Rainy Season: Scene One

Misted fog fading the mango trees, green, into the layered gray sky,

you hear applause, distant, from the drip-drop dripping of rain falling snow

slow and tricked into trickling full the cistern below the front porch.

 

You wear your flannel, the sleeves rolled, because it holds back the (relative) cold

(your skin forgot warm needs no coat, and couldn’t remember cool fall sweaters

folded twice at the wrist like your jeans at the ankle).

 

The road’s a river —black pavement of controlled current’s gravity,

and God knows it flows. It flows, and kids that giggle at a dip in the road

know (they call to heaven for more water).

Answer All My Calls

I thought I’d sing a song for you guys (I haven’t finished with the lyrics, but here is what I have so far). Let me know what you think!

 

VERSE ONE:

It’s been so long since I heard you call.

And not because I haven’t tried –believe me I have.

And when I hear from you, you say you don’t know what to do –what am I to take?

And then you claim abuse, but I’m just trying not to feel used.

 

CHORUS:

Answer all my calls I’m trying to fix all my struggles for who I’ll be.

Hold me close I’m trying to find who I’ve been for who I’ll be.

Kiss my lips I’m trying to kiss all I can for who I’ll be.

Hold me close I’m trying to love all I should for you and me.

 

VERSE TWO:

You wrote me back today.

It’s hard to know if it’s real because it’s gonna fade.

And when you say you miss us because we were so in love –it feels fake.

And then you say goodbye, but I’m spinning from your lies.

Haircut

She says as long as I sweep the clippings

She will cut my hair.

 

So, I sit on the office chair and she covers

my clothes with an apron before grabbing

the comb and her extra-sharp scissors

(and her glasses).

 

I watch her in the mirror as she stares

at my head from the back. As I have never seen

the back of my own head directly, I can only imagine

what tragedy is bringing that look.

 

Perhaps I have a cottage of hair nymphs

camping back there, feeding on lice and dandruff.

They’d whistle like the seven dwarves

as they work to keep the top and front of my hair looking swell.

She cuts them off.

 

Then the sides. I guess those I see more often.

maybe something is hiding out of sight there.

A ghost of the hair that used to be there,

haunting the nymphs, and maybe whispering insecurities in my ear.

She cuts them off.

 

Then the top. I’m sure there are wildflowers

just about to bloom. But, plants usually mean dirt

which usually means bugs. And there is no nymph left

to roast them on an open fire.

She cuts them off.

 

And the front. I made that part myself.

Or I guess I shaped it.

She cuts it off.

 

When she finishes, she asks if everything looks okay.

I say yes and thank her and sweep up the nymphs and bugs,

and probably the ghosts too.

Though I never can tell if they phase through my hand.

Pulsar

We feel light in mornings and make dew

until afternoons.

The sunset seems bitter —

a reflection of bleeding red scars

in memoriam of waking with the sunrise.

 

So, I’ll send over the moon and you send me the stars

to soften the night and prove it’s our own

(All happiness comes

from singing stars –pulsars

broadcasting lullabies through silences of space and time).

A Short Story

 

Sitting on a brown-flecked pony, she rides at six,

unaware of the crash of ‘29 until her neighbor jumps

out of a fifth story window.

 

And one of her brothers slices her right ring finger.

Holding the tiny carcass, she races home. “Who

did it?” But she won’t tell –she never tells; it was an accident.

 

A simple kiss scurries to matrimony

after her father is drafted, but before she moves away

to a secluded farmhouse.

 

Then the wailing of her first born, Dorris, my grandmother,

bleeds into the wailing of her second, Steve, my great-uncle.

They grow up and marry residents of the same town.

 

Soon grandchildren, three and two, and great

grandchildren –at least eight– play cards

with her while she mumbles through numbers and suits.

 

She dies at eighty-nine

in a lemon-scented hospital room.

 

Four of us ignore the rain

as her carcass is lowered into the ground.

The road looks blacker when it’s wet.

The grass looks greener, too.