sestina

The fabric of my blouse catches
on the wind like a sail.
It ripples like I am wearing the sea,
stitches snagging like the waves that break
against cliffs, screaming for peace
before sinking back into the swell.


The throaty laughter of gulls swells
against the wind, catching
the ocean spray up in its song, peaceful
in its cacophony, content to sail
alongside music, but not in it. Breaking
on rocks as the sun makes meringue of the sea,


chopping and frothing while the sea-
salt beaches house swollen
people, ripening red from daybreak
to dusk. Their children play catch
in the lengthening tide, watching bodies sail
through the waves, laughing and at peace.


The pink and brown bodies, at peace
and in bloom on the rocks, taste the sea,
but go no closer to sailing
than the gulls do to settling in the endless swell
that flutters like a woman’s sundress caught
by a breeze and patterned by broken


shells and fish hiding beneath the fluid breaking
of water against itself. It never finds peace,
hissing and spraying and catching
the song-laughter of gulls. The sea
will always score the swells
of gull-song and the laughter of children sailing


alongside the bodies in the waves, but sailing
by thought rather than by the breaking
waves. Each swells
and searches for something peaceful
that isn’t the glowing red horizon atop the sea,
too far away for the gulls to catch.


The waves assail the shore, peace
just beyond the broken cliffs overlooking the sea,
just beyond the swelling tide where the children play catch.

2 years with future strangers

Beautiful.
I’m looking back on it all, on us all—
The trees through the windows and the soft sigh of rainfall,
Calming voices slicing poetry up between us,
A piece for you and me and her and them.
We sipped on guitar strings and bonfire ash,
We threw words at each other—
Conflict, love, and something else.
Beautiful.
How could it be anything else?
We were something golden and spark-eyed,
More than we ever were alone, before we shared that moonlight.
Our faces tilted to the sky, waiting for the sun,
Crying and reaching,
Thoughts looping between us like the cords of
Cat’s cradle, stretched from knuckle to knuckle on some giant hand.
We lost them, us, we, she, he, them,
All of us like broken cloth when old threads pulled free.
Beautiful,
In a sense. Lovely and haunting and I’ll miss them.
Them, us, us all, I’ll miss it.
The silent trudging of weary backs and sleeping eyes,
Smiles, your smiles, our smiles—
Beautiful.
Comradery and silence and the parting of ways,
Ocean to ocean to ocean to ocean to
You to me to someone ages hence.
Strangers then, there in the sunlight,
Threads taut and broken, sliding across miles and fading fast.
To think we used to laugh together, share glances and pens.
To think we never used to see this ending as anything other than
Beautiful.

lilac night

Tonight you came to me,
you stood by the lilac tree,
(there, just so in the light)
your hands open, calling for me,
eyes in the stars like they always were.
I joined you there,
of course I did, I always have,
I always will, perhaps.
The grass murmurs there, fluid
and vengeful, crying out against the wind.
I held you there, not quite
embracing, but not strangers,
and you told me things,
lovely and lilac against the simpering sky.
Beautiful, I told you,
sighing and sighing,
I wished you would go, I wish
you had left me alone without your words
there, against the sky.
You stood there,
brighter and softer and lonelier than I remember,
but then again, I remember
when you were with me,
when we were lonely together.
I love her, you said.
Of course you do, came the reply,
a gentle smile behind my face.
Of course you are lonely, my star-filled boy,
she is of the earth and we are of the sky.
You stood there, casting stars
round about me, glittering in the darkness and
catching in my hair and on my fingertips,
I think you should go, I told you,
my thoughts swaying in the night air,
lilac and calm.
I came to see you tonight, I came
to see the lilacs again and hoped they still
perfumed the sky, my sky, our sky.
But I watched you walk away tonight,
and the air was clear and still,
full of moonlight and nothing else.

oh.

this frantic grasping in the dark
for things lost, boxed away.
I see a camaraderie,
gently stitched between us,
keeping my memories from drifting
(happy helium, oh how I'd float)
I want to burn those boxes
in front of you,
full of your words and your heart.
But instead
I embalm you behind glass,
watch you dance away, hand-in-hand with
her and them and never me,
without a care
for me and my frantic, grasping, gasping,
bleeding heart

words

here are a few words I really like saying because they feel good in my mouth or words I like writing because they look nice and feel nice on the page. I might come back and edit this and add words from time to time as I remember new ones I really love.

cacophony
frantic
effervescence
coil
soft
gorgeous
chaos
beautiful
laughter
gentle
spill
disingenuous
scratch
break
if
lovely
clack
ridiculous
flimsy
crimson
decay
elsewhere
flutter
black
stone
sometimes
unknown
clockwork
breeze
thick
sprawled
twists
cluster
swell
depths
rich
cavern
disintegrate
marginally
grief
cannot
skeletons
lost
vaguely
flock
glossy
grey
sea
perpetually
ratcheting
whisper
mourn