Hallway to Nowhere

Category: poetry

  • Who I Am (Poem)

    Not the applauded figure that everyone wants to hear.

    There are enough of those,

    And I do not have a good loud voice.

    But the small person who lingers at the edges,

    Picking up what the listeners leave behind.

    The discarded flyers the illusions they wished to abandon.

    The crumpled snack packages the food they found unnourishing.

    The paper cups the empty dreams they hoped to fill.

    Carefully I place these in the designated receptacle.

    As I walk back to my room, I ponder them with a sigh and a quiet laugh.

    This is a very good life.

  • Sweetness Comes After Tears (Poem)

    Hands busy with chopping

    Suddenly stopping, knife in midair

    Hearing a soft voice murmur with laughter

    Throwing the onions in a sizzing hot pan

    A gnarled hand gentle on my face, and the words

    Sweetness comes after tears

    All these, and I’ve no family.

  • Walls Are Hard. Words Are Harder. (Poem)

    I want to shut my eyes, to cry.

    I’m tired, wearied to my bones

    By conversations where I’m thrown

    Again and again

    Against the concrete walls of your expectations.

    I lay crumpled on the ground,

    My grief purpled by darkening bruises.

    The walls, once white, are bloody and stained.

    Where do you look, when you turn away?

  • Beneath My Skin (Poem)

    Beneath my skin, these

    Earliest shadows

    Decay dripping from ancient trees

    Murk surfacing hidden bayous

    Roil foretelling terrible storms

    Bruises left indelible

    Look away

    Do not talk of such things

    I was afraid

    Words leave marks worse than fists

    Icy stares make you bleed

    New shadows differently hued

    Stench fouling beach sands

    Molder crumbling leather-bound books

    Rapine cutting through pine forests

    Invisible stains just as before

    Look away

    Do not talk of such things

    I was afraid

    Fists leave marks almost like words

    Other people’s bodies make you bleed

    Swallow your voice

    Choke on grief

    Cover your indigo body

    One day when I speak

    My power will shatter the world

  • Gifts From My Mother (Poem)

    Never these:

    The antique brush that did not touch your hair

    But always sat before your mirror.

    The silver bracelet from your favorite aunt

    That you wore to enhance your forbidding elegance.

    The Mont Blanc pen you prized as a understated symbol

    But found my question of “does it write well,” vulgar .

    The gifts you bestowed cannot be touched

    And are beyond compare:

    A mind made razor-sharp

    Honed against the whetstone of your obdurate distance.

    A heart with hidden chambers

    Filled to overflowing with a magpie’s assortment of kindnesses.

    A language in which words become more beautiful

    By the flow and tumble over your stony disregard.

    So I thank you again and again.

    The love I bear you remains my greatest burden, my greatest treasure.

  • Bitter Disappointment (Poem)

    My mother took me to a tea room.

    She promised a special treat.

    What kind of tea would it be?

    Some tea brought from China, pressed into a cake,

    Aged so that it was even older than I?

    Some tea from Japan, fine-leafed and green,

    Served in a cup more delicate than my dreams?

    We entered into ordinary room that tried to make itself special

    With cloying incense and scarf-draped lamps.

    No other customers, for she had reserved the entirety of the hour.

    The server poured us tea,

    From a commonplace pot into commonplace cups.

    She told us that we were to swirl it once

    Then pour it out quickly into a bowl on the table.

    A woman came and read our fortunes aloud,

    Speaking with a fake Creole accent,

    And made us each a taped recording.

    I carried mine for years.

    The taste of the tea I never drank lingers on my tongue.

  • Writing In Ignorance (Poem)

    always considering the worth of this

    the energy effort expended in writing

    transient ephemeral malleable

    these words one thing to me the writer

    quite another to you the reader

    why should anyone want to bother

    why should I

    if we cannot even see our own faces

    then what do we see in the words of another

  • Two Cries (Poem)

    the first cry.

    not unnoticed.

    I turned at the faint sound.

    yet unheard.

    I went back to preparing a meal.

    the second cry.

    heard and seen as what it was.

    pain and a plea for help.

    I caught her as she fell.

    my heart fell with her.

    she is my heart.

  • A Mother’s Words (Poem)

    she said

    your eyes are too big too startling too blue

    you stare at me when I enter the room

    she said

    you’re not as smart as everyone thinks you are

    you’re really nothing special, you know

    most of the time she said nothing to me

    moved around me like I were furniture

    only less valuable than the chairs or tables

    that she had wanted and chosen for herself

    not like an imposed disaster that upended her life

    I had to stop flinging myself again and again

    against the stone wall of her implacable rejection

    made worse by the love she displayed to others

    a flawed love but tender nonetheless

    years passed and much work

    I viewed her with relinquished need

    still in unguarded moments

    her words echo in the background

    their harsh judgment ringing sharply

    overriding what I know

  • Ouroboros (Poem)

    My words have become leaves

    Tossed in the bitter wind

    The wind a foretaste of winter

    And the days darken more quickly

    I dreamed with the trees

    Our lavish gloried visions

    Made into detritus by inexorable passage

    Become dry drabs trodden unnoticed

    Yet these desiccated remnants remember

    Remember with such fealty to beauty

    That they sway time’s unbending resolve

    The months bring bleak skies and cold rain

    Cover yourself against the chill

    Feeding the yellowed pages with faded ink into the fire

    To warm you through the lengthy march

    Eventually in the lightening morn

    You’ll gather your courage, peer into the new sun, and know

    The pledge I made

    The pledge of the trees

    We vowed true