telescope

If you offered me your home
I would curl up in your bed.

Turn out the light
And feel you sleeping in another room-
Your pillow pressed against my head.

When the sun rises
You will hold me again.

So drifting to sleep
I ponder the dawn
And how I've never really seen the sun.

Never stared directly into its blaze.
Even veiled by the eclipse
I hid my eyes.

For now
We peer dimly through a mirror,
Pressed up against the glass
In wonder.

A room away,
Averted gaze-
Then we shall see face to face.

And I'll stare straight into
The mystery of you,
Unafraid.

For now
There's no way you could love me more
Than to leave me alone here
Under the stars.

Drifting to sleep
I ponder them.

Concave mirror
Collecting light-
Quiet mind turns into telescope.

I savor the night
And the stars that shine through,
Their sparkle small enough to swallow.

Small enough
For you and me
To know.

onto the page

These poems
Demand to be written.
They keep me awake
And take their own shape.

As automatic fingers fly
Across the keys,
The poetry spills out
Onto the page.

handshake

carnage
from my knuckles
to my fingertips
rudolphs
glowing red
you hold out your hand
for a handshake
and i hope you don't see them
shining there
at the front of the sleigh
a way to cope
on foggy christmas eves
and other days

echo chamber

On maps Michigan
Is the shape of a mitten.
As our van drives away
I catch a glimpse of the yarn
Unraveling,
Revealing what I was unprepared
To see.
The hidden hand
Never stops waving goodbye.

Years later,
Sitting in the back of a pick-up truck,
You tell me I'm resilient.
Driving away, dirt roads,
From a village
That also is not home.
For years I hold
That word in my hands
Hoping it will echo-
Dance.
I want to be like the moutains.
I could always pick out the point
Of one, especially jagged.
Always wanted to be that peak-
The one to be noticed.

But then, behind the curtain,
Waiting to go on stage
I'm sick, uncertain.
The pills slow my heart-
Deaden its motion.
Shaking or waving,
I can't tell which-
They steady my hands,
Knit yarn around them.
Over and over and over again
I walk through flames
To get to the spotlight-
Have the scars on my feet to prove it.
After my short moment in the sun
You clap, the lights go out,
And the war is won.

Dark-
Drunk with praise,
I tend to the wounds.
Learn to equate love
With bruise.
Learn to empty myself
For you.
Coax acid up my throat
For you.
Learn to crave
The hollow-
Prerequisite
For an echo.

When I was a kid,
Taping pages together,
I imagined myself an author.
Now those pages
Are my echo chamber.
My thoughts spilled ink
Bouncing back to me
In letters written,
Woven into words
Reverberating.
I'm trying to empty the pen
Instead of myself.
Feel the blood pulsing
And not cringe at my own heartbeat,
My own motion.

Years later,
You move away again
And this time I do not feel it.
Too heavy, too full here
To be dragged along.
Instead
I set up fort.
I put on mittens
Hands steady,
Still hidden.
And the chamber echoes back-
Resilient.

paper squares

I saw my life before me

On the table.

A flat, white square,

A piece of paper.

I saw his hands,

Holding mine.

Picking up my life,

Folding, shaping it

In new ways.

His hands before me

On the table.

Inventors, builders

Making beautiful.

Would you fold me

Into a bird?

Do you know what would happen

If you did?

If I were a bird,
I could fly away from the cold-

With wings and no hands to hurt
Or to hold.

You see,
I've seen my life before me

Once before-
A perfect paper square.

With one hand
I picked it up,

While the other held scissors

And cut.

And there I was,

In pieces,

My own doing.

Torn and full of holes-

Trying to be like snow.

Oh God,

I'm giving

My life to you.

I lay it down before you

On the table.

A flat, white square

For a great inventor.

You hold my hand

Like he does,

But love me

More completely.

You've seen the snowflake

And remade me.

Folding, shaping tenderly,

Teaching patience,

The art of trusting-
The art of taking

Our hands off the table.

We're held in yours,
Perfect paper squares-
White as snow
And almost birds.

the light gets in

Inspired by "The Fools Who Dream" from La la Land

-

Freezing river.
Flicker and flame.
Her life was about feeling in extremes.

Feeling everything
Or nothing at all.
Skies with no ceilings.
Despair with no floor.

Can you have one without the other?
Can you have art without the embers?

-

She said a bit of madness is key

So I looked through her kaleidoscope
For the new colors I could see.
The colors gave me hope
That my madness had meaning.

I held on tightly to the refrain:
"Forget your perfect offering,
There's a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."

-

It shines through our weakness
And that's why they need us,
The painters, the poets.
The cracked and the broken.

Vessels of light
In our imperfection.

And for the teenage girl trying-
to be understood,
to capture a feeling,
to figure out if her imperfect self
Is worth anything-
That message is powerful.

-

But what happens
When we start to glorify the crack?
To celebrate brokenness
Rather than the light that's supposed to pierce it?

Romanticizing rubble,
Finding glory in shame.
Freezing in the river,
The flicker and flame.
Forgetting His perfect offering.

I've lived there too long,
Loving darkness and hating light
Thinking pain is beautiful-
That I'm only worth living if I hate my life.

-

Our cracks are not the hero here.
The light is, and it's the light we fear.
We know we're broken
And we want to hold on to it.
Believing I’m beautiful
Because I’m imperfect.
Because that’s easier.

Darkness is the absense of light.
But now the light is here.

“There’s a crack, a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”
But He didn't come in
To leave us like this.

diamond poem

Sun

Warm, bright,

Shining, Glowing, Burning,

Dawn, day, dusk, night,

Setting, sleeping, gleaming,

Cold, silver,

Stars