The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

in

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

-Dylan Thomas

It Can't Only Be Me

It can’t only be me

stomach distended with cramps after kids or eating something I shouldn’t like a bread or a bit too much

it can’t only me be that sleeps on her arms
it can’t only be me in disbelief and denial
at the blood.

It can’t only be me who trips on her own life or her own traps or her own fears.

Maybe I’m not sick of it so much as I’m just sick of how I’m thinking about it or maybe I’m bleeding soon and forgot. Or maybe I’m forgetting soon and bleeding.

Have you ever dumped a cup of red clotty menstrual blood into water and seen the red mystery of it and felt some feeling with no name?

It can’t just be me who feels into the life awe burdensome beast of being in a body that has breasts and a dark womb that I can’t see that makes small lives and disposable organs and then acts normal as if it’s all “tale as old as time” but then again

Have we lived or does living invoke death and all this is actually tiny daily yin yangs any old way you slice it?

It can’t be me alone who forgets and forgets to feel and floats face down in the hens coming home to roost, the tension of opposites embodied in the moment after moment after moment of all of this.

Maybe getting out of prison and laying on the ground
maybe just being out of prison is enough and you don’t have to make something of your freedom.

Maybe do nothing or maybe that’s a cop out, energy on my life wasted because I didn’t become anything but everything.

Maybe to have a heartbeat is enough.

Maybe I don’t know how to improvise and integrate all of this but maybe it’s not only me.

Do I miss it? Of course I miss it.

in

Thoughts on exile and the things we outgrew by Alex Caldiero. Clipped edit from, “The Sonosopher” by Torben Bernhard and Travis Low. Watch it on YouTube if it resonates.

A poets answer to “Do you miss the fellowship of Mormonism?” Any past things outgrown or excommunicated from by choice or force can take the place of the specifics here and the pain of your loss is justified.

predator

I dreamed it

sunlight bright

as lady hawk plucked

the wet winged hatchling

from mother-made nest.

I drank it

red hot and jaw clenching

in its timeless loop

of awful devouring

while there I too,

devoured.

I lay

as they cut the bulbous middle

(intestines set aside)

pulling soft screaming life from me

(hardening breasts by the minute)

to make a meal of me.

I bleed

a bucket tick tock, a clock

to cry myself dry

a crimson ridding

an inside, made out.

I tear

the skin flesh

of apple

of trout

and steal the calf’s milk for my cheese.