Part One: Life

Poetry by Season

Summer

Wild Rose

June

You

August

Settle

Fall

Your body will be earth

November

The world before birds

Winter

Tower of Babel

January

Diyenu

Wet forest

Spring

All things are different and the same March

Garden of oranges

Cathedral

Summer

Wild Rose –

You are no tulip, no rose

No small soft mammal.

You are no porcelain doll, no plaything, No decorative pet.

You are a wild rose, thorny and fierce You defy trellises

Tear them apart with ivy

Turn them to earth with moss.

Your roots crack rocks

Your leaves search the sky

You breathe rain.

You are no quiet dewy dawn,

You are the moonless night,

The howling wind,

The cold ropes of lashing rain.

They say that you are too much,

Speak too much

Move too much.

They say you have too many edges

Tell them you are full of edges,

Crevasses and canyons and cliffs

And that your curves are too big for them to see Rolling plains and verdant cradling valleys.

If you are too much, they are too little You powerful, thorny, wild rose.

June –

Sunlight is forever, day after day

Of sweet, gentle, still-young sun

Kissing our cheeks, browning our forearms The mornings still chilly

Clouds of cold fog on the lake

And the nights full of frogs singing And young loon heartache

And the rustling of the forest come alive.

In June the last traces of sunlight linger Like old friends after dinner

Until long into the night

Stars in deep blue bleeding orange streaks, The last traces of sunset holding hands with the night.

And somehow the days that last forever Seem like the always, the eternity

Painting every day for the next thousand years in watercolor and peach drippings

Like snow was only ever in old photos Crumbling corners, black and white

And the sun shines on forever

And all the insects buzzing, singing I'm alive, you're alive, everything's alive And the sun shines on forever.

You –

You are rain in the mountains

Soothing my

hot

sunbaked

rocks

Slaking my thirst even as I crave more As dirt that is too parched cannot drink Rivulets of water

run down my spine Until every inch of dirt learns

to taste and drink Until you’ve caressed every part of me And leave me sparkling with dew

Blushing with sunrise

You.

You are rain in the mountains

Unexpected and welcome

Gone again too soon

Come

fill my valleys slake my thirst.

August –

Sometimes I think I'm melting

Or falling, slow and smooth

Like a pebble

Sinking into molasses

When I look up at you

My eyes stick, half-shut

And through the slow brown dimness

I can't tell if you're smiling

Your lips move, a question, waiting – Can't you tell

That I am mouthless, tongueless, skinless And that if I just

Slow

each

breath I will melt into the wall

Into the floor

Baking into the grain

Like a wood stain

And the lips keep moving, your eyes bright It's a movie, on mute

And in black and white.

And I am sinking

A smooth pebble in molasses

Until at last, sticky feet on clay

I touch the Earth

Slow

each

breath

I will lie among the dying things

My body warm and glowing with rot

Until flowers bloom out of my ribcage My belly full of moist dark soil

My toes will be mossy, quiet and green And blackberries will shoot out of my throat Once mute, now dripping

With thorns and sun-baked sweet

And you will pick them, tart purple, juicy black And your fingers and lips and tongue Will be stained

With all my answers

To those waiting questions

That hung, buzzing like fat flies in August So long ago.

Settle –

Settle your mind

You are racing

Like running in the dark over the meadow Half tripping on rocks

Feet flying faster than your eyes can see Under the starlight

And your mind, still faster

Is up there twirling on galaxies

Flitting, faerylike, sliding down Orion's belt And hopscotching Cassiopeia

Only to run unrelenting circles

Around the Pleiades.

Settle your mind.

It is buzzing like bees

A busy hive in wildflower bloom

Blow smoke into the hive

Let yourself sleep

Let yourself be the slow-changing colors of July sunsets Not the sleepless twinkle of the stars.

Slow down, sweet sunset honeybee

Close your eyes and breathe

Do you smell the soft sweet grasses?

You're in a field of lavender

And sage, sun-dried and warm

In the dusty heat

And the sun bakes on your skin, on the flowers, On the earth

And a breeze kisses you cool, brings you dreams Lets the earth breathe.

