A POEM A DAY

I'm just happy to be here.

Tag: national poetry month

April 4, 2021

2/30: IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT, IT’S FRIDAY, AGAIN (A BIRTHDAY POEM)

I feel it now: there’s a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world

I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it
All my becoming has needed me
My looking ripens things
And they come toward me, to meet and be met.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of a Monastic Life

I write a poem every year for my birthday
I never know what I’m going to say until I say it
I never know who I’m going to be until I see him
I read between the lines like meaning has a mirror
but it changes every year. 
The art of explaining myself to myself 
is never what it seems to be.
I’m not losing or changing my definitions 
There’s just more meaning to give
the longer I live. 

I know nothing has ever been real without my beholding it


Someone
behold this poem 
until it is real and becoming
like the first days of Spring.

I feel it now, 

the power that slept like a seed
between the wild roots of my being.
It takes time to become who you said you’d be.
There’s a birthday candle on the table
A small fire, my breath, and wishing for what’s next,
My big brother Brent writes in my annual birthday text
	
	You’re as vital as a plant providing oxygen 
	during photosynthesis

One day they will study the biology of a brother’s love.
Oh brother. Oh words—
the gifts that give shape to my world.

I’m reading all the words
coming towards me, to meet and be met
like the words of a song. 

Every year, I’m awestruck
at my unprecedented luck 
in knowing I am loved.
The language of this love puts the poems in my blood.
Oh, the words in my blood are brave and here to stay.

On the day I came into this earth,
I ask the universe with all my earthly yearning
Give me more love than my body can stand.
When the lovebirds sing, tell them I’m listening and singing too.
I’m singing a prayer like a birthday wish, 
the only one I know 
the only I say every year:
Gratitude is the only face of god I know.
If there’s still time, I’ll show you.
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May 1, 2020

30/30: AFTER 16 YEARS OF WRITING POETRY, I’VE LEARNED

The poem can wait.
Living is the first draft to master.
Sitting down to write comes later.
A poem happens out of order,
When the door is ajar and the
Muse is asking what is for dinner.
Whether the stove is on depends
how much fire you can walk through.
Memories are sleeping, hungry giants.
You decide what stays, what goes.
The point is—
you have a purpose,
long after the poem is finished,
long before the poem began.

 

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April 30, 2020

29/30: AGENTS OF CHAOS

The hum of the razor
next to my ear sounds
like an army of wasps
taking formation
at the front-lines
of my overdue edge up.
Each follicle of hair
turned Agents of Chaos.
But at least I am growing
in some small way,
silver linings
in the darkness.
My brother Brent
used to cut my hair
for every important
event of my teenage life.
We had the routine.
He’d cut.
I’d clean the hair
and help hold the mirror.
2 all around, then a 1 on the side,
sometimes a taper fade,
but always a fresh fade
to end the day. It was
a way of life. The lessons
I learned in standing still,
watching his hands move
with precision. How the light
had to be just right.

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April 30, 2020

28/30: I’M GOING BACK IN TIME AND IT’S A SWEET DREAM

This is a love poem for my fiancé, Adela.

When I missed you, when we weren’t together,
I would write down song lyrics that made me
think of you. Each a different melody of longing,
a little soundtrack for my loneliness. That was
years ago. And just the other day,
I stare at you
from across the room
of our home
I watch you exhale on the front porch
Dusk before us, the faint
echo of the wind chime
bouncing off the trees
and into the sky. Another song
just for you and me, Adela—
never forget, you are the one
who keeps my heart beat dancing,
the reason I sing. My favorite song
is called Just Being With You.
The Things You Say, my favorite playlist
Your voice, my favorite instrument.

 

 

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April 30, 2020

27/30: THE ROUND ROCK ROLLER RINK

In the hallway of the Men’s bathroom
at the Round Rock Roller Rink, I left
my hand print on the right side of the wall. I dipped my
right hand in green paint. It was a birthday tradition for
anyone who had a party at the Roller Rink.
Underneath your hand print, they write
your name and your birthday.
It was
too much power for the 9-year-old in me.
You can put
your hand on any wall inside the building, a
it’s your call where. Isn’t that amazing?
A place that celebrates you
by giving you a choice
in what to leave behind
for others to find.
The Round Rock Roller Rink no longer stands.
It belongs to the history books.
Like that one time in the sixth grade,
on a Friday night, I danced during
couple skate to Don Henley’s
Boys of Summer blasting
from the speakers next to the scoreboard
used for hockey games, and
my elastic smile
going in circles, balanced
on roller skates, holding the hand
of a girl who held mine back
for the very first time. Those days
are gone forever, just like Don sang.

