Sandbox Skyscrapers

Sometimes I write just to write.

I trickle ink onto my fingernail

And flick it onto a page.

Truth per square inch? No,

Just a girl playing clumsily

With her favorite shapes. Ay Bee See.

Sounds are delightful. Delight, light, delicious, pernicious,

Hop-scotch and bandaids,

The crackle of the ice-cream truck’s speakers,

The wheeze of trampoline springs.

Buckets in the driveway,

Soap bubbles tickling,

Making our legs as bearded as our father’s chin

And not making the car clean.

Hoses

Geraniums

  Mud Pies

    Mud Castles

      Mud Soup

We wrap our stories around common words.

Applesauce - my brother’s face,

Salt -  barefoot Jersey summers.

Maybe the words of this poem

Are only mine.

My words taste like vanilla and black licorice to me,

they taste like carpets and vacuum dust to you,

but as I tell my story,

maybe I’ll accidentally stumble

upon yours.

Maybe that’s the point of writing,

to jumble up enough words that whole lives open up

with exclamation points. 

(And with maybe an aftertaste

         of licorice.)

Wail - The Entire Poem

(I've been posting bits and pieces, but here's "Wail" in its entirety) 

I.

I was not born for the rush of the stuff,

for the  pennies glittering from their fingers,

for the forms and the plans and your John Hancock here, miss;

I was not born for highlighters and calendars

for instant play / messages / gratification.

I was not born for the diplomas and the dollars

to trade for houses in which to press sticky notes to my refrigerator

and maybe a few finger-paintings and Christmas postcards

until I’ve accumulated enough stuff to call it home.

my home and also my bills and utilities and extinguished light-bulbs.

I was not born for the rush of the stuff

so my world turns to me and raises its fist and tries to tell me

that I was not born. 

But I was born.

I was born and I am here to prove it, fleshy and many fingered

with two legs and two elbows and round cheeks and green eyes

with lopsided bangs I chopped myself

with freckles on my arms and ink under my fingernails

and no dimples;

I was born.

II.

I have been told my head is full of abstract balloons like “wonder” and “hurt,”

useless ideas, not tough & gritty like hot air balloons with canvas and splintering wood

but like bubbles, untouchably fragile.

They say if I carry on I will become like the others - drop outs and burn outs -

well,

the others gave up so they could sit down,

I’m giving up so I can stand up. 

III.

I weep with the tears of a muddy cheeked child,

nose running, knees scraped, fists pounding the air or crumpled against my stomach.

I cry on my knees for nothing, not knowing what war I fight, only knowing I must not surrender

or all will be lost. 

No tragic dew-kissed eyelashes, no hair caught like a banner in the wind;

the only melody in my tears is the silence of the earth around me,

the unchangeable straw struggling against tree roots and thistles,

unruffled at hoarse mumbling and muffled wails. 

I am not a suffering goddess,

I am a scrabbling beggar,

and that is my strength.

Take my hands, beggars and children, muddy fingers clutching at muddy fingers,

we can suffer together, unbeautiful and unbound. 

IV.

I am deeper than my sorrow. 

It is easy to be heavy, 

hard to be light.

If you tugged away my skin and plunged fingertips into my heart,

pushed past weeping willows and tendrils of melancholy,

and quiet tables with wine glasses brimming with bitter words, 

and moaning creatures eating broken chocolate,

if you pushed past newspaper headlines and politics,

and memories of boarding windows against tornados and tropical storms,

you would find

my deepest, wisest, most profound self:

A wild-headed child laughing 

and blowing kisses

at the Sun.                                                                                                              

Speechless

Language flits above my head, glinting and spinning,
I grasp a sentence, but like a butterfly,
my touch kills it.
It curls like a spider corpse,
words pressed up to its abdomen,
vowels shivering like spider knees,
speechless.

Swirl honey on my palms,
I am weak, but if I catch their gossamer webs
and swallow them, scattering my throat with silver spiders,
I could speak.

To Young Adventurers

Leave your shiny machines,

Your flickering screens,

your lone yellow boot,

your forgotten flute.

Leave ballerina dolls and join the ballet,

pink ribbons flying as you leap a jete.

The princess of dance from continents to islands,

light sparkles up your arms like glittering diamonds.

Leave pirate toys and command a ship,

salt stinging your lips and the wheel at your hands.

Ropes snap in the wind, the bow glides ahead,

traverse the earth with your sails as your wingspread.

