ManicDDaily

This is a poem I posted in April, but took down as some of the imagery felt too graphic, and (possibly) open to misinterpretation. I’ve changed and am reposting below. Sorry for the repetition.

Need

I need to get back to the belief that the universe loves us. 

I also need to buy shoes. 

I understand that the universe does not necessarily love us
in the way that we want to be loved;
it doesn’t care if we have a long life
or suffer pain.

Don’t get me wrong—it doesn’t want us to suffer pain.
It’s just that a universe in which trees split in the wind
and stars are born and die with fiery outcries,
may not understand pain. 

I cannot think about those tortured in the Ukraine
and I cannot not think
about them.  

Even when I don’t want the images—hands tied behind the back,
and much more horrible things—bullets through
eyes–

It helps to worry about shoes. Almost none of mine will work as warmth
approaches.

It’s ridiculous. Still, I imagine trying to run after a young child in sandals,
the young child someone else’s but in my care.
and I don’t think I can trust
sandals. 

I dream about—I don’t want to write what I dream about
for fear of imprinting it further—

How did people feel in the 1930s and 40’s,
the Great Depression, World War II? 

My mother, one of those people, once told me she kept wondering
when it would all end—
will this never end, she said she wondered, thinking that when it did at last end,
she could finally start
her own life,
a life that was ongoing all the time she waited
to start it,
and is now (as we think of life) long over,
always the universe loving her, us,
in its way.

I need to get back to that.

*******************************************************

Another draft poem for April.  Sorry I’ve missed a few days, crazy internet issues that knocked out my momentum (such as it was!) 

Note that all these poems are drafts of a sort–of course, I’ve re-written them some, but they are poems that can probably benefit from more thought! And more thought might actually cause me to put them in the recycling bin! I appreciate your understanding!

Power Outage

The darkness feels thicker than regular darkness.
I lift one arm to test it, expecting to need
a swimming stroke,

only when I type that, it comes out as “warm harm”
instead of “one arm,”
maybe because I am worrying about a candle that burns down in the kitchen,
and the kettle that I have also left to heat
on the hand-ignited gas
stove. 

The unattended candle, kettle,
feel foolish,
so I imagine wrapping my blanket
about my shoulders and
stepping down the treacherous-in-the-darkness stairs
to check on it all, 

yet still I sit, blanket
over my legs, listening
to the hum of the kettle, the taps
of my typing, the farther silence that follows a dog’s bark
down a nearby road, and also the
slight tinnitus of which I am suddenly conscious,
an internal chorus of cicadas. 

I look up to the room, amazed somehow
that all its physical, unelectrified contents, are exactly
as they should be, even more so—
the window panes, the chair, the pictures—
me beneath the blanket, warm, unharmed,

and, I am conscious now, not only of the tinnitus,
but of the great blessings that I have
been given, so unearned. 

I am almost afraid to think of them,
as if some spirit of the universe
might say,hey!— and correct the
imbalance. 

A lantern sits to my side, blowing glitter
about its glass, and also about
a stiff little cardinal that sits
on a twisted wire tree.
White-stuccoed gimcrackery that somehow manages
an immense beauty
simply in the way
that it circulates light.

The walls dance with it. 

***************************

Another poem for April.  Written early this morning.  (Nothing burned down.)

Have a good night.