All is burnt. We rebuild.

I walk through walls of advice, run into either/or questions I look for your face, your hands, all I find are more questions We sit in circles, toss the stories lightly like potatoes Grass stains, wet feet, and the core questions Some of us are small like a poem, a pot of soup Some of us are wrestling the peace and war questions We march the avenues, decade by decade the parades Ancestors make it look easy. Grandchildren roar questions Here, my little pantry. Box of rhymes, jar of honesty Here, inside rotting rubber bands - here I store questions Because the roads were blocked we had a party in our minds The guests wore sunshine. The groom wore songs. The bride wore questions The wished-for child dances at night to an unwritten tune I shiver. It’s late. And we wait for your questions

the coats of all seasons will drop from our shoulders and we will become houses for the wind target practice for the ice arrows we have not learned tomorrow’s one, two we have not learned the wilding song we have not learned the grief words we have not learned the new highroads they were not made for us we are only in the way but we will learn the small trail we will drink from the lost alphabet we will climb the hidden map the mirrors will melt and we will find a path for our feet, a sky for our faces a thump for our hearts rising from their sleep dance the clocks will shatter and we will hear the rope of the hours, the pulse of the days

the poems are tucked with the bicycle helmets the dishes are stacked in the fireplace the children are on the shelf with the cookbooks this is my house this is my dance this is my quiet peace overflowing yesterdays, question mark tomorrows empty hands marked with ghostly grime of course I drop the books. of course I catch the ball it doesn’t matter it doesn’t echo we have all the time the tiny little squares we stand on the giant poems bursting overhead the doubtful systems that we use it dreams just like us this is the stolen night it doesn’t matter today I swam in a paint-dry ocean today I waited as fast as I could today I kissed the unlovable world it didn’t matter it didn’t echo it is almost time

All of a sudden the bakery All of a mouth the creature All over hot the driveway All out of pocket the pickers All over town the regret All of a piece the rumble Alakazam, the belly All over now, the shouting All of us masked, this peacetime All over shy, this spring All of the worst, over now? Always already the bakery

If this turns out to be the last day we can speak will we feel foolish for the unsaid words? the baby bucks head-butting in the yard will go on play- ing, trampling our unsaid words. The world might creak to an end on this last day. Frightened away, maybe the baby words will find each other in the yard, nest under the hooves of the wannabe bucks, on this last day we could have spoken. The silent bucks will come to rest. (This poetic form is called san san, which apparently means “three three” in Chinese. It rhymes as you see (a-b-c-a-b-d-c-d), and also repeats, three times, each of three terms or images; in this case, last day, (unsaid/baby) words, (baby/wannabe/silent) bucks)

I cannot make the way smooth for you Young lovers chiseling out your own path on this earth I’ve been squinting through this old keyhole With my blindest eye, been singing my wobbliest notes I feel windows open for dancing I smell the fresh bread of tomorrow punching higher All across the land toes are digging Into dirt, pebbles, grass, wood - every foot a new shape First son, new daughter, you make me glad There will be breath, there will be food, there will be cartwheels

even better than the writing is the not writing even better than the rooms are the hallways even better than the fingers are the missing rings even better than the cookies are the empty greasy spots on the baking sheet how will I know, she wondered, and her backache said, just start but where should I start, she said, and her sore feet said, right here and when do I stop, she asked but there wasn’t a good answer even harder than the aches are the wants even harder than the fists are the open hands even harder than the waiting is the being even harder than the trees are the countless, nameless, hopeful flowers I walked over a bridge, she said I opened a letter, and I learned something new I closed a book, and I missed so much I sat on a bench, and I laughed even older than the sense is the nonsense even older than the aches are the hollow rooms even older than this poem is the waiting even older than the end is the constantly shif...

how can you call this a quiet night when inside the skull there is a ceaseless ricochet? empty your mind, you prophets tell me but do you not know how many would then be homeless? all my bodies are in here with me all my mothers, all the mosquito-bitten evenings we are eating mangoes and guavas we are leaving home, again and again and again we hear the echoes of slamming doors and the quiet shush of pages turning, returning counting out the years, bites, loves, the beats all my children, my selves, the loud repeating futures this is an endless house of my life do not make me tear it down, where would I live and rest?

we are in pieces, we have so doggone many parts to us the rubber bands kaput that held our sweethearts to us our feet go marching one way, our songs just the opposite the map runs off, it scurries back, it feints and darts to us oh don’t feel bad you missed things - there wasn’t much to miss this skittery new campaign recalls the old ramparts to us faces to the sky we navigate free but still disjointed learning from babes who bring the undiscovered arts to us our card tables in the sunshine, we squint and shuffle and hope there comes a rebellious wind and flips the ace of hearts to us