Stores can’t package adventures,

so they package pretend,

but you’re an adventurer,

so come along, my friend.

A Memory

Ocean salt was on my lips and in my lungs,
my cousin’s blond curls slicked brown, my black even blacker;
we bobbed on our foam boards, feet buried in the sand.
But as we gazed at splashing bodies with glistening shoulders,
we slowly raised our feet
and swam Deeper.


My cousin was taller, so I felt it first
when the sand fell away and depths grew cold
and cold fingers of kelp slid up my calves,
and we saw a jellyfish’s stinging tendrils trailing ten feet away,
but I was too wild to fear the deepening dark - or at least to show it.
We laughed at each other like the Adults
and I slid a little off my board to lean against it
and pretend to stand
but really I was reaching with my toes and straining
to catch an abalone shell or a wizened crab,
anything to prove there was still ground,
                                                                but there wasn’t.


One of us chose to scream at the jellyfish
so we could pretend that’s what we feared
and swish back to shore,
boards flailing, arms thrashing. 


After cucumbers and tomatoes in vinegar for lunch and teeth crunching sand,
after our bodies rolled against towels as pink as our noses
and sunblock ran into our mouths,
we built a sandcastle glittering with abalone 
and stabbed my board into the soft sand 
between our house and the ocean
as a shield.

From my notebook:

To Run 

  to see

the World

  spin by,

to Breathe

  the lavender breath

of Spring

  and to blush

with Autumn,

  to Touch

the late dust

  of Summer

and raise umbrellas

  under sprinklers,

to Hold

  my sister’s hand

and Watch

  the snowflakes lace

and blow.

to Hope with all my Blood

  and Flesh

and to Dream

  with nothing less

than my Soul,

  this is Wonder.

Memories

I gathered hundreds of my old poems into a Scrivener document, a patchwork of old selves. I love reading my past poetry, provided it is old enough for me to not be offended by misplaced words and childish notions. 

I am always shocked by how little I've changed. I've shed old skins, printed new words on my brain, grown new ideas and loves in my heart, but there's a core to me that is always hungering for the same things. My heartsong is unwavering in its cry for companionship and home and all that is unearthly and wild. As much as I'd like to believe in Progress and cocoons, the Rebekah Lee Burcham-ness of my soul remains.

For nostalgia's sake, here's a silly poem I unearthed:

The Writer's Song

written at 13 years old

I’ve got a stick o’ dynamite in my right,

a hammer in my left.

May I smite mistakes where they stand

and clarify what’s left.

May my description be enhanced,

my participles replaced.

May I raze run-ons to the ground,

may the sloppy be erased. 

Please forgive my language, Lord,

it should be left for dead...

May I waste my passive voice

and use electric words instead.

May I decapitate confusion 

and deprecate distaste, 

throw out soiled grammar

and leave misspellings in disgrace. 

In the end when hammer and dynamite

cease their hungry growl,

may my disheveled writing

end up better, somehow.

Mr. Moon

O Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin' down?
Down on the hilltop,
Down in the glen,
Out in the clearin',
To play with little men?
Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin' down?

O Mr. Moon,
Hurry up along!
The reeds in the current
Are whisperin' slow;
The river's a-wimplin'
To and fro.
Or you'll miss the song!
Moon, Mr. Moon,
When you comin' down?

from “Mr. Moon: A Song of the Little People”

by Bliss Carman

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 What can be said in New Year rhymes,
 That's not been said a thousand times?
 The new years come, the old years go,
 We know we dream, we dream we know.
 We rise up laughing with the light,
 We lie down weeping with the night.
 We hug the world until it stings,
 We curse it then and sigh for wings.
 We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
 We wreathe our prides, we sheet our dead.
 We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
 And that's the burden of a year.

Ogden Nash

A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty


Unwillingly Miranda wakes, 
Feels the sun with terror, 
One unwilling step she takes, 
Shuddering to the mirror. 

Miranda in Miranda's sight 
Is old and gray and dirty; 
Twenty-nine she was last night; 
This morning she is thirty. 

Shining like the morning star, 
Like the twilight shining, 
Haunted by a calendar, 
Miranda is a-pining. 

Silly girl, silver girl, 
Draw the mirror toward you; 
Time who makes the years to whirl 
Adorned as he adored you. 

Time is timelessness for you; 
Calendars for the human; 
What's a year, or thirty, to 
Loveliness made woman? 

Oh, Night will not see thirty again, 
Yet soft her wing, Miranda; 
Pick up your glass and tell me, then-- 
How old is Spring, Miranda? 

