SOMETIMES TO BREATHE

The painter attempted to paint the rain in competition with the poet, but the rain won.

The sculptor went a little crazy, and there was nothing left but alabaster rubble.

When the dreams were cremated on Saturday, they left a bad taste in our mouths.

One wanted to be on the journey and not outside it (taking inventory of loss).

Days became months; months distilled moments of frenetic calling for more breath.

Sometimes to breathe seemed a major accomplishment with various wars, and all.

If the enemy became oneself, there was no telling how much internal bleeding.

All insurance had been revoked, which led to an avalanche of bills and worry.

If the operation had been successful, the stranger’s kidney would become family.

We left our families at the door to cities of lost places, our more noble crimes.

To want so much colluded the results of the finest scientists seeking a cure.

Ambition had downfalls, ramping up anxiety to a new speed of self’s nightfall.

A letting go could let the poem find its way into the smallest crevices of light.

Melancholy could be banished with last week’s garbage in the dream world.

 

 

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PERMUTATIONS

It was more difficult when others watched the inevitable splintering.

Other times, being unseen for too long was dangerous.

When all was said and done, the finish line might be a cursory illusion.

The start gate, after all, had been jarring, to say the least.

The obstacle course in the scavenger hunt could subside with the fluffing of pillows.

One hoped for special effects while stringing the talismans onto a wrist band without a clear narrative.

The stop sign was stolen when one slipped out of focus.

I had forgotten to use permanent ink, and the sudden rain encrypted my sentences written to an estranged beloved who would sleep through winter anyway.

The mail carrier sang the same song every day, which some days I found comforting.

The refrain often follows under eaves that don’t terrify completely.

When three hawks fly overhead, slicing the sky, they form a perfect triangle without a familiar beginning, middle, or end.

Their beating wings don’t cast shadows or substantially change anything, yet a feeling takes shape, a balloon that lifts the horizon.

Then the fog comes to erase my memories, my wanderings through the forest at night seeking absolution.

I don’t know how to explain.   

Sometimes the answer is another question spiraling. 

Crooked hallways lead into strangers’ houses; the books lining shelves mocking readers.

Boredom and disenchantment become synonyms that can’t fill a pitcher, pour out a potion.

Not every day wants to be a page worth saving.

It was something to think about while imagining the aptitude of stars, the powdered bones of the dead encased in glass.

I wanted to help someone (anyone really), but I was busy drowning meaningless souvenirs at the banks of ill-thought-out behavior.

Transgressions could be a mistake of experiment, an unfortunate delay of composure.

Things became so multi-layered, the mirror couldn’t do anything except multiply sadness.

No strands of gray or white hair could be expunged forever.

The memo targeted the ones who were dreaming in dumpsters.

When the storm hit, the ships unmoored.

The wind doesn’t say where it has been even though I listen.

I could sleep only when church bells rang or when I located my grandmother’s purple dragon broach.

The stray dog has soot in its mouth and was frightened by anyone calling until the shaking of small stones.

Should you visit, I may not hear you if I am once again painting noise.

The apple pie might burn while I dust for ghosts in the basement.

Don’t be alarmed by the clanging of.

Trial drugs would be money-makers, stock raisers, but no one believes, life rafts.

The disease could mutate a handful of times by the time you read this.

Ancient sages in a bamboo forest are sculpting giant hands to clap through eternity.

The applause craved occurs in increments like a song.

I discarded all clocks to know myself better.

I missed the ticking when I wake, disorientated.

Was my own room an essay or a multiple-choice test?

Things morphed into other objects while ideas receded from the brain’s windows.

The object of the race transmogrified.

I remembered again that someone should tell the mother of the girl who studies under the willow tree during lunchtime that she needs a new coat and warmer socks.

The others are always throwing a ball, inventing new names for lost rabbits.

I wouldn’t say I was scared to any applicable parties.

The invitation came too late to RSVP properly.

I wanted to bring wine and align my errant ducks, lost at the border.

They echoed while I separated again, hiding from windows.

Tomorrow I will be better though I didn’t know if it was Friday or Saturday.

I’ll sew delicate curtains and invite the ghosts upstairs.

 

 

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THE ARCHITECTURE OF DREAM

 

The guard dogs become gargoyles in someone’s dream.

 

In someone else’s dream, the gargoyles turn half human and half robot.

 

The war, now internal, an eternal recurrence of masks, shoddy nomenclature.

 

One would think that technology could save us with a new virtual reality.

 

The philosopher climbs up from the abyss with a new wish list.

 

April couldn’t come soon enough until the disease climbed through windows.

 

Night and day, dreams of royal buffets and groceries—have a new scaffolding.

 

Under pressure, even currencies crumble like the finest of civilizations.

 

The architect is known to weep in gothic cathedrals.

 

There was the Eternal Loneliness of Clocks.

 

The children stage a grand parade with all their dolls and stuffed animals.

 

Parents, stuck to their home computers, throw confetti over their shoulders.

 

Night is welcomed when the dolls and stuffed dragons speak of their travels.

 

The architect stays up all night with blueprints and plans.

 

 

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REPLY ALL

The heartfelt conversation caused a heartache and a half.

