Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, poem, poetry, slipping on February 1, 2017| 4 Comments »
It’s a slippery
world with slippery
ways and the treads on our soles
only keep us from slipping
until they don’t—
slippery words and slipping red shoulds
and slippery thoughts and slippery roads—
and each time we slip, we bruise,
then we rise, ’til we slip again
with our slippery steps
and our slippery lives,
it’s a slip of a wish,
this slippery hope
that we and the world
remain unbroke
n.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, losing the self, love, not knowing, poem, poetry, righteousness on November 18, 2013| 4 Comments »
The liars lie and the stealers
steal and the lovers love and
the takers take. The fighters
fight and the restless do not
rest. And also true, the liars
love and the fighters steal
and the restless take
and the lovers fight and all of us,
all of us want to be right.
May I be wrong. May I come
to you without my books,
without my rules, without
my shoulds. Let me always
arrive at your door with empty hands.
Let me meet you with my pockets
full of blank, not convinced
of anything except
the possibility of everything.
Let me be wrong. Let me not label anyone
a liar. Let me bottom out.
What is it in us that wants to be right?
I have seen it turn a whole month, a whole life
to ice. I have felt the chains of certainty,
I have worn the shackles of listen-to-me.
Let me be wrong. Let there be chinks
in my belief. Let there be splinters
in my conviction. Look how alone it is
in this hour when I am so perfectly right.
May my rules go begging. May my imperatives
learn to crawl. May my righteousness hold
an empty bowl. May my musts all redden to rust.
And may I be wrong as the wrongers are wrong.
And may I unknow. And unlearn.
And unselve. And love as the lovers love.
*with a first line taken from David J. Rothman, “And Remember to Be Kind to Yourself”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, community, fragile, poem, poetry on October 6, 2013| 1 Comment »
Fragile, said the stamp
in dark black ink imprinted
on the cardboard box.
The bottom of the F
was not quite dark enough
to read, but there was no mistaking
the message. Things break.
All day, I imagine
the word invisibly stamped
on everything I see. Fragile
on the aspen trees and Fragile
on the chopping board and Fragile
on my daughter and the woman
I sit next to in the pool.
The red-tailed hawk. The cantaloupe.
The plastic bag. The lawn.
In the mirror, I see the word
in all caps on my cheeks. I remember
that afternoon in the car when
I wept and told my friend that I was breaking.
Open, she said, not down.
There is no shame in breaking.
Still, this chance to treat the world
with tenderness, as if the day
itself relies on how we hold it.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breaking, love, poem, poetry on September 16, 2012| 2 Comments »
All your wounds, I want
to kiss them, all the places
chafed, strafed, shattered,
clawed at or raw. Anywhere
you’ve bled, I will mingle my blood
with yours. Wherever you are sore,
let me knead you. Wherever you ache,
I offer balm. Let me cradle you,
hold you, hum to you, know you.
I cannot heal you, can’t whole you,
can’t help. But I can love you
in your brokenness. Now is the time
for love. No one can love without
breaking, dear. Come. The flowers
are fading. We’re all we have.