Taken, Not Found

These days I hold my anger
beneath my tongue like a charm.
Spent all my nights pining
for joy like some left lover.

[The griefmongers hoist up their billyclubs
The griefmongers howl from the satellites
The griefmongers polish collection plates
The griefmongers sleep soundly every night]

These days I realize
happiness must be taken,
pried from between smashed knuckles,
pulled from between gritted teeth.

Three Happinesses: Part Two

You’ll get no happy ending, and neither will I.

Bad drivers, bad haircuts, bad milk,

our lopsided loves, blown chances,

being too much and not enough.

All the hurts of age (my knees) (your hands),

the suicides of friends.

Whatever ever after you will get

is not one happiness, monolithic,

but many small ones:

a baby learning to laugh.

Bread baked by your mother,

and later, her recipe,

a sacrament.

A sudden mouthful

of kisses in the elevator,

or one tender kiss in the morning

as you’re shaking off a dream,

one that turns into your husband’s eyes,

soft with love in a rough face.

A friend’s voice.

Music.

This.

Three Happinesses: Part One

I know how it is. Darkness

seems more honest than daylight,

when we shuffle our hearts

to the bottom of the stack,

brew coffee, match socks, clock in.

If I tell you my happiness

I must be leaving something out.

So I write to you of griefs,

nakedly. But while you are

licking their salt from your lips,

somewhere that you are not looking

a songbird is taking a breath,

opening its mouth to sing.

24/30: Grief by Color

 

Black: mourning cloth for North America, Japan,

and Eastern Europe, just as if bereavement were a blind

and silent wait before a scheduled sunrise, or chambers

of a cave, unpathed, unlit, and terminal.

Korea, blue, a luminous liminal dawn and dusk that’s looming

overhead, turning lives to silhouettes. In Thailand

and Brazil, purpled widows are a newborn bruise.

In Egypt, yellow, sickly flesh, new flowers on a grave.

And India mourns in white, a cloud-cast day in which

the hours pass unmarked by sun but workplace clocks still grind

their teeth for timecards, ingredients must still be fashioned

into meals and placed into the mouth and chewed, bodies

must be bathed and lotioned, combed and dressed and shoed

and moved about and made to talk when all they want to do

   is sleep.

Information Source: Colors of Mourning by My Sendoff