#7/30 - 2015

[prompt: Grab the book nearest to you. Turn to page 47, 59, or 92. (Just one, no cheating!) 

Write an acrostic with the third sentence on the page you have chosen making up the first letter of each line. page 47, line 3 of The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester: "They courted quickly, and tactfully out of sight of the curious"]


They met under strange circumstances, and
courted the idea of their fingers on the same book being fate. it was dismissed
quickly, neither having been much of a believer in predestination,
and each assumed responsibility for their actions that had led them,
tactfully, to this moment.
out of the swirl and swing of everyday occurrences, out
of the reins of a scheduled coupling. fore
sight is always misinterpreted as the ability
of an individual to wrongfully assume
the authority over knowing what is simply
curious coincidence.

#6/30 - 2015

Career Counseling
is never a phrase I thought I'd pencil into my datebook.
An entire hour of talking about myself.
60 long minutes of what I want to be when I grow up.
But to my surprise,
I enjoyed it.
Disarmed with some colorful language
on the part of my counselor as she sat down,
clad in an orange blazer and a Tigers tee,
I found it easy to slip into conversation.
Retrospective on my past employment led to
a shimmering seed of an idea:
I like to tell stories.
Something so simple, something so obvious,
but it thrummed with truth,
the conversion of straightforward data into
a tale
or an argument.
I think I needed this reminder.

#5/30 - 2015

Lean close, Green Giant, and I'll tell you a secret.

The Internet is a strange place.
The anonymous ebb and flow
throws words across timezones and continents
like an enormous game of cornhole.
You cannot see the mark
to miss it
and missives fall heavy
leaden
context and meaning congealed and unintelligible.

Lean close, Green Giant,
and I'll tell you a secret.
Anonymity does not mean
immunity.



[Title taken from the title of a craigslist missed connections recently. poetic, eh?]

#4/30 - 2015

I did not prepare

for this.
It is Bout Day
and
I am not ready. I am not hydrated. I am not mentally prepared.

I lived the Roster Alternate life,

prepping for the game as a spectator

as a just in case:

take away the nerves and the self-doubt and the worry.

But now it is real

and my gear is still on after warm up

and the buzz is in my ears

the deafening noise only lessening for my name over the loudspeaker--

a phrase that still thrills me
even 400 days after my christening.
Even though I will probably ride the bench until the second half,
even though I am not prepared,
every face in my jersey beams as my hand hits after my intro lap.
I am a part of this, and it is marvelous.
I nearly run into my captain as I rejoin the line,
hands on hips and toestops sliding as I make my stop,
and she places a hand on my own and says
you got this, don't worry.

But I was fashioned to worry.
I am built of overwrought thought and scenario playouts
and it is all I can take to be still.
Still, my leg shakes as I step up to the jammer line,
seven minutes left in the game,
three points down,
my first jam.
A time-out for a bench violation draws on the waiting
and I try to feel the energy rolling off my teammates
and channel it into slowing my nervous heart.
Five seconds is called
four of my blockers in front of me
three points for me to make up
only two opposing
and the whistle blows.
I am ready.

#3/30 - 2015

"Fog"

by Carl Sandberg

has long been one of my favorite images.

But tonight, this fog does not move 

on little cat feet.

This fog has fingers,

and it wraps around me as I follow the highway home,

and sometimes

the fingers lace together into a wall

blocking out any sense of horizon or distance,

hiding overpasses and signs until they loom up on top of you

like the Argonath statues of old.

Driving through this fog is 

a sisyphean journey,

my only aim to keep the car between the lines --

the car is my burden, the lane is my mountain --

but I have no release, no relief, from the top of the mountain

I must just drive into nothing

and hope the world is still there

#2/30 - 2015

I caught a first shiver
of mortality
recently
on a visit home, wrapping my arms

around my little old lady dog.
Her middle has filled out a cylindrical space,
thickened significantly
since I scooped her out of the kiddie pool of her roly-poly siblings
and took her home with me.
I can no longer count her tiny ribs when my fingers move over them.
Her legs have bowed outward,
compressing under the strain of age and her semi-permanent
position as Couch Dog of the House.
Her eyes have clouded--though she could never see too well
through the forest of hair she would not suffer us to trim--
and unless prompted in the right direction,
she will bounce her tiny nose off of objects in her path
simply because
she does not know they are there.
Phrases drop delicately from the lips of adults around me,
as if I am right back at age twelve, little concept of passing,
of goodbye forever,
and I am comfortable in this ignorance.
I have been told, it might be her time soon,
she is so old,
she can barely see,
it would be the right thing to do...
But she still licks my jaw when I nestle myself around her
like I did when I was twelve.
She still jumps up into bed with me
although she needs an assisted path now, and
rarely moves once she is settled.
It may be her time soon,
but I cannot fathom that.
Although she lives with my parents now,
I cannot imagine my life without
her little ball of matted warmth at the end of my bed
plopping right between my feet to sleep
so I cannot move
for waking her.
I sat with her gathered to my lap
recently
and thought about all the things I should know by now
and all the things I wish I could go back to
and remember

#1/30 - 2015

With renewed vigor I sit down
at my desk of sunshine
and blank paper.
This is where I live:
in the moments with crisp to-do lists
and guidelines to follow like a tow rope in a snow storm
but it's taken me some time to compose them for myself.
It has been a month
about
since I left that toxic place
and I am ready to put in my time.
Girl has a schedule and a list,
a planner and scribbles on a napkin,
Girl has a new computer and a shiny attitude,
a plan and some walking-around time.
She turned her can'ts into cans
and her dreams into plans,
or so the saying goes,
made to rhyme so as to stick in your head longer...
and isn't that what we all want?
To make something
to give part of ourselves to the world that gets stuck
and is remembered?
I think I know where to
begin.