Noah’s Dinghy

Your Obstacle

Just do
it climb the
mountain put
your shoe on,
one pantsleg at
a time.
You know there
is fog, but that
you will blow through
it. Don’t fear the
heights, you already
learned how to ignore
if those
trees give
you trouble
turn away from their
bark, build a fire
with their threats
and toast in
the assurance that
at the end of the day
it’s another cliff
left  not
to skirt.

Love,

Muse

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Scarlet Butter

Jurisdiction

I want to talk
about endings those
awkward things everyone
hopes will never
come. we like
to think that everything
we do everyone is
immortal that
there is no end to our
shopping list, our hours in
the night that
the week is infinite
so when
we come to the door
to the stop to
the close how
do we push into
the dark put
our foot out and
plunge into the messy
mists of “yet to come”?
I guess one thing
to remember is
when diving, don’t
breathe in, and if
needed,
plug your
nose.

Love, Muse

A.N.: My 10-12month internship comes to a close next week.- then I will search for a job until someone wants to employ me. Talk about giant cliffs to leap off of…..

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An Instance of Fruit

Corporate Failure

I do not care
for fax machines

I would rather eat
rotten nectarines

When it says press  “enter”
I say why?

And with a click and a honk
the machine starts to die.

There are some things
that are meant to be.

All except technology
and me.

Love,

Muse

A.N.: I do not usually resort to rhyming couplets,  for I mostly loathe them. However, this was a special circumstance of extreme disgust.  Like deserves like.

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Taught You Everything You Know

The Rules

I am so unsure
of everything I know
inside my skin
outside in the air I
have no clue
pictures look like
strangers
reflections like ghosts
that have haunted me since
childhood when,
at times, I stood in front
of the mirror, eyes unfocused
trying to picture who
I would resemble when
older
But now as I fix one
knot another unravels
at my spine and
threads tear away at the
base of my neck
I get one layer of
my person and
soul and forty more
come to light
fly away
and turn into pumpkins
at the morning sun.

Love,

Muse

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In a Boat

Everlasting Green

something in
me trembles as I
stand over the
precipice of
the sink and
look into
the drain at
pencils, marbles of
this millenia, spirals
of notebook bounds with
nostalgia, bliss of young
18 year old confused
me
when I go
to where the trees
beckon and
file this year
I  fear I
won’t be
able to  ever
get
that back.

Love,

Muse

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New Cheese

A Caring Profession

no more words
I quit
no longer saying
the right thing
the stranger who says
excuse me fix
my child
that’s it.
you do it you
solve their
problems.
file it all
lock it
up to be
checked out
by someone else’s
savior
because I’m
done with
being your
solve-the-trick
einstein florence
nightengale mother
theresa
failbot.

Love, Muse

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Any Direction

The True Calling

what does it
mean to
be a fixer
a healer a
helper

in my
own words
what does it
say that
the ways I fix
are unknown and
magic

in the beat
of a drum that
is daily

a song that falls
from my lips
because I put it
there with a
smile and
the right way
to guide
and move
them towards their
light

ironic that
I fix without
direction
with my
gut

but sometimes
can’t even
tape my
own rips
as fast as
you
them
the world
tears and
asks.

Love,

Muse

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Like Poo

Every

the stench
not quite
masked by coffee,
crumbles of leftover muffin
and barely-there perfume
is what sifts
in and out
of my waking walk
between the droplets
and over half rotten, slimy leaves

tucked deep
into the burnt-orange scarf
I, the  covert agent
notingthe
running sneaker
against crisp pin stripes
thick tights with a token skirt
the clockwork inevitable shorts-wearer
flip-flop sporter
and school girls
who give me additional, internal chills

and  later,as I wait,
dodging the wayward napkin
made pushy
and persistent by the wind
that seems intent on embracing
the very toe
of my shoe…

half-circles form
in the sticky styrofoam
of the morning cup against
my fingers
again
and again
as the bus is late
just for me.

Love,

Muse

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Let Me In, It’s Cold

An Education

it’s the shaky edge
of my too-full throat

flush of red
on my sleepy cheeks

the  over-education
of an un-plunged mind

beautiful burden
of a wrinkled coat

and the smell of
a stuffed subway

on every morning
of other people’s lives.

those strangers who
make my eyes

plus the trying words
that I can’t share

and the paper envelopes
that are sent to its heart

the shackles
of my  utterly confusing art.

Love,

Muse

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Unstable Ocean

Have you ever stood in the middle of something, where you could barely see the sky?  Like, if you craned your head all the way back, you could maybe see the glimmer of one star and the outline of half the moon? Well the city looms like trees.  Black and silver, like the kind of red-wood tree you wouldn’t want to meet in an alley way. The vans say “stick ’em up”. And the pedestrians dive in and out of traffic like pearl divers.  I can see the years floating off their lives, every time a car misses their shins by two inches.

I missed the smell. A combination of pizza crust, exhaust, rust, tension, technology and smoke. To me, the city reeks of mostly containable danger. Our hostess, standing outside on the sidewalk in bare feet, seemed like a warrior somehow. Wreathed in safety, wielding two keys and a reassuring laugh.  The lurid orange of this building is visible even in the semi-inkiness of the side street.

Outside the window, I can see the tops of flower baskets. Peering at the begonias flowering from a distance seems overly intimate. It’s  like the feeling you get when you are close enough to the top of someone’s head to see the part in their hair, feel the heat rising from the top of their skull and smell a hint of humanity and shampoo. I don’t know how I feel about viewing plants from above.

Something woke me by honking this morning.

Time to hop the subway.

Love,

Muse

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