Or Maybe It Will Be Fine And I Will Be Embarrassed For Having Been So Fretful

Roots descend from my
Greenery
Splitting into dreadful katakana
Little white
Hairs pushing deeper
Into dank memories of mouse bones
And worms
And beads of loam

Up grows the shoot and
Into people's view
Sprout joyful unfurling dewy
Planes of green
Verdant stars or palms
But what you
Don't
See what you never see
Is the latticework
Beneath me

You will not
Hear the grunting of
Spindly fingers as
They hold and hold
So when the
Weather arrives I
Don't wash
Away like
Promises in the sand

My open
Hand to sky
Is only
Possible because I
Grew where I was planted
And shoved
My toes in
Daring to make a home
And letting the dirt seep
Up into me

And now I am expected to
Unearth
The roots that feed me
Divorce them from
The muddy
Barons of backwards
Politics and
Trade in sweet
Tea for Gila monsters
And alabaster flats

How will I
Grow in this
Arid place?
How can
I believe in the feathers
And miles of cloud patterns
With bald sand
Beneath my feet?

When I know I cannot
Stay
And the winds whip up
Salt all around
Me how will I keep
From blowing away
With them?
Will I be thrown into
The Pacific?

And whether or drowning or
Waving you won't be
Able to tell
Until
You see those spindly
White roots
Wrong side down
Pointed towards the
Baking sun
And sinking slowly
Into the sea foam

Magdalena

Maggie, short for Magdalena,
strolls away from me with an orange in her hand,
sticky from the grub of the day.

The earth moves for Maggie.
How could it not?
Around her there must be some mystical shield,
an angel, maybe, or a protective spell.
I imagine the heavens holding a council meeting
to discuss bringing the mountain to Maggie.

And she drinks of it with ferocious thirst.
Maggie grabs the world by its scruff
but then with worshiping hands, cradles it.
And the world, it cradles her back.

She's got some umbrella against the clattering,
the jostling, the pianos that fall from the seventh story.

I, too, move for Magdalena.
I call her by her given name and will the asteroids to strike elsewhere.

Double Dactyl

Miracle thunderstruck
Fencepost a money drop
Fun with a porpoise
Is nodding my head

Ballet shoe miracle
Thunderstruck nodding is
Brontosaur crawling
Its tar-pitted bed

Orange cone Superdome
Purposeful beau soleil
Things I can dream about
One at a time

New shoes and brontosaur
Give me a moment here
Breathing hard into my
First gin and lime

From Jess' Poetry Challenge

"Write a poem that begins with the phrase 'I am a love story' "

I am a love story
My opening credits are epic and my heroine, she
Is not the definitive beauty
(She cries too often, and can be
Extraordinarily self-righteous, so for true
The audience doesn’t always root for her)
And what she falls in love with is
The horizon and what
Sings her awake is
My whisper in the morning that today
Might be different

Oh, I breath her in and at the exhale
She comes out bruised, and vehemently swears off my epilogue
But I never believe her because time
And again she delves,
Waltzing between my lines
With new hope that someone’s forever will
Coincide with hers, and
Pursues the dream with such
Vigor that it doesn’t matter
How many white crosses
She passes on the highway because
Every single time, she creates the
Most moving balcony scene you’ve ever beheld

Nobody Expects a Piano

Nobody expects a piano.

It started with a minuscule shadow on the sidewalk.
You weren't even looking for love, and then, whoosh!
There she was, charming and blonde and callipygian.

The shadow grew so much more quickly than shadows ought to grow.
We are accustomed to the evenings falling fast here.
After supper you can usually only play outside for an hour or so,
And you can watch the darkness at your feet
Lengthen from a figure of your own height into a horizontal giant.
But this was different.

She was honey-colored and melodious
(Or was that melody just the whistle,
The rush of air, falling pitch and prophetic crescendo?)
Whatever it was, you listened, transfixed.
You loved her, no reservations,
Not even three in the afternoon, and nobody expected it.

You stared at the ground
At that sliver of black, expanding like the universe
(Except that this time the bang came afterward.)
The note in your hands read,
"I am flying to Prague or driving to New Mexico.
It doesn't matter which.
Goodbye."
And that was all.

You never saw it coming; she had seemed so happy.
It came from a window on the seventh story,
And you stood as the shadow grew at your feet,
Soon over your feet and knees and then,

It happened faster than anybody could have guessed.
The piano landed squarely on your head with a great smash.
We ran towards you, tripping over b-flat minors strewn on the sidewalk,
And for half a minute thereafter, we could hear
The percussive jangling of splayed keys, hammers, and strings.

tapping toes

I seem to be slacking. Poems are humming just under my surface but I can't seem to hear them. Yet.

Have patience.