The Hardest Poem I Have Ever Written

This was beyond tough. Thanks to James D for forcing it out of me.

Apology

There are no words to cover braces coiled teeth

Spitting adolescent angst
War wounds of middle school warfare
You wore
Like you had walked the halls yourself
Like a warrior

When the sun bore you a daughter you knew someday she

Would bloom
Like turmoil
Backlash not understood
But you braced for misunderstanding
like a viking

Grinned and bore the pain of child’s
Curled lips or
Unsettled restlessness.

I was always the restless one
Never tolerant of idle
I brought light into the house like pixie dust
Put on skits for house guests and
Played fire engine with the tree in the front yard

Giggles filled the hallways while you clung to

every last laugh
Never on the inside of the joke
Never one of the girls
Though secrets and heartaches passed

notes through our hallway
Never scribbling the needs of hands veined with
Child and husband bearing.

And me
Illiterate to notes etched in cupboards after bedtime
Like my consciousness was limited to
daily explosion between temples
The thunderstorm of 14 that crashes down

on the house like a
screaming cyclone
And you
Always the last remaining ship after the waters had settled.

There are no words to scream adult guilt into the
inherent selfishness of daughter
I’m not sure my body could take anyone

being as mean to me as I was to you then

In those days of misdirected personality
And misguided attention
In those days when turmoil crashed

through our kitchen like neighbor’s dogs
sniffing for something bleeding and torn

to sink their teeth into

I cannot apologize
I cannot find words that say

I wake up sweaty with nightmare
Of my someday child
ripping through the house like a torrent rainstorm

I want to tell her I will be the harbor
Dig my feet into sand and wait
Bracing for the storm of her forgiveness.

Gauntlet: Thrown

I've been writing lately. A lot. This holiday season was the first I haven't traveled in years and somehow I found myself in our living room, writing veraciously like a boy scout trying to start a fire. Just go with it. 

This holiday season also brought a challenge from the one who can always push me in my writing, Mr. Daemond Arindell. He invited me to a facebook Poem-A-Day 2009 Group to write a poem everyday for the next year. Do I think I'll last the whole year? No sir. But the motivation to post each day, the inspiration from the others on the challenge and the informality of the poems themselves makes it something I've been looking forward to. At least for the past 10 days.

Finally, today I wrote one of the best poems I've written in a long time. I'm actually just super thrilled with this piece in a way I haven't been in awhile. No prompt or title, just gave myself time to make something out of thin air....

Most days, I wake up writing

Grinding my teeth like typewriter keys for thoughts
Buried in my head like they’ve been stewing overnight
Like heavy eyelids are coriander for the curry
So I sleep on it

Try to keep my brain from seeing this as anything
more than a poem

I see rain clouds in your confidence
But you tell me it’s tired.
And I accept.

Knowing we are the few that dream in metaphors and rain clouds
Knowing
not of a simple morning
a simple postcard,
a simple heartbreak
But rather the earths frictionless canvass cracking open like
jagged lipstick on light bulbs
A lazy head nod cocked to another day
Opening the backlit edges of clouds like motion
And we let it.

Like boomerang ping pong balls of expectation
Poems
The size of postage stamps just to tell me you wish I was there
And I do.

Like the night my rhythm came to a screeching halt
Turntable’s heart attack causing one monotonous scratch
Across the inside of my lungs
Like air was an electricity only you possessed
And I was powerless.

Like wishing the pen had power
Or even the powdered dust perched on the inside of my mouth
If I knew vivid came at such a price
I would have put this down long ago.

Given it to you.

Told you that some days you’ll wake up writing
Cursing inertia like back aches
Feel wrists cracking like marble chewed molars
You won’t remember what you once thought insane was
You’ll scream

Wondering what time of day it was
The moment your mind made the universe
So explosive.