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Posts Tagged ‘anger’

How Long Can It Last?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on February 15, 2014| 5 Comments »

They had razor-sharp teeth
and powerful jaws,
those words I almost
let charge out of my mouth.
They were looking
at your neck, your chest.
And then, with my hand
reaching to undo the leash,
I noticed through
the window how the juniper
is more silver than green.
It’s a silly thing, but
it stopped me long
enough to notice how
the silence, too, has
a silvery hue. And
for that second, I chose
not to fill it with gnashing.
Not the next moment
either. Suddenly, in every
moment, there is more
to notice. The words
follow my gaze and perk
up their ears. We all get
very quiet. None of us want
to miss a thing.

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In the Lengthening Days

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 13, 2014| 6 Comments »

Instead of telling him I am angry,
never mind what it was, it was
nothing much, but I was angry.
And did I tell him? No. I went outside
and shoveled snow and told the driveway
all about it. Told the sky as it changed
from gray to blue. Told the empty
cottonwood branches. Told the missing moon.

*

The snake coiled up her arm
and round her nape, around
her face. It was red and gold and black
and never rested in one place. It twined
around her torso, round her jaw
and round her back. I watched
the woman as she sat there, eyes closed,
arms and spine relaxed.

*

A question I have never asked
but someone else asked for me
and printed the study for all to read.
Why do birds live longer than turtles?
Not the mass. Not the heart rate.
The resting metabolic figures only somewhat correlate.
It’s how much energy they expend
over their lifetime. The answers to this study
come slow.

*

Hopping mad. Glopping mad.
Splopping, troppling, blopping mad.
Hard to be mad when
you’re rhyming nonsense
with nonsense.
That didn’t stop me.

*

In the story the sage
talks about the knowledgeable man.
When the deadly snake twists up
his arm, he thinks to himself,
This snake could kill me. I should
brush it off. The wise man
doesn’t think at all. He simply
brushes it off.

*

Who is the one who thinks
she is angry? And who is the one
that notices her?

*

A straight line of black
through the snow. A wider
straight line of black
through the snow. A whole
driveway of black pavement
lined with snow.

*

I do not want to outlive
the Galapagos Tortoise
who lives a projected 170 years.
But I do want to live
long enough to learn
to love you better.

*

Don’t let it touch me,
don’t let it touch me I think,
and then it is happening
already the snake is moving
around my wrist, my elbow,
my armpit. Don’t move,
I think. Too late to brush
it away. Sit still, I think.
Relax. Expend no energy.

*

Snake. Bake. Cake. Lake.
Smake. Trake. Grake. Sprake.

*

The anger is real and then
it is gone. The woman is real
and she is still here. The snake
was a fiction and still
it is twisting around the woman
who stands in the drive and watches
the sky as it turns from blue to gray again.
It seems to happen slow.
She only has 2.25 billion heartbeats left
if she is lucky.
She tells the drive she wants to make the most
of every one.

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Not Too Late

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 21, 2013| 8 Comments »

Mom, says my little girl, how does mad
get in your body? Her voice
is so sincere, full of sock monkey
innocence, transparent as pink tutu.

She is, I marvel, so curious.

All day I’ve noticed the sand bags
I’ve hoarded to lean against my doors
in an effort to keep the mad out.
I have put up signs, No Anger Allowed,
along with dispensers of small black bags,
strategically placed along my perimeters,
so that others can clean up after their own anger.
Which they seldom do.
Though sometimes they leave behind
the small black bags, heavy and foul,
hidden in the grass for me to find later
and throw away myself.
Which I do,
grumbling beneath a pretense
of patience.

How does mad get in your body?

Through the cracks, I think, though the cracks
are smaller than I want to believe.
Eventually, the water is not held back
by sacks of sand. It seeps. It leaks. It trickles.
It pools. It touches everything.

Just as the scent escapes the dark bags.

The Greeks knew how Athena could,
in her rage, make the skies
turn black and the mountains tremble
and the flowers wilt, how she once turned
a young girl who challenged her talents
into the world’s first spider.

When I was a girl, I learned
an unwritten rule, a commandment
so powerful it need not be carved in stone:
Thou shalt not be mad.

Though today, it did not matter how many barriers
I put up, how many though shalts I did not say. I was angry
anyway, felt the dark seed sprout, then bloom its terrible putrid bloom
and then, as I watched it, wilt. And I did not need do anything
except stand by and watch, more amazed than in judgment,
watched with wonder, even.

How quickly it unfurled! How distrubingly beautiful
the misshapen flower. How quickly it flagged, it drooped, it faded to nothing.

I don’t know, I tell my daughter. How do you think it gets in?

She tells me she does not know.

I want to slash through any bags I might have left behind for her.
I want to make way for the mad to rush in, and then help her
hold the doors open so the mad might recede as swiftly as it came.

But it is not my job to do.

Open your own doors, I tell myself. Slash your own bags.
And get curious, I tell myself, very curious,
the skies above me already turning
a darker shade of gray.

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