This is not a poem to be repeated in night alleyways
This is not a poem that will raise dead from sepulchers
Send them rocketing into dried leaf flight
This is not a ringtone to awaken you from timidity
Or a call to raise your hands in prayer
This is not a proverb to remember in weaker moments
One that will assure you
And shift you
Back onto the right track
This is not the one that will have you out of your chair
Bomb dive, bum rush the stage
Send your fingers stinging
Mend your body elemental for flight
This is not the racket that will make stray dogs nervous
Scratch and howl for no one thing
This is not a sad song to break mom’s heart
Or make daddy do his slow sweep through the living room and sit.

This poem will not go down softly
Like warm ice tea
Cool hot tea
Neither will it stick to the side of your back tooth and have you
Burping lines from memory
This here, right here, will not stain white tablecloths or tshirts
Will not need to be bleached later in a sink
Or on a countertop sticky with liquid detergent made for brightly colored clothes

These lines do not need to be creased down the front of your slacks
Or sucked up off makeshift coffee tables
This is not the line you will stand in for one hour. two hours.
To get on the other side of all this static.
This poem will not bounce you up and down on its knee like you are a giggling baby.
Will not cut your toenails for you
This is not an adage tattooed to forearms
Will not peel off like a wet bandaid when you’ve healed

This poem will not make idle threats
Or legitimate threats
Or threaten your identity

This is more like patience on a cloudy day
More like a whim that lures snails out of shells
Or curls like a cat safe at home
This something will be vaguely forgotten by the time it is even over
But is still right now
The common threading us together
Making you and me, we
(if we forget each other’s names)
Because we are all one moment,
Cohesively

We are one prayer
But one thousand pleas
One mother, yet we all must bleed
One thousand reminders
And one remedy
We are one song in ten thousand melodies

We are the linked up sections on a jackfruit’s belly
The feathers that, if they fit, will let the bird take flight
We are the destroyers and redeemers
The compulsive over-cleaners
We are the spokes in a bike wheel that will not bend
Will not bend
Will not bend
Until God says.
We are one sigh of relief
One gentle smile that says,
My love, didn’t I tell you we would be?
We are one forgotten song God let us sing
Remember, remember
We are trying to notes to see
We are relearning and reviving
We are struggling, we are striving
We are the pearl-like drops that spell love
And the crystals yet untouched and unseen

And it is time
It is time
It is timely.

(Tonight was jazz poetry jams at Blue Room on 18th and Vine. It is so lovely to know there are these people out there breathing and living poetry. Tonight I ran into my friend Tegan who was coincidentally in town and at the Blue Room. I had told myself on the drive to KC, “If I’m supposed to get onstage tonight, I’ll recognize a sign. If not, then it wasn’t meant to be this time.” So when I saw Tegan and she asked if I was performing, I was like, “Yeah… I think so…” So I chose to do this one.)