Post 43 of my favorite poems.

There’s a girl somewhere sitting in front of a cheap, slow public library computer
Striving to be the first in her family
College bound
Walking home in the dark
Alone
To a hungry family, a poor family, an angry family, a broken family
That’s not me

I’m a Catholic white girl
Average brown hair (with the best shampoo),
Average blue eyes (with the best mascara),
Average height,
Average weight,
An average athlete (with the best equipment),
An average student (with the best tutors)

I don’t have to bring home money
I study on occasion
I cheat and don’t get caught,
I steal and don’t get stopped,
I live a life where community service is an act
And summer programs have to prove something

Politicians, poets, rappers, proud of their struggle
Tell stories of discrimination, perserverance, challenge, strength
Proud of their identity
Proud of the injustice they conquered
That’s not me

I was born in my identity
I was born where I sit in a J. Crew polo
In front of a plasma screen
In a well-lit, well designed, freshly painted room

I never lived through any struggle,
Actually I sprained my ankle once
And the saddest day of my life
Was when I left summer camp

I have food, a home, an education, a family
I have a second cell phone, a second digital camera, a third iPod
I have money
But I hate it

I never had to prove myself to the world
I don’t deserve what I have
I don’t deserve who I am
I have nothing to live for
Nothing to fight for
Nothing to beat

I’m not living,
I’m dying the American Dream

Every morning you’d think
all the moths would throw themselves
into the Sun.

But they wait
for streetlights
to consume them

in small coughs
of sparkle.
My dear,

my dear,
my dear:
I have stopped

listening to my moth soul.
My dear, I am done
tilting at streetlights.

My paper wings soar,
brush
your blazing heart.

She’s alone at a table for four at the bookstore coffee shop,
same as me,
and our eyes meet and I think
“It’s too bad I’m a screwup,” and I think
“Maybe I could straighten out if it meant I could kiss her,”
as she sits like a book I just need to read, two of us
taking up eight spaces across this place;
we could conserve and share,
“Think Globally, Act Locally,”
sit at the same table in polite mystery of one another,
shower together to save water
but I don’t know if she cares
about water conservation,
I can only tell that her hair falls like rain,
she has more fashion sense than I do, our eyes meet
and I’m scared of her,
all her “Noes,”
all her “Yeses,”
her “I want to have a baby”s,
her eyes
as small as stars,
the light having taken years to reach me here
at this gargantuan table as big as my life.

—Dedicated to those others who on telling people you’re expecting your first child find they don’t say “Congratulations,” they first tell you how you’re never leaving the house again ever.

Way they say it,
they say
baby
like a storm on the way,
they say baby
like that’s the cue for the thunderclap
to interrupt the wolves’ long howls,
they say I got three
and they’re the best
ever happen to me
as they say
baby
same as you’d say “run”
they shout
baby
like there are flames lickin’ at window frames

tell us
  how their lives
didn't just change,
        oh no,

as
they
say
baby
like a hyena inside there
comin’ out fangs a-blazin’,
they say
baby
like it’s standing
right
behind us
like it’s a tornado on the highway,
but ain’t
it
a marvel,

way they talk,
give that patronizing nod
when we
claim we still goin’ to poetry readings,
we still goin’ to see movies,
we still goin’
to phone our unwed friends
as they say
baby
like a bomb in the air,
they say
baby
like just waitin’ in the shelter now
with AM radio and a can of pork n’ beans
they weep,
sincerely

you're so lucky,

as I sit on the bed,
knees held precious,
watching my wife’s belly,
larger every day,
wonderin’
what’s in there.

We gonna need a priest, a gun,
silver bullets, wire cutters, 16 gallons a hydrochloric acid,
Red Cross, National Guard, seven million dollars
in non-sequential unmarked bills
because all these warnings giftwrapped with blessings
when I know

ain’t gonna be the same around here;
but

baby,

when we say “baby,”
let’s say it
like “bread,”
like “honey,”
like “beautiful,”
like “dear,”
like it’s true.

Like a leaf cradles rain
Like the wind rocks the stars
Like the ocean suspends seaweed
You carry me.
Like branches sway in a storm
Like a fin swishes through water
Like air rushes through space
You move my heart.
Like leaves crunch underfoot
Like broken glass grinds on pavement
Like waves crash against the shore
I hear you.
Like a pen flows with ink
Like coffee drips in the morning
Like a creek babbles at night
You let me cry.
Like a draught of numbness
Like woudns slowly fade
Like water smoothes stone
You heal me.
Like a child kisses a lamb
Like an angel’s wings shelter
Like God holds the world
You love me…
And I love you the same.

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Remember us;
For we were once the stars.
The distance we soared,
Across freshly spun skies,
That we made and explored,
We were gravity, motion and all.

Oh, together we fled,

Now, you are you, but I wish,
you were mine.
My love, my divine.
(My heart.)

And those lips that I kissed,
They did never exist,
(But in dream, curse my mind),
And shall be lost amongst time,
Yet the sum of your parts,
Shall exist, like our hearts,
Forever.

My nearly five-year-old
sister handed
me a colorful mess
of glue, dry beans
and magic marker.
“To Sayre,
Love, Meg”
it read,
with a backwards G.
She beamed so openly
with her missing tooth
as she watched me study it.
I tried to find recognizable
shapes
in the tangled creation
of her green and blue hands.
“That’s you!” she said,
poking a tiny finger
at the large, green blob
on the right.
“And that’s me.”
I smiled at her.
Holding back the laughter,
and unexplainable tears
that tried to flow
at the token of innocence
and love.
I wish things were
as they were then,
so simple.
When warmth came easily
anger never visited,
when the blue
stick arms connecting us
still held
as strongly as our
clasped hands.

A rowan, like a lipsticked girl
Betwen the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens

Coral used to tell me I was
plucked from the sky in an
instant – placed in the ocean
to be saturated like a sponge.
“Get your fill of this world,”
she’d order. “There’s no telling
when the tide will turn.” Scruffy
arms weaving with the waves,
my attempts to adjust to the area
would leave me stranded amidst
the worn shells of shore – hopeless,
lost – a five-sided shape with
no corresponding hole in the
universe. “But, Coral,” I’d ask,
“what happens if I die?”
“Oh Star,” she whispers, “the ocean
will cry. Her tears will cross miles,
and well up into walls
that’ll crash down upon the lands.
And when these tears rock the earth,
you’ll land amidst your family
high above this place again.”