served as his disguise?

Outside dusk comes quickly, but inside—

I sit here under the heat lamp, saying
over again, I never really knew Robert at all. I hopped trains
in search of him. I hid out in the spread
legs of the backcountry—I sipped the high and mighty
in Manhattan. I imagine that he had strong tan forearms but
I never touched them.

Longing to leave, frustration at the questions, finally—

Leave me alone, Man. Go ahead and stick your own thumb out,
stretch your own legs, and see what you find.
I’ve got a folk singer to meet and whiskey to drink,
in a club that was never open,
in a scene as elusive as an early morning dream.