Fall

Your body will be earth –

Little one with the gentle heart:

Someday your body will turn to earth.

For a brief moment in the universe

Blood will flow through your veins

And you will dance and run and learn and die And then for all the rest of eternity You will be earth.

Your ribs that cradled your fragile heart Will cradle grasses and weeds

A flowerpot of delicately curved bones And your heart

Knew love and loss and love and loss But all people die alone

And all names are said for the last time, someday.

They say that is the second and final death.

Little one, you have fire in your soul You are a warrior, defiant

But your fingerbones are small and crumbling And mud is helpless, not defiant – Your least favorite thing to be.

Little one, your feet that took you wandering, They will forget their footprints

And the feel of sand

But you tried to go so far

Following a bottomless yearning

You didn't know how to stop

But there are thousands of mountains you don't get to see Millions of creeks you never swim in And anyway your footprints are long gone The trees don't remember a single song you sang to them.

Little one, your lips tried your whole life To say the words that feel the way you feel To cry when your heart ached and when it was joyful.

To whisper sweetness when you were in love And to spit out all your anger at an unjust world.

And you wrote and you wrote

You felt and ached and yearned and exploded with joy And it all seemed too much to fit

So much so that I almost wonder if dust can feel As if the chalky white dust from your spine Could be more melancholy than the rocks around it

But in the stillness and the growing things, The thoughtless birdsong,

I know that your sea of emotion

Is as gone as your footprints and your defiance Vast though it was in your spark of existence.

Little one with the gentle heart,

Do not fret, for all things are temporary Even the stars

And nothing matters, not even the stars.

So go ahead – love and sing and cry and wander With this body that will soon be earth.

November –

Settle down

Soft and slow

Warm and sweet

It is time for dreams now

Everything is thin and papery

Old and dry

The leaves and your skin

Both thirsty and tired

Crackling gently

Like the ice in the morning underfoot.

Outside smells of fragrant woodsmoke Hanging in the air on doorsteps

As if waiting to be let back inside And the late sunrise wakes a grey sky up orange The sun dim enough to look at

Quieted by the blanket of wildfire smoke As if it, too, is hiding in bed

Alone and still

Candles on windowsills

Forgotten tea whispering curls of steam

It is time for dreams now

There are so many questions

And the world is so very big

But everything is slowing down, breathing soft And waiting

So don't go

Settle down, soft and slow

Warm and sweet

Time for sleep.

For Blue Jay –

Don't worry about the world before birds For there were fungi and Lincoln logs And little fishes in bogs

And yes, some things were real good The lakes and sky still blue and clean And no there were no birds yet, of any sort, nor mammals But I suppose that wasn't right or wrong just as this isn't It is the time that it is – Things are different then and now

And you can go to sleep dreaming

of a world before birds

But don't worry

Soon the ravens cawing will wake us in the sand And sunrise will see the flutter-drop-flutter-drop of cactus wrens.

Then you'll know we're in the now that we're in The now with whales and lizards

Oil wars and energy crises

The now with these rocks

Instead of the rocks an eon ago

The now with you and me instead of two other people or two other microbes Or two other little fishes in bogs before birds.

Winter

All things end somewhere

Tower of Babel –

You and me, we're standing in a great white tower And there are no windows

But some of the walls are painted

Like trees and sky

And all of the people walking about Are wearing fortunes

Of tissue-thin fabric made in a country they've never been to Shipped across oceans in black belching barges Made in the hands

Of the slaves to poverty

Who are made to kneel down and open wide For the corpulent First World greed That looks the other way with piggy blue eyes And throws two dollars down

Pennies rolling in the dust.

And after the slaves to poverty in foreign countries And the cargo ships with black breath They parade about in their finery

Closets so full that they wear their favorites Every other week

Before the tissue rips and away it goes To sit in a stinking pile

Somewhere on cheap land where we can pretend trash doesn't exist Because if we all had to live with our trash We wouldn't sell bananas in saran wrap Or water in plastic bottles

Or use paper towels like trees are the only obvious way to clean up messes And maybe it wouldn't be counterculture To buy in bulk and bring your own jars As if reusable containers are a branding Of what it means to be crunchy, the new age of hippy Because unsustainability is so normal That anything else is foreign and weird Thrown in with granola and reggae

And backburnered in politics like a niche group To take a brief nod to

After the tax code and oil wars.

