A Tribute To My Dad
Thank you for always supporting my art, and poetry. Loosing you was the hardest things I've ever had to go through. Love You,
The Exhaustion
My body is tired and aches
I can’t tell if it’s the rain
Or if it’s sympathy pain
Of rigamortis the stiffening of my bones
I’m taking a page
From a therapist book
Letting the grief envelope me
A baptism of what comes after
After the death of a love one
I expected grief to be sadness
A fluidity but it feels like stones
An aching of bones
A heaviness that weights throughout your day
It makes words stumble out of your throat
No flight light songs
Even my bed
Does not embrace me enough
To ease the exhaustion
My soul feels
As it lingers In this body
Bones Fastened
From Wood
I can’t tell if the enemy that lives in my house
bare bones fastened from wood
If it’s the rocking chair
or the bed he slept in that was not his deathbed
the bed that was nestled in the living room that I assembled upon finding out the diagnosis
the bed that made him more comfortable
the bed he would get better
in the bed that sat in the living room for three months after he died
This was the bed my sister and I slept in shifts
The bed my mother slept in,
The communal piece as we observed his last day
No my feelings of Discretion is not with the hospice bee that came and went so quickly that only had one purpose that was the inevitable end.
I wonder if it’s the bed that was before his deathbed or if it is the rocking chair that rocks so with rythmatical throughout the years
Undisturbed by bad news that still sits there lacking its purpose
That mocks me at night
When I still hear footsteps and movement from the other room
And its only purpose is a reminder
Bodies of Water
We are just bodies of water
Oceans of people
Souls our currents
Cycling at different stages
Like the rippling waves of ocean
Hoping our current doesn’t stop
Iv seen the trickle new life
With such innocents and promise
We are just bodies of water
In our prime there is
The passion
Felt between lovers
When there's fire in there sternum
Steam seeping
Through the mouths
Of words on fire
Before their love
Is extinguished
We are just bodies of water
Iv see the undertow of sickness
I watched you slowly
Evaporate
I promised you’d we’d go to beach
When you got better
Just after a few more treatments
Then when
You no longer needed a wheelchair
As the air in our house slowly grew stagnant
We are just bodies of water
Memories of you
Are mixed with oceans and chlorine
Memories
Of you are always summer
We are just bodies of water
I hope when you evaporated
Instead of becoming lost in clouds
I hope
Your soul lingers
Between the smell
Of salt
And the breeze of the sea
Three Times I Felt Gaia's Comfort
One
It was the day after you died, I was driving
Stopped in the midst on the road at dawn
Standing before me was a buck
We made eye contact for a only a moment before he dashed away
For some reason I knew it would be okay
Two
The day you died it was summer
Sunshine wrapped around me like a blanket
I answered the call
When the news hit the warmth was interrupted
A light breeze passed through
I hope you died peacefully
For some reason I knew it would be okay
Three
I saw your soul leave your body
After months of fighting
I knew it was coming like the rustle of a slow train
I was caught in the tracts
Unable to free myself
The moment you died in August
The sky opened on a sunny day
Downpours so unusual
Accompanied by a rainbow
For some reason I knew it would be okay
My religion isn’t a language of the earth
A spoken tongue of Gaia
Yet when she speaks to me
I will listen
For some reason I know it will be okay
But I have come to the conclusion
That there will be a day
Were my world stops turning
Carve my epitaph with love
May you know
Gaia has taken me home
For some reason you’ll be okay
MY FATHER’S AGE
I think about my fathers youth
The dancer he was
I wonder his thoughts that packed
Into ballrooms and the back of clubs
I wonder what colors the rooms were
The lights that spun around
I wonder what went on in his mind
When he met the love of his life
If he had any idea of what would come
As the sound of his heels hit the dance floor
He was in his mid twenties
When he met my mother across a dance room
Then his late twenties when they married
Started putting together
The pieces of their life
My perception has changed
On how old he must have been
When he started the foundation
Of the life he would build
When I wipe down mirrors
And in my reflection I see
That I am now
My fathers age
Nuclear Explosion
Some diagnosesÂ
Manifest Â
Mushroom clouds
Surround the perimeter of your houseÂ
Because the bomb just droppedÂ
Causing a Catatonic stateÂ
Unlike most nuclear blastÂ
When the news hitsÂ
Your nuclear familyÂ
Radiation isn’t the fall outÂ
But it seeps through your wallsÂ
Manifesting itselfÂ
As a toxic saviorÂ
Savior that poisonedÂ
The cancerous part of your love onesÂ
In a raceÂ
No one winsÂ
Your feelings of powerlessnessÂ
EncroachÂ
Putting faith in godsÂ
And medicine that will fail youÂ
All you can doÂ
Is hold your breath
And try to notÂ
To Choke in the fall out
Hospice
The chef was take out
And church food
Joy drained out
Through the windows
Like heat in the winter
Hospital bed
In living room
Guard rails up
Hand holding
Tear stained face
Is what hospice looks like
They tell you people can get off it
Recovery can come to some
Brain tumor Grew
Unlike the new memories
we would have with him
There were no last wishes
No one last hurray
Mobile dissipated
In a matter of days
Before we could do anything to stop it
Good Morning to You
The song of my childhood morning
a sun salutationÂ
from father to daughter.Â
You woke us up every morning with a songÂ
made the day seem less scaryÂ
when it starts with a tune.Â
Sat us up on the counterÂ
washed our faces and brushed our hair,Â
hair in high ponytail.Â
Good morning to you,Â
a song only sung in my father’s voiceÂ
any other octave unfamiliar.
No, my father was the only oneÂ
who could greet the morningÂ
and make you feel like it was greeting you back.
There are moments nowÂ
in the stillness of the mornings,
the mornings that start without a tuneÂ
that I now linger in bed.Â
Wishing for afternoon to creep through the curtainsÂ
I wonder if I was ever a morning personÂ
or if I just like morningsÂ
because of you.
Hands Ontop of Graves
There are moments
when I sit beside you,
I put my hands through the blades of grass
I take in the air
I wish could fill your lungs.
I hold my breath for a moment
and feel what it’s like to be you,
motionless and breathless.
For a moment
there isn’t a cloud in the sky,
I hope you see it
from the other side.
There are moments
I run my hands on top of the blades of grass
on top of your grave
I hold my breath
wishing you could hold yours.