Rainbow Bridge

for Carrie Jo

i notice

as the color trellis grows

sprouts to cosmic depths

to the star nursery where your new self

is bursting out

how the rainbow bridge

from your bones, your luminous

skin, the chemo skin from childhood

an alabaster peace

how the smile that came

after we bathed you in gardenias and roses

spread all the way across your face

has become a rainbow to the stars

imagine the twinklepower

to plunge back down to us here

in this snowlit quiet grove

rose petals scatter and Aphrodite’s dove

which sat on the branch throughout

is winging now, through darkness

back to glistening starlight

your body wrapped in grandma’s quilt

has become a sacred site

may huckleberry blossom every year

from this sacred ground

at night, i feel the incandescent, luminescent

strength of final light beaconing out to your new star

from your bones, your voice, your movement through space:

you have birthed a permanent portalway of peace

untitled

Woke up a few inches above the sheets.
My bones were poking out of every pore.
The blankets hovered on my sharpest points.
I warned my waking wife, "Don't roll over.
I'm pokey again." "You'll be all right. It's

going to be all right." She rose fast to pour
lotion into my hands. This I patted
on, leaving globs suspended from the hair-
thin needles covering me. She chattered
to make it all seem normal. "I think that's

a good reason to call in sick," she said.
"Would you do it?" I asked. "Okay. You go
to the garden. I'll call Guy." The sky bled
pinks and golds as I stopped and let my toes,
their tender skin, greet the cold soil. My core

felt warm though frost stood in the garden rows,
and I was naked as a winter rose.

Deeper Then (with thanks to Janice)

“deeper than begin “
began to watch
earth tears drip
from wear & tear
apart the greys
from the blues
“unflyable kites”
dip nots
knots dip deep
inner tube time
floats paint chips
downstream up
strokes across paper
oils piled
Jay de Feo high
quarter time 2
layers of us
passengers only
past this point
“maybe or not we start”

Skin Deeper

You've lost your watch
and nearly lost your mind
you can see and feel yet

You passed out of time
and now you reach for
but out there there are

No references any more
real than one thing from
another or all things real

In their own way just as
you real within this skin
consciousness skin deeper

The blinking cursor tells
nothing like it once may
have now only intervals

With some precision and
without measure so help
you time where what when

Something helps you pace
yourself find your bearings
we've given those numbers

Strange fruit such magic
unfolding again and again
before our eyes oh yes

How will you know to
arrive to depart to fall in
to be yourself all in all

Such fraternity the avenue
of time cannot turn against
all things unto themselves

Out(side) of time we rest
markers makers listening
as long as stars hold yet

Even then or were that
may be or not we start
again deeper than begin

IMUNURI Prompt: Whangdangdoodle!

Happy 2013!

To kick off the new year, let's pitch ourselves a whang-dang doodle!

Here are a handful of sparks from writing gatherings. 

Write something using as many of these as you wish, from zero to all fifteen. Or take the patchwork itself as a prompt — something about collaboration, association by proximity, the colors of inking things, torn paper.

keywords: whangdang, poem, your name