Poems VI

Routine


Morning warnings.
Seas of tail-lights and freeway waters;
weekday's insistent buoys
bringing streams of mindless chatter:
you joy you joy you joy.

So.
You dive headfirst
into errands and sweat,
and try to forget
the lies to yourself --
because only truth sees truth,
brother and sister anchored in knowing.

Pickups and dropoffs
and breaths between,
and life is a blur
and it's passing you by --
seersucker cars in parallel lanes --
and you worry
that it already did.

Then the slosh of dishes and bathtime,
and pondering during,
and you're drained
like your dinner,
and you stumble upstairs,
but you sink down too.

Again:
You joy you joy you joy --
the span of your eyes
widens and closes,
and, see, you suddenly
stop.

And it comes like a slap:
the lie to yourself
is a lie
in a lie,
yet only just that.
A shadowy tide that
resides within you,
perpetual.

Then your motionless self
feels the borders of its skin
finally, finally, finally
dissolve, as you're pulled under into
an ocean's whitewash of salt --
and also the waves,
breathless and stingingly clear.






Instances

this moment alone
is so, so small,
yet an eternity too.
a timeline of lifetimes,
unfurling.

a garden of gardenias,
white and shaking
in fragile state --
uncertain sweet secrets
in want of bloom.

a journey by train,
creaking and smoky,
expectantly sexy,
arriving a glittering city's
lanterning night.

a starlit sea
engulfing a boat upon a horizon in a horizon,
lost in darkness,
languid and tranquil, yet
dangerous too.

a trembling daughter,
teary and pliant,
hurting in violet
pajamas and slick, wet braids.
leaflike and quiet,
crumbling.

and this --
this moment narrows and expands,
like her sweet shallow breath,
and makes the other ones seem
shallow and paltry
and silly.

memories glassy and vapid --
hairline fractures, in fact.
but I am helpless and loving,
and giving and wanting,
and what is there more
momentous than this?