crossing

I am a failure of the system walking across my mistakes, frail planks on the bridge between sound reason and widening heart. Questions of stability sway my thoughts with each step, with answers that do little to satisfy. And for brief brilliant moments between fatigued movement, I recall why we started crossing. But I will lose my balance thinking no matter how many times we fall, we do not learn.

matters of the heart

I have short lines of courage
drawn on expired coupons,
not enough space for an entire row,
short lines
marking segments of truth, disconnected
by today’s cuttings.
and I don’t have enough,
not enough
space to draw my plans,
the matters of my heart are short slices,
curve balls
on sandy playing fields.

waiting to sink

I cup my palms,
each of my fingers looking skyward
frantically praying,
slowly scooping water
out of my weathered, punctured sailboat.

Out on the lake, I am
hoping for some final ray of sun,
some quiet passing boat, some distant
wave of memory.
But I am alone,
my hands over my eyes
waiting to sink.

Home

is my grandmother, bereft
of her ability to speak full sentences,
but her kind smile and eyes
make me unable to tear mine away.
she doesn’t remember home, or that
she is our home.
And I am sad that I am strange
to the place she grew up, this same apartment
where she had my father. I am sad for not
knowing the lines
of her face and the creases of her hands.

Later I examine my heart,
find that it is weak and unstable
and wish that she could tell me about home.

Assault

I am assaulted.
the loose ends of my scarf
unravelled by slow motion voyeurism,
they can’t stop watching,
hoping for piles of yarn and
dismembered hope.

I wake with dry eyes dry mouth,
I wake to the feeling
of assault in my bones, the desire
to crave slowly dissipating. The desire to write
fades into strange metaphors
I a tree, they woodcutters.

Old photos of me, old photos of us
unraveling into shreds of slow memory,
They can’t stop watching,
hoping for shreds of remembrance and
dismembered hope.

seeds

Your voice, my tourniquet
weaving seeds in ploughed soil;
a labouror’s wages paid
in soothing tones and soft poetic
bills.
We are the pages in our books,
a synchronized shuffling and
quiet wisps of words, paper cuts.
I find a photo of me as a child lodged in the centre
of the first chapter.
Nearly carefree, with red nose and wide hair.

Your voice,
shaky explaining your one-way
ticket off beyond your inner panic, unease
and submission to the earth. The fields are ploughed
with your voice, a rhythm of being,
turning, shuffling together
and
planting seeds of poetry in my heart.