And in our white tower

We feast on far away foods

Coffee from Ethiopia and mangos from the tropics Like kings who ate pies of lark tongues And drive everywhere, cursing traffic Wishing we were in the carpool lane As we burn liquid dinosaurs to get coffee downtown And we grow avocados and almonds in California Half on fire it's so dry

Leaving layers of ash on mountains

A message in a bottle for alien scientists “THIS is when it all burned down”

And 13% of Americans don't have enough food While 1 in 3 dies of heart disease

And the rising, acidifying ocean

The cemetery of oxygen-producing coral reefs Threatens half the world's population – But don't worry, it's the poor who suffer Who can't afford to move and get blamed for living Where Katrina landed because it wasn't enough To blame the victims of rape

We had to pretend that they were stupid enough to deserve a hurricane To deserve poverty

In this bizarre land where the poor are fat Arteries clogged with cheap calories and malnutrition Where the rich are thin

And the concept of dieting exists

Because half of our food isn't real And we have so much of everything

We gorge and gorge

On a bender of excess

While millions starve

Bellies swollen, eyes protruding, fingers like feathers And it is a crime to sell drugs

People getting by however they can

And it's not a crime to bankrupt the planet for your own profit Almost comical, like the tophat man from monopoly Who flies to his golf property every weekend In Mar-a-lago

And says that the poor are asking for handouts Those lazy bastards

And laughs on yachts with champagne from France And feels victimized on stage

As he lurks predatorily behind women And grabs them, doughy hands claiming their flesh As millions shout his name in adulation To make us great

To return to this American dream

In the land of plenty where we pretend Resources are infinite

So let's get richer

And richer

And richer.

We are standing

In a great white tower

Feeling like the only ones looking down At this monstrosity we've built

Like the Towel of Babel

Built by men wanting to touch God

And laid brick by brick of insolence Until they were miles up into the sky And you and I, born on this tower

Growing our rooftop gardens

In urban compost

In smoke-tinged acid rain

We are so far from Earth

And as we peer over the window ledges Our heads swim with vertigo

And like the old story, will God strike us down And let us fall crumbling

Crumbling into white brick dust

Like a funeral shroud we grew up sewing Since we were small,

Our clumsy hands stitching uneven lines Born to contribute to the brick-laying And the grave digging

And the tugging at God's skirts

Until Mother Earth calls us home.

January –

The wind chills, a slicing cold

And the watery sunlight trickles through the trees But does not warm

It has a filtered, surreal quality

Dreamlike and muted

The weak grey light slows one's thoughts And though it is clear I feel as though I am lost in fog When I speak the words drop from my tongue Unnoticed, like overripe fruit

Disconnected

And in slow motion I watch the corners of your mouth Hoping my words were the right ones – And around me the bare twigs of the oaks stretch toward the far-away sun As if dreaming that they still had leaves And I too

Dream of green fingers

And growing tall and strong

The watery sunlight sings

In a distant whisper

Harmonizing with the deep echoing silence Of the trees.

Diyenu –

Carrionbirds of hunger

Feasting on our own rotting carcasses We are but blind rabid harpies

Gifted, brilliant, winged

With a feral lust for life

We'll hunt more and more and more

Unstoppable, our rank talons and jeering cries And having sliced the world to ribbons We'll fall on our brethren

To gnaw them down to steel and bone Before they can gnaw us

Knowing we are but the next step

And yet unable to stop in our savage momentum

The dialogue waffles –

Did we shackle ourselves here

To feast on the bones of our neighbors Before we starve to death ourselves?

Or did someone put us here –

The bigman with the money and shackles to spare.

Victim or villain?

And while we stew in this conundrum of guilt We suck juicily the marrow of the earth Like a toddler crying because he stole the last candybar His guilt-ridden, chocolate-smeared face Tear-stained and inconsolable

And no amount of crying will undo his deed.

Australia is burning.

