I remember…
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How do I become a poet?
Brigid
I guess it’s never too late to get all Celtic on ya. 😉 I got some new collage supplies today and was reading about some goddesses from Irish mythology for my book, and well, here you go. 🤗❤️☘️🇮🇪🧚🏻♀️✏️📝✍🏻
Brigid,
she knows the heat in your face
didn’t come from pulling The Lovers
out of a tarot deck,
she knows the blue streaks in the fire
you study is an illusion, tempting you
to wave your hand through the flickering daggers,
proving to everyone but yourself
of your resiliency.
She knows you can grow anything you want
without killing it.
She drives barren hands
to burrow deep into the boggy soil,
to hold bulbs like a child you’ll never know.
She knows when the wells have run dry,
and the battles are about to begin,
yet she satiates, inspires, ignites fuses
you never knew you had. #art #poetryandart #poetrylovers #brigid
Nostalgic poems
Pigeon
My father had this persistent habit of laughing
at his own jokes. Not a hearty, bellowing laugh,
thank God, but a gentle, closed-mouth chuckle,
as if he was trying to clear his throat.
When I was maybe 12, he recorded my little cousin
having a meltdown in the middle of my uncle’s pool,
after she’d been thrown in by said uncle.
“Help, help, save me,” she cried,
wearing her inflatable arm floaties
and my old Minnie Mouse dance leotard I didn’t need anymore.
“No don’t, I could get money for this tape,” he joked.
And then there was the laugh, which I will now call,
the pigeon.
The pigeon was often best heard on our camcorder.
We had one of those cameras that used little tapes
that we would then have to put inside a big tape
in order to watch the videos on our VCR.
For years, Dad literally took that thing everywhere with us.
In a Christmas video, the laugh came out
when he cracked a joke with my aunt
about my great-grandmother receiving a gift certificate
to Pathmark. “It’ll probably all go towards feeding the dog,”
he pigeoned. The same aunt called him out on the pigeon one time,
and he denied it – while actually doing it.
The same way he denied all the afterwork martinis,
the 60 hour work weeks, the tantrums he’d throw at red lights,
and the cancer.
We all thought he’d drop dead of a stroke at 52
the way his father did. “Never sick a day in his life
then boom.” Pigeon
But dear God he’s still here, and I can’t recall the last time
I heard that laugh. Whatever he records on his IPhone
rarely has his voice on it. But from his laugh,
I learned that sometimes you do need to nudge
other people’s sense of humor. Then sometimes
you have to nudge your own to remind yourself
you still have one. Dad still has that dry jokiness
even when things get tough.
No matter the month, day, or hour
everyone in his circle has to be okay.
If I told him that it’s okay to not be okay,
I don’t think he would understand.
But when seeking absolution after a rock bottom hit,
he’s the one to remind us there’s no where to go but up.
And then he may pigeon slightly as if he’s the only one
who knows that – and most of the time he is.
I’m from…
streets once crowded with Ben Cooper costumes,
running from door to door
through blocks of military housing.
In grassy courtyards, we’d spread out
old comforters and brought out Cabbage Patch Kids,
play food, and stuff we thought all women
had to carry in their purses,
like Dep hairspray, press on nails, and candy cigarettes.
On our blanket home we were adults
without a roof. We were women
without concrete ceilings.
Minor poem purge – thanks to Rupi Kaur’s Healing Through Words
Without Flight
“Because I’m leaving
on a jet plane…”
that could kill me.
Please don’t plummet to the Earth
at 300 miles per hour.
I want to believe humans are meant to fly.
We end up building our wings
instead of being born with them.
Don’t we have to earn everything
we’re not born with?
I know without flight, I would have never
heard the guards shush people in the Sistine Chapel.
Those men are still gods to me.
Not only are they divine creatures
for putting up with tourists,
they are there to protect that heavenly ceiling
from unnecessary noise,
flashes of light,
the breaths of millions who remember only
how God created Adam.
Without flight, I would have never been held
under a stone at the top of Blarney Castle.
Hands that held hundreds before me,
yet I didn’t trust.
Two widely spaced bars and a stranger’s grip
were all that stopped me from plunging
head first and backwards onto the lush green below.
I pressed a kiss to my palm and reached for the stone.
With the same hand, I patted the arm of the man
who kept me from dying. Perhaps he knew
I didn’t need or want the gift of gab.
Without a jet plane, I never would have experienced
the happiest place on Earth, once I finally
got a sense of what happiness was.
Without flight, I couldn’t have sailed away
with old and new friends,
for several days – doused in margaritas and men.
Friends who reminded me of the me I needed to get back.
Flying could kill me.
But without flight,
being stuck on the ground
is death’s fingernails on a blackboard,
its own virus that feeds on words and chances.
The Parasite
Dearest,
You’re a need to be alone
but not be lonely.
You’re a yearning for independence,
yet you always need help.
You’re a control freak,
but you pour responsibility freely
into the cupped hands of others.
You rarely make sense,
or you make too much sense – as difficult
to put into words as love – or more so.
You’re the friend nobody likes,
but that’s why you’re kept around.
Having you is better than feeling nothing,
yet not having you is like the moment
your host’s body adjusts to the cold water.
You’re the racing mind with too many targets
and the checked-out mind shrouded in a marble veil.
Those who carry you
know more about you than you think.
You’re the baking soda packed
into the depths of consciousness,
waiting for your host to spill the vinegar.
You forget how easy you are
to wipe clean after the storm.
-Regards,
Serotonin
Lights On
Could you do me a favor
and never not wear black?
Keep making me laugh
until my asthma kicks in a little?
Nothing your finger
tracing the length of my spine
can’t remedy.
I wouldn’t mind simply grazing
your collarbone with my lips
while my hand strokes the dark hairs
on your chest, exposed by your
missing top three buttons.
Tell me you love animals
while you build me the world’s
perfect writing desk
with reclaimed barn wood.
Come close to tears of joy
when all I can repay you with
is a scarf and a gentler
Sylvia Plath-style bite to the cheek.
Sing other people’s songs,
and I’ll forget they’re covers.
Read me your poems,
and I’ll remember how to breathe,
at least until you lower me to the floor
with your promise to never leave
the inside of me completely.
Serotonin with a side of fries, please 