Plain Poet

I'm human.

[plainpoett]

A Simple Ode to my Dog

The pads of her feet are worn

homologous to nearly all of my shoes.

Everywhere we’ve been,

every dune we’ve climbed,

every lake we’ve swum,

every trail we’ve hiked,

I see etched into the soles of her feet.

[plainpoett]

Chemical Fire

He couldn’t stop laughing at the bar

because he took too many hits,

so I locked eyes with his friend across the table

and didn’t smile once.

He kept laughing and laughing and

I knew I should laugh with him.

Instead I stared out the window

at the fire firefighters

lugging bags of metacaulk into a brick building.

Chemical fire.

It’s not advisable to put out a chemical fire

with water or even a fire extinguisher because

it exacerbates the flame

and only makes it grow.

I felt like maybe laughing

would make me worse-off.

His laugh the water,

I’m the chemical fire.

I thought maybe they should let it burn.

[plainpoett]

Merry

Lazy, lazy, lazy days stuck within one drunken haze.

Swells inside and severed tides, expose strangely rooted lies.

A founded peace and quiet still, swallowing xanax, pill for pill.

[plainpoett]

Shell

I feel

like shell.

Akin to what sea does

when it takes shell from shore

and pulls shell out.

Shell tries to make home

and is used by crustacean,

who crawls into shell,

transports shell from seabed to seabed.

All the while, shell aches for this burglar to be siphoned

by the horizontal mouth of ray.

When that day comes,

a short-lived freedom.

Shell falls victim again to tide,

is brought to shore

and waits

until the next swell

renews the cycle of shell

and crustacean

and predator

and sea.

[plainpoett]

Ending

What is an ending, but a combined mix of chaos and clarity. What is an ending but the sum of all things real, becoming unreal. What is an ending, but a revived beginning, a fresh chapter, the first page in an unopened book, a past revealing itself in the present, the desire to begin again at the preface, a way to fix that which is already rigid. What is an ending without a grand beginning? What is a beginning without a former end?

[plainpoett]

Rot

Outcasted at home on a line, on a turf once familiar, unsullied, saccharine.

Foreign as the city once was, here only the seasons change; the flowers bloom, decay, and sometimes swell.

A void creeps in, swells, ebbs, flows.

“We all seek a haven, and when we finally find it, it rots before our eyes.”

Surely, it has rotted.

[plainpoett]

Swallowed the Room

The drone of the classical guitar swallows the room in its warm, ebbing surges. The mood here is tranquil, and presently we are undisturbed. Sinking slowly, describing deeply, taking every occasion to measure notions beyond our very considerations— swirling slowly, listlessly reaching our cortices— what really do we know? It is curious to attempt to understand why what must be so, must be so?

[plainpoett]

Grown

There’s a silence that precedes every child’s first wail.

Aging keeps us forever suspended in the silence that precedes.

Suppress, suppress,

suppress everything.

I attune to the grievances of the grown through their eyes.

[plainpoett]

Booked

Goodness is in everything, just have a look. Worthiness is in time ready to be took. Liveliness is in tombstones waiting to be booked.

[plainpoett]

Bitter, Sour, or Sweet

All that matters now is knowing life continues on. Whether bitter, or sour, or sweet, nothing changes but the time spent dwelling.

[plainpoett]

Fingernails

Underneath my fingernails there are galaxies that take up more space than the emptiness you left behind. Wounding with intent is cowardly and you know that. You know that.

[plainpoett]

In-Between

A rush of adrenaline seeping through untethered veins, climbing through arms covered in faintly tanned skin.

Cloaked in the darkness I meet your eyes and your face changes with the shadows-- my stomach lurches with uncertainty.

I am caught, if not for a fleeting moment, between what makes you whole and what makes me whole.

I am seeking the balance laying in-between.

[plainpoett]

The Day Repeats

Every night the sirens wail down the road, the street lamps burn sunset orange, the house creaks, the birds sleep. And in this bed, dreams of forgetfulness, creep into the sunset orange street lamps and screech and creak and falter. Every morning the birds awake, the dawn burns a cloudy gray, the floor creaks, the day repeats.

[plainpoett]

Anxiety

Creeping up on me like a snake to its prey, I feel you moving from my heart to my body to my mind.

The nagging, the chewing, the spitting me back out and, the recesses of my mind I wish never to travel.

It becomes real when it is real.

[plainpoett]

"Waxing and Waning"

Far off I see a light shine though you, I see you raise your wrinkled arm in the depths of slumber, searching for something no one can see.

I grab your hand and, in the instant I do, you open your tired eyes, smile, and return to sleep.

Your time is so near, I feel the urge to cry but you are so beautiful.

Your nervousness surrounding an attempt to find your mother, drifting back to a time when you were not eighty-five, punctures my heart like an arrow from a nearby bow.

The hospice nurse says through a phone in my ear, you are “waxing and waning,” and I repeat in my head, “waxing and waning” until your tired eyes, “waxing and waning” reach mine.

I see your tired body, the swelling, the bruising, the breathing that is slowed, and I feel a calm, an ache, a curious love for the unknown.

[plainpoett]

Puzzle Pieces

I'm missing the piece that makes me whole, longing for it to spoon me from behind and wrap around the edges of my body like a pair of fitting puzzle pieces.

[plainpoett]

The doors of opportunity opened at your feet. I let myself in and climbed to the top of your beating left ventricle where I called it home and listened-- like one who never speaks-- to the rhythm of your body.