Are we dead yet? I’ll have to remember to check the news To see if the last stone has been cast The last guarantee rescinded The last rights obstructed. I’m still sitting here cross-legged in bed Hanging my hopes on ridiculous ghosts Forgetting whether the sky has fallen.

A small poem for #smallpoemsunday, scribbled out last night just before bed.

#smallpoems #apoemaday #februarypoems #poesy

Predictive Text Don’t tell me who to be, or where to hang my words. My voice is a house where I’ve cut my own wood. It was won out of nettles, a nest of mom-speak Stringing gurgles and grunts into syntax and sense. First, it was your mother, your teachers after that, Who did the slow work of interpretation. You had choices. Milk or apple juice? Marker or crayon? And we learned what was rude, what was base, off limits. To finish someone’s sentence Required a lover’s intimacy, a mother’s entitlement The refrigerator habits and folded laundry of an old spouse. Who are you to decide what comes next in my diatribe? I wake up to go writing. I’m an image collector. I found a sunrise sprayed with clouds through the kitchen window A wad of paper melting into a rainy sidewalk, a plastic bunny Inflated in an office, teenagers kissing in the street, A man sleeping there, too. Graffiti and grapes. And I want to be struck dumb, Perplexed by my own pen, left weeping over a page With nothing but a puzzle, a tangle of ideas That wrestle their way into one thin line.

A new poem for today because AI sucks (up all the water), art is sacred, and humans are meant to do hard things.

#poetry #apoemaday #februarypoems #aisucks #writingishard

Choosing Softness I wanted to be hard A rough spot rubbed to a callus, Heart impermeable And head airtight. Face straight, feet planted Elbows out and ready to jab. A cold stone in my palm Might soothe But the kiss of a gift Melts my volition, Puts a song in my head That reminds me to go soft. Once again, I resign To open my fist Once again, I decide And reach for your hand.

It's that tender, turned on feeling I get when I let in the soft thoughts. Even when it's illogical, vulnerability is brave.

#apoemaday
#poetry #goingsoft
#februarypoems

Living in Analog Think of the things we could do in analog– smell the books and hold them, our fingers knowing the thickness of each page. Explore the soreness of a wrist writing by hand. I’ll return to the roots, to rocks and plants. Mushrooms. Moth and mango. Snake and fern. San Francisco smells like eucalyptus. San Francisco hot springs is in New Mexico. Remember that morning we woke up there In our tent surrounded by snow? There were no apps to warn us. We drank our campfire percolated coffee and went into the water, naked as string beans, thin as wheat.

A quick poem for today, written first by hand.

#apoemaday
#februarypoems
#livinginanalog
#noapps
#sanfranciscohotsprings

February 11 Frost in the morning No sleep till 3 Soured stomach And walnut on the lathe The self-made despots were charging ahead, face down in abated lawlessness We clutch our pillows Soaking them And practice forgiving. I draw cards in the edging sunlight Snake for change And fox for adaptation Nothing but nouns these days. He shows me his cue stick, Dark like espresso, curly wood. I went out with friends Stood around a pool table Walked to my car And saw myself out. Today is the day After my birth, the same date That Plath put her head in the oven. I'll not go out that way. Every day I choose this life Every day I choose to stay.

A little quick poem for today, composed in the parking garage just before heading into work. I always think of Sylvia Plath on February 11th, the anniversary of her suicide. #february11 #poetry #februarypoems #apoemaday #sylviaplath

What we could do with snow… This morning we pushed open the screen door and held out our hands to touch the rain watching it grow fatter, splatting on windshields and windowpanes. We were hoping for snow, snow that would fill the streets and wedge its way into our routines. We’re not so young anymore, no longer the sole protagonists of our stories. And there’s no honor in being tired, though we come by it honorably. I want to be slowed down, to see the rain made sacred, the way I’d like to put my hands into your hair, give you a little pleasure in this madness that separates us from nature and reason, reach out for snow close the screen door, touch your beard. But I can’t keep my eyes open. The stream goes fuzzy. Lights turn off and traffic stalls. The rain turns thin and wet again. Everything gets interrupted.

I wrote this last night, while fighting sleep in a semi-hypnogogic state. Sometimes in that space, the poem takes over, ideas and images from distinct spaces converge to make their own story. #poetry #apoemaday #februarypoems #precipitation