this is the cliche of spring,
that there is a new note in the air,
the smell of warmth and change –
I envelop myself in it
as I push open the front door,
it follows me up the stairs.
Category: Poetry
-
march 20: today I smelled spring
-
march 19: today I celebrated our anniversary
I can make anything exciting with enough effort,
even our trips down queens boulevard –
the quintessential example of ‘city driving,’
that white knuckled terror I wish on nobody.
in between being cut off in traffic
and squeezing between pedestrians
I think on four years together.it’s a block of time that stands alone,
all of the years before scattered
and disorderly in memory, where our time
is ethereal and radiant, a definitive
beginning that stretches out before me
without end.
-
march 18: today I celebrated your birthday
it’s colorful – the beads of dye
pepper the insides, imparting their own
kind of life. you watch me glob on frosting,
clumsy and nervous, and suddenly laughter
lights up our apartment and we don’t need candles.
-
march 17: today I wandered in a bookstore
it’s not enough to say that we were made this way.
this doesn’t account for what cannot be explained –
these quirks of the human condition – these affects
that we adopt and scarcely notice.down the aisles of the bookstore I clasped three titles –
nestled casually against my palm, the weight of them
was familiar and reassuring. I found my happiness there,
suddenly – as if it was stuffed haphazardly between books,
unnoticed as we were whirring by.we picked the shelves clean like vultures.
-
march 16: today I began to break in my shoes
my stride has changed to an unfamiliar gait
and I find myself disappointed in my new shoes –
the first disagreeable pair I’ve owned in years.
the relationship between shoe and owner is sacred
in its simplicity, and I have had great fortune.now my walks have become unforgiving –
quick to correct my distracted clumsiness.
the leather is possessed of its own will,
each new step brings a chiding gnaw
to the backs of my ankles.but I have a great and all-encompassing patience,
being made of stronger stuff and tempered –
I will gently work my wanderlust into them
until leather softens and becomes as yielding
as own attitudes. together, we will see many things.
-
march 15: today I sorted through memories
day after day my thoughts fall upon this,
the subtle quickening of the years and
my fleeting memories of past ones, how
recollection doesn’t come easily, anymore.despite this, I mysteriously find myself in the clutches
of a strange and unintelligable habit of collection –
carefully placed like trinkets in the cobwebbed corners of a drawer
I stow away seconds of memory, captured like film,
deliberately etched where they cannot be forgotten:
like that one cold february night, sitting in the front seat
warming my hands over the vents on your dashboard.
the roads were treacherous, you carefully drove in silence
and conversation didn’t come easily – watching your hands on the wheel
I thought to myself, like so many times before and yet to come,
you’re going to remember this moment forever.the steel-like certainty of that thought must make it so,
because the memory surfaces quick and clear. I sit
and I write and I hold it up to the light like a negative,
placing my own significance because it offers me none.
-
march 14: today I spoke to the sun
I can feel spring waiting, just under foot –
I feel it as keenly as my growing wants,
for shorter sleeves and lush green grass
under bare feet.even today with the cold’s fingers prodding
and pulling at me through the seams in the windows,
I can see the sun rolling over the blanket of gray
hanging over the city – solemn and golden.
it speaks to a more ancient part of me,
a depth I cannot hope to see that nonetheless
speaks back to the sun.I am the outsider in this conversation, pale
and shallow compared to the breaking afternoon,
the creeping warm on my skin that stands my hair on end.
-
march 13: today I thought on trash
I’m grasping for handholds, trying
to take those same leaps I used to –
back a scant few years that feel like eons
to a self I scarcely recognize.
I tell myself it was easier then,
old hurts easily dismissed
so that I can live vicariously through
a life that’s already been lived.I walk through my days questioning
the ground beneath my feet, and then
those very feet taking careful steps.
I question my perception, the glimpse
of desire to photograph the destitute
alley beside the apartments, piles
of discarded furniture that has been
made, touched and put aside.I tell myself this is beautiful,
but I wonder.
