Please don't look at us

Making America ashamed again,

Trump's treatment of Puerto Rico,

I don't even have words.

Paperwork

The long form needs completing
and with it maybe I can put away
some of this dread of the last seven
or so years.

Warm Imagined

Someone made me look back, suggested I read the past again. I feel it all, still, in my chest and remember the celebration of moments and the desperation of losing them. Well, you're not dead. You didn't die without them, but the landscape has changed and the road you now walk is unfamiliar and strange. It's not good to be alive - it's a heavy pack and a long road, mostly. You take it off to sleep, which you are grateful for, and then you lift it on again upon waking, This while you've really got nothing to complain about. Your house still has it's roof, the plates here have not shifted disruptively, the ground is still and dry beneath your feet. In September, I hear Blue Jays more often and their cries touch me like an imagined friend, leaving me warmer in imagination and colder in the world.

Summer's never been mine anyway

The radio sang
Autumn is hard to love
I've heard those words myself
Which is maybe why I cannot
Help but love her
She'll arrive tomorrow sure
And we'll watch the glory of
Our demise together
And I will burn
Then she will
Go

Where's my kilt?

Waking in the middle
of a dream, running
effortlessly up and
down the steep green
hills of Scotland.

Regarding the day

Regarding the day
as another mystery you
were fortunate enough
to wake up to.

You get to participate.

With the highway overhead

Dreaming in the car
traffic sounds wake me
and it's just after sunrise
get coffee, some molded
bite-size egg and stuff morsel,
splash water on my face in the bathroom
gargle, spit, smooth my shirt
ready for the work day, ready to
account for why we do what we do
and how. 

Noonish

At dusk yesterday
there was a mosquito
at the window screen,
I almost wanted to let
it into the house because
it was one of maybe three
or four I'd seen since the Spring

Mosquitoes didn't really happen
here this year, too dry,
unheard of as far as I can remember
but the North is burning too,
the world is getting hotter and
the storms are blowing bigger -
normal is becoming something else.

There's no joy in waking midday
it always feels like I've lost something
and not only the day itself but
the weight of cumulative loss like
you're waking mid-dream remembering
every lost thing in sequence,
every lost feeling, you.

Name of A Mexican Girl Kind Enough To Dance With Me.

Another brewing hurricane
strongest Atlantic storm in history
the computer maps all probable routes
I live along one of those with
my paycheck freshly deposited
doing my own calculations
finding that I can't make the math
stretch far enough to cover
what is owed.

Reminder

You have to remember
when your world gets too
small to walk through the
door. There is more.

Weather or Not

Waking to the sound of rain
there's been so little of it here
not a problem in East Texas, and
did you hear that Greenland
was burning, yeah, it's up there
where there should be mostly ice
and then foggy, chilly, San Francisco
hit a record of 106 Fahrenheit degrees
but whatevs, I'm sure it's fine.

Holiday Weekend

Catching up on sleep,
that is something I can afford to do,
wiping out the microwave with
a lemony bleach solution and a
paper towel, overgrown grass to
mow, an unclean house and kids
who live elsewhere. A state of inertia,
a particular brand of anxiety.

The Numbers

These are the days of numbers

Appraisals, debt to income ratios, 

Interest rates, mortgage totals,

Monthly payments, weekly installments 

You'll be dead before they're paid

But won't it be better to have it behind you?
Before you answer,
Do you multiply or divide
By twenty years?