No, I haven't

No, I have not written for some days, with the overcast up ahead,
chilly wind and snowy weather.
It is difficult and words come slow.

The brain has an uncanny way
of being able to hold itself
gray mass pressing outward,

so outer pressure pressing fissures open
encounter innards pushing back
making wet
thwacksmack, whackatasmack
sounds.

I have not written for some days, but that does not mean my eyes
examine wet mulch any less
than they did last week,

that the green buds are not doing their best
to shed dead skin cells and rejoice
like they did last year

and the year before.
That year was the year bees were going extinct,
at least, the year the press cared.
If I tried to help all the bees
trapped in all my jars,
that love would be volatile.
Now I don't own a single jar with a lid.

Freewrite.

I haven't had a sip. I see steam.
Not yet. Until I do
I flirt at the wide eyed little girl,
hand in her pink mouth,
sneakers pointing up from the floor
and out the foggy windows.

Her sneakers have shark teeth on them.
She's cooler than I am.
I don't know why but
the american poetry I read
and the Neil Young they play
are better early in the day;

I read places the I haven't been
into rolling scapes
invading the little shop,
crowding red-eye patrons against walls,
the breezy dry grasses doing their thing
in front of me.

The barista with his tribal tattoo
changes the CD and goodbye:
John Wayne and Neil Young vanish.
Now Bjork complains through the speakers.
Icelandic whining and piled high black
hairdos do music. The people grunt disgruntle.
I note the nearest exits.

___________________

I like my land made
not of fire and ice
but of rain and fog
made of misty fabric
that evaporates when it turns corners

A place with piles of wet paperbacks that can't sell
with old Norwegians and Swedes in sweaters
where I kissing your chapped lower lip,
licked up the blood I made.

I like the land to eke outward,
expanding from the earth's core
up and in, out
eating us up because it can,
not because we want it to.

To the Person in the Doorway.

Tonight you look lovely, your stance by the door
ringlets going round unsuspecting freckles
that didn't know but to attach to your face.

Structure you may have,
the iambic lines of your body
carry you up and firm, straight and strong
the shutters to your blue
eyes close their blinds sometimes
open for a few
close shut again
the curl upwards of a brown lash or two,
the brow rippling sand dunes,
making the dotted waves of your ginger skin
unsettled, earth shattering. Quaking, though

I just said hello.

The Top Stair

I'm on the top stair.

You're always friendly and maybe
Tyson is on the floor, all brown
and warm

I'm on the top stair
the wooden stairs, oak,
with knots from past lives.
Sometimes we end the stairs in joy.

Mary Oliver buried her kitten.
I bury the past
with its mossy overgrowth
covering my apartment door,

its thrones without dictators,
no kings or queens
but serfs in the field.
My face turns to the sun to feel it

while I knead bread.

But for now I climb the stairs.