The Poetry Marathon

You lived inside our mother, first.
That changed everything, I’d thought
but once you were here
once your laugh was real
The birthmark on your hand
your soft forehead on my shoulder
The intoxicating smell of your hair,
You changed us
Everything we did was just somehow better.

I wanted an imaginary friend.
I tried to make or find one.
He may be invisible, but I would have it.

He never came.

Wanting, it turns out, is not enough.

Geometry is all about history
the crane speaks of recreation,
re-imagination, annihilation.
Palm reader, complimentary
angles of criss-crossed lines,
of life lines.
A window washer crosses the intersection.
Layer upon layer, the city is a code,
written and re-written,
A clock with endless corrections.
It can’t be started over from scratch
so they paste a new map over an old one.

My illusive friend,
you torment with with your absence.
I long for you to smother me
return every night and find me waiting
sink in to my bones, and don’t let go.

Ragged child holds a match close to her chest
when it blinks out she lights another
each match is warmer, she is sure
there in the light the match girl sees
all the help she needs
so she follows the outreaching hand

We are tendrils in the blue ether
a hairy water dragon of war
behold our enterprising hive mind
colonial, attractive to the eye
Observe us, we watch you back, in silence
Maneuvering, positioning
Forget what you think you know
and wonder into our domain

The kids catch the tail-end of the holiday films
While parents tidy away the odds and ends,
choose their best jeans and fix their hair.
The new toys are now up in the bedrooms.
A pink glow from the tree shines on for the new year.
Adults fill the house, the rooms, the kitchen, the stairs,
along with alcohol vapor and blue filaments of cigarette smoke.
Children gingerly make their way among them, observing.
The night wears on to a count down
when everyone forms a circle, singing about forgetting
The children can barely reach.
Parents help the children socialize and say goodnight.
Despite the pounding heartbeat of the music through the floor
they doze their way to New Year’s Day.

My brother rambled about going back to therapy –
things my mother wanted to hear.
Then excitedly moved on to other topics,
maybe a job at the second-hand store,
and something else he’d found there.
He disappeared into another room,
carried it back with him,
glowing in the afternoon light, tulip-shaped, an angel’s trumpet
hand-painted with flowers, ruby enamel
beaten out of brass.  He wound the crank.
A scratching, spinning voice sang back at us .
We could hear the distance of 100 years,
And my brother cried.  He said it was just so beautiful.

If I choose to meet the current
I am no longer one, alone.
Instead, two galaxies mingle
drawn by a mounting gravity neither can control.
This is inevitable,
though I don’t believe in fate.
Meet me at my body
we are breaking ground
put your heavy arm around me
rest your heavy head
it’s hard to admit that we are trying

You wouldn’t have noticed, but
I flew over you
probably dressing yourself
or thinking about work
and making tea
in your narrow kitchen.
Thinking of you I looked up
And there was the moon
blemish free
and bright as an eye.