I’ve been on a writing break since around Christmas and am just now easing back into daily writing, editing, and testing the creative waters. Instead of writing, I’ve been focusing on composing, studying music theory, and learning how to tune a piano. I’m hoping to turn the latter into a career; I’m done with traditional classroom teaching, both on the public and college level. 19 years was enough. I’m still teaching English to Chinese students online, but that doesn’t feel like teaching at all…it’s more like encouraging.

Anyway, here’s my first poem of 2019. 

Comparing Hands

You tell me fix my hands, like they’re broken,
as if they’re useless stems I just happened
to be born with, not finely-tuned instruments
for giving love, back-rubs, applying pressure,
or anointing, whichever the situation calls for.

You pretend your hands are perfect when, in truth,
they’ve written reams and reams of lies,
and still you brag that they helped set the stars,
soothed the earth’s waters until they calmed,
the record of your work preserved for heaven’s sake,

to make the angels scratch their luminous heads
and wonder how a creature such as yourself merited
favor, taking secrets bets on who you slept with,
which principality or power you blew to in order
to win cosmic favor, to be the fairest in all the land,

and all that shit that fills fairy tales…but this is life
on life’s terms, the hard and the harder, the blood
and the eye that sees the blood, the scream and the ear
that hears the scream, and all the while you doze
in a patch of sun, the world burning down around you.