this poetry has been my life’s challenge
and I rose to it
every time
this poetry the arena I boldly entered
and I’m fighting still
I’m not quite sure I’ve imagined
locked doors of academia
and their thousand reasons
to do something else with my life
but I owe it all to poetry
it was my access to the inner life
lit my smoke in front of
the firing squad of time
gave the muse a fire escape
she could climb
in just an overcoat and heels…
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Mom is being buried today.
We will never see her face again except in photographs.
The coffin lid came down a week ago, forever,
or at least the seventy-five years it’s guaranteed.
Only seventy-five years, although it’s made of copper
the salesman said was indestructible.
We’ll all be long gone by then,
except for the grandchildren (maybe)
and great-grandchild.
Something to be said for being buried
not too far from Disneyland.
Four months later, on Shelter Island,
a cloud is coming toward us,
swiftly falling, like the ghost
of a meteor about to self-destruct. I can’t
tear my eyes away, until it passes—
not falling after all, only moving on
to the next—house, table, life.
I want it open.
Do we all want it open?
We take our seats under a shelter,
in the heat, before the coffin.…
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This is about knowing yourself.
When I was a kid,
I remember writing
on a small piece of paper:
“I am gay”.
Then I tore it up
and flushed it down the toilet,
trying to forget the truth
I had just confessed.
Because that disease is not true:
that only happens in the movies,
and to that one distant cousin
of my mother,
to whom she doesn’t talk to anymore.
…
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Imparting tiny grains of colored sand with intricate thoughts
One giant flower covering the ground. It was so beautiful
I wanted take it home with me.
After it was done, he smeared great swaths of color against itself until
It was nothing but white sand.
It should have changed my life. I should have taken it away with me
Let his day disappear in the pursuit of beauty, but just the beauty of the moment.
I fully intended to go home and erase everything I had ever written
With the artist’s apparent satisfaction at the act of creation
Should be enough for me, too.
– Holly Day…
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Believe me,
nobody wants to be loved.
What good lies
in the isolated knowledge of one
who loves,
one who finds himself in love?
What good is it to me that you
love me?
The truth is irrelevant when it
comes to individuals.
What a useless thing—to be loved.
But to feel it, ah!
All souls, all spheres
of energy and matter
were created to seek it.
We bathe ourselves in the
hope to find it:
The feeling,
not the truth behind it.
For what is a color
other than the thing we see?
No reality can go beyond a belief,
becoming inconsequential.
Maybe they don’t know it,
maybe they can’t understand,
yet nobody really wants to be loved,
what they want is to feel as if they were.…
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Waves leave me stranded
My body recalls the pull
of salty siren
I echo remorse
My shell an amplifier
of solitude
The sun rises
My body warms to resolve
accepts stasis
Hours tick like time bombs
Metronomic visions
of feet and feathers
Owning neither
I sink further into sand
pretend I am coffin
Waiting for death
I discover a new concept
Regeneration
The world moved forward
into perceived reversal
I am recycled
Arms of tomorrow
embrace me like yesterday
I breath as if I am home.
– A.J. Huffman…
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Near the bridge, one leaves Jack’s Java.
Three blocks down, on the opposite side of Main, another exits Alma Books.
The two approach each other under a patchy sky, where blue tears whole swaths of winter from March. They notice: black hair wind-raised in a question mark, sunlight winking off a silver buckle, brown blazer, turned gaze, one’s loose gait, another’s briskness.
Passing cars interrupt the observations. Storefront windows darkly double them.
They appreciate. They dwell. There is much to like.
This could be fate.
One wants to stage an encounter, pretend a sudden street crossing is part of the afternoon’s agenda. But then what? How to bring about more than a nod, hello, and backward glance?
The other wonders the same, rapidly weighs which possession (phone, book, gloves) can suffer a timely plunge to the sidewalk and warrant a halt, exchange, closer inspection.…
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