Monthly Archives: February 2019

Buy Yourself Flowers

24 Sunday Feb 2019

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Never miss an opportunity
to buy yourself flowers.
You’ve been there
from the very first
scared and lonely cry,
and you’ll be there
until the last,
scared and lonely breath.

from the time when one is sick to death,
One is alone, and he dies more alone.

You searched through the years
for the one big love,
a soulmate, the person
who wholly understood,
but that person was always there.


Buy them flowers.
Say, Thank you. Thank you,
and, while you’re at it,
beg forgiveness,
for the moments
you were unkind–
the voice that said, no,
the voice that said, not enough,
the voice that, come to find out,
was always wrong.

*This poem is dedicated to the roses I purchased at Walmart during a long, cold February, and who inspired several poems.

I could snuggle
between your fleshy petals,
stretch my whole body
into the many folds of your mystery.
The world would be a better place
if your breasts were its universe,
your perfume, its stars and gods.

The quote “No, from the time when one is sick to death, One is alone, and he dies more alone,” is from Robert Frost’s, Home Burial.

The Day After A Fight

21 Thursday Feb 2019

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Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right

I feel your love on my skin, like the sun
after days without sun,
the feel of its heat on my face,
the brightness in my closed eyelids
when I lift my head to absorb,
thank, and worship it for coming back,
lighting up the snow’s fine crystal layers,
melting the icicles on the front eve.
On days like this, I can almost forgive
winter, how it took away our joy,
shortened our few, precious days,
slowed us down, almost killed us,
but we survived for this reward:
radiant skin brushing radiant skin,
bodies ablaze, awash of flame.

Words, Like Bullets

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

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Today, and even yesterday,
I felt your words like bullets,
how such small objects
can weigh so much in the hand:
their heft, their steely shimmer,
the protrusion from their case.


One, two, three, four, five,
they slip into their holes;
spin the cylinder, 
click it back
into its resting place;
the chamber is full.

Even I had to admire the calm
of your aim: no shake of hands,
nor dramatic pulling back
of the stiff hammer,
just a smooth squeeze
of a trigger wanting to be squeezed,
an exemplary mastery,
and suppression,
of the residual kick.

Examine the target:
how your words hit their mark,
all too well, all too well,
and as small as those bullets,
admire their rip.

Placebo

16 Saturday Feb 2019

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placebo_antidepressants_drug_lancet_review_drjoe

1.

If I offered you a placebo,
would you take it and believe
in yourself, and finally trust
that what you have to write,
is what needs to be read?
You see failures like supreme
rulings, their many judgments
as self-imposed gag orders,
but there’s a pill for that;
it’s sweet, and round,
and goes down easy.

2.

You can open your eyes now,
and when I snap my fingers
you will not remember any of this,
but you will be as the raven
who flies against fog and snow,
the black outline of her body
hurtling toward the need:
truth, authenticity, love,
forgiveness.

3.

I anoint your head with holy oil
from an olive tree that grows
in Jerusalem, whose roots
extend thousands of feet
beneath the ground,
into hidden aquifers,
tears and blood
of your ancestors:
their unanswered prayers,
their cries from dark nights,
their suffering,
their death.

4.

The Three of Swords;
I see you have suffered,
but it’s time to face what rose
from the ashes.
Everything you said you hated,
what he did to you,
the lies, the infidelity,
the leaving.
Do you see it there,
in the tower?
That’s you,
tearing it down.

5.

So many lines, intersecting other lines,
your life is complicated, intertwined,
your heart, easily broken.
Look at your love line,
how it curves up here,
toward contentment,
then here, toward turmoil.
Your head line, see how long–
all the way to your pinky,
tells of much consideration,
your life line, such caution,
what you’d expect from a palm
of fire, and of earth:
a hand of many deaths,
a hand of many births.

6.

I see your future–
Ah, it is clear;
here is sadness,
and here is celebration,
here is hurt and confusion,
and here is clarity.
Here, a day of silence,
the whole world muted,
void of color, sound,
and the ground hard,
infertile, stubborn.
Yet, here is a day
so vibrant, your fears
are drowned out
from birdsong,
a chittering breeze,
and flowers so eager,
you can hear their spathes
bursting up toward the sun.
What more can I tell you
that you don’t already know,
but refuse to tell yourself:
you are sun and snow,
joy and sorrow,
selfish and fully poured out,
justified and guilty–
what more can I say 
to make you believe
you are all
of what you’ve been
desperate to become,
desperate–
to make go away.

Rwanda: Dead Hands

12 Tuesday Feb 2019

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for Evariste, and his family.

I look at my hands, see

they are alive. I look

at the basket,

and see dead hands.

Hands held, posed

for mercy.

Hands held, posed

to survive.

Our enemies are not always

who we are told;

you see, they are the same–

our hands,

these five fingers,

see how they bend,

see how they weave,

the way they sew the future,

the way they brush the cheeks,

of those whom they love.

Memory In Winter

09 Saturday Feb 2019

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Winter returned, unbroken,

and I bought azaleas, hydrangeas

and stems of lilies

to stand against white windows.

How like memories,

these flowers in winter:

smiles, laughter, love,

eyes, cheeks, toes, and fingers.

Mama, mama, mama,

I hear them calling,

as I cut their stems.

Flowers for the Dead

05 Tuesday Feb 2019

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I said magnolias,

you said, peonies,

how you remember her hands

tending them, day after day.

I imagine a grandmother’s hands

reaching into a profusion of blooms,

wrinkled and wise and tender;

it’s a good place

for the mind to wander.

Memorial Day.

You were so young,

and your brothers, one older,

one younger, even than you,

would cut the luscious stems,

and place them in a wagon

alongside empty pickle jars,

mayonnaise and jelly jars.

The cemetery.

You’d sell your bouquets

for fifty cents,

three big blooms to a jar.

What a memory,

and I imagined families

pulling up in lonely cars.

It’s the sixties,

and there are waves of Chevy sedans

with heavy doors,

hoods, stretched out in lines,

like plots.

We sold them all, you said.

And I’m not surprised:

regret in empty hands,

is no small thing,

as they walk toward their loss,

tombstones, which remind them

of loss,

of lack.

And then, the relief

when they can fill those hands

with the heft and smooth skin

of a glass jar filled with water,

and a few fleshy blooms.