I don’t know what they want so I offer cookies and lemonade I don’t know what they need so I proffer sleeping bags, toothbrushes I don’t know who they are so we start introductions I don’t know where they came from so we start drawing maps I don’t know what might be useful so I start pulling things out camera bags, wooden trains, tiny Lederhosen, broken easels I don’t know what might be dangerous so I pack things away sharp tables, Ethiopian daggers, rat poison, bleach I don’t know when they’ll be back so I wait I don’t know when they’ll be back so I wonder I don’t know when they’ll be back so I start vaguely doodling I don’t know if they’ll be back so I pack up to go I don’t know why it matters but some things make me mad so I try to remember: one foot, one day I don’t know why it matters but some things make me sad so I look for the music, I wait for the sunshine Oh I am the desert and those thoughts are like tumbleweeds I am the sky and the...

every night my friend I write to you between workstop and complete sleep I make the day into words people into pictures hard things into thoughts I know you’ll read that helps me write it down every morning you write back to me you’ve had a night to sleep on things you’ve had a night to dream in your bright-eyed day begins your life unlike mine our selves unlike yet we write and learn still all day I carry your morning words all day snippets come back to me I answer you in my head by nighttime when I write most is forgotten I am sleepy it gets late words go blur we toss ideas into the air they come back to us fast and slow now we are covered in them I learn of the not-me What would Heather do? there is a world we stalk it talk it full this is another night now my friend again the day has gone headlong I write of dance, edits, groups you’ll write of paint, dog, run we talk of people we talk of sel...

We are afraid, and we burn with joy We sit in the dark, fingers flying over the keys We etch a lightness out of the weight The redbuds mock us gorgeously. The deer amble past Humans hungry for a human touch Days fall into heaps, weeks are too old to count clearly Ask the questions! It’s now or never What keeps you alive? What threads the hours from sleep to sleep? How does it feel to be suspended? Holding the world’s breath, how do you really feel today?

I wanted a minute’s breath to quiet my hectic own self I wanted the voices held away from my frenzy-prone self I thought, let me close my eyes and hold my face in my hands Just like that I was in a world apart with my unknown self It was meant to be only a moment, to still my jangled thoughts But I stayed there, unhooked, unplugged, with my dreamzone self I’m a little girl. I’m a gawky teen. I’m a weird aging woman I’m a dancing fool sitting stone still alone with my own grown self Just me and the quiet. Just me held safe in my own cool hands A circle of peace around this jangly shaky-bone self The magic is usually deep in the snaking threads that keep us webbed Tonight I cut them all to spend time with my sole lone self I’m a silent rebellion, a party of one, my face in my strong cool hands A prayer of my own in this alien world, hauling home my far-flown self

There comes a time when the well rings dry When the mothers and fathers live in empty houses When the day turns an unseen color When the letters we send shred themselves to confetti There comes a day when the trees grow tired A time when my bones walk slower than my memory When the signs don’t know how to read me When the comfort I get comes from counting surely down There comes an hour when we just stop short When the world streams by in all its hot cacophony There comes a moment when all is well The pebbles are smooth, the babies are rolling fatly When the roar of the unthought, undone Lets through ribbons of song from the basements and attics

we are dancing the same dance, but at very different speeds me standing on Daddy’s feet, five years old, at the van Renterghems’ New Year’s Eve party (oh and the grownup tables at my eye height as I wandered the room, the pig with its frilly skirt and apple in its month, us miniature Baptists telling jokes about Catholics, what did we know) we are dancing the same dance, but to such different music you send me messages and there is never a ding or a buzz, just randomly later I glance over and there are your words, floating we are dancing such a different dance to this same old music will we ever find ourselves dancing it together? Marjy and me on our untrained tiptoes, fat Belgian lady at the piano, tiny Belgian girls in their bathing suits leaping across the floor Mommy and Ruthy and me in the living room, put your little foot , all of us on the cracked tennis court, square dances on records, Uncle Jerry shooing away the little kids, won’t you dance with m...

