What I See
What I See
Behind the fluffy clouds
Stands the tallest ever skyscraper
Its needle shines brightly
Spreading the suns light across the sky
A vision so beautiful and Hard to Beat
9.
“Good things come to those who wait”
She sent me a children’s book drawing of white Jesus
Holding a giant teddy bear behind his back on the right side of the frame
As, on the left, a little girl clung to her bedraggled and lifeworn teddy
She was meant to give up what she loved
For the promise of what she could not see
I navigate away from the image, angry.
Hour 11 – Tide Pool
Tide Pool
My gumboots shift carefully underneath me,
avoiding life hidden amongst sand and stone.
I lean my head against the cool grey and
suddenly the Periwinkle turn skyscraper,
fragile spirals silhouetted against clouds
held in needle-pointed certainty.
I whisper my secrets to a city
that emerges at my humming
and leave them to drown in the tide.
MIDNIGHT TEA
No crisps, no cookies,
and, most certainly, no
mobile devices.
Nothing like a cranky
conservative recluse to
pry out the raisins before
devouring the bread.
But this keeps me alive,
and unhampered, weird but
so utterly, utterly free.
8.
The years I spent in the desert of my mind,
in the concrete bleakness of the northwest end of my city
you spent in the pink and yellow and dust
a training base just north of Joshua tree
Where we went to celebrate me turning thirty
The years I spent singing and learning
You spent playing music and barking orders
Sargeant in the marine corps band
When we met you had had a few years to grow out your crew cut hair
And mine was growing out from a pixie
my hairdresser had cut inch by inch from halfway down my back
“Are you sure?” She asked and asked
A few more years ’til we chose not to kiss in northern Europe
to protect the secular and safe camaraderie we shared
But I decided our rule did not apply to me
Kissed you on an top of an old lookout tower
“A lifelong friendship is a marriage” my auntie said in the summer heat
When I flew back to Canada
Then you drove from the east coast of your country
And the night was cold
So I draped a blanket around us
And our love was a truth I finally told.
Hour 11, Prompt 1: The Origin of Love
My childhood bedroom was periwinkle
there I dreamed instead
of living inside a library
and being a hermit
in a heady cloud of thoughts,
shining ideas, and esoteric philosophies
I hear the color that housed me
belonged to the Virgin Mary
if anyone, she would understand
the power of a medical miracle
to bring forth a child
who was meant to be birthed
Years later, I sit in my room
strewn with blue, pink, and purple
having fastidiously spread
alcohol wipes, needles,
and bandages across my bed
drawing testosterone from a little vial
past the marks and measures of fear
into the syringe as a sacrament
May this be prima materia
the Black Madonna
And the stuff of which the universe is made
I chose the same beloved song
And belt along with the familiar lines
an interpretation of Plato’s Symposium
In this moment,
it is a treatise on wholeness
as I transfigure
Great Black Mother, hold me
Metamorphose me
in your cosmic cocoon
I finish my work before
the beat drops
in time to sing
the origin of love
Prompts hour nine: This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
Fly away,
When this life is over.
We will all get to heaven.
What a better day we will have.
Just.
To see,
The Lord.
Waiting For a Miracle
The mountain range sat solidly,
spread out under
the periwinkle sky, the clouds
sitting causally
like sourdough bread on the countertop,
warm from the oven,
both healing hearts,
like a spiritual storefront
offering options for the lost and weary.
Hour 11
Imaginary – 11 of 24
I am looking everywhere for you
I have checked
my emails,
The answers on Jeopardy,
The since-abandoned Spirit Halloween,
The hotel in which I was yours for the first time,
My best friend’s backyard,
In between my folded towels.
You are nowhere
and that’s alarming.
I am looking everywhere for you
I will check
The KFC that used to be an Autozone
Your grandmother’s apartment on Google maps
The zen garden you put lines in with a miniature rake,
The chorus of every song I’ve ever known,
My esophagus,
my DVD collection between The Shining and Mamma Mia,
Several Twitter threads
and the restaurant down the street.
If I haven’t found you in any of those places,
I think I will admit,
I made you up.
PERPETUAL REPLICATOR – Hour Eleven (2021)
PERPETUAL REPLICATOR
so in choosing a color the eye and I merge seamless
seeming in a secret art of water and witness
where the brush is a forest ranger watching the wilds
where my towering idealization crumbles an uncommitted skyscraper
where we bear the proof of pain and paint
and testify
I set the palette aside for sewing
I thread a cloud on my needle to mend my socks
just call me a typical aquarius
the sky-castles construct themselves
night in a periwinkle dress twinkling twilight
dusts dusk on the ivy across my highest turret
the beat of the world spread out with the darkness
footsteps align with a trillion pulsing veins in one silent symphony