Delaware Water Gap

We are off to the Delaware Water Gap!
Tents packed and rusty ancient stove,
Dad stops to buy marshmallows.
We make up songs about
Trash dumps and Jersey,
Driving up to the campsite raked clean
Blue sky and sun grinning
on our noisy machines.
Test driving the Nissan,
“Don't tell Mom!”
We finally settled down after supper
Slowly adults ordered children to bed
Fires began to be shared as adults sat
huddled by the light. My father
noticed me and with a broken promise
I stayed as he retired to the tent
and listened to stories with grave intent.
Free and alone, stranger's faces shone
and embers were almost blue
from heat against the cold night.
Wood burning and flickering light
then I gazed out into the dark
so still, no trucks or traffic distant.
And up above, more bright and clear
stars seemed much more near.
The last two and their homey voices
drift away from my fire.
Feeling the wildest breath of the trees yell at me
Now alone they stop whispering.
The star's stony silence and the trees
shouting in the night.
I sprint to join the wind in battering
the loud leaves and bowing grass
Trunks backed farther away, and when
I fell the earth warmed me from the day
Still I laid and the roaring earth beated out my time
the wind told me secrets from the trees
and then the stars squinted until I stood to see.
Trees quiet for a minute,
the stars tried to wish me near.
But the distance was too far
and the tree-wind fury too fierce.
I danced letting the wind steer
wild whirling in the tree-claimed night
until back to the fire I stared down.
Pounding from the ground.
Trying to be the new wild me.
Bowed head, asking the wind and the earth to let me stay.
Then slowly the stars dimmed with light
The trees were not dark but outlined with gray
The fire was low and the first bird call
heralded first daylight and the death of night.
Then I pulled my sleeping bag to the Nissan
And covered my head in a reclined driver’s seat
and could not dream.

mango

I hate you most when I remember the day
we laid on the soccer field hands melted together
warm salted skin still sticky
from the bleeding mango juice
when you flayed the fruit,
skin shaved off and
filleted out flesh for me.

I curse you when you said you liked me
And then handed me the knife and
showed me how to stab and slice
down to the pith.

I will rain down fire and ashes to burn
Your blood-juicy body
already empty of the sticky warm water
fed to hungry mother earth.
Empty table sits with my mangoes
waiting for me to feel mango lips
screaming from their orange damp depths.

A Race

What is the color of the sky?
I say “Not blue but gray
With purple and white added up high
today.”

Make me a man in a minute and a half
Call me a monkey
Try to make me just chaff
But I’m too black for you to see

I am black
My mother and sister are white
Two more brothers are Latino
And Dad is frying latkes tonight

When someone calls you dirty
What do you say?
Tuck it tight inside
And walk away.

White mother, try to make me
understand.
White hand in black,
cross the street, hold hands.

Would she lie?
My boy don't cry.
You are mine, toe to nose
and our skin color is just clothes.

Take them off and
we're all the same.
The colors people use
are just a game.

You say I'm white
But look at my skin in the light.
Is it white like paper or clouds?
No it is freckled and really light brown.

Except where you're burnt.
There you are pink
And tan brown where it doesn't hurt.
With a little yellow or orange I think.

So what color are you?
Not black like the cat
But I am brown too,
Just much much darker than you.

In a race someone
wins on a long straight track.
In a maze all are lost until they come
together to the center, coming back.

What is the color of the sky?
I say “No more clouds up high.
Sunset pink, Mom.
Sort of like you.”

Return of the Blog Entry

Did she forget about the blog? No. All creative efforts have been focused on a creative writing class and how to survive until the summer. But the summer has now smothered us all and the entries will continue with a vengeance unknown as of yet.

Muffin

I stole a muffin last night
And I’m telling you this morning
Because I thought you might
Notice and wonder where
it went. It didn’t walk away.
It didn’t fall into a refrigerator lair.
I just felt it should play
With me and my appetite
Until it lost to me in a fight
And I ate it up out of sight
Swallowing the evidence.
It was worth stealing.
Maybe I’ll replace it, but
Watch me or I’ll eat that one too
And there will be no muffin for you.

Keys

Lost again
They treat me like the worst friend
Dumping me and dear john send
And moving around just to confuse
Without a forwarding address
Do they want to me to lose
My mind because I want to find.
Small, they seem to always need to
Be found
But location confounds
Do I not pay enough attention?
Do I abandon and ignore?
This behavior is the typical convention
And attention would be a chore.
Get over it and show yourselves to me
Or I’ll make new copies and you’ll see
Only the inside of a drawer tomb
Until I lose the new ones too.

China

far away and surrounded by strangers
a restaurant
sitting with an empty chair is
a reminder of a lost table almost full
my abandoned seat
walking away with box
take out boxes stack in bins
a less intimidating companion than
an empty restaurant chair
staring silently
shamed into loneliness
take out eating in a secret room
curtains pulled
TV blaring foreign blasphemes
chasing away the echoes
a book near enough to hug

fourteen hours from now the abandoned
table will creak with use and
the raucous patter and loving argument
will commence again in front of paper plates
they are in the past
future me will be waking the next day
working without remembering the echo
echoing over to them

Untitled

I wonder in the wandering feet far reaching
Is there a haven I am seeking
Or another sky far distant
Hues hallowed and nonexistent
Dreaming of a lonely figure found
Underneath horizons stretching unbound
A pinpoint to focus all wrapping around
The planes rolling, circling on and on
Until it hits the black unknown beyond
The world and space and time
Empty with echoing silence except a heartbeat, mine
Mingling with the silent center, all in time
With my walking feet and the beat
So loud and solemn there is nothing
And then something more than me and my wandering beat
Still and divine, every moment and line
Frozen, with a breath I finish and slump and sigh
Walking on to see eternity close up
And then run away because I’m shy