BOTANICA

11.14.20
Joshua Tree – Yucca brevifolia

“One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. “You’d be destroying what makes it special,” she said. “It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.”
J.W – The Glass Castle

They pick-pocket each other’s knowing looks with full intention of returning what is shared.

In this place, brevity becomes.

That side-eye glance that tracks back heritage from Umbilical Chord to the Pleiades.

You? You fly-on-the-wall in desert bedrock. Watch the spaces between familial lines and kneaded out avoidance.

Take that in. Take it all in. By either social fopaux or dumb luck you slipped in the cracks of some cellophane looking glass. Maybe that’s all there is here.

The way they set the dinner table with meals for one and yet, share a bite. All characters are present; The Hiker Trash, The Empath, The Dim Genius, The Mad Hater; all stitched together with paternity glue. All threaded to bits by wanting to do just a little better, feel a little more, avoid a little less pain.

“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”
J.W – The Glass Castle

You? You sit, you listen, you gather your thanks for all the hugs and kisses, all the kind words, and the unkind ones too. All the years of molding your own version of “a little better.” That’s the spoon you were fed with. These lessons you swallow are mirror to the ones they’ve learned. There’s no telling if our legs would have carried us were we wearing each other’s shoes.

Sometimes it’s just better to face the boulder barefoot.

What would they think of me anyway… “I make my bed every day.” I tell them.

I have a bed. I omit.

These characters would frown at the likes of us. Us who packed these bags by need, rather than choice. Us who’s bedrock was be bed before it was therapy, us who made routine from making carrying home on your shoulders, making the whiskey warm the body, feeling too comfortable in discomfort.

“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”
J.W The Glass Castle

BOTANICA

10.25.20
this should feel good
good like Saguaros at dawn.
Good like Ephedra to tired lips, Ocotillo’s feet on short minds, Opuntia to the hungry.

sure, it’s nice:

small showers to thirsty grounds. Enough to tease the ground with “steady” when the roots still ache for “flow”.

to call it rain is an insult to the river, just like to call it love is a disservice to the heart.

you dipped your toes in and called it swimming. But the damn broke; chains turned cages but no one asked the lion where the thorn was. Instead she limped back to skirts and shirts and therapy appointments.

these mountains once danced green, now they scream dry — i meant what i said, but when you heard monsoon i saw mist. mist-ya, friend.

I’m sorry.

10.7.20

BOTANICA
Cleavers – Galium aparine

Cling to my fingers for a joy-ride.

You’re the outward reach,
teaching us Nature is not linear, and the heart is an organ of perception. A grounding agent in the lymphatics. My tiny life held in your older more powerful chemistry. There is substance there. Some soul food I need to become more human.

Like so many others this century, I found myself a displaced person shorty after birth and have been looking for a place to take a stand.
You color me soil and remind me; no amount of city can erase me, nor dull the remembering with length of time.

I trust you.
Nature doesn’t know how to lie.

BOTANICA

9.25.20
Saffron | Crocus sativus

three Stigmas in a sea of Stamens
they pluck your gender at high value
and they don’t know what they’re missing

it’s your strength that humbles me
a muscle stronger outside its shell
how something so small and frail dares to
grow in the coldest of places
not brashly, you’re not picking fights with the seasons
you have nothing to prove
more tenderly,
embracing the snow that opens back to you

you’re not shy either,
un-apologetically cradling yourself igloo
a splash of purple during seasonal depression
like some capricious parrot finger-painted
the memory of sunshine on the ground
the tear feeding Skelleton Woman
the signaling of spring,
a child’s first breath,
the first crack of light through a tightly shut curtain

there are some who believe we hold grief in our lungs,
fitting then, for you to open equinox
each exhale releasing bitterness and tensions
breaking down walls with sympathy and kindness
the type of cry demanding two quick consecutive breaths
the one that fills the lung
and the second to hug the empty space where sadness is no longer

BOTANICA

8.28.20
rosehips
the unexpected type – the foreign type
the type that leaves the doggie flap open for you at night
the type to intentionally leave lipstick stains on the milk bottle

yesterday i was water
today im a capricious breeze
blowing up the skirts of the mountain
tasting the river drip down your leg

tell me about the rising house prices in Colorado
and i’ll tell you how i just imagined my hand
playing realtor in your cunt
drawing boundary lines with margins of
arrowhead, cattail, and reed

you don’t need to know my name
to make lily out of ponds

BOTANICA

8.16.20
monkshood

you know the one
the blue bells – a blue so violent your eyesight can be abruptly dislodged by a twitch of embarrassment
looking away, as if too look so directly into the origin of so much pigment
might violate intimacy sacred even to an unrefined pride
you smell of butterscotch
or is it that caramel iris of yours?
i digress,
monkshood knows what it must feel like
a rustling of scarabs in mummy wrappings
as we pretend to
assume our historic roles (mine at least) as enchanters,
soul feeders, sacred pimps, and alchemists

ive decided, the universe does not have laws
it has habits
and habits can be broken

BOTANICA

7.26.20
nettles
never underestimate the fidelity with which painful memories marry
but don’t let that scare you
this brings blood to the surface
stimulates blood vessels
oxygenates cell grow for you fingers to bend and pick up
the small part of voice box you tried to thread through a needle

this is what i love most
the texture of peace in nettle sting

BOTANICA

5.24.20
lemon s first impression is bitter
on closer look
it coats the tongue in velvet
sinks into the pores
exposing surfaces hiding behind particularly meaty skin

salivating – it exfoliates experience
a game of twister for the senses

BOTANICA

5.17.20
sometimes to pine is not to falter
it s to drop the last straw for new fires
crisp memories making smoke signals to mirrors
in anothers words

there s shame in there
as if, failure to be someones doormat speaks less of you
they never saw the piss stained sheets
foreign lands that could be perfect
could
were it not for slurred insults

no
pine is quiet, but no longer subtle
forgiving green needles stitching hearts together with its sap
until winter comes
cold and undulating needles are straws
for warmth.

this isn t a condemnation
nothing is burned here
this is phoenix, after all
let this be a passage, keeping you warm this winter
until next spring
in the night – were all sounds strange
until dawn, when dew replaces musk.