Merwin said on the last day of the world he would plant a tree Not for the fruit bearer but for the one that stands in the earth for the first time What for Wisdom’s genesis Innocence. Wonder. Remembrance. That the first and ever ancient spirits are ants and spiders And the land is…
Author: sobrietypoet
For Edgar Allan Poe
You fancy me mad? DARK H e a v y Popping open one pale eye into trashed bed sheets Gray, ghastly eye with film over it Not seeing but feeling wine stains and plastic bottles soiling the carpet Not hearing but feeling the muffled pulse of my own Tell-Tale Heart ushering me into that hideous…
Waxing Gibbous
There she is. I wondered how she’d look tonight when earlier today I swept free the cobwebs from the legs of a patio chair. Irritable and stately, perhaps half a cloud sliding from one nude shoulder. Radiant and hungry, no doubt searching for the approval she knows she deserves. Wide eyed and watchful 99.7 percent…
Light in the Window
What if all our little deaths are as beautiful as fall? That somehow to someone even the savage that swallows us wears on its face our sweet aftertaste for others to see. Who’s to say a leaf whirling casually to its end doesn’t feel in its dry vein the same absurdity as cancer or overdose…
Nepeta Cataria
If I accomplished nothing else today I planted nepeta cataria inside the broad mouth of a flower pot leftover from my grandfather’s passing. I held a pony tail of her sticky locks and considered long the origin of her species, the ancient quality of dirt unearthed with five extra heaves of a shovel, and of…
Independence Days
I stumbled upon an old photo of us This slow Saturday breeze in my brain turned it over and there I am on my parent’s roof with you 4th of July grinning into the crook of your neck our sleeping daughter beneath our bodies on that tiny couch my mom bought her for Christmas I…
The soul is like Jesus Bare feet in both worlds Everything here has one The dirt soul The cow soul The man soul The sea soul The bird soul The world soul I think it’s so we never forget each other The Other One long bridge So time makes sense Especially…
The upside of being a drunk in recovery
I like to imagine all of us sober tonight Our aching bodies This mundane human throb Delicious, honest to God fatigue After hours at the office Hours of tidying the house or pruning the rose bushes Or moving all my books from the bedroom to the living room to make room for a dresser set…
Ashes falling into my cup
I can hold my daughter’s compassion in firelight one tiny log at a time make it last her ashes falling into my cup I can hold the weight of the moon in my breath one porcelain eye on my chest make me see her ashes falling into my cup I can hold my soul in…
Atlas
How much can you swallow before it swallows you back When the empty is heavier than the sky that he held over his head for losing to Zeus to Gods who have no business being Gods I thought about that today going back up the stairs to my office after a particularly shitty phone call…
Sobriety Poet 