68/365 Sestina for those who write them

We are creatures of reflex and recovery
One ear for music, the other for friends
Trading as currency the stanzas that make us swoon
Shivering in circles, straining through the thin exhale
of smoke for the sake of being known
In each moment, planning the moments to follow

Taking steps and missteps when feet don't follow
in close time, one-two, one two, the recovery
comes more quickly when the route is known
When we have seen the healed scars of good friends
Who will remind us to breathe and write, inhale, exhale
Let our diaphragms spawn the poetry that will make them swoon

The way that one first poem made us swoon
made us trace our fingers along the edges of moleskin, follow
the ink of our favorite pens as they exhaled
our passions onto crisp pages; cathartic recovery
that we will revisit, revise, and share with friends
and strangers to whom we will soon become a bit too well known.

Regret forever tells us we should have known
enough to unclench fists and breathe, so we would not swoon,
not stammer, not fear the very critique from friends
that we ourselves asked for, suggestions we intend to follow,
Relish the pain borne of healing and recovery
Rip of the band-aid and don't just gasp inward;  Exhale

It is not the deep breath that rewards us, but the exhale,
the first and best release of tension; we have known
since infancy to cry out, to sob, to sigh through recovery,
to build that drumroll, mount like the symphonies we are, to swoon
into certainty and the confidence that is to follow.
This will not happen in a vacuum, in the absence of friends.

Companionship and accountability are the best friends
of creation, of inspired work, of the slow and meaningful exhale
that will shape this poem and every stanza that is to follow
where meter and metaphor are the sweetest gifts known
where the hunger for perfect phrasing will make us swoon
when we hear it, exchanging more than one knowing glance in the recovery.

This is where my friends are, where I am known,
In the subtle exhale of an appreciative swoon,
The swift recovery, and the raucous laugh that will, surely, follow.

67/365 Shut Up, Unicorn

Shut up, unicorn!

One stupid horn and you think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread

Prancing around with your gleaming white coat

Shimmering in the moonlight and farting rainbows

Just a stupid mule with a horn

Seriously, it isn't as though that thing gets wi-fi or or anything...

What...

Wait, IT GETS WI-FI???

I hate you, unicorn.

No, wait.  Don't go away.

Just, wait, just stand still for a minute.

Tilt your head like this.  Hold on.

My email isn't done syncing.

Okay, now you can go pout in the corner

Shed a tear, and watch:

Some Harry Potter fan

Will inevitably attempt to collect it

And feed that tear to his dying grandmother

Thinking it will keep her alive forever

Superstitious fools.

You're just a crying horse.  With a horn!

They'll never learn to be skeptics.

Not til you've impaled a couple more of them idiots

And it gets on national TV

And even then, your emotional imbalance

Your fits of rage and violence will

Only make you more of a legend!

You just keep prancing,

Prance away, stupid unicorn, the way you do.

Drop your technicolor manure in the middle of the street

Watch the children scurry to collect it like it's free candy

The housewives mix it in to their prize gardens

Impress all their neighbors

It's just horse poop.

Smells as bad as mine does, only my manure is just plain old brown

And nobody gives two shakes where I drop a turd

As long as I'm not flying over them at the time.

Rainbow feces.  That can't be healthy.

Clearly your digestive system is in poor shape

Bacterial imbalance or hemorrhoids or some such.

Is that why you walk the way you do? 

Why you prance around like some trained circus animal?

Like you're better than me?

Well go ahead and prance, then!

Prance all you like.  You'll never leave the ground.

You're nothing special.

You don't have wings.

You can't fly.

You can't do anything.

I have wings.

I can fly.

I am a flying horse, for crying out loud!

They don't want to collect my tears, though.

No body thinks I'm magical or potentially fearsome.

Wild, I guess, and majestic, maybe, but mostly

I'm just some birdie horse they want to keep in a cage

Spray that glitter stuff all over me

Put a saddle on my back

And let screaming little girls in pink and tiaras go for a flying pony ride.

Every last one of them wants a ride on the pegasus

And maybe that's all I'm good for.

