There’s something about a dirt road
leading you-don’t-know-where that rises in your chest like an incantation. The seconds throb in your throat, patient and panting, keeping time with the ocotillo rising and falling to the left and the right in the evening sun. I become the howl of dust rising in fire light, the stomp, stomp, stomp of bare feet and molten lava stars dripping from the sky. I’m trying to say that I meant what I said when I shouted drunken poetry into the night. The echo returned to me wild, threaded with hope, sounding exactly like home.
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The way words can never adequately convey the miracles one stumbles across and the way they can so easily be taken away.
Remember how there was so little to hold onto in the early days but so much concealed inside and underneath that I couldn’t see? The small, halfhearted start then the division, multiplication, and the branching away. Recall that I had good intentions but forgot to water things sometimes. Relationships and tomatoes suffer the same from that. The forgiving nature of the whole thing. That one way or another, it all works out. So many soft surprises coming slowly, slowly then rushing in all at once, the colors of jade, garnet, and coral, spread with sunshine butter and the feathers of birds. Never enough, and I do think tomatoes can be called that, grew deep roots, reached toward the sky, and woke up one October morning heavy with fruit hidden in all the secret and dark places. It takes some work to find them. On certain days, when the light shifts and the harvest is halfway gone, the richness and solitude sweep themselves together and place an offering at my feet. Sunshine warms my hair, which is wild and sprawling like the hedges that these tomatoes have become, and it is beautiful. I harvest with only birdsong and leaf rustle for company and know the meaning of plenty. The light on our bedsheets is emissary
of more. It hints at the way you will cry when your mother is buried, not from heartbreak but at the way that you feel nothing and then mourn for your own heart, forged steel, smoothed granite, laid to rest so many years ago. The first time you almost killed your baby brother because you hit him so many times and all you could see was blackness, a glorious Spirograph of pain. The next day, you were late for 4th grade because your mother couldn’t drive with so many tears in her eyes. She told me this story yesterday, your mother, regret a coyote loping slowly across the 40 years between then and now, mangy, flea-bitten starved to tell someone, anyone the shameful black truth that has been hiding in her mama heart all this time. I told her I was packing my boxes. Whispering, she tells me that her son is a beast. That she will never forget how flat your voice sounded when you answered her questions. I can’t help it. I am afraid of what’s inside of me. She will not admit how many times you said these words over the years. She says she loves you still and always will and that she’d hoped I’d quiet the roar. My own intuition has been telling me to run since the very first moment I sat across from you. I did not run and now eight years later, this light is thick liquid, creeping golden and alive across your rising and falling chest and it foreshadows the exact opposite of warm beacon, dripping life, electric salvation leading homeward. It pleads rescue me from the dark. It speaks of how the gravedigger knocks at your door every single week but goes away empty handed because you are trembling under the bed blind with rage. Heartbreak, the way your mouth tastes like pennies for days no matter how many times you floss and brush. How you have always known that tears taste like the ocean and sound exactly like fists landing hard on flesh. You are afraid of everything, most especially yourself. And rightly so. Do you remember that scotch filled night in which you told me that you'd never had kids because you were terrified that they would turn out exactly like you? I do. Why are you so upset?, you asked. I’ve worked so hard to bring you to this place slowly. It sounded like strategy. I remember the hollow places around your eyes. The way I felt suddenly cold and unsafe in my own home. I can see you standing there in our kitchen, haunted and terrified. Terrifying. Your empty eyes. And so I am awake right now, watching the light dance across our bedsheets and I am left wondering if the difference between you and a serial killer or you and a sexual predator is simply fear and I am thankful for that. Grateful that after all the posturing and bravado, all the anger and telling me what the fuck to do, that underneath it all you are just a coward quaking with fear. A small boy afraid of what is inside. I am not the same anymore. I will not be hunted and I will not stand in place while you pick me apart. So I am packing my suitcase and leaving. The breeze strokes the leaves of the trees
that my son calls weeds but I call wonderful. They will spend the day thinking about turning brown and drifting to the ground. Soon it will be fall, but not today. Today, the birds wait on power lines heads tilting to catch the sun. They send an occasional song through the air, which lifts and joins hands with others, singing itself across my wagon-wheel potting shed. The lavender digs her toes a little deeper into the dirt. Prickly pears widen their shoulders and stand up straighter, fuchsia cups on the tips of their tongues. On the west side of the city, someone’s motorcycle is growling its way forward too fast and I worry about safety - his, hers, mine, ours, everyone’s. Wind chimes whisper my name and I answer silently, so as not to break the spell. Save your bottle rocket.
