Rights (a found poem)

Movement relying upon us
Beings bound for selfish purposes
Human nature serves our nature only
Masters may decide
if animals are created by God

Crashing in Reverse

You and I
Were like a car crash played in reverse
We were wrecked when we approached
And our collision put us back together
Our metal parts crumpled out smooth
The scattered shards of glass were blasted off the ground
And melted back into our window frames
The light spiraled down from who knows where
And jumped back inside our headlight bulbs
And by the time we'd stumbled off the way we came
Somehow we were good as new

Locker

It's funny how the place with your stuff in it
Becomes your home base,
The place you go back to.
It's funny how despite all our power,
The Kings of Nature,
We still rotate around
Some textbooks,
A mirror,
A tube of
Chapstick.

Outer Space

In my daydream I lived on the moon, alone
I didn't need a space suit or an oxygen tank
The laws of science looked the other way
And as the days and nights ran together
I walked for hours over the rocky ground
My feet were cushioned in the thick gray dust
Quietly in the distance the earth twirled, adorning the night
My only sky was outer space
The stars and the endless unknowable darkness

When I was tired, I laid down and just watched
On a scratchy old record player, I played low ballads
Violin and cello chords

Society forgot me, and slowly I forgot it, too
I knew the universe outside
In all its peace that we have never shared

The Real Problem

You told me once that you’ve never understood poetry

And I laughed today on my way over to give you back your key

Because I realized so supremely and so instantly

how true that is.

You’ve never understood poetry,

Not while it filled the pages of my notebook

As we sat side by side on the airplane to Tucson last summer,

Not when you saw it spilling from my tired eyes

That day two weeks ago when we had our last fight,

Not even when we danced at that wedding

And it wrapped around us like a warm fog,

Was like dew against your skin,

And I reached out and touched it

Couldn’t even speak

And when the song ended, you walked away

Like you were leaving a grocery store.

No, you’ve never understood poetry,

Not even when it was all around us,

Not even in the moments where we became it.

And there, all along, my dear,

Was our problem.

Everyday Danger

We walk battlefields every day

We go out into the cross-fires of aching perils

We pile on our heavy armor, our talismans

Praying we have a chance to deflect what might pierce us
Praying that like an action-movie hero,

we can somehow run through the enemy fire

between the raindrops

and come out spotless

Whether we like it or not,
Every one of us is armed
And not one of us is invincible

And we look around and see the fallen

And we see:

Danger is not a switch,

But a sliding scale

And the choice is to fear or to move,

To hide, or to breathe

For me, it depends on the day.

Resilience

My cell phone
has felt cold murky water
clasp hands over its head,
pushing it away from the air,
seeping between its buttons toward its green plastic motherboard.

It has tangoed with the ground, the flattest, hardest partner,
bouncing, skidding, sliding,
each hit rattling it through its casing to its wires.

It has pushed through on the last electron
clinging to its battery,
running on sparks, on pure momentum.

But like an old warrior,
like a creature that rises from ruins and cannot be crushed,
like a woman who leaves her cheating husband in the divorce room,
head held high, bright red stilettos, not a care in the world,
my phone still lights up and vibrates
when I get a text.
Scratched up, chipped,
but not a crack in sight. 

Turmoil

Hope and hopelessness are at war in me
Euphoria and despair like a cartoon angel and devil
The faith of my soul tells me I'm 
among the soft clouds;
Till cynicism hisses bitter in my ear
that it's all cardboard and fishing wire
And so, feeling still no leader I can trust,
I can only cling to what I love and what is beautiful
and try to do these things I want to do,
and try to be this thing I want to be