At least I'm good for something

But you,

You're just a stupid horse
with a horn.

66/365 I Watched You Watch Me Walk My Girlfriend Home (For Charles Xavier Lacerte)

(This is a response to Charlie's stalker-y poem he wrote when he was 18.  It's meant to be a little stalker-y, but not as much as it ended up, so I need to work on it a lot more.)

I watched you, all right
Watched you watch me walk my girlfriend home
Listened every night to the stupid pet names you had
For the girl on your arm
Did you honestly believe she would find it endearing
To be called "Honey bunches of oats"?
There is no romance in processed sugar
And hastily forged pet names
Are for the shallow and  insecure.

You bet I knew you were watching
The way my girlfriend tossed her hair
The way we laughed together over private jokes.
Most of the time
We were talking about you,
Feeling your eyes lingering all the while.
That hand I slid so boldly
Into her back pocket
That was entirely for you.
I never do that kind of thing
It was just to keep you off that high horse
Thinking you and your little "frosted flakes:
Had something I didn't.

And maybe you did.
And maybe we should have called each other by pet names
And maybe there's a reason we didn't.
And now we never will
But don't go thinking you have anything to teach me.
We had nothing in common but a relationship status and a street
And then we didn't have that anymore.

I watch your new girlfriend make me a burrito to order
Day after day, without you anywhere in sight
I've read her poem, rife with innuendo
So I know she would see the irony
If only she knew the whole story

She laughs at my jokes
Smiles her biggest smile, each time
And teases back
If only you could see this
If only you could be a fly on that wall
Helpless while I order mine
With extra sauce.

You said you wanted to share what you had
With me.
As though I would want you to give me anything.
As though I wasn't already taking it from you
On my every lunch break
With every smile she gives me
When I tell her, 
"Yes, my little Golden Graham.
I will have a nice day."

65/365 The Long Exhale

I will not die
while I can still hear her say,
"Daddy"
while there are plans for family vacation
languishing on the kitchen table,
dandelions in the yard waiting to be blown.

There will be no slipping quietly,
no tolling of bells to be pondered.
Her dresses are pink and twirly
the way she likes them
She will not be pleased to wear formal black
to sit quietly and not play by the coffin
or pluck petals from each bouquet.

I will breathe
whether lungs cooperate or refuse.
There will be pictures of us
taken tomorrow
moments next summer that will etch themselves
into our eyes
traditions that we will start when she is older
and she will learn to carry on
the way I learned to carry on
to close my eyes
and remember.

64/365 More Than Waiting

They pointed fingers

Called me Virgin

As though I'd done something filthy

As though I'd done anything at all

By not    

doing

As though at thirteen

I should have had a girlfriend

And known how to talk about her body

Like she was a baseball diamond

And I had any athletic aptitude whatsoever.

As though at fourteen 

I should have been mature enough

to identify my true soul mate

in the time it took Stairway to Heaven to play at the Elks Club dance

As though I should have been as ready and willing

as I was impulsive and naive.

To tempt fate, live for the moment,

For just a moment

Taunt procreation from the inside of a latex condom

I didn’t.

It wasn't that I didn't look forward 

to finally having sex for the first time

I just needed it to be perfect

To have the certainty of no regrets

Intimacy is too precious a love note

To be published as a rough draft.

So, I waited.

At thirty, 

My abstinence was a conversation reserved

For those few friends I most trusted

And those few girls who I knew would stay.

There was a day

When purity was honored.

I never meant to be noble.

Just to love someone, someday

In a way that meant something new and more

And not just the samedifferent

For “one and only” to mean ONE,

And ONLY.

When a thirty-one year old virgin has sex for the first time

On the perfect day

In the perfect place

Floor littered with rose petals, a bow tie, and something borrowed and blue

It is amazing

How it is still first-time awkward

But also the best they have ever had.

Let me tell you about commitment,

The comfort of certainty,

The assurance of looking only forward

With no past to look back upon

Of waking up in the morning to say

“I waited my whole life, for you.”

And we will laugh about the rose petals
For as long as we
Both shall live

And we will know love,

Without waiting.