the cherry blossoms are out
but half its people
are not here to see them
since the first justification
of saving lives, we have done nothing but lose
ourselves to blind hunger for
a precarious safety
built on the cancerous cremations
of human, hawk, herring
each uranium tear a blistering
of heart of earth, of relation
tell me how to come back
to where the sakura blooms
Written 14 March 2011
Published in The Writers Block Magazine (Issue 8)
Posted in Poetry
one by one, yellow balloons are
lost and let go of
nodding and bobbing and side-
stepping in a slow
skyward dance
their white strings caress the
outlines
of cedar
below this aerial choreography
two girls swing dance to the trembling beats
of hannah georgas crooning
over the sun-soaked crowd
and a smaller one is spun around
in airy circles
defying the call of earth
as long as her mother holds on
I dropped my heart here, somewhere
between landing past clean moving sea and
looking up at blue mountain iced-cake tops
years ago, now
and have not yet found
where to retrieve it
it is my last summer here, for a while
(because I do not admit, even to
myself, that change
happens and it might not be
just a while);
the coming loss persists in thought,
reminds me moment by moment
how it all moves away through me
past my ghostly grasping
so I ravel these nows into lines
strategically stored in memory for later
when I may need to follow the thread
that lifts my spirit from a lonely place
to the yellow balloon floating so high
it is now simply another whisper of cloud
Posted in Poetry
pebbles pressing against each rib
defiantly defining itself underneath the dress
she won’t remove because she thinks
she has wobbly bits
her food disappears from her plate
but they don’t go in her
they don’t sustain her
just the sewers
I can’t convince her of ‘enough’
when you’ve limited her concept of beauty
and she doesn’t see that was who she was
before you came along and said otherwise
Posted in Poetry
