Julie’s Poetry

When All The Bad Things Cancel Each Other Out

Sifting through notebook piles

and faded photos,

sun streams in and fades me…

The other person now sifting

through notebook piles

and faded photos of strangers—

days that layered the years that

hung below a belt indentation

on the Earth’s skin.

Smoothed out wrinkles

where time doesn’t visit

and we’re happy just to be.

Here is an actual gift if you grab it

by its ass. And learn

that the bad things can

easily cancel each other out.

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Grounded

the sky can’t fall, I say to myself

as we lay underneath.

We make shadows on the lawn

like a ghost’s imprint

and wait for an invisible

wall that divides us.

Next to me, you drift,

possibly asleep, possibly dreaming

of things that make sense, knowing good well

that I don’t. Circling above is a cloud

and in that cloud is me, well part of me,

the part that isn’t grounded here.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

You Sent Me

You sent me

in a box of little foam peanuts

wrapped in ten feet of bubble wrap.

You sent me

as far as i could be carried

in a crumpled card board box–

with extra postage for my additional drama.

and away i went,

with other rejected packages

sailing on the conveyer belt

to another state, city, country,

to no where special or somewhere

with no return address, like the one-way

ticket you gave me last New Year’s eve.

Smelly-wet-smashed up boxes

drifting one by one

to someone else who

can overlook their crinkly corners,

jagged edges, and missing pieces.

i wait inside for you to come back,

to take me home, to even shove

me under your bed with the dust bunny

slippers and lost coins…

instead, you left me aside

to be picked up by the addressee

You randomly chose out of the phone book.

__________________________________________________

Red Sweater

Turned inside out

the red sweater waits

for his return, crumpled

and sad, balled up half-way,

clung to the bureau drawer.

Its blended wool and cotton

frame held him tight on

Winter days when playing

near the creek after dark

was forbidden.

Each pilled fiber, proof of another

year the boy had grown and chosen

to wear the red sweater instead of the

new one Mom bought and placed nicely

On his bureau top.

Like most boys, he chose comfort

and the red sweater chose him, remained

in dependable shape for another chilly

day.

Left behind, the house quiet too, the sweater’s

pilled, lonely threads hold tight for his next

trip home, faithful the boy will miss it’s

comfort and give it another deserving

wear while walking near the creek on

a simple chilly day.

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The River Collapses

A river once ran behind my home.

It lulled me to sleep,

drowned the monsters in the closet,

pulled bad dreams undertow.

A river that once ran behind my home,

Grew colder as I grew up—

Grew bolder and more cynical,

as people often do when falling out of love.

A river, dried up now, ran behind my home

Until my home was behind me–

Watching it disappear out of the car’s rear window,

Watching it change to tiny pieces and hide deep in-ground.

As my mother collapsed beside the dried up river,

drunk from whiskey tears and lost church bells,

The river, gone forever, lulled her final breath–

Until she lay helpless for that moment,

Next to the river’s now dry land.

__________________________________________________

Ethan’s Poem

It truly never matters:directions given, advice spewed, hands folded

neatly waiting for their place,

and the boy just sighs

Long, inner, placid, peaceful sighs as

if content could linger in his lungs and on his lips–

each breath dipping deep down,

then rise and fall, recycled air

The boy, somewhat older than his years,

gives his father the half-cocked, curious

[somewhat callous] smile…

mouth with turned up corners. dance devilish doubts across

his face.

Tempered glass scattered in the corner closet

cleverly concealed,

covered by Dad’s least favorite bag of clubs

The boy, innocent for now, waits his turn to ask

for a second slice of sinful chocolate cake.

Dad, proud of his son’s properly positioned,

folded hands  agrees-

the cake coats curiously innocent lips

–the boy’s confession will wait

til the tub is filled

and his father is too tired to teach another lesson.

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Metaphors We Keep

Naught we need to sense nor feel, but crutched to write:

subdued like gun-shots through dense, viscous air,

and curtained sleep where dreams make love

to angry days before the eyes can close.

A peek into life– wild, free, in a candid open–

to risk the hidden monologues deep inside

our favored cliches and wishes…

( precise reason we search with certain faith, and not by panic we were taught).

For all the ways the heart can triple beat and not implode!

now strained, and wedged between here, and no place else,

giving soul to stable wombs, a Harbor Place-

for newborn birth that completes a single page we call tomorrow.

__________________________________________________

Lost in Orientation

Gently pulling on my hair-

Forces beneath my feet and falling forward…no,

Now backward,

gently pulling on my limbs.

Tipped and spinning, a fine acrobatic feat.

Changing course, now looking up

And laying on the floor beneath.

Inebriate me. inebriate me. inebriate me.

I seize in aura—beating, flustered,

Fleeting. I hear it. kids are playing-

Shouting. Crying. Wait, are they

Calling for me. I rise, disoriented–

I got lost again on the oriental rug.

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Green Goddess

An inflection of shattered visions-

Now dust bunnies in the corners of the porch.

Recollections, distinct and thumping,

crawling deep inside the walls.

Free fall onto frozen, bladed ground

and gasp for gods to gage,

Sun to shine and melt.

Move less, still, while shadows float and dance.

While Nothing is bothered or touched,

And Green goddess stalks stab the sky.

Baffled beauty turns to

Battered beats that call to us at night.

The sun just waits to Warm

And come, the next day soon,

so Ground can sleep

and dream of better things to do than hold us up.

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That Last Night

I love to make you laugh.

Even more now that your atheistic

charm is so damn sexy!

Your eyes tell me fuck off,

Go away, but your soul follows

me up the stairs as we make love in

front of your mother’s mirror.

Calm from all the faith you tossed away–

no longer forced to carry on your back–

We sink below ourselves.

Now deep.

Deep down inside another place

Where no gods roam and children

Never sleep.

____________________________________________________________________

Sweaty

Sudden humidity set in

and the air was thick

like a wet mesh rag

expanding in the sink drain

panting dog at the edge,

shirtless I sprawl,

waiting for a phone to ring

or the ceiling to disembody

itself and free its contents–

Heat makes strange things happen.