Hedge Apple

My Ukrainian wedding band:
a strip of wood, a sample of lichen,
forest hues hardened in resin

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I tend to tense my fingers
below knuckles, stiffening,
tendons kissing hard,

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an obsessive squeeze for release
which brings the fear, inadvertently,
I’ll crush the ring in time,

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freeing foreign vegetation
from my promised finger,
stasis to alien air

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I chose this one for its floating greens,
a primordial reminder
where we come,

.

but I know nothing of
the creator’s home
or the war down the road

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How could I?
How could you,
from here?
If anyone should ask,
it is a frozen wheel of the planet
that made us, our trembling, affectionate guts,

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a chain of mushrooms, leaves, and pumpkin sun,
offerings of a morning after rest, reminders
of turning renewable soil,

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finding lovely sameness,
unbreakable cellular repetition,
clean cancer for the soul.

Poetry is for the fainthearted
The feeble and insecure
Who find shelter in words:

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We are the crippled and infirm
Our hurt coalescing into alphabetical figures
Broken lines on the page

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Vast white spaces
Like the snowstorm that blinds us
And hides the throbbing heat

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Of passions with cooled hands
Cold-trembling skin
And icy hearts.

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Your enduring love
And certain fidelities
Are not the stuff of poetry

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Which can only speak
What is otherwise unspeakable
Too deep to retrieve

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Too profound to understand
Except in the halting speech
Of poets, for found love is mute.

Pain is a weapon wielded by time.
It tears and it burns and it cuts
At your soul, till it penetrates your mind.

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You try to defend with whiskey and wine.
Retreating bottle, to glass, to tongue,
Demons lurking just behind.

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Haunted by the things you cannot undo,
Their voices echo words, and cries, and dies,
Somewhere deep inside of you.

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Your wife, your child, your brother too,
Catch glimpse in the mirror
Of their eyes shining through.

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And time keeps coming.
It chases you down, cradle to grave.
You’ve spent your life running.

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There’s pain in loving,
In choosing, in breathing, in and out
A stale air hovering.

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You’re tired. Done.
You say “Life’s a game of winners and fools
And I’ve played the fool my son.”

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“Me and life are 0 and 1,
My body too broken,
Legs too weak to run.”

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He sees himself a broken man.
Won’t ask or take, just watch and wait,
For an ending to God’s plan.

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His daughter comes to take his hand.
Blue to blue eyes stare;
There’s a darkness there, she can’t understand.

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Bitter words meet swollen eyes.
Tears stream, finger to trigger,
She sets the gun aside.

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She asks him if he’ll try,
But he keeps repeating searching for meaning
Over and over—asking her “Why?”

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Life is cruel, life is kind,
It brings faith and hope
But makes monsters in your mind.

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Uses drugs, prayers, and turpentine
To strip away the paints
And colors of your prime.

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Yes, pain can be weaponized,
But love is the shield of a friend
That keeps you alive.

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Why do we romanticize,
Stories of men too rigid to bend
Who spend their lives in the shadow of pride?

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Need to listen to voices of daughters and sons,
To God and ghost shouting
With every breath in their lungs,

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“It’s not over, you still got trips ‘round the sun.
You may be lost in the dark
But there’s a spark yet to come.”

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“Block out the words of bottle and glass
Full of liquor, bleeding, breeding,
Lies from the bottom of the cask.”

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“Remember days of summers past,
Holding on to good, and bright, and light,
The wisdom and knowledge, that someday, one day,
This too, shall pass.”

I am a member of a forsaken community
and I refuse to believe that
we have a safe place in this world
I realize this may be a shock, but
our experiences are uniquely valid
is a fucking lie; and
only those who adhere to the binary deserve to live
So I will tell the next generation that
they have no power in this world
Bigots will know that
I appreciate what’s truly important
sticking to these patriarchal labels
is more essential than
Being authentic to myself
Once upon a time
We stepped outside without fear of rape or death
But that shit will not be true in my era
This is a binary society and all individuality will be erased
Ministers tell me
we must all be categorized by the length of our genitalia
I do not concede that
everyone will be free to express themselves
In the future
each one of us will be fossilised
and no longer will it be said that
we’re descendants of celestials and the divine
It will be evident that
we are grostique abominations
How the fuck could we presume that
There is hope for us to have a respected place in society

(now read from the bottom up.)

in which families say / regarding their four-hour-old newborn /
she has her mother’s eyes / her father’s nose / her grandmother’s
ears / her grandfather’s toes
then / as she grows / characteristics set in and families say / she
has this one’s smarts / that one’s athletic gift / this one’s fine
draftsmanship / that one’s bubbly showmanship
in time / virtues and faults follow / whose temper / whose charm
/ whose tolerance / whose stubbornness / whose gracefulness /
whose possessiveness / whose pridefulness / whose calm
eventually / the game may complicate / with troubling hints /
of inherited sadness / or worry / or brittleness / or over-strict
conscience
yet in this intermittent / speculative game / families often see
things not there / or fail to notice what is
and in any case / any trait handed down gets amended / by the
child’s private / thorny / experience
so even after a years-long session of this game / in truth / nobody
knows a thing
the child least of all
leaving her to her own / slow / self-defining speculations / to her
own / unfolding / consequential / game of solitaire

I
wade
upstream
over rocks
feet firmly planted
shuffling sideways like a sly crab
concentrating on the water’s speed and on the depth.
I’m leaving those in need to find why so many people keep falling in the river.
But if the current takes me under and sends me back
drowning and in need of rescue,
will you still be there
at the shore?
Will you
catch
me?

The day 144,000 words
Got slashed ten times over
By one single blade
A podium awaited in quiet

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Writers and wannabes
Unwittingly at this requiem
For every exile
Bled untold stories on paper
Or dreamed such sacrifice

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As a blind man
Rushed the stage
With eyes were geographic balloons
Filled past capacity
From breathing
The stale air of barbarism

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Unleashed like a perfect storm
Fermented in machinery
Operated by deformed Wizards of Oz

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Who like the assailant
Believe they can see God
Unfalteringly

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So to cover blindness
Under permission’s blanket

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Albeit no Oz will be caught
Associating with any miscreant
In rumpled T-shirt and skinny jeans
Doing their dirty work
The insulated wear pressed suits
Or fine robes beneath carefully coiled turbans

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We who still can see
Are on our own
Though keep alive
A most strange
Kind of vision
Necessary

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To find one another
To save ourselves
By imagining
Then making
Every sentence come true

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In the mythic land of art
Of ideas on the move
Beyond borders
Bet your life on it
Salman Rushdie did.