-
march 12: today I got it all down
I live for those moments when you see
those grim-faced strangers on the subway,
for all those fleeting embarassing urges
to hug them, as if to say
it will be alright in the end –
the thought of actually doing so
and reaching out is a cringing in your gut
but you write it down anyway.
-
march 11: today the sun set into clouds
it must be twigs tripping the sensor,
the spotlight down the alleyway flickering
into a sickly yellow light – just for seconds
at a time into the dawning night.I can’t help but humanize it, standing
with my hands full luggage by the door
to our apartment, it’s almost pleading –
a steady and stammering
are you there? off again.
are you there?
-
march 10: today I walked through puddles
it’s days like this, rain spilling cold and steady
into the windows and making me long for the warm air,
for the smell of salt and cut grass, it’s now
when I can’t decide which is more important:
that sad songs and my thoughts can move me tremendously,
or the fact that they do at all.
-
march 9: today I fixed my shoes
the soles of my shoes catch edges on the sidewalk
and trip me up. along their sides the soft leather
is cracking, pulling away – they need to be replaced
but I’m reluctant to let them go. always I’ve grown
so attached to the least of my possessions, like at
six years old when the mean boy in class gleefully
broke a tiny plaster turtle my mom brought back
from a trip, an inconsequential token I clung to
with a ferocity that even surprised me as a child.he callously snapped the head clean off the neck and
placed both pieces in my hand, breaking something fragile
within me too – I knew this then, still a child.
people say that childhood ends as quickly as a
single gasping breath – with the sudden terror
of cars colliding or a loved one lying in a casket,
their face is strange and the moment is surreal
and you can’t place why – your eyes blink and then
childhood is over, gone so quickly you wonder
if it was ever really there.I think it’s much slower, bits and pieces eroded away
by the thousands of stinging blows you carried with you
in your childlike hands, the insults and hard truths
that threatened to pile up and break you, to take the
soft, wooden grain of your innocence – to whittle it down
to toothpicks and callously place them in your upturned palms.for some reason I hold onto those hurts the same way
I cannot buy new shoes. I’m comfortable in them, and I fixed
the soles with glue – the same way my mother gently pressed
the turtle’s head back onto its tiny painted body, a thin
ribbon of glue forced out from the disappearing crack.
-
march 8: today I watched out my windows
pay attention to the man who keeps a good password,
takes the time to tap out a string of formidable complexity.
it’s the subtle act of someone with worthwhile things to hide –
not to imply something sinister – merely the secret, gnawing bits
that we all keep close to our hips and hearts, the sad storys
not worth telling but worth everything to our characters.
-
march 7: today I owned my disappointment
my brother taught me about cargo claims.
I learned how crab meat spoiled on container ships
is salvaged for soup-grade crab meat – I learned
how to mitigate your losses.it was in this way with my dress shoes clacking
down the subway steps that I learned to minimize
my own losses, to take the sour ache of disappointment
and cherish it. it belongs to you and this is significant.the fire escape outside my window casts shadows
while headlights on 23rd avenue slide back and forth,
prison-bar silhouettes framing a cat form, a strange play
that I watch unfold on the ceiling. it’s late and it’s begun to rain.
-
march 6: today rain covered the streets
this is a gentle kind of living – the rain falls
outside the windows, fascinating the cat.
the hours slip past, time flowing through my body –
seconds and minutes that bring me closer to you.
tomorrow is another day – I say this, but
as a rebuke to this afternoon. I’ve missed the rain.
-
march 5: today I endured the wind
change always comes silently,
like the gust of wind that suddenly staggers you
while standing on the sidewalk. I feel something
stirring, and will not brace myself – I’m ready
to let the winds blow right through me, unafraid.
-
march 4: today I rekindled karma
I’m forever seeking comfort – prying it out
of all my passing minutes, as if they are gifts hidden
and neatly tucked away in dark corners, trampled underfoot.today is a day when your mind has exhausted you
and you’re done talking when you’ve barely spoken at all.
I’m seeking that moment of silence under covers,
just the right amount of loneliness
that brings warmth with it.
