Archive for the 'Poetry' Category

You are currently browsing the archives of Soapbox .

Cloudburst

I remember running
through sudden summer showers.
The first fat, petulant drops take you by surprise as
they kick up tiny explosions of dust on the sidewalk,
then the leaves look away
and a rush of earth cool lifts
your hair from your sweating neck.
You laugh,
hold your hands out before you
as if each chubby drop that finds them
were a jewel in a poverty of heat.
Indignant over your amusement
the sky lashes out in earnest then,
and you lift your feet high
almost prancing
as you rush to find a doorway or tree for shelter,
inhale the heady aroma of hot wet concrete
and delighted, gulping vegetation.
Lightning staccatos around you
and a riff of thrash-metal thunder lends you speed
but no sooner do you reach safety
than your own shadow finds you there
as the sun returns.
You realize that the cloud's tirade was
no more than a fit of pique, after all.
Rain still pummels you with tiny fists
but the sun soothes any lingering bad temper
and for a minute, the wet world shines so brightly
that you can only close your eyes and just
breathe while your shirt begins to steam.

Posted by Tracy on Jun 6th 2011 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

Abide With Me


I plant perennials
because I believe in committed relationships.
Not for me the instant, disposable garden,
seasonal affiliation,
no “Hey, I’ll call you in April”
when we both know it won’t happen.
There are no casual hook-ups in my beds.

I plant perennials
both deliberately and by chance.
Hitch hikers and strays jostle for sunlight alongside my carefully chosen loved-ones.
Some fill my summer with beauty and winters with promise;
others are really more trouble than they are worth,
problem children who will not stay where they are planted.
But still I plant perennials,
because I hate to say goodbye
even to the ones who push boundaries.
Neighbors suggest I just yank them out-
“they’re really just weeds” they say.
But I pause, trowel in hand,
I see the tiny pink blossoms opening bravely
among the ragged, straggling green.
Some days I convince myself that, with a little love
they will come to bloom more brightly,
other days I just feel so damn weedy myself
that I am unwilling to judge them.

I plant perennials
because I believe in second chances.
It’s not an easy way to live.
Nearly every year I find myself on my hands and knees
in an August garden suddenly gone wild
trying to bring order to chaos and get the kids to play nice
and I hear myself vow that next year
I am gonna dig the whole ungrateful lot up
and buy a few damn flats of petunias and be done with it.

But I plant perennials
because I believe in lifetime friendships.
I know they usually don’t last.
So many beautiful faces are already missing from my garden
but I don’t like to let go
always hope that even the long-lost lambs will return next spring
and I plan to be here, waiting to welcome them home.

I plant perennials
because I believe in happily ever after.
20 years ago I took 5 dollars that Grandmother gave me for my birthday
and bought a little rambling rose.
It was on clearance, past its prime, already exhausted
 but I took a chance.
After a few years, my grandmother died, and then so did the rose.
Years later, while thinning the soapwort that had moved in
I saw a thorny tendril pushing up towards the sun.
It offers just a few crimson memories each June
before retreating back to the earth by September.
But every autumn I sing while I feed and mulch
that empty corner of the garden.

I plant perennials
because I believe in the promise of spring

Posted by Tracy on May 21st 2011 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

Alienation of Affection

I had an argument with God today,
really went off on him
told him I am sick and tired of the way he always says he’s gonna do stuff
and never comes through.
He completely ignored me, as usual.
I swear we have the most dysfunctional relationship.
I am always either professing unending devotion
or vowing to end the relationship forever…
and he just pays no attention either way.
 
My friends all tell me that I’m over-reacting.
They’re sure he really loves me-
they read that love letter he wrote,
but I say, the proof is in the pudding and I’m not getting fed.
And it’s not like I’m asking him for a diamond ring and a new Mercedes-
not like that Hedge Fund bitch he’s been showering with gifts.
I just asked him to stop dicking around with the people I love most,
stop pulling the rug out from under someone who is doing everything right
and still getting the world’s door slammed in his face.
But as usual, I got the usual impenetrable, inscrutable silence
as he sipped his coffee and perused the day’s headlines.
 
So I said, Oh hey, nice work, by the way, in Ivory Coast
yeah, I can see you’ve been busy there and in Fukyshima
but could you possibly take your eye off the damn sparrow and give me
5 seconds of your precious time!
All those other lovers you’ve been spending your time with
I think they’re starting to rub off on you
with their “Punish him!”  “Smite the one who is different”
and frankly, I told him,
I don’t like the way you talk after you’ve been out with them.
You come home to me smelling of brimstone
bring your sword to my bed.
 