I could set you on fire with my eyes, start the smoldering using the heat that rolled in with the clouds this morning spitting sparks into the hollow valley and burning brush from these blackened arroyos. Secrets must be told closed-mouthed. Whispered, drawn out long and slow like holding plums in your mouth and sucking them dry. I don’t fear abandonment but I do fear apathy and chill. I worry about admiration that ends in organized disappointment. I want a love that gathers itself in flames and burns itself to the ground every night as the moon rises and calls our names. Hands thick with paint, songs on my lips and a swing in my hips, I lose myself again, turning myself inside out again, just to feel something that isn’t there. Lying to myself so as not to break my own heart. I fear my own low expectations and growing old too fast, losing the wild side while time spins softly on a Saturday morning. Pen strokes paper, paintbrushes sunbathe in the sink, and the desert light drapes itself into a curtain across neat rows of beans and kale. I wish for harvest. I wish for lightning. Remember how I took your hand and led you to my room, to that sweetness of candle and sigh? I’m sure of who I am and who am not. Beautiful and strong. I speak the truth to myself, no matter how hard. I am nurturing and soft. I get shit done. I can’t promise the world but I can promise that you will never be bored. So after all this time, I’ve still got you on my mind.
You who didn’t know the first thing about balance, which is what I loved about you and I guess is also why you flung yourself headlong into the abyss. Me either. Can’t balance a checkbook or all these cogs spinning around in my brain and it’s always tripping me up. I’m always on the verge of falling. Despite the fact that fall is my favorite season, I don’t navigate falls well. Falling off of my big wheel, out of trees, out of bed blood pooling and nose cracking. Falling into love and out of love more times than the stars in the sky. Falling into myself, that black as tar mystery, falling away from you and from that snowstorm city. Joy has been sharpboned and shadowed ever since because nobody falls like you did. Autumn always makes me fall into heartbreak. Speaking of falling, I love waterfalls. The crash and break of it all, the smashing and reveling in the destruction, the fact that we don’t have time to sob over spilled milk and that things get lost in the churn and wake of water, the weight of it all. Is that what happened to you? You got pulled under? This shit is heavy and I guess I always thought we’d do this together, falling in and out of things. Falling because see here’s the thing - had I known you were falling I would have begged you to hold on. I would have tied you to this earth with ropes and all the bungee cords I could buy at the dollar store. We could have done shots of lemon drops until we were falling off of our bar stools and then stumbled home in the snow. I would have told you that they’re not worth it but we are. Oh, honey. now I can never stop falling. I am still here and the leaves are falling - they call your name every night at 3am. Remember that day when I was a spinning top and you held me in your hands until I slowed down? You didn’t let me fall. I wish I had held you like that. Like something beautiful and precious. Like the purest water falling from the highest cliff sparkling like diamonds all the way down, the sun sifting its way through like so many crooked and beautiful teeth. I would have brought you a parachute, made you promise to sleep in it every night and reminded you that falling is dangerous. The trees without leaves look just like spears and daggers. So it’s fall and you might see me smile on some days, but just know this - nothing is the same anymore and I keep falling over and over again into a space shaped exactly like you. ( <3 August 23, 2003 <3 ) elegy: a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead
Remember how she smoked too many cigarettes, flicking them one after another into the cold street? Standing there for hours under the streetlights, breath and smoke locked together like the blue and silver holiday wreath she found at the Thrift-a-Lot and carried through two husbands, one apartment, and a house. She once got top marks in typing but then failed out of business school because she took up with a beautifully broken man who kept her up too late and drove her to class each morning, swerving through patches of black ice, motorcycle tires spitting snow onto her stolen white jacket. I've always wondered why she never had warmer jackets. I've always wondered why she stayed so long. She couldn't leave because Wednesday was ladies night. She knew all the jukebox numbers by heart and made a habit of going home with the wrong man. Remember how she never cried but could take a punch and give it right back, how she spoke in circles and shouted until the sun came up? She once said her life was an afterschool special with tired country music blaring in the background and she wasn't smiling. Remember how we put her to rest in that record breaking blizzard? How nothing seemed real anymore and the snow was soft feathers against the windshield? The road led west and it turned out that she could have rescued herself all along. May she rest in peace. What if the earth were poetry
and all the curses were lies? If rejoicing in sweetness was learned from the start, would we have more of an inclination for heaping grace upon others and ourselves like wildflowers fresh from bloom? Let’s build something together, you and I. Carefully water the seeds, patiently wait for the roots to grow deep, and hold me tight on those days when I am my worst self. Speak of grace when I have forgotten. I will do the same. Is there anyone who could remain unaffected? Or would everyone react as I do - dropping their parcels and purses to sink deeply into this generous offering, arms and legs swimming as if the sea were only one stroke away? I will not walk through this day. I will float through a field of sunflowers soaking up the silence. I will move as if I am a welcomed and grateful guest. I will silver the earth with softness. Hey, listen. Don’t lose hope.
