Maureen Armstrong

Raccoon Poet Washing Her Words

[haikkun]

Muled Whine

I think that stubborn might be

My favorite word in all the world

Stubborn thumbs

Stubborn chin

Stubborn love

Your name lives under my breath

Crowding the tip

Of my stubborn tongue

And it’s always exhales, exhales, exhales

These days

____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Secret

This quiet

Is superficial

I write poems which

Cannot see the light of day

Because I’ve already burned

The earth enough times not to

Be wise, and besides, you would

Pretend you didn’t know that they

Were about you anyways, or worse

You’d know it, and let the pamphlets

Fall like little junk mail, to the floor

Whistle a change-the-topic tune

Or rub my face into the snow

In a please-don’t-make-me

Break-your-heart sort of

Way. I’d retire to rooms

To lick my wounds. I’d

Pretend it didn’t kill

Me. Walk around

On eggshells

Staunch the

Bleeding

____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Glaucus

I sit down, dangling my feet

Into the water

Pass him a beer, but not before I

Pour a sip for the gods.

“How’d you end up here,

Telling fortunes by the dock?”

“Well... once long ago, While hunting on Mount Oreia, I rubbed my rabbit on a pile of hops. I don’t know if ‘twas the irony- which should have killed him- had the effect of bringing him back from the dead, but I immediately became a pescatarian and swallowed a handful of humulus myself instead”

“Go figure? And the rabbit?”

“He hopped away. Drove me mad! Hopping mad, or maybe that was the hops... but either way my madness drove me into the sea, and it wasn’t Zeus’s orders, if that’s what you heard.”

“I’ve never heard him claim such.”

“Well good! So you see, I ran to the sea, and that’s where I found I can’t be drowned.”

“Oh, I see...”

“In short the hops forever preserved me. I’ll age... never die, just like a proper sea-bound IPA.”

He sifts his hand through the blue-green locks on his scalp

“Ok, but how’d you become a prophet?”

“Like any bro extolling wisdom at a frat party!” He guffawed, “I drink the beer and it speaks for me.”

“Do go on...”

“So I pledged for the neireods (because how does one turn down 50 nymphs?) and after all the hazing, they taught me clarity. How to see the future, as the gods did intend it.

Eventually I became Apollo’s wingman, and it’s amazing how many maidens will sleep with you because you tell them you see it in their future.”

____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Sooth

The major obstacle to overcome in my writing is:

Fear

Originally

This place was a high-epinephrine diary

Nobody familiar reading

In an online or real life capacity;

The less loss

For audacity

But everyone craves to be

Chewed

And how not to do

That without relationship:

A little of me

Inside a little of you?

How do I continue to reveal?

When I see it reflected as cringes

And I didn’t care if it was strangers

But now I care

That it’s my friends

Pad the words up

Check for rough edges

Before I hit the “send?”

It will not do

In this lifetime

The goal is to be “true”

Unapologetic

Poetic

Ready or not

_______________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Helter Skeleton

My legs will dance

When my fingers are done frying;

Firing words upon a page.

People ask

“What is this...

Fascination...

With death?”

Well, death fastened his hands

Around me, you see

Not the other way around

It’s in the air I breathe

No matter what town

I retreat to

By which sea

I’m fascinated with him

Because he’s the only one

Who’ll have me

__________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

I water the aloe plant

Your hands

I burn the rice

Your hands

I turn a page

Your hands

I muddle the lime

Your hands

I let my thoughts drift

Your hands

I work a double shift

Your hands

I sense the clouds lift

Your hands

I shut my eyes

Your hands

I close my fist

______________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Timber

Sun set swiftly

I was the last person

To leave the cemetery

Same one we hiked through

At midnight, the first time we met, years back

To hear what the wind had to say

I never realized

Until a solo trip by light of day

That it was to walk past your father’s grave

You didn’t say a thing

You didn’t even flinch

Just invited me up for tea afterwards

Because you didn’t want the night to end

And sat me on the bark-stripped stump

I still correctly identified

As ash

(how you grinned)

((an arborist in his own footsteps))

I asked what tree you’d be

And you said, “Ohhhhh… I don’t know…”

But I, trilingual in tree rings, enigmas, and blurtings,

Said:

“You’re an oak.”

