I wish you could

I could tell you to breathe,

To grit and push

To enlighten and endure

And enunciate the edges

While the sun bounces off the peninsula, 

Or the way one word can soften the harsh corners.

It’s nothing to pull up that reading list

Of Thomas Moore and Oprah and two kinds of Grahams,

For a snap of a moment to guide you to the stillest point

where facts and futures reduce to one sentence, maybe two,

Then fall into a portal or a mantra, and please, an explanation, finally, 

that shows how empty gets filled, 

how questions stop confusing,

please something to assure  that acceptance reigns and destiny divines.

Assures…

For a time.

It’s as simple as you wish it to be

For a time.

But I kid you not, lest it’s best you know:

The road’s rocky, the trip’s tricky, 

The ache is real.

The lump in the shower, the call at midnight, the pinkest slip?

Who said it: We grow, we grow. stronger each time?

Perhaps, and so what?

The drips of recovery can deplete

And when that happens you might stop being sure.

And what about that: when you toss your hopes to hell?

What then? When time and years alter hope, meld it into something 

That will rend your heart as surely as the sun sets and rises?

Children are kidnapped, for god sakes.

Or that first betrayal! In time it will heal: time is the medicine of destiny;

But never enough. There is no enough in such a matter.

But wait:

You can lose.

You can let fate wrestle you down 

And decide to lose,

Right there on the mat of goals and wishes.

It might look dire, 

To have packed your suitcase and parachute only to leave them both 

at a bus stop to nowhere;

to venture off with a faith that looks like zany circles 

not reassuring lines.

But there is a but.

When there are no answers

The questions don’t matter nearly as much.

And when you stop questioning

You just might find

Your own brand of astonishment,

Waiting and ready 

To carry you home.

Karen Jasper
Feb. 2012

Afterlife

That line is paper thin,
She told me.
I can hear the footsteps
Even when they fly—
They leave their footprints sometimes two chords deep,
They pass through me,
And when they reach my rib cage, I kind of fold inside,
I stop what I’m doing and I pay attention.
The trees look different when that happens;
They sway the way my grandfather laughed
When I showed him my crayons.
You know my father visits.
Sometimes he hides behind his dahlias
And poof he points out the dew drops
Just as if they’ve been there all along.
And sometimes the clouds spell words
Embedded in my memory

Now Karla, I told her.
This cannot be proven.
You die, I die, this much we know.
But at that point the buddhists think one thing
And the republicans another
And you know that priest
Who told me I was risking heaven,
Me, who follows 8 of the 10 commandments.
I dismissed him, but he could be right.
It would have to be two way communication,
Don’t you think, if the dead could speak?

You shouldn’t doubt, she answered,
Your friend Renee told you yourself
To say fuck as a prayer
And see astonish as a sign.
And I’ve watched you raise a broom to the ceiling,
Knocking a hello from here to there.
You told me yourself,
Time isn’t linear
And love outlasts a fleshy mess.

Why doubt it, she said.
Why be dead
When you might not die?
What mother would leave her children
 here floundering, trying to understand
how something holy cannot hold water?

You might be right, Karla,
i hope you are.
But even thin lines are still lines
And lines have two ends.
i can’t follow two ends.
I’d rather just one
I’m a circle girl, Karla,
And you know what?
Circles might be paper thin too





Karen Jasper
January 2012