And we are full of useless questions Like whose fault is it anyway and

Who should be president and

What can I do?

No one thing is enough and I so want to believe that if we all do one thing it will be enough Diyenu.

But in my heart I know

This 6th extinction will be over only long after we, too, are gone And the skyscrapers are but concrete fairy dust And the scaffoldings but trellises for wild things And this fact I do not celebrate

I am in mourning

Mourning these tall hairless social apes Who sing and dance and paint and write and love And are so drawn to create

To better, to invent

That we built a great cathedral of our own oblivion.

Wet forest –

Come down soft

Let your toes sink through the snow Into spongy pine needles and wet paper oak leaves Put your knees on the earth

And look up –

The sky thinks it's summer.

Breathe once

Drop down onto your belly

Stretching fingers out in front of you, Dig them into soil and snow

Pull them out tingling

Dirt under your nails

Breathe once.

Rest your cheek to the ground

And listen

Feel the earth's cold, clutching winter close Listen for the water sinking underground Breathe once.

Turn over, your back wet and cold now Goosebumps on your skin.

Breathe once, look up

The pines tower above

Glittering wetly in the sun

And their tops look tangled in clouds As if to remind you how small you are.

Fat, heavy droplets fall

Punctuation marks, and they feel more like joy Than tears – but they pool in your eyes and Run down your cheeks

Cold and earth-smelling.

Breathe once.

Listen.

The bright, wet forest melting

Raining melting snowing melting

And glistening in the sun

Could we melt with such grace?

You think, eyes closed and full of snowmelt.

Could we tumble off branches

And sink into the earth so joyfully?

You think, shivering, cheeks reddened by wind.

And the wet forest melts

In drips and drops

The wet forest melts.

Spring

All things are different, and the same –

The air is thick with living

The reek of flowers

Little purple tubes and reaching grasping yellow stars All open and lustful and alive

And the slow sticky buzzing of bees

The green things are drinking last night's rain And the wind tastes of a desert rejoicing.

Many things are true

And always true

Like love and death

A plague like a somber chord

Underlying the silver laughter

The sweet sounds of friends under the sun and the stars

And there is a tension –

The chord and melody dance

In the same key, refusing to resolve But some things are true

And always true:

Where there is joy there will be sorrow Where there is death will be love

After drought comes rains

After winter, the fecundity of flowers And that winter and drought come again And that nothing is certain,

That each thing that is alive

Rejoices each moment that it is

That nothing feels so good as having a body Feeling the sun burn my skin as I lie Under the soft musk of dry lavender And the lavender rejoices with me,

And the bees

And the small sand bugs, curious strangers to me.

And this moment is an infinity of big and small, The future and the past and all things cradled in the space Of this one small, precious, present moment.

And like an orchestra swelling,

The slow sticky buzzing of bees,

The distant wailing of a world ailing, The silver bells of laughter in the canyon The whispers of old things,

Rocks and wind and sun

– All things are different and the same.

March –

When it rains, it pours

Fire and ice burning in your veins

Grey thunderclouds boom

And it rains

And it rains

Soaking through your skin to water your bones And it hurts. You cry.

A sobbing, sopping tangled mess

Your arms and legs and heart and mouth Are all frozen

Sitting rigid inside your abdomen

Like so much scrap metal sculpture you can't digest.

Your ears ring

From all the noise

Of all the silence

You screamed in your head, in your sleep And your questions follow you, hungry dogs The big ones, like

Where are you going anyway

And

Who are you, anyway

And when it suns it shines

The sky so blue you could burst

Things starting to hum and come alive Everything's waking up

And so are you

And yes:

It rained and it poured and it flooded And now you're lying dazed

On the silt-sticky riverbank

Cold and wet and so alive

And when you leave, look back

Flowers follow in your footsteps.

Garden of oranges –

I am a garden of oranges

My own fragrant, blossoming orchard Ripe, sweet, sticky and sour.

You held my face in your hands once And told me that I am

A garden of oranges –

I say to you now

Yes, I am the garden

And the gardener

The tender flowers, sour young fruit And the forgotten fruit fermenting underfoot I am the storm the gardener fears

And a warm gentle westerly,

The faint taste of seasalt in my wake.

