when fir trees branch inside us
anything can happen
like the feeling
when seeing you
that this happiness
could breathe out 100 butterflies
from the center of my chest
fluttering winged feeling
is something no longer charming
but alarmingly possible
***inspired by the prompt to be random at Octpowrimo, and also this article: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2009/04/13/too-strange-to-be-true-tree-found-growing-in-mans-lung/
Hi, all. This piece sprang from a conversation I had with a friend about food/lifestyle choices. I do not judge anyone for their choices–this is just an exploration. I will try very hard to offend everyone equally in this poem.
there is asceticism in eating
or not eating, the laws for not mixing
meat & dairy & all those prohibitions
& different dishes
the story of daniel the slave
eating pulse to obey
even in babylon
wiped away when Christ said
it is what comes out of mouths
that makes us unclean, not
the flesh we take in
the halal & haraam
food, what we eat
is spiritual,
embodiment
at its most basic–
practical worship
saying grace before meals
the body & blood of communion
ritual cannibalism
if i could i would root
and shape substance from sunlight
& rainwater, like plants do;
grow where nothing dies
to feed this need for matter,
the small blocks that I am
always hungry,
but i cannot draw substance
from nothing, and this mouth
loves the taste of meat. prometheus
brought fire and I will use it
primitive, primal
that hunter under my skin
thanks the givers–not the sanitized
wrapped packages but the lives,
the furred & feathered
there can be no disconnect
from these lives i swallow
there is that current you go willingly with
or it takes you anyway in riffs and rips
better to slide into it than fight,
drowning in crocodile rolls
hard to teach that flow
but when we learn it
easier to skim,
to float that surface pull.
it only takes you under
if you fight
the dead surrender
much more easily
than the live
but we can learn it
***another octpowrimo exercise, prompted here: http://www.octpowrimo.com/2012/10/writing-poetry-day-21-weaving-and.html#more
who knew
that guy, that brilliant
sardonic guy shaking wit like martinis
served up & very dry
would lose the pseudonym,
his barbed wire breached
smoothed by a feeling so rainbow
when he wears it
the blue dances in his eyes
***for you, Bruce, and Ms. Blue 😉
i want to sing your life
or smile it
but loss carries me past words
RIP to my Aunt Marie, the lovely young woman in the center of this photograph. She introduced my parents to each other in 1954, and was a wonderful friend to my mother throughout their lives, and a good friend to me, too. She passed away 10/20/2012 after a long illness.
you take everything
five suitcases
heavy with longing
counted on fingers
that difference
lightening
translated to miles
(kilometers
where you are going)
what else is needed
as that matter of time
when you fly into it
scatters and collapses
into seconds
or is it firsts
that last step into arms
you both open
Susan Daniels Poetry 