I carried the half out back behind the rotting toolshed but couldn’t lift the whole one.

Something that was said echoed through the texture of days on repeat.

A blue jay perched on the empty bird bath, waiting for me to remember.

It would be better just to talk about the weather, the lavender-tinged early dusk sky, errant ribbons of cloud-light that don’t hurt until they vanish.

I brushed death like a horse, and the dust clouded my point of view.

When we rode into town, no one looked up or knew.

Google had become a strange life coach.

Alarms were set to swallow the confetti-assortment of pills.

I didn’t know how to stop obsessing about how to reply to the person who couldn’t stop obsessing.

It always helped to couch an opinion in terms of theory.

I didn’t mean to hit reply all to the disturbing email.

Luckily, it was late Friday afternoon.

My boss had advised me to drop the bullet points in my presentation and instead, by Monday, become a flow chart for the others to follow.

The formulas and data in the spreadsheets could no longer be verified.

The Canadian geese had already left for the migration south that was genetically inscribed in their wingspans.

After raking all the leaves, my motor skills stopped cooperating.

The neighborhood children, surprisingly tired of their electronic devices, jumped into the piles of leaves, but I didn’t mind.

Their belly laughs, untranslatable, inspired me.

I learned to speak a new language, but no one else could understand me.

Everything was a metaphor, unravelling secret codes.

I no longer had to think things I didn’t want to think anymore.

Sentences I did or did not say, but should have, crumbled with the new syntax.

I followed a band of strangers that had fallen off the wagon again.

Lying in the sinkholes, they renamed the stars for the ones who abandoned them bottles ago.

Someone left a small white cloth on a wooden stake in the field, surrendering.

With gestures and facial expressions, I bargained away the whole heartache for a clean slate.

Without the winter sun, I couldn’t find my way out of the forest until dawn.

I waited, lying next to a decomposing birch tree.

Deconstruction’s faded signposts mocked me.

This year’s holiday letter would be written in invisible ink.

Look at me! It would say.

I’m going to do something remarkable someday.

 

 

 

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LIFELINES

The oak leaves have relinquished to wind—into piles of odd, crinkled hands of some creature multiplying our paths. We walk through them, crunching the brown ones to know we are here. After all that has happened. What no one should speak of. Maybe quietly. Maybe when all the dirt has fallen out of your hair.

 

Your hair in the wind, a silver mane of wild horses that crowd the plains, invite ammunition, a thinning out. Look away, but it will still happen.

 

If you don’t brace for the cold, the wind can push you through new doorway frames. A perpendicular grounding, upright—a passageway. Hold your breath before you see it. The cold in our faces, in all we have become.

 

It happens to everyone. The proliferation of line items, to-do lists, paperwork, email, scheduling, bottom lines, rides to school, misplaced bills, food rotting in the fridge, mantles and seams of hurry, worry, grief, guilt, avalanche, quicksand, dread. Unnerving? Yes.

 

You should know that the ropes were tied intricately, reef knots I studied in a book nervously, before they were lowered into that chasm where you slipped from the rungs of your thinking—while wishing for less wind-throb heartache; that certain unpredictability would go away—the next day, day after, or next week. Worst case scenario: the pain would stop next year.

 

The anchor didn’t stay lodged under the wall of stone sprouting milkweed and small rabbits. Nor could anyone hear what anyone was saying, cooing, climb up, here near the sun-slant, sit behind the obsolete train tracks, wash your hair, make those animal sounds you were making down there. It’s okay. We could all use a reminder.

 

Sideline coaching back to the plateau, specific directions to the stage where we all wait, often hiding, for things to grow again, soften nerve-rattled cores, quell the sparrows’ nervous jumpy shadows, cut ourselves some slack before we find our way out of the darkening, thinning trees. No, none of it is higher math. Well, maybe.

 

 

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WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU

You can’t park there.

We gave you the wrong vaccine for melancholy.

Your ex has married and won the lottery.

Your current spouse has a secret bank account.

There are 38 more days of winter even though the groundhog did not see its shadow.

Not all roads lead to Rome.

The speed limit is 35 miles per hour.

You have the right to remain silent.

Not everyone will vote.

Due to a breach with our cyber security, you may or may not be a candidate for identity theft.

You’re late to the party; all the sushi is gone.

There is no fortune in your fortune cookie.

Your package has been lost or stolen; check nearby surveillance cameras.

There is no cure for your disease.

Not all the tests your doctor ordered will be covered by your health insurance plan.

There are more wars going on than the ones shown on TV.

Your library card has been revoked until you find the missing book you took out last summer.

The dog you rescued is having puppies.

Your favorite sweater is on backwards, and your socks don’t match.

All your co-workers, minus you, have been promoted.

There’s a monkey on your back, a chip on your shoulder.

The snowplow took out your mailbox, and you missed garbage day again.

Your psychiatrist had her baby early and will be out for twelve weeks. Act accordingly.

Your grandmother watches The Bachelor while drinking martinis.

Your son has disowned the entire family.

The Narcan didn’t work in time, but you’re not allowed to disclose who overdosed on the heroin and fentanyl.

Your DNA sample indicates that you may have been cloned.

Your neighbors are signing a petition.

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