So I told him: this is it.
You have to treat my kids with some respect!
Don’t make me choose between you
because you will lose that contest, Mr. High-and -Almighty.
And I want you to be nice to my friends- yes even the ones you think are weirdos-
and will you for Christ’s sake please LOOK at me when I’m talking to you,
Nod, or wave, or end a war or something so I"ll know you're listening!
Because, if you won't, I am done trying with you.
Hell, I can stand here and get ignored by anybody!
 
Yeah, I really had it out with God today.
I'm just wish I knew if he was listening.

Posted by Tracy on Apr 6th 2011 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (2)

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

For the dragon-wranglers at the Fukushima reactor complex, and the children of Japan, who are drinking radioactive milk today.
 
We build our homes in the mouths of sleeping dragons
because it is so easy to keep warm in there.
We use the massive teeth as our foundation stones
plant flowers to mask the sulfur smell in the air
and ignore the way the ground occasionally rumbles beneath our feet.

At first the dragon probably didn't even notice our presence but soon
convinced of our own cleverness
awed by the seemingly inexhaustable supply of room there,
we built larger, dug deeper,
pushed and pushed, until the dragon grew restless.

Was there ever a time when we understood the need for balance
and the cost of taking too much?
A thousand years ago the greatest of civilizations was broken
abandoned to the creeping disrespect of the forest,
chattering monkeys allowed to overrun streets once bustling with the commerce
of their advanced intellect,
because they lacked even the instinctual wisdom of a herd of wildebeast
which moves on when a plain has become over-grazed
to allow the grass to grow again.
Today we study their crumbling architecture,
puzzle over shards of pottery
oblivious to the message scrawled on every ruined temple:
they lived in the mouth of a dragon.

A millenium later we know how to journey to the moon,
have explored the surface of Mars
and yet we continue to run with scissors,
play with matches in rooms full of dynamite,
vacation on the slopes of volcanoes.
We sow our pastures of plenty with salt
wash the oceans in oil
and insist that the dragon will never wake.
We tell ourselves that, thanks to our superior intellect,
 the dragon does our bidding, it wears a collar with tags that say
"Property of the Human Race"
and we know all the beat lullabies
but the truth is, we know almost nothing about the physiology of dragons.
The dragon holds our children and their children
cradled between its jagged teeth
we bathe them in its acid venom
while it rolls its red-jeweled eyes in dubious regard for our efforts.

And when, on occasion the dragon yawns, coughs….
and swallows,
as dragons are wont to do
we tremble and wail,
horrified by the unpredictable nature of the tragedy
that has destroyed so many fruits of our labor
and with laudable tenaciousness and predicable stupidity,
vow to rebuild from the ashes.
Why would we ever want to build somewhere else?
That would be admitting defeat,
allowing that dragon to win when it should be our bitch!
We are mankind, created in the image of God, after all.
We straddle mountains and blow the tops off  of them if we want to
and besides, it’s so much easier to keep warm
inside the mouth of the dragon.

Posted by Tracy on Mar 20th 2011 | Filed in Poetry,The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

First Flight

It seemed so easy at first.
Like two young birds just out of the nest, teetering on a branch
we suddenly tumbled forward
and discovered what our wings were for.
We were not a perfect couple, but we were a perfect couplet:
our hearts just seemed to rhyme,
as our wings beat in the same rhythms of desire and delight
and the ride was intoxicating.

It felt easy, so effortless,
probably because we had no concept then of how hard anything could be,
or  the true heaviness of thunder.
We just dove head-first into the wind
plunged into the welcoming air together,
flying a wings breadth above the trees
but oh, we thought we soared so high.
We heard the song of the warm nights echoed in our own singing blood.
we knew it felt right, assumed it would always would
believed that the air would always hold us up
and never considered the kind of storms,
bruise- purple, roiling on the horizon
that can turn any song to a scream.

Though in truth, it took no terrible storm,
just the day-after-day turbulence created when the cool reality
of different friends, disconnecting schedules and unrelated dreams
slides beneath the warm, soft air of fantasy.
The rhythm of our wing-strokes began to syncopate,
then contradict
and really, we were just flapping aimlessly by the time consequences
and the rush of air from careless words
sent us tumbling in different directions
finding ourselves, at last, lonely and confused,
on opposite sides of the great divide.

Now we know that nothing, really, is easy,
but we were young then, untried, directionless.
And perhaps the thrill of flight was all we really shared,
and we never could have made it over the mountains together.
But sometimes I can sense it
trembling on the edge of vision:
that future we thought we’d be living.
It lingers, wanders fretfully through my dreams
the ghost of a displaced reality
that doesn’t understand that it is dead,
that it was finished before it could ever begin.

The skies are clear around me as I circle toward my own horizon
and I rarely pause now to wonder where your wings have taken you,
but occasionally, if I close my eyes
I can still hear the rush of air across your feathers.

Posted by Tracy on Mar 12th 2011 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

« Prev - Next »