i know i haven’t written much of late. i go through periods where i am living too fast or too deeply for this space, no offense…lately it’s been a combination of both. traveling and healing and being sick and being around babies and looking my future in the face and wondering who i am anymore and remembering and rooting down deeper into my commitments to myself, to Detroit, to my life.

i have been thinking mostly in poems for a bit now, so i have been posting poems here. for those of you who want something else, come back another time, i’m sure i’ll be back to prose in no time.

here are some poems from my 10-poem day last week.

—-

sub-terrain

if i should be
so intoxicated with love
so flattened out
sunlit on your petal
if i should stumble with the headiness
of being in the path
of your smile

if i should fall silent
slurred by the dark musk of that grand intimacy
tilt forward with my
fill of magic
batted at you
lean too close
into the sub-terrain of your neck’s curve

forgive me my love

i have been out seeking home
and here you lay, hearth

i suck that sweet liqueur off your lip
losing the myth of difference
down through a million verdant layers
sap, drizzle
you are the scale of ocean and sun

nothing parchment can bind or separate
such a pure thing
i didn’t even know to long
for such a love

—

(inspired by an elder’s story)

i went to the grove again
the softest place
away from the lights
that illuminate my bones
for your clumsy artist’s touch

i go where the roots fall all over each other
no one seeking depth
just eternal company

when you have brought blades against me
smiling and pressing
through year after year,

when you couldn’t love the master in me
the goddess
the all powerful in me
the sweet warrior,

i would scrub your dishes
your floors
i would sweep away your messes
bathe your children
and your feet
take your words wrapped in cloth
to unravel over the small fire
the ritual i offered
to the trees
whom i held
and wept into
getting the love
i needed

—

post-nationalist

america
i see another continent in you
i see the plains covered with a people’s prayer for grain
under a rug of synthetic lawns
a Sahara
with your own band of Bedouins

i see an old man atop a horse
at full gallop
after a terrified buffalo, so alive

i see deep breadths of space
great walls and ridges
i see abundance in you
in sunkissed roads
that all lead to moonrise
and harvest

i have blood in your soil now
i can’t ignore your total desire

i see rivers opening up and down your thighs
as you continue to never say no
at least
not to mean it

someone has you
under his calloused thumb
to think you are some foreign land
something different
from the world

but my love
i see in you that same dust
distracted by stars and myths of tomorrow
i see you clustered up
fenced up
hemmed up and penned up
longing for yourself
in another
faith held in the potential
of your eldest lover
his greed
bruised fingers and nightshade
all over your sumptuous flesh

you still believe it
someday he will love
without breaking

i see a whole woman in you
America
operatic landscapes conducted by god
fjord’d, tundra’d, scraped and blasted away
but unashamed
to let the sun fill your hunger

i see your dinosaur years
when the steps were heavy
but not so deep

i see your human years
such laughter and violation

i see your healing cycles
all alone,
and frigid

i see you always changing
dropping off into forever
rising up as if you mean to fight

my love
don’t you know yet
who you are?

i see you whole
no borders, no walls
the beauty under your armor
the abundance
that comes through your suffering

i see another continent in you
i see the taut skin that begs for drumbeats
held on every side
by her arms
Yemaya

i see you offering up your roots
opened up
the salt and dirt
the hatred of self
the vulnerable cities
huddled together
terrified you might survive
but be alone

end the tantrum now my love
you are vast
you are only
you are beloved
you are powerful enough
you have enough
a million times over

the desert is full of life
America
that is all that you are

and yes
even now
you
the devastating one
are loved
without condition

—

love is an emergent process

i stand before my love
and let the tendrils unfurl
in every direction
i am whole
and becoming

time is one instance
examining itself
mirrors
seeing each other
and blushing
into eternity

i am the ant
who carries grandfather to the grave
in my palms
you lift the next day’s meal
enough for everyone we know
we in rhythm
leaving home
and returning
on the wind

love can’t look away from itself
vibrating in the cell
fluttering breathless
into sustained migration

i feel you
like dust feels water
and remembers
the home galaxy

it appears nothing is new
never was
and nothing is truly massive
when seen in its wholeness

until i took this breath
repeating the miracle
i didn’t know i would say it
could not have known…

i look to the sky
taste the wind on my tongue
and fling myself
into the pattern

when i forget –
when i think the end is near
i realize my insignificance
as important as yours
and begin
to love
again

—

Padawan

i never sleep while i’m flying
it’s still such a new knowledge
i don’t yet trust myself to the sky
to the constant wind

i feel the rhythms of my comrades
that intimate biology
as we crest on a change
lean in
and drop

we’re going to that unknown place
and we all feel her calling

i never sleep while i’m flying
i’m still pressed up against the window
telling myself
it’s a breathless height

i feel the sweet
hush hush hush
let my fingers run that cloud length
then this one
an eternity of curvings

we defy the heart of the world
teasing back against her pull
held aloft
perhaps
by imagining we can fly
when we are falling