My fist is her flag still furled. Take the cannoli and leave the tuxedo - This is my jackleg opera to the world.
B.J. WardTag: poetry-quotes
Will there be no more irises
in your garden tomorrow morning,
or perhaps any rainbows that covet
your roof will melt into Rorschach pastels
in your gutters and birdsongs in your windows
turn into shrill shriekings as you recall
how, for one moment, you were as brave
and equal to beauty as that which you feel?
Can’t a world end gloriously?
As hard as the diamonds in your smile,
the wind carries its hammers with no hands
and sustains a moan with no mouth,
seems to cradle solitude in its rough arms like firewood
to be burned in my house as it passes through
and asks, “Where does she sparkle from?
Shakespeare’s felicity is so often taught
it is easy to overlook how taut
the sinews in his neck must
have been when he grasped his pen, or the musk
that exuded from the fat of his chin
below a somewhat chthonic grin—
life wrestled death on his desk when he composed.
These words are my mother’s,
my father’s, my brother’s, my lender’s, my garbage
man’s—the poem runs
like oil on fire
beneath this earth where we know each other.
Witness the black smoke everywhere.
I’d reconstruct Heaven, or usurp Hell—
write till I swing open like a door hinge.
I arrive—a rogue who’d refurbish town.
I take my pen, begin to nail things down.
Above us all rose my mother’s hand, dangling from the column shifter
like some battle-tattered flag for independence, surrounded
by the glass shards and quietude of a parking lot gone empty.
My beautiful mother, safer than ever before,
even in defection. ¼ tank of gas, fully empowered,
her car pointed in every direction.
The judge sentenced us to life—
real, awake life
out of the jails we had been roaming in—
life in prism—
then started handing out fines
for parking too long.
I wanted to shove her
away, thinking of my job, of headlines,
of how this kind of comfort was outside
the behavioral guidelines of my contract.
She began to sob more softly while holding me
tightly, and I let her. I let her have control
of me for that moment. I let her break
behavioral guidelines as more important ones
had been broken on her. And then we stopped
being student and teacher—just a couple people
at a loss when the powerful and unexpected
had been suddenly thrust upon us.
The principal and three students turned the corner
and stopped short. I knew it might be years
before I cleared my name, but far longer
for her to reclaim her life.
As children we learned our shadow
is a darkness we never totally shake
until we lie down, pull the shades,
draw the curtains, shut out the world,
and turn our own light out.
Pagina 1 di 1.
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.