Merits

Sometimes the weight of this rests on me
as heavy as the history of the world.
And I realize these ghosts
are more then just the dead I knew.
They are living and breathing fossils.
Bones of my childhood.
The wood and frame of that green house on Lawrence Ave
where I thought,
where I knew
you'd always love me.
But growing older has taught me
that knowing can be an illusion
and what a lucky student I am
to have you as a teacher.

Hot Moon in July

you always brought the fireworks on the 4th of july.


in big paper bags


like they were groceries


packed in your corvette.


we'd start with the bottle rockets


watch them scream into the air


and pop

hoping the burning ashes wouldn't damage the neighbor's roof.

you lit cigarette after cigarette

until the roof of your mouth burned

and the sun went down.

on the 4th of july,

you always felt like living

so you brought us cracker jacks

and cherry bombs

and gave us sparklers.

we lit those and watched them sizzle

and we'd write our names in the air

and in the sky

because just for a second

it stayed there.

when the night got really black,

you told me to lay on the monkey bars and watch the show

and i did it for years

and the show never changed.

fire and gun powder.

pills

pills

pills

and suicide.

I want to put all of this into the body of a rocket

and launch it out of an empty beer bottle

and watch it screaming towards a hot july moon.

we'd light firecrackers in the driveway

and you always made sure to tell me

"stand back, kate, you don't want to get burned"

i wondered if anyone ever told you that

because you got so close i could see the sparks in your pupils.

it would go out and we'd keep lighting more

until the pavement singed black.

it stained black

you burnt out faster then those fireworks

and you said you wanted the flames to eat your bones

so we watched your ashes

sink to the bottom of the bay.

i don't even buy fireworks anymore

i pay someone to light them for me

and i think it might have rained the last few years

and you can't light anything in the rain.

Guest Poet :Anna Ciferno

This is a poem my brilliant poet of a neice, Anna, wrote about my little 2 year old daughter, Scarlett. Or how everyone in the whole world refers to her as "Squishy Bumpkins".




"You don’t believe your own name.
Your birth certificate would be the
most illegitimate document
to you if the people you love
who love you
told you that your name was
something different.

My mom called you darling
on Monday & you cried.

I ran into you & you fell
into a pile of sticks behind the grill
& you told me you were so sorry
and continued to blow bubbles
with your lips covered in soap
from the little circle bubble maker.

You asked me how my day was
& I wanted to say it was horrible, Scarlet Rose
but you do not think that is your name
& my day was not horrible anymore,
you were smiling.

I asked you how your day was
& you told me to look at your jelly shoes.
They are yellow, you tell me
I know this, but I act surprised.

Then you tell me about mermaids
that live in my kitchen sink
& flamingos in the closet.
You deny reality to embrace imagination.
You paint thoughts bigger than the suns hands
could ever stretch with two year old eye lashes
& you don’t believe your name."

Getting published in Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology for 2009

I submitted three of my poems to this infamous celebration of the arts with a timeline saying I'd know by the 30th if I made it. Well, the 30th came and went, and so did the 1st,2nd,3rd, 4th, and 5th and I heard nothing so I thought I didn't make the cut. Usually, if I don't succeed at something, I think "well, I just wasn't good enough...". This is the first thing I've done where I feel I really am good enough so I was "wtf"ing for a week! Finally today I get an email saying I've been accepted and I will read my entry at Mac Books on Coventry on May 13th at 7! The top three go on to the stage at the art fair that following weekend. I'm so excited! It's my first published work! Its giving me the steam I need to really start this blog rolling and to get off my ass. Its called "traveling poetry" but it has only traveling once and I need to do it again. Hooray!

You're a hard pill to swallow

and I've swallowed a lot of pills.

I have to cut you with a butterknife into 4 jagged pieces

and gulp water and red wine until I'm drunk and drowning

just to get you down.

And I don't understand how you can talk about how you hate "the blacks" and "the Jews" with a smile on your face

but yell at my kids for wearing shoes in the house

like there's nothing worse then getting dirt on the floor.

You talk like your words are diamonds

but nothing you say is diamonds

just cut glass.

And I'm sorry I don't send "thank you"s

but you won't swim with black people because you say they make the water dirty.

You put bumper stickers on your car that say "Stop the War!"

and tell me not to eat sea bass because its endangered

But if you don't care about people,

how can you care about fish?

Well I guess you are an expert in cold blooded creatures.

Life is too short to live in Ohio

Today, it is snowing in my little Cleveland neighborhood. As much as I love my home, I'm getting tired of its moods. Thursday, it was in the 70s and I walked around in a tshirt and today its so cold, I don't want to walk to my mailbox. The snow is actually sticking now, which makes it more real. If it just discinegrated into the rain, it was like it wasn't REALLY snowing. I had a dream last night about San Francisco. All my dreams seem to revolve around San Francisco lately and I think "why does it have to be a dream?"

We always talk about moving.
Life's too short to live in Ohio
and maybe if the sun shined more,
our lives would be better.
It seems like the only roots we have here
belong to trees with no leaves
and whats a life without green?

If we had a house with more windows
it would make us into artists
and if our street was called "Haight"
there would be more love.

We always talk about moving
because Ohio is full of so many lines.
Big, bold, black lines
that catch people like flies
so they think "this is it."
When really, this is always it.
Our daughters would be princesses of the coast
and everything would always be growing.
We'd always have fresh air, fresh ideas and fresh tomatoes.
Even in January.

Maybe our lives would be fuller
if our neighbors knew what peyote was
and what God looked like
and how to get to the Golden Gate bridge at 5pm.
Because I'm as bipolar as a Cleveland spring
that cries with snow in April
and smiles with 75 on New Years.
So that there is no meaning in anything but change.

If our forecast was always orange
and we thought about the tide,
maybe there would be more hope.
But this gray dissolves everything around it
until all you have are memories of a sun with your life
We always talk about moving.

We always say that, but we never leave

What St.Patrick Never Wanted

It's been almost a year

since he told her he was numb

and that she wasn't pretty enough to sleep with anymore.

She's been asking for honesty all this time

and he was sorry but he was "just being honest"

like it was the simplest feeling

.A feeling and an excuse.

What she always asked for

but never wanted.

So she sent her babies to her sister's

so she could be alone with the cold

and painted pictures of trees with leaves of purples and blues.

Trees you would never see in real life,but made beautiful pictures.

She searched through her months, trying to pick out the lies like they were berries

hoping all it would take were eggs, flour and sugar to bake them

and turn them into something sweet she could choke down.

Because her mouth tasted like metal

and every kiss before this hung on her lips like someone desperate to jump off a bridge.

He said he didn't leave for three reasons

the last one being he loved her.

But it was the last one and it was like it wasn't a reason at all.

The paint made her calmer and by the time he came home,

both the tears and the trees had dried.

They both said hello and he followed her to the bedroom.

Apparently she had gotten prettier in the last few hours

or he wanted to fuck out the honesty.

And its been almost a year since she took that picture.

That black and gray one where her eyes still stained with old mascara even days later

and she looked broken and sad.

But broken and sad makes great art so at least she could get art out of all of this.

It took a rusted city and a summer

to make her smiles come easier

.And he tells her he loves her

and its the first thing he tells her now.

His skin is warmer

and her hair is darker

and it seemed to make all the difference.

But she still counts the number of times they make love in a week

and tells him what a great man he is b/c all men want to feel like winners, she heard.

She makes his favorite meals and listens to his electronic music

hoping it all stops him from feeling numb.

Because she can't be a lie again.

Something he's settling for because of the mess it would make if he left.

A terrible mess.