So matter of fact

Unaware

It was the one

That felled your dad

And you grew quiet at that

But played Kevin Morby until we were nodding to sleep

And I tripped away at half past 3

Now I see…

-

We only hung out that once

I still don’t honestly know why you chose me…

To walk beside you

In the dark

In the grief

When we had barely chatted for a week

I had to use all these dichotomous keys

To figure it out

In the time since you deactivated

Though occasionally

I still see you in the grocery store

Still think of throwing a ripe avocado

Wish I hadn’t reminded you

Of the ghost of the woman who haunted you

And wish

I could have been

Anything other

Than careless on the breeze

_______________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Desert’s Desolation

A treasure in the tough

The undulations’ elated emotion slows

Near the edge

So we wedge

Ourselves

Within the part that hasn’t forgotten

How to be alive yet

Even if it means swimming

Further into its sea

We sit between

The wave crests;

Seeking feeling seen

Sinking without the loss of breath that

The ocean would demand to demean

We drown only in

The silence

It’s too easy

To self-hypnotize

In the parallel curves some godded hand

Traced the heartbeat of starlight kissing the ripple-beaten sand;

Come cosmic echocardiogram

Scintillating a rhythmic twilight escape

Of a pulse that apparently twitterpates like humans do

We lie in weight

There is no salt to provide buoyancy

As we atomize in the cooked-off air

Scrub brush punctuating the last of our cares

In a stubborn attempt

To hold down innevetability and fate

In a world that gravitates

Towards destruction and expunction

__________________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

Inspired by @gvnther-hopeful’s writing and photography about the dunes over the years

[haikkun]

Hoo

Everything I’ve been working towards…

Everything I’ve been doing

Chewing, cultivating, collapsing, building, brewing…

It could never be enough

But I’m still ready

Even in the rough

Do it scared

Do it flawed

Do it now

Or do it never at all

_______________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

This One Goes Out To The One I Love

When someone sees an obstacle:

Your fingers cramped and locked up

Like the opposite of a fontanel

And they reach for your hand to massage the tissue,

To hand you a slate,

To kiss, without issue, every quivering non-quilling objection you make up about your writing

And they say,

“Here, Love

I put this page before you

So I could see whatever you write

It just needs to be yours

It doesn’t have to be right”

The first thing you pen

Has got to be

This ode to him

Who doesn’t just inspire

But removes all the hurdles

And smiles, with lupine hunger in eyes

That you only want ever-infinitely supply

This one, Baby

Is my thank you and my vow

You remind me of my purpose

And I’ve no excuses now

_____________________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

Δ

[haikkun]

Urniture

Businesses exist to turn cremains into benches

Ashes to asses

And dust to duffs

Come on, I’m being facetious

As though fear isn’t calling my bluff

What’s the deal?

We have to laugh about it or cry about it?

Well, why not both

I don’t want to be sealed in anything that’s not

A Populus tremuloides

But what’s not to say

That someday it doesn’t

Get turned into a bench?

Maybe in another life

A fence

Scatter me to the winds?

I could still get trapped in cement

And what am I going to do about it?

Self-immolate?

Again?

Spontaneous combustion becomes

Particulate matter in a cloud

Rains down

Encased liquid in a geode

Maybe matter is never free

And I can’t escape

People sitting on me

__________________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Combine

We plow-share

Taking turns keeping the machinery lubed

Spitting on fingers and sucking on thumbs to wet

The cultivators

I let my Nails dig troughs and furrows

Across your back

(I have no say

In the matter)

And guide the back of the tractor

With mewn “haws” and “gees”

I simper to plant you

A little deeper

This planting season

And pray for rain

Come thunder soothing

_____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Humans Invent Earth Day

I work my way around

The coastline of the soup

Pretending I can separate

The wall of the bowl

‘N the scoop

But everything parted pardons back to cahoots

Everything wants equilibrium except our success

The neon of our ancestral guilt

Burning behind the eyes

Even when we try

To feign brass knuckles were

As much of a surprise

To us as to Mother nature’s blurred, blackened skies

“We’re learning!”

“We’re trying!”

“We’re sorry the Lorax is dying!”

Even as we’re planning the future film

I can’t crack the code on us…

The world’s blightiest virus

Steering ships while feigning no arms

Raping fields and crying “No harm!”

Like our bodies wouldn’t fertilize it with

Microplastics now

How, how…

Did we get here?

We made a holiday

Isn’t that enough?

____________________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Abacus Strings Don’t Mean a Thing

A trig coy

The coyote sings the sin

Of the times

A howl

Off on a tangent

Of the mourning star scraped sky

Cosine, so kind to

Corrupted mind

Waist-deep in a drug line

And fallen oak, at Roanoke

Was where you disappeared

From sight

No trace

____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Stratosphere

Optical phenomenon

Are light

Mixed with matter

Your rainbow in the sky

Is basically

Pancake batter

And miscible and missable

Are two words I would use

To denote you

__________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Flattery

The kind of day when

Upgrading

The likelihood

Of a pornbot

Being an actual catfish

Feels like a win…

These are the the times

We livid in

_____________________________

Maureen Armstrong @haikkun

[haikkun]

Haven’t updated my profile pic in forevskies. But sometimes a version of you comes along and just clocks all past versions of yourself over the head with a small fishing boat. Looks at the hostage, says, “Get out.” Sometimes you see yourself through the lens of someone else and you go, “THAT’S IT, OFFICER!!!! That’s THE GIRL!!!!” and feel amazed. That it could be YOU. Showing up after all of this time on the “wanted” poster.