A Mind, Lively and at Ease • RSS • archive • LMGMD

My dogs have both fallen into REM sleep.

One sounds like a horse neighing, although he’s sleep barking little woofs.

The other twitches and yelps in short coughs and bursts of ruffs.

My cat, after inspecting each stirring body, curls purring at my feet.

Green grass rolls above Georgia clay earth; cool and damp he lies.

Lion-head pillow cases and liquor names etched on every glass and box,

the monuments of my grandfather, his Barbasol, the comb that fit

through glossy hair, his heaving belly napping on the sofa after work.

I’ve always wondered on my pups’ dreams.

Soft turf? A neighbor’s ankle for the nipping? A bowl of food big

enough to swim in? Does death ever soil their stead?

Grandpa ate like a dog. Both hands working inside the plate. 

And his dreams, what were those?

Oven Bird by Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Tempered

Migraines hardly effect her anymore; she’s managed

to abate them. The sun leaving a stark, steep hill

receives a by-your-leave, for the melatonin-deficiency

fluorescent furnace keeps her locked in mid-strike

as she forges emails and agreements and accounts.

She speaks of shutting her oppressive wooden door

to sob as I would mention Halley’s comet. She wore 

away her knees for her children, and upon discovering

that she could no longer walk, cut herself open

and soldered thigh and calf together—two and two.

She makes mistakes, forgets, can seem unfeeling,

but what more can you ask of this loving blacksmith

as she pours her hot blood as iron for steel?

Wash away the limestone pillars in your sprawling mind to lift the whole thing with more dignity. No one achieved much the first try, but if they did it would’ve just been dumb luck. You’ve got a cowlick of a heart that won’t go down, but you still try to heavy it with dark wonder and brutal surprise. 

Could’ve been different, you know, but every decision came to the next and every moment came to your future. Now, you’ve got a vast amount of new elements and man-made chemicals to work with, so why not hitch up those overalls containing all your pride and lost expectations to better fit that step? Get messy. Tear up every bit of your canvas life and inch it back together again, taping the shreds up on both sides. 

I’d love you no matter what. Piece by piece. 

Hit straight and true, or wave around the target like the world deserved that miss. When your fingertips burn off your prints, let the grime and sticky leftovers from last night fill them back to grip. 

Mentally kick people in the balls, even if they haven’t got them. Think a cruel thought and dissolve it with every other one of kindness and hope, without purpose. Steal weight from insults by taking them too seriously, and ask the person for more input. Make yourself an inside joke that always convinces yourself to smile.

Never give up those 3D glasses that help you envision the world differently for the scurrying last attempts to aggregate friends by lackluster default. 

Only accept defeat as a showy diversion, retreating and regrouping instead.

Always love yourself instinctively; love others through learning. 

I’m so tired of the nostalgia, the escapism of bad habits, and the things that are supposedly emotionally provoking, and they’re all saying the same thing, they’re all avoiding the same thing, we’re all screaming those futile words drowned by everyone else’s yells:

We are growing older, 

and what we once thought

never was, 

and I feel completely

out of control

and out of depth 

because even as a child

we were crying 

straight from the womb.

But then we tell each other, 

“Deal with it,” 

as we all dance slowly, yet in predetermined

haste, decomposing to dust.