Yes, I am the garden

And the soil and the birds

I am the rain you beg for

And the drought that comes instead.

If I am the garden, I think that you became my fences And so with storms and ivy and then quiet moss I broke free.

I am a wilderness of oranges,

An untamed forest, a sea.

Cathedral –

You were made to dance

You were made to sing

You were made for words

To course through your veins to your heart And oxidize in your lungs

Becoming bright beautiful bold sounds Before cascading out the cathedral of your mouth A Hallelujah chorus of all the shapes and colors of your insides For you are made of poetry.

You were made to dance

To the rhythms of your own thump-thump For you have a drum that beats unceasingly until the day you die And you can dance to the music your own body is made of.

You were made to sing

A counter-melody to your breaths

In and out like tides, like storms

Like sunset and moonrise your constant pull and push Your very bones humming in time

And there is no wrong note

For the pink clouds of dawn are the same air in your lungs And what you breathe out is the mist on the lake.

You were made to dance and sing

Your body, a rhythm of the earth.

Part Two: Death

These poems, less curated than in Part One, are just all the poems I wrote since my cancer diagnosis, in order. They are raw and sometimes bad. I’m hoping that it will provide the reader with a window into my experience, and make you feel like you’re walking alongside me.

1. Oncology

2. October

3. Be Careful

4. Trust me, I know

5. Imploding

6. Upside Down

7. Lake of Death

8. Choosing to Live

9. Honey

10. Taking a Dirt Nap

October 8, 2021

Oncology, from the Greek word ὄγκος ( óngkos ), meaning 1. "burden, volume, mass" and 2. "barb"

I imagine that I can hear it seeping From my offending peripheral nerve sheath From under the stitches

Under the numbness where my nerves no longer connect all the way to my brain

Or perhaps it slithers

Or thuds along - "a burden, a mass" after all

Anyhow I picture it advancing

Not knowing yet if it is in my liver or heart or lungs or blood

One can't help but wonder if it is a sludge of hate If all the hateful or ungrateful or spiteful things I've ever done or said Just curled up in a lump

And decided to be cancer

One can't help but wonder

Did I do this?

Is this because I shoplifted nail polish as a teenager Because I secretly think I'm better than others Because I love to be right

Because I didn't wear gloves around the cleaning chemicals at work Because I drank and smoked -- the way we all did in college Because I lie sometimes

Because I ache too much to be loved ?

Or is it because of all the good I've had A cosmic balancing out

Because I've seen so many shooting stars Laughed so much in the sun

Cried happy tears and sad tears

And felt so much and loved so much More than I could bear often

Did I live all my life already,

Used it all up in 26 years?

They tell me I've lived many lives Canoe guide, french teacher, historian, linguist, climber, sex educator, medic.

Ice castle builder, foot model, mover.

Friend, lover, sister, daughter, mentor.

I have been so lucky and so full

But so sad! How can it be?

I whisper to the uncaring infinity How much I've suffered

To suffer again, anew

I've been raped and betrayed

Imprisoned by my own mind,

Beaten down by my depression

Thrashed senseless and stupefied by anxiety I've lost years of memory

And wanted to die for years

I had only just figured out living.

I crave a way to put these pieces together But the universe is not made out of such puzzles No comfort to be found in it being my fault Or because I had it so good

Or because I had it so bad.

And the ocean will continue to crash ashore The birds will fly north in spring The earth will warm

The people will suffer

The stars will shine

And the sun will rise

Perhaps the miracle in her indifference Is the beauty we find in it.

10/13/2021

October

In which all of my poems are suddenly about cancer And I see the forest with new eyes.

It's fall and spooky and misting rain The sky always gray and the wind always gusting But I suppose maybe it would feel appropriate in any season If it were summer the warm golden light would have a strange quality Sticky and slow, toxic almost

And the berries would remind me of their short lives But a few weeks of fat little red strawberries Eaten, holey, unclean.

If it were winter I would hear the wolves starving The trees freezing

The bitter wind taking my breath away.

If it were spring I would weep

To the wildflowers

To the swollen streams

Life so abundant

So temporary

So uncaring and ruthless.