Just know that this glorious city of ours holds so much more inside of her alleys and adobes than monsters and meth heads. I know what it feels like to wake up each morning and search for just one reason to hold onto hope. I know that sometimes the bad far outweighs the good and I know that my not good enough words are nothing like jackhammers. They are whispers, wisps, tiny drops of water disappearing into an endless and angry sea. But I won’t stop and don’t you stop. I can’t speak to you directly of her because I didn’t know her. What I can speak to you about is the way my daughter’s blond hair used to fall across her cheek when she was ten years old. That her smile was pure sunshine and sometimes just the sight of that would almost break my heart with joy. I can tell you that evil walks this world on two feet wearing sneakers or flip flops, that the human heart is a labyrinth, a dark and frightening maze. Albuquerque, we grieve as a city. Our tears seep into the cracked and dry dessert, onto the dust which surrounds her so sad grave. These same tears also water ocotillo and pinon. They rise like hot air balloons. Did you notice that on the day of her death you could smell fall in the air? As if the entire earth had put its foot down and declared you shall have not one more moment of sweet summer in the face of this travesty. All of this - the prayers, the sobbing, the broken fucking hearts - comes together and holds her tight, wraps her in feathers and the kind of bubbles little kids play with in the bathtub. Combs her hair softly before bed and reads her a story about a castle and a dragon. A fairy tale of warmth and love and human fucking kindness and I don’t know what kind of mother doesn’t love her daughter like that. I don’t know. I could have written this entire poem to just say I don’t know because I don’t know how we have come to this place. What I do know is that I have spent days crying, that my heart is shattered like yours, that we cannot change what happened. We cannot take away the blood, the pain, the fear. What we can do is drop our versions of sunshine & glitter into the world. We can send them out day after day after day. Even if we don’t see them come back to us, even if we don’t know where they have gone. I can assure you. Love makes a difference. Love. I want to speak to you of love but what about justice and what about this wild rage in my chest? We need to understand this. she was not alone. There are children in this world, right this second, in situations of grave danger. They cannot defend themselves because their hands are too small and their hearts are too sweet. I ask today that you hold onto hope. That you heal one thing even if it’s just yourself and then do it again tomorrow, and the next and the next. Because sometimes this is all that we can do. For Victoria Martens, who died on August 24, 2016. Afternoons flow like warm honey, the sun a soft scar in such a celebration of sky, a hush holds you sweetly like spring and summer have fallen in love and cannot stop holding hands. Even a river could lose its way but there is no river here, only dust swirling between tufted grass and silence swelling wide like a secret that everybody already knows. Nothing rushes in these clarion canyons, not even water. A mantis prays, tilting her head heavenward and I stand captivated. I want to believe that she stands in the gap, holds the line. That she drops to her impossibly small knees and implores the universe on my behalf, begging forgiveness each explosive morning and again through crisp, black nights. But no. If there is any justice in the world, each of her meals is a dedication to the gods of mother nature. Each head torn off is a sacrifice and a curse. A plea to end mankind’s pillage and bring blessed silence back to these hollow sunlit mornings. I kneel hands pressed together, head surrendered to the heat of the dirt and pray for the first time in my life. The mantis tells me, you are not lost. You are inclining toward grace and it is this place that will redeem you. Note: this piece was written for the Literary Inventory of the Organ Mountains – Desert Peaks, edited by Eric Magrane, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Geography at New Mexico State University. It was published at Spiral Orb. |
Who am I?I’m a systems engineer, artist, and coach living in ABQ, NM. I believe that we can intentionally design our lives to align with our deepest dreams and desires. Archives
January 2023
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