Ian Barry

Its been over a month since you passed, but sometimes it still feels like yesterday. I am never going to forget that morning in the hospital, I am never going to forget how familiar your hand felt even after you had left your body. I am never going to forget seeing your Mom and Dad, that was the hardest part.
Some wounds never fully heal, and in a way I am OK with that. I don't want to ever stop hurting when I think of you. The hurting is the thing that makes me really appreciate who you were and what you meant to me. it makes me want to be more like you. Its a beautiful pain you cause me, Le Friend, I am blessed to have known you and I am blessed to carry you with me still.

 I remember the river,
And slipping into it while
Screaming at you
Through the snow.
I remember you laughing
As you helped me out

I remember your birthday
When I fell onto you in the ice rink
And my skate split open your finger;
How we had to bandage it up and leave,
And you wouldn't talk to me in the car

I remember the flower fields
And crouching beneath reds and yellows
Hiding from our parents,
Giggling as they called our names

I remember New Years
When we drank Martinelli's
And stumbled through the yard with sparklers,
When midnight felt like staying up until sunrise

I remember that week
You were obsessed with digging holes
And I helped you move dirt in your backyard
Without ever questioning why

I remember when the waves were big
And I was too afraid to go out
So I watched you from the cliff

I remember the flannel you gave me for my 18th birthday
I still wear it sometimes
even though the buttons are broken

I remember when you cried
After I threw your hat into the lake
I didn't know then how strange the world makes us

I remember your hand
And how it felt when it pulled me from the river
I remember how it felt in the hospital too
I can still feel it now

Soliciting the Soul

There's an art

To the interruption of lives

 a gentle knock that deceives
of friends stopping by with
 honeyed-news; and they sock-
shuffle to the door, speculating what
passing pleasantries will be
exchanged on the other-side,
only to be jarred by foreign features
and a shameful glimpse at the unexpected

The woods are the book

we read over and over as children.

Now trees lie at angles, felled

by lightning, torn by tornados,

silvered trunks turning back

to earth

-Wyatt Townley

Flat Side of the World

We say

pinhole.

A pin hole

of light. We

can’t imagine

how bright

more of it

could be,

the way

this much

defeats night.

It almost

isn’t fair,

whoever

poked this,

with such

a small act

to vanquish

blackness.

-Kay Ryan

 

We could never become raindrops
Regardless of our tries to dive after them
They return to the bent foam
And we splutter to the surface,
Half intact and wholly alone amongst
The rimless flood

Dune

Love lasts by not lasting. 

Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire

 for his sins. Love allows us to walk 

in the sweet music of our particular heart.

-Jack Gilbert

memory has been on my mind

the past couple months

but I keep forgetting why

Sometimes it doesn't require evidence to know the truth

and sometimes even as you lay alongside the evidence

in the darkening hours

it doesn't hurt to look again

All Those Not Dying Are Dead

 Sand hints at something

older than itself

like how cobwebs give age

to what they hang over

thin evidence of the disappeared;

beaches mistaken for deserts

stones and statues dusted

into bland oneness

***

we are much the same as

all that has crumbled

turning ourselves barren

in the face of time

creating sediment out of

mountains

crushing pop-songs

and parade confetti 

evenly sifting them

into forgetfulness

becoming the post-apocalyptic

wanderer of our own skin

growing these dunes

without edges

***

nothing can feed on sand

but my... we try.

Your lover says to you, "You're skin and bones."

What your lover means seems transparent:

You're a kind of death's head
that ought to have the sense
to hide itself from sight.

But you look in the mirror and the mirror says:

"Wayward, trusting amiable flesh, flesh
lending itself to other flesh,
how can you help but be seduced by another's body?" 
-Tom Sleigh

Gram of mania, animated pepper,

shadow-monger dressed in panic,

monitor of  ghostly footfalls,

it concentrates in its essential tic

the frog leg dropped into oil

and the human shock at the verge.

If  it would stop and let me look,

I might imagine the tropic

where it hangs in a hammock

between two popsicle sticks

admiring the iguana’s stealth,

but it does not stop. Hawk-

dodger, crow-pretzel, gallows’

twitch. Spider-shark. Porter

of  readiness, miller of  the

steady shudder, peripatetic

rectitude, run by the power

of   the sunlit rock, it fortifies

Darwin and the idea of   being late

and the missed appointment.

With its blue tail, it reminds us:

it will go on. It will not stop.

-Rodney Jones