Sweet is sweet in any language

When my mother sent candy, or cookies, or anything special and edible to me, I would always have some, have a few, and then let it sit. I would leave it for a rainy day, try to spread it out and delay gratification, but it always ended in the same way. The candy would dry out, the cookies went stale, the breads that were sweet became moldy and green. I was always afraid that love, that her love, would run out if I finished those cookies – that if I ate them all, it would be as though she’d left, or died, and the packages would stop coming. The oven would shut off for good. There would never be any more sweetness arriving as a surprise from any part of the world.

Softly speaking, or touching, the voice says

Softly speaking, or touching, the voice says
whatever it means to say
given the proclivity towards fast love
we both adopt the idea of choosing our words
careful, and slow.

But neither of us know lagging in practice
nor is it our concern
so we circle closer in and closer out
waiting for punctuation to a sentence
neither of us care to end.

We want our words to be complicated
to complicate
to make the other believe we are ready
not to care about a consequence–

funny that we’d both care.

Funny we turned out to lie together,
the same way.

Waiting

The waters were quiet, the wood was dry.
Old men sit in the sun and doze, while the women inside bake
for no one in particular.
One woman stands, eyes out to sea,
fingers crushing the life from her balcony rail, though no one yet knows why.
They are all waiting, for different reasons
but with a common hope – that the men come home

so fathers can clasp hands with sons,
mothers dote,
so women can lead their husbands to warm beds.
So children can have a father again.

But one woman stands with eyes apart of time
every day she waits,
passes a whetstone over her future,

meditates a red tide in her mythology
as yet, unwritten.

Learning

“His stomach was warm”
-Michael Ondaatje

The sun came out from behind the clouds
I thought how it ruined a perfect day
made me believe within without
I wanted to pull one over on the world

I wanted to pull one over on the world
made me believe within without
I thought how it ruined a perfect day
The sun came out from behind the clouds

I dream in objects

I dream in objects
and so do you, and rarely is my mind tickled
as when I view the counter the morning after
the coffee cup, the small black computer drive
their atoms compiled into familiar shapes
but what echoes from them, in my eyes
surprises me as radiant fire beneath my skull
and inside my brain

So does day follow night follow day
and the fear that fills my hollow spaces merge
into the fullness of my fibers. I know there is something inside.
But is it fear? And is that where the poem comes from?

And is that a weakness,
or a truth?
It fills the muscles in my neck,
with a twitch and a power,
and if I didn’t feel so powerful I’d know I was weak

Weak, because this is a discovery,
and fear under lights is still fear.

Love stays there, with fear, is fear,
too old to live,
too strong to die.