-
march 3: today I watched the swans
tonight two swans drifted down the channel,
the goslings from the summer grown, now,
into a full, round white. diligently, they cleaned
their feathers, oiling them against the cold.
for a moment their discomfort was my own,
even if they didn’t show it.I knew we all were suffering, the three of us
aching from the cold – it was their first winter.
the pair looked lonely – quietly preening,
they didn’t even bother to swim. the current
was enough, a gentleness they had settled into
that would carry them like a home through the night.
-
march 2: today I wanted for words
park avenue is painfully vivid as six o’ clock settles,
formless clouds casting their silhouettes against the sky.
I’m writing this in a notebook, my hand finishing letters
with a flourish to commit it to paper and memory –I feel as though I don’t fit in, as if I’m merely dabbling
in the act of living, like any of my hobbies that lie
neglected and underpracticed. harmonicas, sketchbooks,
folders full of photographs, half-remembered memories are
all placed into drawers to wait for me, for my will to grow
to equal the profound aspirations that I carry like a burden.
-
march 1: today I looked for stars
it feels strange to say that I miss the stars
when I’ve only really met them a scant few times.
huddled in a new hampshire cabin, eight years old –
they were just above the pines –
and so, so many of them.I pick out the brightest, the flurry of potential
is only a memory. neighborhood houses are painted
sickly green through the night time haze –
a muted sky over rooftops haloed in dull brightness.I believe that I miss them because I am part of them,
and it’s the kind of thinking I should fall into more often –
I forget to think small thoughts. I am star dust, assembled
in a shape for this short while, tumbling through space, and
this makes me feel small, and this is a good way to feel.
always, the better part of myself misses the stars
like a child misses its mother.
-
february 28: today I remembered glee club
I remember singing, the microphone hanging
fifteen feet somewhere past where our notes just were –
the spotlight reflected off my shirt onto the sheet music.I could never read it, anyway – the notes went up
and my voice would follow, simple work on mad wednesdays
when my bag was heavy and my feet were tired. six o’clock –
watch the sun go down through the branches our the doors, see the campus shuttles drive
round the circle.they’d take me home later, read my sheet music in my
converted nuns quarters, place my mug in an asinine sink.
I hung my favorite words on the wall, hoping somehow
that they would leap out at me at an opportune time.
I spend my days waiting, watching the sun do down
through the trees out my window.it’s one o’ clock now, remembering two years ago when
the notes went up, and my voice followed – we hung notes
on the microphone, a mad rush of order forced with baton
onto the chaos of our voices. I remember how it was here
where things made sense – where the music and the very
worthwhile thing inside of us
came naturally, the way I remember –the way I remember, while sitting in the cold morning.
I’m alone with my thoughts and the words don’t come easily.
-
february 27: today I listened to the silence
the sun sets over the rooftops and burns the sky orange,
I feel the earth warming – the light brilliant on my skin.
the evening comes on peacefully, bathing the room in
a more serene kind of atmosphere, and I listen to the quiet
that settles in the hallway, all the corners of the room.
there are no whispers, no secrets to make waves, nothing
to unsettle the silence. the evening comes on peacefully,
and I welcome it.
-
february 26: today I took in fresh air
I don’t want this taken from me, these –
my midwinter moods where the fresh air
filters inside me just the right way, not
even the depths of my sadness that can
weigh on me alongside my anxieties.
this makes me who I am.leave them be and I’ll take care of them,
allotting them enough time to surface
for a while, to let them taste the wind outside.
leave them – they do not trouble me any more.
I’m weaving them into a bigger picture,
and it’ll all turn out more colorful in the end.
-
february 25: today the rain passed through
the fog and the rain
wash branches off the plaza,
and the feel of my sweatshirt
as it rests sure and heavy on my body
is just enough.
-
february 24: today things fell into their place
believe me when I say that I’m trying to tell you
how coffee warms me the right way –
we both craved it this morning and cherished it
as the heat dissipated into our hands.
I’m trying to tell you how I find my routines
uncomfortable, like my leather shoes with the soles
that are coming loose, the rain soaks my feet
but I cannot bring myself to part with them.
CALL ME BELOVED 