some things i have learned from picking blackberries

The big flashy ones are not always best;

The humbler ones are at times sweeter, softer, and tastier.

You shouldn’t have to work too hard to pull ‘em off the stem. They’ll come when they’re ready.  If you have to pull at all, it’s not time. Just let it lie.  Otherwise you’re gunna end up with an unripe berry, sour and resentful at being plucked.

The juiciest ones are the most elusive, hiding underneath scratchy leaves, barricaded by sword-like branches laden with piercing thorns.  But if you are diligent, and patient, you’ll find ‘em... more like, they’ll find you.

Just when you think you’ve combed the entire plant, an exciting splotch of cerise and violet catches your eye and beckons you to diagnosis its willingness to be plucked.

Stains are okay. In fact, they are inevitable. 

Polar Thief

A bear creeps

In the coldest of regions

Perhaps

Too far North for one to see,

Visually

Yet far enough

South to tuck under a mountainous fog

It thinks it’s hidden

With pale coat

And proud strides

Behind the protective cloak

Of blurred distance

With a confounding grumble

The bear strokes the embers of

A smoldering pile of sticks

But it has been seen

And felt

Like blood rushing to the head

After a jolt up

Towards the suns stretching limbs.

The beast has been known

For many years

Many, many years

Many, many lives

Though this one incarnate

Has left a sloppy trail of muddy paws prints

Across the back upon which

I’ve carried its memory.

Stupid bear.

Stupid, stupid bear. 

Oh
Fuck it all

Oh
Fuck it all

All will get fucked
By something
Or somebody
Eventually

Hell, maybe even more than once

So, let us get it done
Yes, tonight
The many Marguerites sing
Fuck it all

Route of Blood to the Wind (Ruta de sangre al viento)

When daises no longer cradle you
because they follow me,

when you ask the wind for my name,
and the wind has forgotten even my echo,

when I shall be pretty clouds crossing your memory,
with what love will you care for the souls of my verse?

With the bird-love that followed my mornings,
when I found my warble rolling in your flight?

With the water-love that displaced my anguish,
when my timid waves plowed your sleep?

With the quiet love of rapture and ecstasy
with which you loved my wandering dreams in the night?

With the sprout-love that defied currents,
and plunged me on the winged peaks by the sky?

With the small love, careless and absent
with which you loved my childish tender games?

With what love will your hands take blandly,
the small still body of your sad memory?

Will you speak of my face
to the silent verses?

Will you tell them you saw me opening life to them
over a bad of waves and fantastic oars?

Will you show them the trail of birds and warbles
that with me in their wings, flooded your breast?

Will you water their yearning to kiss my eyes,
with the image of laughter in my last illusion?

Will you hide the history
that downed my sailboat?

Or will you take their souls to a tomb of clouds
that came and left with me?

If your eyes stay to spy on me in the summits!
With what love, my love, will you care for me verse?

~Julia de Burgos

Festive

There was a lot of dust
and sun
the type that crackles
plastic things left in it's piercing vision
and stifling touch

There was uncomfortable bedding

"somewhere in there behind my ears and beside my eyes"

Who wants to smother their feelings in order to be accepted?

Or pretend that something doesn’t exist because it’s not reflected

In the same intensity,

Received in similar propensity?

Flung onto and clung on you

My smoldering streams of feeling

I could never hope for such a return

From the locked up quadrants of what you called love

Who wants to always be a source of stress?

Or nervousness…

A tick that never fades

Curtained by someone’s weak, fearful masquerade?

Seven months into a new year and I still bare the scars

One year almost now

Cut endlessly with rejection’s crystallized shards

But who wants to be a pain?

Or cause a fuss and make things undone.

Who wants to uncurl the flowers dried up edges,

Or twist the rope's fibers the other way ‘round?

Who wants to let their heart melt into a small bowl,

Then scoop it out served sunny side up on a piece of toast?

Who wants to continually ask: “what if?”

Or “why not?”

Or “why?”

Or “what the hell!”

Who wants to feel like the center of a spider web shatter on a sheet of glass? 

I’m retired from self-sacrifice

And though I’ve made a pretty dependable income

Thus far

I’m looking for a profession

With sunnier perks,

Less intimidated co-workers,

And a sustained well in which I can float my paper boats

Made of

Pure, raw, messy love.