House of My Life (landays)

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?

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My own lone self (ghazal)

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

I keep coming across the same stranger

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...

the next time

the next time we all stay inside it will be for love of our cooking pots pencil sharpeners Buddhist gongs ripped-up couches rooster cloths the magnolias will explode hard, pinker than ever but the windows will grow dirty the front doors cobweb over the hinges will rust while we burrow lost in our old old things *** the next time we all walk down the middle of the street we will be moving refrigerators, lifeboats, houses all of the engines gone kaboom and we the elderwives power your world onewoman, onewoman, onewoman at a time on feet, toes, blisters onewoman, onewoman, onewoman at a time with the hum of our babies driving our bellies forward forward *** the next time the airplanes are pulled from the sky watch us pile them into mindbombs telling our unborn selves the story long-ago stewardess pin collections, coloring books little feet kicking the air while we worldsailed high *** the next time quiet wo...

All is burnt. We rebuild.

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