listening 2...

Pear tree

in parking lot

informs me 

that: "life

is about loving 

the soil you are in"

spoken from:

a three foot

by three foot 

patch

that cars

pull up to

and people
pile carts on

and the birds

who see trees

from the sky

that shelters them

in context of the 

massive earth curving

outward and downward

from beneath their roots 

recognize all life

as the capitulation
to random placement

and the harnessing

of incidental light…

lucy meskill

one size fits all...

mercy extended is 

truly mercy gained, 

a gift given by the giver

the grace of which
is utterly retained…

lucy meskill

comestible...

we

are the nightmares 

that pigs have

that cows have

sleeping fitful in fields —

they feel our hunger
like we feel lightening

crackling in leaden air

standing in a field

in a raging storm

beneath a big tree

whose conductive roots

we imagine travel all the way

to the place that we call home

— we strike from a distance

fiercely decisive, with appetites

that split living breathing beings

full of desire and longing 

clean down to the bone...

lucy meskill

read

here's the way the word works:
one, that I only lonely speak
at the two of the moon, and
why, that I whispering shout
at the scream on the wind, of
you, in the room with your
hands on the clock spread, to the
tick of the lock on the door,
like the bell in the head, of the
eye, through the hole in the leaf
of the how, do I sing in the night,
me, with the shoe in my hand
since the lamp where you stood
sounds, like a keen on the taste,
of a river of patches gone green,
loud, as a hovering lawn
on the slip of an island of
stay, till the sentence is done,
when the sentence begins in the
quivering, wavering howl
of the opening end of a, play

lucy meskill

an ode to emotion...

I'm about to see you
and you're ugly
but I don't mind
because I am ugly too
the best thing is that
you are really real
and that am really real
and we can ring our real
together—keeping chime—
like clear and darkling bells

because every pretty
is its own brand of ugly
that denies the honest truth
—like the most comely shirt
in the whole wide world
that goes sour in the drawer
remaining static and unworn
because we are afraid
that its beauty will not last—

and honest ugly can be

splendid in its own honest
open, gleaming way
—like the torn and tattered
edges of a really fine
piece of handmade lace
more beautiful as it
—slowly threadbare—
unravels deft secrets
about its knotting over time—

every real thing has a beauty
that fake pretty never owns
and the border towns of honest
shelter hordes of awkward
blessed ugly aspects that
enjoin to form a rampart
around fortresses of truth—which
are often gentle ugly places—
where no honesty is shunned

Lucy Meskill

for nothing...

I loaned light
an attitude that
light loaned back
to me

I loaned sky
an altitude for
soaring high
to see

I loaned grief
a vessel which
for awhile
it sailed

I loaned dark
a cover that
it could remain
veiled

I loaned time
an envelope to
help contain its
weight

I loaned faith
ample room to
contemplate
its freight

I loaned love
my everything that
it gifted back
for free

I loaned sight
my open eyes for
bending light
to see

I loaned life
my willingness to
drive it here
and there

and contemplate
my gratefulness
for everything
I share



words and image by lucy meskill

particulate...

Dust shrouds the bright glint
of brutal remorse. It blunts the sleek,
stealthy, and powerfully muscular,
half-submerged contour of earthly struggle,
that progressing, cleaves the cloud-reflected
glassy illusion of tranquility and success,
questing unceasingly, at the deep water's edge.
Dust is the wholly uneven emperor
of even the largest incoming wave,
riding weightless atop the roiling foam.
Dust is never conquered, only shifted,
it coats the bars of every dank prison
and the moist nostrils of every free soul.
Dust is our destiny and our inescapable,
weightless, transcendent and mobile density.
Love the loess, move and be moved by it.
Pray, as you shake the mote laden rag,
beat the woolen rug, empty the canister
shake the coat and hat, on your own personal
inevitable, cleaning-day/moving-day/play-date,
lifelong, intimate and inscrutable love affair
with this spiraling glimmering universe
of unfathomably balanced light and darkness,
curated by shimmering layers of blessed spiraling dust ...

Lucy Meskill