It is October.

It is all perception

I've always loved mushrooms

Life from decay

But suddenly I ache for the trees.

Aug 13, 2022

Be careful –

I carry a rainbow cuttlefish with me A reminder of better days

I carry with me a house where we all used to laugh and painted a whole aquarium.

When I left I took mine with me

Covered in plastic to keep it safe

But of course, it’s lifeless now

Without friends to swim with.

Be careful –

My walls are covered in pictures

– I thought it would help –

But I can barely look at them

I look so happy, then

Me on rocks, me with friends,

Me hiking and sledding

Grinning, alive

I can’t help but feel sad when I look at them So I don’t

But I carry those with me too.

Be careful –

I carry a whole journal with me

And never write in it

as if I’m afraid to find out that I’m sad!

I carry with me

Two ukuleles that I never play

A handful of expectations I try to ignore Extra stuff and a bizarre fear of scarcity I carry with me a privilege I examine guiltily – (It lives in the same too-small bag With my traumas and grief,

And I never did know how to make them fit together) I carry with me

A fear of commitment, a bit smaller than my fear of abandonment

Every heartfelt letter I’ve ever been written A smattering of overalls of different textures A big ego and a bottle of self-loathing And a contradiction or two, like anyone.

I carry with me a stuffed polar bear that’s nearly my age

A shelf full of field guides

A hunger to know everything

And a trivet made of hospital socks.

Oct 15, 2022

Oh, trust me I know

More than most how our bodies are meat Having watched the inside of mine

White tendons flickering in and out of view as I wiggle my fingers

Yellow fat, red blood,

Curiously garish colors for nature

As if I expected to be soft lavender and peach on the inside,

Flowers and fruit

Fragrant and sweet.

It is October again

A month I associate now with my own mortality As if I’m a single leaf on the red maple outside Still holding on but with finite days – Not numbered, as we don’t get a countdown And if we did would you look?

An early snow put a chill in me that I cannot shake I am not ready for sleep.

12/1/22

Today at a stoplight I saw a young woman screaming Her car smashed in the intersection Another car pulled over, driver crying This young woman in her yellow crocs and gray sweatpants She talked on the phone, she paced

She yelled at the other driver in the parked car, gesticulating wildly Knocking at the window

Rage dripped from her voice

And panic from her hands

And finally she got in her car and drove it away Innards dripping from the front of it The car screeching along with her.

And I, uselessly onlooking –

I felt embarrassed for her

Look away! So as not to witness this uncomfortable public pain – What am I, a Puritan? – I couldn’t help but think

I’m dying and I’ve never thrown my tantrum Should I be doing that?

I could try to let loose but that is not in me, I’d be acting.

For some reason I sit here in the calm despair of it all I’ve always felt like imploding instead of exploding Prone to crumpling in on the vacuum within The aching emptiness in my chest

Yes, my heart and mind

But also the way my body

Is a yawning desperation

I’ve only ever wanted to be full of love I picture myself growing fat with it Acceptance, respect, laughter, desire All lining my belly and my thighs

Until one day I’m not hungry anymore.

12/9/22

“How are you doing?”

They ask, knowing full well it’s a ridiculous question.

I’m flying to California

It’s late, and it becomes the surreal, liminal space (as travel does)

where anything could happen

I imagine an accident – the airplane shakes itself apart

Our doom brings us together and I am holding hands with the man next to me

seeing each other for the first time And I say, “You wanna know something funny?”

“I’m already dying of cancer!” And I laugh And it calms him, for a moment his eyes smile And then we’re sucked out, torn apart, Shredded bodies strewn across Montana kinda funny, I insist.

In the light from the wings I can see the rain That is clearly falling sideways

And not regular falling either – hurtling violently in straight white streaks alongside my window This sums up how I am doing, I think

The rain is falling sideways, incomprehensibly The world turned upside down

and there is nothing I can do

but watch it fall.

12/21/22

Today we walked around the lake of death Our mouths thick with it

Our eyes wet with it

Tongues stuffy and cottony with words like pain and time and what if

Crows harassed a redtail and the lake froze, audibly.

