On 2/7, I had the opportunity to join a poetry reading at Backwater Books in Ellicott City, Maryland. It was such a beautiful night, and I wanted to share it with you through this special post. I hope you enjoy this reading, I look forward to the next one. Thank you as always for the support. Below, you can follow the set list.
Entomologist
In the morning, I walk through the fields of suspended wings from the moths who died in the night from throwing their bodies at lightbulbs for love.
Moths on fire, to keep the night burning, extinguished by attempts to kiss the goddess in the glass before they evaporated from her Olympian beauty.
I pluck the lovers from the cement. Their Dust-jacket vessels hellbent, the posture of their last lament, crescent moons still hoping to cradle ideas.
How funny are we, moths, throwing ourselves at things we can’t have, damaging ourselves over something so deranged as equivalent exchange of intimacy with someone who doesn’t know how to put down their walls.
Death is full of life
Death is full of Life,
stars shining through the dark of night,
the glint of scales in the sunlight as salmons swim up the river for the last time,
the daisies rising from my old dog’s grave,
a child tearing out dandelions and placing the wishes in a Ziploc bag,
shadows stretching out toward the sunset,
my living room surging with black,
as mourners converse about how beautiful the service was.
Death is Life,
seamless as leaves changing in the season,
or breath leaving lungs,
shifting through different forms to pluck moments away from Existence;
the hawk perched on the telephone line,
a harbinger for the mice weaving through the meadow grass,
the cat trotting off, its belly full of birdsong,
sleep digging the bear past hibernation,
seeding them into the earth like blackberries,
their bodies curled against their mothers once again.
Life unfolds its petals, blooming into Death,
and Death, lets us rest, while the world grows on.
We are memories,
like the stars shining through the dark of night.
Death is full of Life.
Flora
I forgot that we are flowers made of bones,
weeds hoping to stay a little longer in the concrete creases
because bones are a human plight -
trying to escape the grave they make grave things like axe heads
and their swings,
but we are all bouquets,
wilted by the evening.
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