This is it and I call it, Sense of Place

The lake
ferries its reflection to the shore

A cold draft
bustles in through the open door

And sitting here
Before this view
I remember
remembering you.

poem about sugar

the wind is biting and my blankets are
overwarm
and the delicate dead leaves fade day by day
bleaching in the sun and the whipping storms.

for people like us,
the weekend can’t come fast enough.
it is an escape from the watching eyes. 

today is a 
two-sugar
kind of day

mirror mine

I burn, and I want him to feel it too, the burn, the tense moan of heat,
dragging him along my rhythmic breath, I am coaxing his flame to life,
but he is soft, always yielding, the seas parting for him, waves dousing, drenching. 

I would be alone with myself, then, and tea that scalds me when I want to feel the heat returned. I only want someone
who will turn me back on myself – who presses me forward, lunging towards the sunrise –
I want to be pressed onward always, forced into tomorrow –
beat by beat, push me, syncopate me, mirror me! and if he won’t
I would be alone with myself, and tea,
and the fog at the window, and a sharp world, a glass world.
Mine is a world of burning, a world of ice. 

sleep disturbances

you wrench yourself out of the grip of the nightmare
hands clawed
hands at the pillow, tense, clawing, tearing, chest heaving. gasping
and it chases you back out into the tight darkness,
the stars threaded taut through the sky.

breath coming fast,
then smooth
uninhibited. rejoice in
how the paralysis lets go of your lungs and your diaphragm
goes limp.
how your fluid breaths become a melody.

when sleep becomes a threat, there is no escape
no loose end to a long day, anymore.
the last corner of peace, obliterated.
but that is only the natural
progression of things. maybe next week
sleep will come easy. 

you think
it is your own fault. you have seeded the nightmares
with your memories. you water them with reliving.

we settle our heads back into the pillows together. what is there to do, now
but try again.

As a writer/poet, the hipster small-talk-hating thing really baffles me, because they completely miss the significance that’s woven through small talk with someone you’re close to, or even a random stranger. 

There’s an incredibly moving poem called The Lanyard by Billy Collins and in talking about it, he describes how you have to take on the large topic of a mother’s love with a smaller point of entry, a more manageable, concrete image – he uses a seemingly insignificant anecdote about making a lanyard at summer camp as a child to sculpt this all-encompassing description of what motherhood is like, and the sacrifices involved, and the disconnect between mother and child – the child as the recipient of her boundless, unconditional love, who does not realize that the mother receives very little in return for this sacrificial gift. 

In poetry, that point of entry to the deeper topic can be an image – in conversation, it is small talk. 

There’s something short-sighted about saying that you hate small talk and want to talk about death and the universe, without realizing that small talk is the universe and that it’s a way of probing around possible topics to find an access point to the next level deeper of conversation, and then from there you go a level deeper and so on until you’re at the heart of the shared experiences and beliefs and humanity between the speakers, and you’ve gotten there using the map you got during small talk. 

Maybe I’m just not disillusioned with small talk yet and in a few years I too will be groaning about how I’m done talking about the weather and ready to jump right into discussion of solipsism or whatever, who knows. I just think people tend to undervalue it. 

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

The ARTFL project’s collection of reference resources, Webster’s Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, French English Dictionary, French Verb Conjugator

OKAY YOU GUYS I’ve avoided plugging this for a while because I know this is UNBEARABLY dorky and that CERTAIN PEOPLE are probably going to tease me for having a… FAVORITE DICTIONARY. But I do. And it’s this one. 

This is the dictionary that really… got me into definitions. Like. I ENJOY looking up words, words I do know, words I don’t know, in this dictionary, because I swear to god, the definitions are art. Reading it is like reading a strange version of poetry. And to prove this I will paste a few definitions for you. 

Glitter: “2. To be showy, specious, or striking, and hence attractive; as, the glittering scenes of a court. Syn. – To gleam; to glisten; to shine; to sparkle; to glare.”

Wave: “6. The undulating line or streak of luster on cloth watered, or calendered, or on damask steel.” God, listen to that. “The undulating line”. (fans self)

Frigid: “2. Wanting warmth, fervor, ardor, fire, vivacity, etc.; unfeeling; forbidding in manner; dull and unanimated; stiff and formal; as, a frigid constitution; a frigid style; a frigid look or manner; frigid obedience or service." Wanting warmth. Man. 

I know dictionaries don’t light most of your fires and that’s okay. But if you’re a writer and you want a dictionary that really explains the nuances and the sense of a word and not just the definition, if you want a dictionary that will bring your poetry to a new level. Well. I’m telling you. Webster’s Revised Unabridged from 1913 is the one you want.

(Unless you’re looking up anything related to computers, in which case use Google’s define: function. But my point stands.)

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

long weeks, grindstones

It’s been a long day and the sand hasn’t rubbed out of your eyes. 
grit
grit in every orifice and your skin crawls.
Last night’s tattered sleep washes over you at intervals like a tide. 
“I’ll put tea on.”

Entropy increases. Your family
is a wildly spinning solar system,
Starless.
When the sun sets it is too cloudy to see the
sky.
The tea whispers insistently. Deft fingers
at a packet of Earl Grey.
Don’t add any sugar. The bitterness produces
pleasing synchrony.
“Let me pour for you.”

You never agree to that but
today
you don’t care
how far from the lip of your mug
the waterline is. It spits flowing from the spout.
“Careful.”

A week ago,
your life was a calm ocean. 
The windy season has come, and under what roof
will you find shelter?

peach sunset

A peach sunset, blushing
& the trees stretching up to it
always yearning – aspiring –
the heights, dizzying –
Clouds sprayed silver-and-pink salute us.
The waves licking, lapping like fire
and my sheets –
warm
but smooth and
void;
The sun sets & the flowers
nod.
I wish I could hear you singing. 

When it’s matte-dark
every faint light is visible like
a beacon.
Wait for dawn.

silver morning

I dreamed of you last night.
The sun dropped and the loons went silent and the lake
was still under the boathouse. And you crept
in, slipping between the cracks. Trailing the mantle of dawn;
I was unprepared. 

In the light of day, silvery threads of steam snake upwards from a cup of chamomile.
I reclaim your body-heat in tea, or the ambient heat
of my laptop. Why bother?
You’re already gone –
my company is again with the waves.
The lake washes last night away.
Fed by the river Lethe, it laps at the shore
like a dog. Never satisfied. 

sunrise lover

I woke up with the salmon light in my bed
lying beside me, naked on the sheets.
The balcony door tested its hook in the morning breeze.
A stranger stood on the porch,
but she drifted away, and I was glass.

 I unhooked the balcony door and stepped out and
a yellow airplane was flying low over the lake,
ghosting the waves. And it pulled up hard,
wrenched into the sky, dizzying, dragging the white noise of its motor behind,
she dove out of sight behind a point.
The trees waved it goodbye.
I felt the sunburn seeping into my skin –
the breeze quieting the heat at intervals.
The apple tree growing on the lawn behind me gesticulated with the wind,
conversationally.

The powerful sun stared down over the lake.

My mood bobs on the waves here.
Some days I cry into the buttery streaks of light painted on my bed.
Other days spin by like child’s tops. 

I wake each day into dreams of tomorrow,
faces dissolving like cotton candy,
sweet on the tongue, and I
dream of a boy I haven’t seen in months.
I drink my tea black in the morning and the bitterness
strong-arms him back down
into the clear sea of memory.