30 seconds of happiness

A drive-by. A mellow house at sunset.

Timing may be everything, or maybe not.

She could have glowed the same, say if

in the slip of morning, or the seep of fun.

But she shown in a photographic light,

and you know what that means.

Everything levitates, gravitates.

And anger (for lack of a better color)

won’t burn in a 5 o’clock butter.

So you are. Welcome to simmer

in 30 seconds of happiness.

Breathe a fuzzy incense ~ this subtle sigh ~

a chiffon house smacking of happy.

[for d’Verse Can you guess what color I am?]

“The clear vowels rise like balloons”

Like clockwork, I’m stillborn. 

It’s uncanny, you know? Words I’ve heard

before are setting my heart right presently

in the only way that’s possible and sure.

With my eyelids closed. In corpse pose

“Can a mother forget the child at her breast?”

–something sweet like baby’s breath

whispers to the veins housed within my

soft sack of skin, I love you.

I sense their faces.

I talk tenderly to the ones who’ve disowned me.

We walk barefoot until somehow we stumble

in the way of sunshine through an open wall.

Fresh faces smelling like apples.

I float into mornings this way. Happiness

evaporating cooly. I rise again, without them.

[for d’Verse Poets]

Been doing hair for eleven months

I pinch the red on his newly naked ear

between my forefinger and thumb,

still locked into their scissor-grip hold.

A blister of blood wells up willingly

— and so it is. With light pressure

there’s no fear in love, yet my fingers flinch.

“Please turn your chair this way.” Turn your

mind away from any form of reflection.

There’s no small talk, really. Just an old pair

of kitchen shears, his bones resting in the sun..

— coarse salt and pungent pepper hair

lying in a neat pile, soft under foot.

This is (literally) how we fell in love

he was perfect. appealing punctuation–

word weight and proportion.

truth be told, i’m sure i had a tiny hysteria

under a jasmine vine one afternoon

at the sight of his line breaks.

i laid across his literary landscape

multiple maddening times a day

pleasuring myself with his hand-

picked citrus lemons and verdant leaves.

when he supplanted ‘nape’ for ‘neck’

his breath brushed me exactly there, and

subderminally i knew i would be reading

this new and exciting language like the

back of my hand for a very long time.

novelties

i’ve been having my own thoughts.

i like to indulge

them with winter wine,

cover them with ridiculous red velvet,

let them stumble around;

change it up

for humanity’s sake of it.

my favorite is when they close their eyes.

they’re so sweet reaching out with starlight fingertips

as in a blindfold sensing game; laughing and

groping for a hand to hold,

feeling about for a wide-hipped partner

looking for an open-booked mouth

to dissolve it straight away —

bellow: we are legitimate, chaotic,

charmed, for sure,

[for TSM #143 and d’Verse]

Maya was right to say phenomenally

I’m a mythical thing beyond love,

above love. I sashay barefoot

out of a shower mist. Instinctively,

I know I hold all seven oceans

because I’ve slept with tides all my life.

Every morning I’m reborn.

Re-drawn in charcoal.

Without blushing, or becoming unbecoming,

I cover my body with milky white clouds.

I feed my tongue fresh-fallen snow and

whispering creeks,

because sometimes

it’s nice to taste like Christmas.

My tresses are a light southernly wind.

Each small breast, a suckled spiced latte.

Maya was right to say phenomenally.

I’m a mythical thing. I’m a phenomenal thing.

[TSM #138]

Pleasanton Ridge

“The mountain path leads skyward and dissolves into light.” -Tukaram

I examined my sadness all Thursday morning.

Everyone else was baking pumpkin pies.

I stretched my leg on a log, but not for too long

on account of me being unbalanced from the last 20 years of shade.

I asked some hikers (a man and his son), Is this the way?

And even though they didn’t look like prophets, I made myself light.

On top of the summit I got rid of a scarf, a sadness, a jacket, a regret.

I stayed there awhile on a wooden bench while communion lasted.

My eyes burned the whole way back down, because I inhaled the sun.

[a twiglet prompt & submitted to D’Verse]

Numbering days

How long, world? Stick your tongue out like an exhausted lion. Push your tonsils through an open window. No one’s looking. Cut off your mane. Regurgitate as formerly. I feel the urgency to tell you no one’s numbering days anymore. I’m sorry. The old pane’s been gone for decades. It’s a cutout. The plastic’s been ripping into sawed teeth ever since the 1980’s. Exited. Like 2020. A whimper. Try not to look back. All I do is look back. Let’s not use scrappy words anymore. There’s something sinister about deadwood in December, like the density of shwarma in our mouths reminding us we’re not from there, or here. Just keep walking out of frame, past this banged-up country scene.

[for TSM # 137]

On the Golden Gate Bridge

that day we had a little mood adventure

and yeah, there was water below,

and yeah, there were massive steel braids —

i don’t know if you saw it

the Benjamin Moore Paint bucket,

the little dogs on leashes

nobody panicked

sometimes we were hand-in-hand;

sometimes we acted those roles;

your hand on my ass

and some of the time i couldn’t understand

despite the daylight

despite the little dogs crushing it

despite me twirling my scarf fringe

despite the lilting of my head towards the sparkle

of the sun on the water

the fantasy always

of jumping

Jane Fonda calls it a pussy

what did you think she would call it?

more tiger, less sex kitten, taking over

the world and streets in a country that

needs the influence of women.

cats, so obviously woke.

it’s their drive-by super power to leave

calling cards of powdered prints in places

of men’s psyches which only creatures of high

intuition and acumen can reach.

[for TSM # 130]