We walked down the street of death

Into the house of death.

We had friends over

Hugs of death

Cocktails of death

Christmas carols of death

Laughter of death, love of death.

Tomorrow we’ll walk around the lake of death again It’ll never stop being the lake of death, I think To those left behind, it’ll always be the lake we walked back when Ikse was alive And this house will be the house we lived in with Ikse.

I can’t take it back

I’m so sorry to leave you with a house of death and a lake of death The music I loved will be songs of death And the paintings I gave you will be art of death.

We all want you to remember me alive But to remember me alive will be to miss me Remembering me will be knowing that I am dead And you’ll never be free of it,

Not as long as you live

It is fucked up to have to hurt you this way.

1/8/2023

I went walking on the lake today

It seemed solid until it wasn’t

All of a sudden it was slush

Water slipped crept seeped into my boots My heart sank into the lake

I thought I would drown

But the rest of me walked home, somehow.

Is it like that? you might ask

Yes and no

It is like the ground disappeared beneath me And I am falling

Still falling, for months, maybe years Until impact

There’s less to be afraid of down here Because all the worst things are already happening A certainty of pain and death – Can’t worry about that one.

Still, I fear suffering

And for this I know that I will go

By myself, in the trees, I will choose to die After hearing for many years

The death call of my own heart

and turning away, choosing to live

I thought I would never end it myself I chose life.

I still choose life

There’s not much these days that could be worse Would it be worse if I wanted to die?

I think so.

The crying in the room across the hall is for me It’s always for me

Me, me, me

it’s about me

Until it isn’t

No meaning to be found in that.

Making sense of anything is a job for poets What rhymes with malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor?

Indignant girl hors d'oeuvre wreath boomer?

Turns out the universe is random chaos No meaning to be found in that.

1/12/2023

Honey

The first person I fell in love with once showed me how to check my oil He told me that car oil should be the color of honey He leaned against the hood

Hips facing me, eyes burning

More seduction than car lesson

Even the dirty oil he showed me on his fingers was a wet promise And the word honey rested on his lips As if we could taste it.

Now I know that oil never really looks like honey It always looks black even after you change it Now I know that love is real

So is lust

And people grow apart, sometimes.

It’s funny to think of those days

Everything was bodies

Sex and sports

The two powerful medicines to feel good Sweat as antidepressant

We fuck and eat and tell lies and truths We lick our friends' ears

We play at hunting

We drive too fast and learn to check our oil And then we die

End of story

And if you don't want the story to end there then we are soil We are so much carbon

We will grow flowers and blueberries The worms will drink us in greedily But the ashes are not me, anymore

End of story.

1/17/2023

I’ve always hated euphemisms for death “Passed away”

What the fuck does that mean?

Or “passed over”

It’s funny how little words can change the whole meaning From passed over to passed out

Passed up to passed away to passed gas I don’t think death or dead or dying should be bad words People get real squirmy when you say them Or deny it outright, when you put it like that.

I heard a new one today

It was “expire”

“When you expire” this lady said, trying to be polite Which really did make me laugh

Picturing orange mold growing on me Like something forgotten in the back of the fridge Odorous fecund and slimy.

“Deceased” is better

Doesn’t beat around the bush

But it sure doesn’t beat the dead horse The way saying “my dead friend” does “My dead friend used to love this song”

Is what I want you to say

And people will cringe and wonder whether to ask you about it And you’ll say “it’s fine”

(It’s not fine)

And they’ll say “how did they go?”

“Go where,” my ghost will ask snarkily in the background “They’re in a better place now”

“Dearly departed”

“Resting in peace”

“They’re with God now.”

If you have to euphemize, might I suggest the crass There’s a variety of colorful options English is wonderful like that

“Kicked the bucket”

“Croaked”

“Pushing up daisies”

“Bit the dust”

“Taking a dirt nap”

All have a delightfully irreverent feel As if robbing death of its hush-hush sacredness Tell it like it is

We’re just wet bodies

Until we’re dry bones.

Table of Contents

Life and Death: a Collection of Poems

Part One: Life

Summer

Fall

Winter

Spring

Part Two: Death