CORRECTED : I Am Going To Go To Work Now I Say Spraying Myself With Rose Water Smelling Like My Mother

Poem #4 for June (or a confession or how a poem is made)

For June I decided to join my friend Ingrid in writing a poem a day, I am not new to writing a poem a day, but I am new to calling what I write a day a poem. I underestimated how hard the challenge would be. That I would find so much missing at the end of these poems. Or maybe just the right amount missing? Maybe just the sketches for larger things, as these poems in my notebook have always been. Either way, there is a movie I am not writing at the moment. Let me know if you like reading them and I will continue sending them to your inboxes or I will just post here daily and you can come check it out at lunch or in the morning or after dinner. I always like to read poetry first thing in the morning. And it should go without saying, that a like and a comment or a share mean so much, if you are enjoying these a subscribe for free or for $5 a month helps immensely. Yours -

It is 3 am and my brain is already rotting.
Going white at the temples.

There are things I keep returning to.
End 55 MPH Zone.
Feeling the body growing wings.
The sun knocking everyone out in Los Angeles.

There are places my dreams keep returning to.
Chatrooms and you. (And you. And you.)
A pool or a pond or a river.
The tide gone way out on the beach.

There were things we were always running out of.
Like milk and ink and peanut butter.

Trying to make sense of the past.
The braces cutting into the soft part of the mouth.

The woman crawling down the stairs white with pain.
Losing the baby.

Bringing a slice of birthday cake down to the station.
Dying the hair red.

Somewhere there was a camera with pictures of us in a childhood bedroom
trying on our selves.
I was not measured.
I was too young.
Crying on the subway.

What wakes you up? The therapist asks. Are you having nightmares?
Every night I think of our dying earth and I plunge
waking when I land.
The snow dragged in.
The beautiful girl standing next to you on the 14th floor.

What is it that you want? I ask myself.
A whole country.
Watching him place his index finger on her mouth.
Your body in the past.

I wanted to write a poem about all the things I did not know how to do.

Revealing myself.

I wait for my film to come back.
I frame my daughter’s art.