nursing teaches a heart attitude
not learned from studies alone
we become genuine strangers closer than friends
compassionate for physical, spiritual worth
with cores that cannot turn from service
from the courage to feel

My car, a rust-infested attendant of me,
reliably pressing on, content with its
purpose to the bitter end, an endearing
thought that overtakes me suddenly and
intensely, that there will soon come an end

anyway, i keep thinking about the old laptop we passed around after school,
blue light pooling over our faces like a second puberty—hot,
cords under your desk, knotted around our feet.

She never forgets to water the piano
So that under her fingers white rivulets
Punctuated by black peninsulas
Maintain the tonal integrity
Of each percussive encounter.

One-Cent wasn’t his real name,
just the name taped on him
by authorities who had their own purpose,
taped on the wood of his forehead
at a slight angle, trueness unimportant.

I am a catafalque
rising pretentiously
like the pie in Jason’s oven
out of a conflation of a changing self
& a pile of remnants of Nan’s DNA.

Quill-feathery high-minded rhetoric declaiming
on life liberty … well … try pursuing happiness
if you’re woman if you’re enslaved or poor
unpropertied or indigenous facing genocide.

Standing amid the death-censors
“You cannot succumb to Thanatos
all for all”, I said to them to ward off
their collective suicide. Unheard.

I’m not one to admire change. I’ve been here
for billions of years and will be for billions more,
and in the time it has taken me to draw a single breath,
you meat puppets went from pissing on the savanna
to whipping past my feldspar plains a dozen times

Contemplating the eye of a loved one,
you have noted the white of the sclera,
Its contrast with the pigment of the iris,
the cast pulling your focus. Encircling

everything beautiful hurts
to be touched
your mother’s
cold hand on your forehead

the number on the thermometer
higher than your burning mind
can count
and now you’re the king

I am finally admitting
that I am never going to read War and Peace.
I started a number of times,
printed out a cheat sheet with the cast of characters,
made many a tasty snack,
read to around page 100,
and each time abandoned the project.

The challenge is called Oceans Seven,
and by the time Marcia Cleveland
finished the ginormous feat of swimming
all those channels and straits,
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
she indeed earned ownership.
As in, Her Oceans Seven.

Starscape obscured by
countless swarming pixels with 14-inch wingspans;
but no tangible color or form.
No sound, at least none perceived.
But there was something…
a presence felt. No, not felt. Not exactly;…
a presence known by reputation not senses, as mammal, not bird.

A hot September
morning flames fire to heaven,
Golden Lucifer.

Anticipation
to culmination: a bloom,
its cacophony.

Is there a planet where words silence
a cannon’s demented mouth?

Here, on Earth, furious iron roars
past all reason, past all pleading.
No warding it off
with incantations, prayers,
poetry.

We saunter along the shore,
boys trailing behind.
Tender dusk, the wind
a sigh as we skip stones,
stride briskly between
the bulky boulders, climb and leap.

By way of the stars,
on the tightrope between the worlds,
the grace of the human form, risen from the sea
into the seer in the seen, kin to all life
across the pale blue dot, to live
in accord with our vision…

I can’t wipe chartreuse
from my brain, ever since
you used it in a game of Uno
twenty years or so ago
and it’s such a bold shade

Dark mummified roses standing in the vase,
gray spider webs hanging over every corner.
A broom wipes out the traces of ignorance,
reclaiming the territory once more.

Hold me in your arms just one more time.
Let me feel you surround me.
Let me feel your embrace.
Your solidness, your security, ever my touchstone.

Rumbling rain makes stable
rhythms that soothe
rinse clean thoughts that pry—scratch
between
the hemispheres at duel.

life is not a test you pass or fail.
there is no A+ to earn
no standard to surpass
no reward for finishing first.
life is a book.

January is alight in possibilities.
It’s feeling the cold air as you breathe it in, seeing it exhale out.
It’s the smoke the fire sends up the chimney to greet you from the outside.
It’s your back tingling as you warm near its flames.