JAMES
DIAZ
What Keeps Us Here
allow me
please
to pick
the bones
from your
hair
the lanky
death knotted prayers
plasticized
knees
autumn
creepers
on the
gas station bathroom floor
counting
several hundred heavens
with
finger glow
between
us
the mortar
for stars
dust
resin bone
raise me
to you
and drink
my
unknowing
my iowa
dusk
eye veins
thin pain
through
the barely rising
crow
stone
the run
in the stocking
the run
in the hall
shattered
mirrors
Stevie,
no land,
lots of
slide
heave me
cut into
it
to the
bone
cut me
down from you
I will
grow thinner
like god
all girl
in my
throat
heart gut
and twine
give it
time
the world
will end all too soon
but our
bones will rise like ash
and feed
the sky with bread.
Travelling By
I let the
highway retry me
Changed
into an off ramp river
The crow
in my heart sang for mercy
It was
shadow and moss
And the
stations of the cross
Etched
burning in my deeper wound
After
this, oh love, after all this
Behind
the old motel
and the
stories around old John's fire,
25 will
get us into heaven, a black van,
a quickie
with a turnequit, god, you know if I could,
I'd chop
all that wood, but I wasn't built for mercy
and it's
quicker falling than it is climbing,
everything
there is to love in this life
has been
burned for heat
before we
ever even get to it
Here's my
heart
it's a
rusted pipe it's a satellite prayer
here we
are / in moon light / crossing
into the
great blue clearing
of
highway rain / bandaid dreams,
this is
how we were made / broken whole
but my
god, we were here.
What We're Left With
A gentle
marigold heart
stuff me
with light
carry me
across the highway
to the
old bridge
little
stream
throw the
big one's back in
stars not
stones
oh
mother, why is it so hard to talk to you
I am all
rain
brittle
furniture
small
bones
can I be
just be
not
broken, okay and not mad
or
confused
is this
blue or red
it's all
fog in my head today
I woke
with bird song and ache
a
marigold woven heart glowing
nothing I
know helps anymore
oh
mother, why is it so hard to talk these days
can we
just be
not
broken
can we
just be okay?
How To Write A Happy Poem
When You're Not
Begin
with friendship
The
hollow in the moon's endless opening, a heart divisible by nothing
Other
than hands holding down the branch, crossing to the river
We are
all of these things
And then
we are ourselves
And the
light gets into everything
From this
angle
When I
can't,
You show
me how
This is
what we're made of
A heart
divisible by nothing
So
useless as disappearing
When the point
is to show up
Tender
mountain, climbed by hands searching for the next available jutt
In the
rock
When you
can't,
I show
you how
The light
stays a little longer
Each time
We climb
We climb
Back,
back
to where
we began
And there
is no ending
When everything,
Everything
Is just
beginning.
When
The Going Get's Dark
We
Get Darkly Going
"I
hate everyone but you"
-Matthew
Ryan
I know a
place
in the
pines
just off
the highway
it is
warm and full of light
it is
texaco, it is gravity
it is an old
man leaning on the wind
I don't
know much anymore
I go
willingly
I speak
sparingly
there is
a traffic jam, in whose heart tonight
there is
tarmac and winter light slanting
against
dark wind, only god
isn't
answering
if I am
you
and if I
am not
there is
earth / dark / in my bones
the
questions outweigh the echo
I know, I
know;
water
welcomes the stone
it is
getting late
where you
are
& I
am not
sure
how long
this wind
will hold
me up.
The place
is there in my mind
I look
up, we are almost home
I look
again,
nothing.
There is
no promise in a poem.
Simply, I
had faith once.
It is
always a little easier to lose your way than it is to find it.
I don't
know where to end...
but I
feel so close now,
to the
edge,
the edge.
of mercy.
maybe. 10
more minutes wind,
just give
me 10 more...
JAMES
DIAZ
JAMES
DIAZ is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger
(Indolent Books, 2018) as well as the founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic.
Their poems have appeared in Yes Poetry, Gone Lawn, The Collidescope and
Thimble Lit Mag. They live by the simple but true motto that “feelings matter”
every shape and size of feeling. They believe that every small act of kindness
makes an often unseen but significant difference in someone’s life and hope
that their poems are a small piece of that.
No comments :
Post a Comment