Gentle

I cannot picture the boy you were
without your set of squared shoulders.
As if you entered the world
already braced against it. You love
the linearity of logic, pride yourself
on the weight of your brow.

Your edges are rigid, smooth –
I wonder what knives
have sharpened themselves upon you.
I wonder what other shapes
you might have taken.

The first time you called me gentle –
later, I cried.
I am the water to your rock.
My movements are subtle,
my skin, permeable.
I live in constant rawness
while you hold fast and stoic,
the anti-vulnerable.

I know you could not looked in
and named my tenderness
without having encountered it
somewhere in the cavern of your chest.
I heard a spring in your voice.
When laughter sends waves
breaking down your back,
I see something soft, unguarded,
free of protective shells,
trusting of shelter.

Post-Explosion

In the technological storm that follows
any tragedy – the hails of texts
and calls please tell me you’re safe and
statuses my heart goes out to and news
segments on televisions at the gym,
the mall, blood-soaked
streets played on repeat,
all carnage and no causation on repeat,
repeat, repeat –
you should know –

You can look away.
You can turn off the screens.
You can cry without telling anyone.
You can show up unannounced
at the door of a good friend.
You can look away.

You are not careless
for taking your eyes off of the gruesome fanfare.
You are not uncaring
for resisting being swallowed in a virtual sorrow machine.
You are allowed
each and every action
that brings you closer to your humanity
and takes you away from a grief
that will warp your gentleness
into something hardened and bitter.

These days poison our marrow.
They inflict the worst kind of disbelief
that cracks through everything we hold close.
Crumbled people have given up on rebuilding
even as tools rust in their limp hands.
Do not give up on your pulse song.

Turn off the screen
if it keeps you from turning off your light.
Let your heart go out to others
and then let it come back to you.
Rebuild when you are ready.
Start with the faith in your chest.
Start with yourself.

Why Most of My Poems are Not Happy

Because inner peace sounds like the stillness of air
when you shout it into a canyon. Because a smile
doesn’t need further explanation. Because you
are much more you in metaphor and I need to feel
close and you are empty space. Because every line
needs to feel like a punchline. Because sometimes
I can’t even laugh without crying. Because in
the moments after the release, or the next day
reading the words I wrung out of my sadness,
I float a little higher above the ground. I carry
my shoulders with a hard-won grace.
My fingers do not drag in the dirt. I open my mouth
and it sounds like air.

Psych(e) Study

A group of 70-year-old men, asked to pretend
they were forty years younger,
found their shoulders to be wider,
their hearing and vision improved,
their gnarled fingers smoothed
long and agile – their bodies
remembering youth so precisely
that time halted, their ages froze,
and their minds smiled into the 1950’s,
re-becoming the young men
watching black and white television,
marveling at the first satellite in space.

If I am still for too long – forgive me.
If I am caught like rain on glass
in this moment, forgetting to blink,
holding my hands in my lap,
legs pressed one on top of the other,
if I shift so I can feel the heat
between our shoulders, standing
side by side – do not mind me.
I will not remember this someday,
but my body might
draw me into this moment
when my wrists are stiff,
my eyes misty and unseeing,
my skin cool and lonely.
I might be here again someday.
I want to learn how it feels.

Little frightened bodhisattva

quaking on its fragile threads

of “poor me, poor,

poor me”, tucking its chin

against the wind –

.

small sunburst –

darling magic gumdrop –

you are many more colors

than this. Un-bow your head.

Spin stronger stuff,

a way out without one back.