Tongue-Tied

and finding the words

[tongue-tiedprose]

A whisper

I dream the patter

Of small feet, in our childless,

Too quiet home.

[tongue-tiedprose]

i know not what i do

my baptism was a long time ago.  today, i clench my teeth  with water in my nose and ears, knowing not what sins  i've committed  or whose god  i am answering to,  gasping as i emerge  from the depths.

i realize between breaths that the god i am answering to does not clutch my destiny like i once believed. i realize i do not fear this god. i will not be judged by this god; this god will hold his hands beneath me as i walk. and as i change directions, he, too, will change with me. i will create this path of palms and fingertips,  knowing not where i am going.

but i will walk where i desire to walk; though we do not know my destination, i pray to him with steady hands.

[tongue-tiedprose]

hot cocoa

the bright cold reddens my cheeks and my nose. it is only one more mile to you.  my winter boots,  i know - i have always known,  are ripped at the seam near my toes. 

it is only one half mile to you. 

the snow does not typically melt into the soles  of my shoes. 

i arrive at your house with wet socks

[tongue-tiedprose]

the poet hibernates

she launches herself, with reckless haste, into the solitude of hibernation.   she sleeps violently in  plucked feathers,  and she hunts REM to feed her nightmares. 

[tongue-tiedprose]

bloom her laughter arcs and cascades like droplets water from the sprinkler saturating the soil on which she walks

[tongue-tiedprose]

a rigged afterlife

the waiting room to heaven is lined with sticky church pews. here, you spend crowded hours deliberating  the wealth you accumulated during life,  a system rigged by a conspiring interloper.  with your coin,  you can purchase a return route to your earthly body,  but conspiracy does not play fair.  travelling through the tornadic tundra to your bones is marked  by oohs and aahs of those in line behind you, yet whether your coin was well spent is determined only by the warmth of your soul.  

[tongue-tiedprose]

rewriting a poet

her power of words grew weak, as she became  more and more unpracticed in the art of poetry. 

the verse from her once poured  like warm honey spiced  with cinnamon. but now her  dictionary entries face each other in combat,  lined up one by one. 

while she offers her apologies, the syllables collide and then tumble to the pages, bruised, having  long surpassed their honey-drenched days in the sun.

[momentary-poems]

In Quiet -

Don’t worry too much

Over how much you worry

The mind always flutters

From thought to thought scurry

It’s in such a rush

But oh what’s the hurry

The news is the news

It happens right now

And now again

Now again

Now again

POW

Shut down all that garbage

Breathe in silence …

WOW

One little thing

Can make such a difference

I wonder what else

Like lighting some incense

And sitting in peace

While reading a book

Discussing with friends

The trips we all took

A jog to the gym

If that is your thing

Unwind your muscles

They too feel the sting

Tensing and pulling

Down on your bones

Grappling and

Twisting and

Knotting in zones

The back of your neck

Behind tired eyes

Even the space

Between your sore thighs

From head to toe chill

You owe yourself still

A place and a time

Where worry is nil

So turn off your phone

Shut down the blue screens

Enjoy in the silence

When all of these things

No longer have power

Or sway in your day

Let worry dissolve

In quiet, let’s play -

DT

[tongue-tiedprose]

baking

between and under pillows in piles,  i am flour and sugar, and you, the butter and chocolate chips.

[tongue-tiedprose]

waking up

one of my dreams with braids in her hair and tattooed arms and a ukulele slung ‘round her shoulder told me she was free, and asked if she could walk with me.

[humansofnewyork]

“I had an awakening on a balcony in Seattle. I was listening to soul music on my Walkman. And I was paying attention to the music. And suddenly I realized that I was the attention itself. I realized that I’m not my mind—I’m the awareness of my mind. We’re all just drops of consciousness and if you get to the point where you can turn around and see your drop, you’ll discover that it’s connected to an ocean of consciousness. And then you’ll be illumined. I don’t care if anyone believes me. I’m not trying to convert anyone. There’s nothing to convert because everyone is exactly where they’re supposed to be right now.”

[buttonpoetry]

She flourishes in the splinters of me. Or the splinters of a man, who was once a boy that thought he would live forever

William Evans, “Father / Daughter” (via buttonpoetry)

[tongue-tiedprose]

the tendrils of summer spiral around her finger, communicating in their reach a fruitful season.

sun spots line her back through big, end-of-summer alder tree leaves, and strands of hair come untucked from behind her ear.

she exhales.

she gives in to the siren of quietude, puts to sleep her pen and her thoughts, and she closes her eyes.

[tongue-tiedprose]

the sound of walls

as a child i admired the quality of quiet in homes  unlike my own.  in my own childhood home,  there was ever-tinkering,  footsteps,  dancing and laughing and conversation. 

my room,  located directly beneath my sister’s, was outfitted with a pvc pipe which connected our windows so we could talk through the night. 

i played the radio while i slept. 

my brother walked  and talked in his sleep.

my father sang i’m a little tea pot while he cooked. 

my mother kept the tv on as narrative company. 

as a child, i sometimes retreated to the quietude of friends’ homes,  and basked in the ability to nap,  wondered at the questions that hung in the hallways unanswered,  imagined that their furniture was then and had always been a permanent fixture. 

the silence within their walls was only  a temporary comfort,  soon soothed and blanketed  by the sound the noise the love of those i loved.

now in my own home,  i survey the depths of quiet. 

i can hear my cat as she moves from room to room.  i can hear chirping crickets.  i can hear the basement door open as my husband walks downstairs.  and somewhere in the distance is a dog barking and a plane overhead. 

[konczakowski]

Universe 101.

[tongue-tiedprose]

minneapolis

hiawatha’s constant whir  echos into minneapolis homes. i can hear, on 40th, or maybe just imagine the rotation and percolation of car tires and bike tires and conversation.  i am a temporary evolution  of this city, yet the words escaping my mouth and the clicking of my bike tires and the rush of my car tires against pavement will cling now  and forevermore to the leaves,  the the cracks in the sidewalk,  to the curbside. 

[tongue-tiedprose]

the quietude of sanding hardwood floors while wearing earplugs

she is coated in wood dust,  the fruit of sanding century-old hardwood floors. 

along the floorboards, she sits to sand the edges, to dig in where the drum sander could not reach. 

dust clings to her sweat sticky thighs, and larger splinters indent her knee caps.  her fingertips are rubbed bare from sandpaper squares, and her wrists ache from the awkward pressure  of attempting to evenly sand the perimeter.  she cannot help but think of the hands that  first laid these boards, and wonder about whom these boards belong today.