Erinaceous

I'm swelled; don't touch me yet.
Dark burrowy underground is quieter
Than this way you have of
Picking me up by my shoestrings
So I bristle. It's natural
Someone should not want to be
Turned so upside down as you seem to turn me every
Time you speak. But quiet isn't always good
And safe doesn't always serve me well,
So here we go again
With the speaking and the flipping
And the way you make my quills
Stick out every which-a-way when you call my
Name. Tingling starts in my squishy bits
And works its way towards my spinose ends, and the surprise
Is just more than I really know what to
Do with. So don't touch me yet, or I will ball up around
The flutters (to keep them safely encapsulated) and
Thank you kindly to remember that I do bite.

Utah, Astronomically

Saltine air makes crumbs of my shallow breaths.
The words don't drip anymore,
But with skeletal jerks
They unleash feral snarls from among my ribs
And the air wraps brittle scarves over my legs
Climbing past cat-o-nine-tails ridges on my belly
To snap my head skyward
Where stars like needle pricks
Bite pictures on the black velvet
And the summer night tells and tells how
This sky goes on forever
And there is shortage of neither stars nor moon balm.
I might get it wrong again,
But there will still be stars--stars and Diana--
To sing me moon songs
Even if my outsides turn to brown paper,
And the dried up gullies over my skin
Slish when I walk, telling the story
Of arroyos down my thighs,
Even then there will still be stars aplenty.

A Plan

I'm digging a hole
Digging a hole
Digging a hole to China

To bury these bones
Bury these bones
Bury these bones forever

And then

I'm building a raft
Building a raft
Building a raft with driftwood

To float out to sea
Float out to sea
Float out to sea forever

And then

I'm humming a tune
Humming a tune
Humming a tune to myself

Until I fall asleep
I fall asleep
I fall asleep to music

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.

Icarus and the Timebird

When will I be magic?
I pounce, thrash, punch the air.
No refined sugar suffices.

I climb up and up,
Flaring my ire at the staircase. This is how I have to travel now.
I settle for spitting from the roof of the Shaw building.

I miss those wings. I know they were mine.
Maybe it was centuries ago, maybe it was another life.
But at some point I had them.
I have dreams of thermals and tailwinds
And always wake with knotted shoulders.

I am jealous now.
They were mine.

I glare at the clockworks, its sad, sad chiming.
At noon I was a clever prison break.
At three there was hot wax dribbling over my ribs.
I plunged into the ocean, no fins, no gills.

The irresistible sky beckons, scolds,
As though I could will my vertebrae to open into pinions by thinking,
Transform, transform.
Hollow out my bones and float backwards in time.
Believe me, I would.

Atop the Shaw building
I spy on scuttling people, haunt the rafters
And wait for the time to spring up
Into the ozone.