a spade

 sometimes a spade is just a spade

Retribution

Oh baby you don’t have a clue
The things I am going to do
How you’ll see my name in the paper
My face on the screen
Read my words in your books
In every magazine
Say I knew her once when
And no one will believe you

When I’m on the street signs
The monuments all mine
Masterpieces on the walls 
Of museums, galleries,
Newest season on the runway
Designed, made, modeled by me
You’ll look out the window
And wonder what you could have had

Had you been 

what you should have

You’ll say I knew her when
And no one will believe you
You’ll say I knew her when
And no one will believe you

No one will believe you
And why should they? 

It was never true
You could never see what I was

Right in front of you

Right in front of you
Now won’t that be some 

retribution

Goodbye for now

If you can't see me now 

You'll surely see me then

wisteria

Do you know that sometimes things just work out?

We hold each other in mutual unknowingness

temporarily stitching together sadnesses in the afternoon sun.

The details are unimportant, cumbersome, besides the point.

What matters is the mutual acknowledgement of frustration,

If we do not talk about it we will burst, she confesses.

Holding space need not entail perfect comprehension

to go beyond an understanding as light as it is deep.

We reach a wisteria grove 

purple and unexpected

fragrant and pungent 

and she places a fallen sprig

on my knee

                    before departing.

I sketch it hungrily, wishing for color,

an arc of green and flashes of purple.

as I sketch I realize, what I thought was 

the end was the beginning.

What if

What if not getting what you want is a gift
Perhaps the best thing that could happen 
A salvation from your own accidentally induced forms of self destruction
Darknesses that you will never know
(Saved as you were by refusal)
You will know other darknesses surely
Lovely and lonely
Chosen and not chosen
Who are you to think yourself master
Of anything?

You know how to play me

You know how to play me
blow deep blue notes into my belly
lightly touch my highest strings
make me tremble

You know how to play me,
you know how to play me.

Turn your face like a spinning coin
touch my waist just where I'm small and breaking
linger when you say goodbye–

You know how to play me, 
you know how to play me.

Never let me see (past) your eyes.
Trade in shadows and overcoats.
Say much less than it seems.

You know how to play me,
you know how to play me.

Keep me circling the sun,
unable to realize the clouds have come,
and think I was the only one:

You know how to play me,
you know how to play me,
you know how to play me.

Rejection

Perhaps to take the edge off,

a gentle setting aside,
an act of love, a care,
a saying of: not this, but that.
not now, to allow the space for
something else.

particular infinity

And then I realize
Everything is crawling with life
Watching the black ants moving in circles spirals patterns that I don’t understand
Again and again the message: live in this exact moment
In its particular infinity

mother ginger

when I am far from my mother, ginger becomes her.

hugs me with her aroma, tea in the morning, soup in the evening.

purely good. a love that is lingering. tender and soft.

I peel with the back of the spoon, Joris said, I love how you do that,

it is so delicate, but what he didn't know, what even you didn't know,

was the peeling is an act of love, the cutting, the imbuing, the drinking,

even when it doesn't lead to drinking, the ritual of doing something that might

make you better.