 

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April 28, 2020

26/30: A STREETLIGHT MEETS AN OAK TREE

Every night, I see the Oak tree across the street
Towering over the houses and the power lines,
pumping light into my heart. After all,
I am a machine. Meanwhile, the Oak
was born where it stands. I know how
different I am from that which
is rooted into this earth. We are both
shadow makers, though,
the Oak was here first.
Elder Oak. All light is
a lesson, though,
we are different students.
I illuminate the dark street,
the sunlight scatters through the Oak.
I am not a home for the wandering Hawk,
the roaming blue jay or tired cardinal, though,
I do want to
We are of two different worlds
living on the different side of
the same street. When the leaves fall,
I feel a longing I cannot name.
I am not a tree,
growing and alive.
I am a machine, designed
to illuminate. I know my fate—
it ends and begins each day, arrive
when the sunsets, leave when the sunrises.
In the in between,
the Elder Oak must sing
a thousand different
songs.

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April 28, 2020

25/30: THIRTY-FIVE INCHES TALL

Jessi picks up a crayon with purpose.
Every color is her favorite color.
She talks a sing-song of thoughts
under her breath,
washing
the white paper sky
ignoring the lines,
she orbits around
with color after color,
determined to create.
I ask her, what she created
and she answers,
This is what I created!
I laugh and tell her to keep going.
It is Saturday afternoon and
Jessi is the color of joy.
We paint the day together.
She asks if I’m going to color
with her,
and I pick up a crayon
like an old friend.
She laughs like a color wheel.
It sounds like my favorite color.
Reminds me of my brother,
her father, and when we were boys,
we would do everything together.
Now his daughter is in my house,
three years old, thirty-five inches tall.

 

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April 28, 2020

24/30: SUNDAY – GIDDINGS, TEXAS

At 55 miles per hour, a head on collision
between two vehicles has enough force
applied that both drivers could die on
impact. A quick death, I suppose
is a small mercy. I did not die, though
everything
in life ingrained the expectation that
no one is that lucky.
It was a Sunday in Giddings, TX,
the day I should’ve died,
but didn’t. Think impossible.
Think inescapable fate.
And I escaped.
But the other driver did not.
What kind of miracle is this?
He crossed the dividing line
of oncoming traffic. Happened
so fast my body couldn’t
even see its fate. I never
broke like glass. Even though
my car
bounced like tumbleweed
over concrete and grass.
I question God and physics
all the time. What I feel
is a different kind of pain.
I never talk about that day
in November. It was raining.
I’m not particularly
proud of how the story ends, but
I am not here unless it ends that way
I didn’t do anything
but lock up, my blood
pumping frozen adrenaline.
The airbags did all the work—
cradle my spine and skull
into the grassy knoll. I
rolled over the concrete parking lot
Landed in the soft mud
the tender earth
oh, the gentle soil
that gave me
a safe place to crash. Maybe
that
was God
coming to my rescue—
and on the Day of Rest,
no less.

 

 

 

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April 24, 2020

23/30: HAIKU ON PRESSING PAUSE

To pause Netflix when /
your loved one takes a phone call /
is an act of love.

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April 24, 2020

22/30: EARTH DAY 2020

“I move with the breeze in the trees /
I know that time is elastic” – Fiona Apple, I Want You to Love Me

The world is not ending. It’s still here
for now. I agree though, its end seems
unfathomable—
Separated from the soil,
collecting tidbits about
the coming extinction,
the fate of the Glaciers,
the disappearing honey,
flowers I cannot name,
all the forgotten scents
saying goodbye to the clean air,
leaving behind the trees,
accepting
the reality of
living
without
what’s always
been.
And then I think
Oh,
god bless
earth-made shade,
my body
alive in the cold springs,
my grandma’s voice
when her garden
is in full swing.
These little things.
How much more time
before nothing is the same?

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