24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
Senses
Night is powerful
Engulfing darkness within darkness
Happy apparitions shimmering all over
While fireflies try to hide their lights
Lightning strikes precisely everywhere
Drowning earth with incandescence
Sweet petrichor dissipates in the rumbling thunder
The tingling feet measures six vibrations
Revealing the tectonic drama underneath
Night indeed is powerful
Hour 3
The time is ticking
I’ve fallen behind
I thought this would be easy
My mind lied.
I should’ve known
An anxious child like me
Would worry and stress
Over the quality of my words
And the subject of my post.
I thought I could just write
And be content with that
But instead,
I’m worrying about being perfect.
What’s out there is best experienced as clean lines and simple geometries.
On crisp paper
That folds neatly into squares
What I’m trying to say is
Beware of the dog shits
They aren’t mapped
The roadrunner makes a clicking sound
and spreads its wings in warning.
It is not my favorite bird,
the way it preys on others.
What I do love
are the hummingbirds buzzing by
like determined little helicopters,
their wings beating fast through the air.
Neighbors walk on the street, dogs at their sides.
I hear the dogs’ tags ringing like tiny bells.
Already the sun is hot against my skin.
It is summer now
and the desert stretches out her arms
to me —
In between the cracked concrete
and the burnt out lights,
our feet meet.
Whispered secrets, poetry,
notebooks passed
between you and me.
Nights spent sitting curbside,
drawn together magnetically,
fire sparking, chemistry.
You need not be smart my love, you need not be smart
You already have my heart, you need not be smart
You need no extra wisdom
For love itself is wisdom, I mean the highest wisdom
Your friends may say no
That I will lead you like a fool
Sarah did not say so
And she was not a fool
In this sport of life
On the spot of love
Shall the ball be my heart
There is no puzzle to solve
You need not be smart
The world is ours, you need not be smart
Just give me this heart and see
That you need not be smart
Sometimes,
That TOUCH heals all the wounds…
And soothes the soul
That LOOK has all my answers…
And the sorrows disappear
That SOUND calms me down…
And only heartbeats are heard
Words are forgotten,
And only the language of SILENCE is spoken!
Power of it is such,
WORDS cannot describe as much!
how odd it is to me you think
i am what you think i am
no more no less
as if to defy laws of physics or california
or whose ever laws those are that say
it is what it is
which I’ve never understood – not the meaning
but the purpose for saying so
i am what i am no matter what you think
or i think or we think or some group think
determines is so and so writes into law and so it becomes
i am
bic pen
the meter is running out
i am until i am not
in this moment
so why all the fuss
on who
i am
or why
i am
or what i might have been
or what i might become
think all you like about i and you and am and am not
me, i’m going swimming
I see the promise has been kept–
The seeds have turned to bloom.
Early planted, in the spring,
Too much rain, I feared, had doomed.
But soon the sprouts broke through the soil,
Then taller, grew each day.
And now, a rainbow shines among
My garden, in display.
Pinks and orange, red and white,
With fragrance, nostrils fill;
Those seeds that fell beneath the ground–
Their purpose was instilled:
To bring delight to those who pass
Beside the road–so hidden–
Their quiet beauty shouting loud,
“Find me, and love the given.”
Heavy rock guitar strains on a $5 speaker three floors down.
Smogged marijuana smoke clouds drift higher than my neighbors.
Cumin and garlic marinate this entire apartment complex.
Little clacks from this keyboard make my dog’s ears shift.
Russian, African America, Middle Eastern, and me.
The men next door won’t meet my eyes, but the women love me.
We dance in stairwells, shifting from left to right,
singing, “excuse me,” and, “I’m sorry,”
to the tune of our differences don’t matter here
from an album titled If you need anything, let me know.
The woman below me is Mama. She is strong and her laugh carries,
and I’d rather hear her laugh at 3 a.m., then ever listen to her cry.
I know she knows when we fight and I know that she prays for us.
The people here are whole,
but you wouldn’t know it from looking at any of us.
We are broken too,
but with every pitch of music, every puff and drag, every loud conversation,
we are pulling ourselves back together together,
and it feels pretty damn good.