Weep

I weep with the tears of a muddy cheeked child,
nose running, knees scraped, fists pounding the air or crumpled against my stomach.
I cry on my knees for nothing, not knowing what war I fight, only knowing I must not surrender
or all will be lost.
No tragic dew-kissed eyelashes, no hair caught like a banner in the wind,
the only poetic taste in my tears is the silence of the earth around me,
the unchangeable straw struggling against tree roots and thistles,
unconcerned at hoarse mumbling and muffled howls.
I am not a suffering goddess,
I am a scrabbling beggar.

Take my hands, beggars and children, muddy fingers clutching at muddy fingers,
we can weep together, unbeautiful and unbound.

From my notebook:

I was not born for the rush of the stuff,
for the dollars swinging from their fingers,
for the forms and the plans and your John Hancock here, miss;
I was not born for highlighters and calendars
for instant play / messages / gratification.
I was not born for the diplomas and the dollars
to trade for houses in which to press sticky notes to my refrigerator
and maybe a few finger-paintings and Christmas postcards
until I’ve accumulated enough stuff to call it home.
my home and also my bills and utilities and extinguished light-bulbs.
I was not born for the rush of the stuff
so my world turns to me and raises its fist and tries to tell me
that I was not born.

But I was born.

I was born and I am here to prove it, fleshy and many fingered
with two legs and two elbows and round cheeks and green eyes
with lopsided bangs I chopped myself
with freckles on my arms and ink under my fingernails
and no dimples;
I was born.

Trees (Take Two)

The trees whispered stories to me when I was a child,

old stories with yellowing faces and feverish like spring,

their stories crawled through my dreams and swam over my eyes

until they ran through my blood like sap runs through trees.

My head cradled between two roots as thick as my arms,

I would respin each tale with a plastic pen.

Trees can only speak with wind running through their leaves,

I can only speak with ink running through my pen,

we share the sadness

of silence.

Emily Dickinson

"I'm Nobody..."

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog – 
To tell one's name – the livelong June – 
To an admiring Bog!


"I died for beauty..."

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room. 

 He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth - the two are one;
We brethren are," he said. 

And so, as kinsmen met a-night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

A midnight scribble from my notebook:

I am becoming Nobody.

      If I step out of the game, the pieces will not fall
      like yellow plastic pawns clattering to the floor,
      checkered cardboard tearing down the middle like the red sea
      allowing them to pass.

No.

      I will slip away,
      strip my soul of plastic,
      and realize that no one has noticed.

Is that so bad?

     Being Nobody makes it easy
     to laugh at the Somebodies, to throw pebbles at their windows
     and sing the siren song of change.
     Nobodies move like water between the cracks
     filling every shape until they are not enough
     and sink into the dirt.
     Somebodies clasp their corpses in iron boxes;
     even after death
     they hope to never change.

Poem

The children love each other like they loved cigarettes,
guilty pleasure crowded on a stained concrete bridge,
smoke choking the first timers and pumping cancer into the experts.
No one showed them another kind of love,
their leaders were competing in the same game.

This is why the woman who cannot afford her apartment
calls the infomercial for the slice & dice:
this is the move she can still play.
The game of success is good to no one,
not even its winners, opportunities printing from its mouth
into their pockets,
words fall into their ears and echo to their feet;
they are still starving for more, they are still calling numbers.

In the Spiderwick Chronicles, once a character tasted fairy food, she never hungered for human food again. My mind must have run wild with some fairies before I was made sensible.

 

I TASTED THE STORIES

    SUSPENDED WORLDS

    RUBBING TOGETHER LIKE FLESH BALLOONS

    W/ WARM SKIN AND BEATING HEARTS. 

I TASTED THE STORIES

     & WAS POISONED

     ALL OTHER FOOD IS DUST.

     W/ A FULL STOMACH, I STARVE.      

Apple blossom tiara tangled in my hair,

twisted leaf bud rings around my fingers,

I loved the trees with the love of a daughter.

Trees can only speak with wind running through their leaves,

I can only speak with ink running through my pen,

we share the sadness

of silence.

The trees whispered stories to me when I was a child,

old stories with yellowing faces, and feverish like yellow.

Stories crawled through my dreams and swam over my eyes

until they ran through my blood like they run through sap.

My head cradled between two roots as thick as my arms,

I would respin each tale with a plastic pen.

They gave me their curse

of silence.

I TASTED THE STORIES

    & WAS POISONED