you hate my haikus
you want the real me in verse
uncensored for you
One Day I’ll Be Back
you hate my haikus
you want the real me in verse
uncensored for you
beliefs
If You Were Me
if you were me,
tears and doubt would be so common
you’d learn to silently cry,
to wipe away moisture
while putting puzzle pieces together
with your five-year-old,
to catch that knot in your throat
before it bubbles into a balloon
of anguished sobs
if you were me,
you would be more than
an overly-confident status update
who brags about cycling down the interstate
for a late-night gas emergency,
who flippantly adds an impossible dream
to the brutal reality of all
that you must carry
on your already heavily-laden shoulders
if you were me,
you would see the reality
behind your words,
you would know how utterly small
you stand beneath decisions
that press against your soul
and tear you apart from the inside out
if you were me,
you might want to be
(just for one moment)
the safe-secure-satisfied working mom
who would never do this to her family
but then…
you wouldn’t be me.
i wouldn’t be me.
and what kind of truth
would we both face
if we met, you and i,
and we were not ourselves?
Brooklyn
he says it is a woman
but i know it is New York
if he had its blood burned
into his childhood
he would understand
just as my girls
who argue with him
about the name of the song
and count exit signs
along the interstate
we will be there soon
we will be there soon
we will walk across that bridge
and enter a new dimension
of the city we all know
as we close our eyes
and dream a new version of life
just like my great-grandfather
(the one i never knew)
who pulled my frail and tiny
great-grandmother across the sea
and saw the glorious light
of the Empire State
he will see
they will see
(when we walk across that bridge)
just how beautiful
a new life can be
Acceptance
message of love lost
beneath judgmental hatred
my girls will see love
Infiltration
i am infiltrated with imagery–
a small town upbringing
infused with adolescent inner city,
torn apart by the desire for more
the desire to make more
out of this oh-so-short life
like drones we clock in, clock out
stay in the same place
and never put our lives on the line
for a new awakening
i put it here now
to step out of Big Brother’s reach,
yet he still watches my every move.
i feel his shadow behind me
mechanically moving my arms,
tearing away my emotions,
like being put in the room with rats
will i step out into the new world,
suck on the bitter gin
and tell him how much i love him
while my soul lies dead
inside my robotic body?
or will i find the forest
–the escape route–
and become the person
i always dreamed i’d become?
That Would Be My Way
to have my life played out in notes–
that would be my way
there is music in the relentless wind,
in leaves that swoop seemingly silent to the ground
in the bubbly laughter of a small child
for me it would be more traditional—
the white piano keys overtaking a room
in a cacophony of melody,
the voice everyone hears and loves in
one swelling moment of listening lust,
notes drawn out in minds, hands, ever-tapping feet,
playing out my life—
that would be my way
to have my life played out in song—
that would be my way
lyrics that cling to my daughters’ voices
and follow them into adulthood,
harmonies holding up the background
of every overly dramatic scene,
the sharp choruses and smooth verses
of songs that soothe me to sleep—
that would be my way
One of Five
If you would like a Spanish visa, begin here.
This is my living room floor. And one member of my family’s paperwork for a visa application. One.
There are five of us.
This is only ninety percent complete. We are still waiting for the two most important papers of all. The one that says I have a job in Spain. And the one that says we’re not criminals.
We are not criminals. We are five people connected by a thought I had when I was a heartbroken nineteen-year-old freshman in college. The thought? I will teach ESL. I will marry someone. And I will take my family to a Spanish-speaking country so that my children will learn Spanish.
What you don’t think of when you are nineteen: your husband who doesn’t speak Spanish (but will go anywhere in the world with you). Your third child who becomes mute in any discomforting situation. The job you have had for seven years and the colleagues you love so dearly, many of whom you may never see again. The friendships that (head out of shell) you took years to develop, which will deteriorate rapidly upon your absence. The Girl Scout troop that may not exist while you are gone. The grandmother whose hands you can still picture grasping her husband’s back, who may die while you are overseas. The children who will be unlike their peers when they return.
All the praise and forced gratitude and jealousy and pain that you must face every time you speak the word SPAIN.
The financial tally. Life savings placed upon the floor of the home you purchased so proudly at the age of twenty-three, fresh out of college, the floor your husband took out and replaced with his bare and beautiful hands.
When you are nineteen and heartbroken and set your heart and educational future and every belief within your soul on an impossible dream that somehow you have made into a reality, the last thing.
The last thing.
That you want to hear, at age thirty-four, once the paperwork is laid out on the floor, is that you have CHOSEN this. So you must deal with all the pain, the unbearableness, the consequence.
So this? This semi-occupied floor which could never fit the file folder filled with paperwork? It is an image worth a thousand words that will remain unspoken. Because I will never know if my loss will be greater than my gain, or if a giant gush of a wind will blow it all away, just after I have laid out my family’s life for all to see, for all to never forgive me for.
Simplicity
five simple life rules:
work, play, eat, drink, enjoy all
don’t make it complex
Cottonwood Colorado
trees don’t grow on beaches
and they shouldn’t be here
eighty years old
stacked up along the sand
a domineering presence
of the shade i crave
it is June now
and cotton floats in the air
in and out of our hair
our mouths, our pieces of food
a dreamy landscape
of seeds starting anew
i sit for hours
as lyrics drown out
the blue-collar Bud-drinking
daytime neighbors
i could sit all day
my cottonwood Colorado
a dreamy landscape
of all i will leave behind
soon we will breathe
the salty seascape
there will be no trees
only a faulty umbrella
unable to withstand wind
no cotton bleeding with life
no comparison to this life
and will my girls
sassy as ever in their new bikinis
remember what it was like
in the cottonwood Colorado
of their youth?
or immerse in a
languagefoodculture
that blends together
in a different dreamy landscape?
My Last Four Days
this will be my last four days.
i have one cardboard box,
a creekside path,
an empty laptop bag,
and just a bit of my soul
trailing me out the door.
i’d like to leave it open,
for you to say, Come back.
i haven’t asked for much–
and given so much instead,
but you don’t see the notes
i receive from a teacher
twenty years back,
the one who saw the light in me
when i was thirteen,
when i am thirty-four
instead you are blinded by dollars,
hassles, and paperwork
(aren’t we all?)
so much that the dream
that once burned inside you?
it has withered away
into a tiny flame
barely bright enough
to blaze beside my fire
Step Write Up 