I keep coming across the same stranger, and she wants me to dream in the same color green. To beat the rugs to precision, hanging as they do in patterned formation, Persian, Southwest, Chinese, deep red, oh the ocher repeating, what do we see? I keep coming across the same stranger, and she creaks with the knees she has danced on forever out of my sight. I keep throwing my elbows up and out and swigging the potbellied Koolaid, this is a childhood I won’t escape, this is a dance I won’t remember. I keep letting go of the same things, eyelid by eyelid, there isn’t an end to this riddle, it isn’t sweet but it tastes like it, there isn’t anything left at the end. I keep letting go of the same things and my hands ache from opening, from being empty. I keep letting go of the same things and in the distance the worldbeat mows and scrapes, drills and races. I keep coming across the same stranger, and she whispers in someone else’s ear but it echoes in mine. She dances in someone else’s bo...

there was a tree to draw and I drew it strangely there was a sweetness to draw on and I smashed it wrong there was a wall full of drawers and in every one an old body there was a zipper to pull and everything went spilling lost this is the wrong handwriting but it keeps looping this is the quiet, finally, brushing me with its lashes this is the fever we dance to with the deep deep beat these are the eyelids we press with cooling fingers it doesn’t stop for anything, it keeps me turning it doesn’t wait for letters from the old back country it doesn’t run smoothly through the rolling machinery it doesn’t drink the things I drink, it doesn’t know from ice how do the hundreds of hours fill with brisk-eyed wanting? how do the hundreds of pages speak the dusty lines? how do the hundreds of feet stomp the ageworn wood? how do the hundreds of aches ever rest?  ------------ * today's Napowrimo prompt: Listen to a favorite piece of music and write...

By day we ran barefoot. By night we bathed in her cascade of words Pinocchio, Little Boy Blue, and all that wild parade of words The room with the wandering beds where we were little girls on boats At bedtime floated away into a fairy place made of words Oh they felt guilty they’d taken us from the land of milk and Kellogg’s So they tied us to home with their endless golden braid of words Daddy read Bibles, biographies, Newsweek, and sometimes Le Monde But Mommy read mysteries, novels, poetry, in every last shade of words Of sewing and cookery, cleaning and wifery my mother taught me nothing We traveled a sparkling world behind our enchanted blockade of words Our homeschool had number cards, sundials, paper-bag horseheads But the fabric of delight was sung, recited, and prayed with words She opened her golden throat and crooned us a universe of witchery Her free-range children built of song and stoutly homemade of words

the silence means something new each day my hand on the big paper going round and around my face at the window looking out we wait at different corners for the same autobus sanity can be found like spring snow cold, unexpected, strangely beautiful, till it hurts sanity can be counted, counted in every head, in every body, beating the time there is so much noise until it stops there is so much life in the counting out of the pulse minutes to midnight, hours to dawn days till release, decades until we have learned it all counting the scars, telling the blessings shouting them aloud in all God’s languages at once

I am looking for something, and you are in my way You are dreaming something, and I wake you You are wanting something, and I have taken it far away I am looking for something, and you are in my way. I am trying to be something, and you won’t hear what I say You have an earnest meaning, but I mistake you I am looking for something. Get out of my way! You are dreaming something. Let me not wake you.

Prepare now for incoming storms. There are so many different kinds! So—while this trickster spring month warms, Prepare now for incoming storms. The hope that leaps, the heart that swarms, The fear that floods, the love that blinds: Prepare now for incoming storms— There are so many different kinds!

the voice when you haven’t used it all day the closet when you have no need for clothes the car when there’s nowhere to go anyway— oh that voice when you haven’t used it all day. look at us finding ways to stay trying to remember how the song goes: the voice when you haven’t used it today the closet when there is no earthly reason for clothes

what if I carried the world inside myself oceans, giraffes, mosquitoes don’t use words they are an old technology do it better what’s this skin? these scars, these rough-cut memories? who lived here? from dry sky thunder cracks old sleep nights we listen, running this hard house shelter, prison, eggshell, snowglobe, home but no sleep don’t use words they have a strange echo try something else don’t throw things I won’t catch fast enough they will break do not speak they have machines for that find something soft do not speak they have memories for that that won’t echo do not speak do not listen so hard don’t use words

April 10 Napowrimo prompt: Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is another one from the archives, first suggested to us by long-time Na/GloPoWriMo participant Vince Gotera. It’s the hay(na)ku). Created by the poet Eileen Tabios and named by Vince, the hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. You can write just one, or chain several together into a longer poem. For example, you could write a hay(na)ku sonnet, like the one that Vince himself wrote back during NaPoWriMo 2012! So, some hay(na)ku sonnets: Silverware Drawer Spoons plain forks the rattly knife Curves simple sans-serifs all size spoons We emptied out all the extras I washed out the metal tray Now it’s perfect Spacious silverware drawer *** Coronaworld Problems First ...