 
Runaway Odysseus:

Collected Poems, 2008-2012

James Welsh

Copyright 2015 by James Welsh

Published at Smashwords

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Other Titles by James Welsh

Pale Eyes, Fantasy

Those Years Without, Historical Fiction

Through the Woods of Babel, Historical Fiction

Tidal Swans, Romance

Where the Sugarcane Tastes Like Dirt, Adventure

Whiskey Romeo, Science-Fiction

Dedicated to the speech therapist who showed me that you can't stutter when you write.

Individual Poems Published

Benediction for the Outside

New Plains Review (Fall 2011)

Calypso for Excuses

The Stray Branch (Spring/Summer 2013)

Colors (An Old Man to His Wife)

flashquake (Summer 2010)

Ghosts in Subway Windows

See Spot Run (February 2012)

how a speed bump destroyed the world

Caesura 29(2008- 2009)

I Am My Muse's Right Hand

Grasslimb 8(2)

Penelope's Lament

The Centrifugal Eye (April 2011)

Tricycle Worlds

Kaleidoscope (July 2011)

Where Fireflies End, and Lightning Begins

Mused (2011)

6 AM

Silhouettes ripple in the webbed

mirror, against the ashgrey

sunshine leaking through the

window blinds.

It's all a losing hand

tossing the dice.

My fingers are limp, but

I can feel the scars roadmapped

across these anemic arms.

Atlas has finally molded

the globe he could never shrug off.

Last night's dreams glint

brokentoothed in my eyes –

flash like fool's gold – flames

flickering, starving, wanting

to come in from the cold.

But it's too early for stories –

it's always too early for fables.

Besides, I folded up my biography

months ago, tired of reading

into my past like future.

I'm too quiet, afraid of rubbing

my past awake. I suddenly

feel that ridiculous urge to crackle

the glass in the mirror even more –

the crimson neons the first

coffee spoon that ladles out the afternoon.

November 16, 2010

A Century on the Mind

Have you already forgotten you

are the immigrant's son?

Have you already forgotten you

are the immigrant's daughter?

I guess a century's long enough

to sift the dollar from the barter,

the begging from the supermarkets,

the starving from the artist.

Yes, centuries are long and memories

are the kids too short for the

carnival rides – but they're

not that short that you would

forget you're still the immigrants'

daughters and sons.

A Death of Cranes

If I could melt the mathematics

off my odometer with a lighter, I would.

But that would mean crawling

backwards to the beginnings of

my world, and why?

Just to watch this walnut of cancer

perched on the cliff of my lungs

shrivel down into a seed

instead of hatching like a popped balloon,

and an essay of bad words flapping

out of the nets of my mouth?

It's too hard to be born again –

the birdwatcher says

it's much easier to die instead.

August 17, 2012

A Goodbye Wave to a Hello Face

I do not know when the sun will rise,

will rise again, the night is dark,

a blackjack of spades spades

quick through the thick

dirt that curves and works

its way, lost, around my veins.

I do not know, I do not know

where the crow crows, but

I do know why – it has

cried too many times before

for a bluebird lover that

loves him nevermore.

Two deer gather at the

lake where the red clay

rises in groans like

worms at the gardener's

hands. Two deer gathered,

not knowing why nor how

nor even when in the dark,

uncharted waters

sloshing at the trees –

none of those seem to

matter to two

lovers like these.

I do not know when

the sun will rise, will rise again

but until then, I intend to rinse

my face with the thin

harvest moon's rays

that stray down into

this forgotten place.

A hallowed eve in

a hollowed-out place.

Well, at least none of that

is your goodbye wave

to my hello face.

A Moment's Thought

" _Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!"_

– _Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener_

" _For to articulate sweet sounds together_

Is to work harder than all these, and yet

Be thought an idler by the noisy set..."

-Yeats, Adam's Curse

The pinprick of this pencil opens

up my veins like a smile,

smearing the lambwhite

paper red like a lamb's sacrifice.

My blood is already dry,

though, before it even splashes,

the drops black and crackled,

like midnight painted the house earlier

and now it's morning, finally.

Still, I write on,

and I write more –

There's the first bike standing upright, without a rider as a kickstand.

There's the first tuxedo, filled out brimming like a balloon.

There's the first book, pages turning, the wind literate and interested.

Perhaps it's too easy to write off my

poetry as a ghost's literature, even

if the page is inky and rubs off

on your palm – a page that's

a sponge of some writer's blood.

October 13, 2011

A Poor Man's She

You're a poor man's she,

rising from the trash

drumming with tin cans

and crinkling in brown bags –

barely enough to warm a shaking

man drinking his whisky,

rubbing the bottle like a branch

to start wildfire in his hands –

"Prometheus I am" – yet still,

summer days leave him

to cold winter

nights.

The old life lingers deep

in his eyes. The rich man's she,

the flickers of once-thick mattress

memories dancing in

circles – wearing their

best watches and purples – all

those waltzing tides, how they

wear feet like shoes (a laugh,

a smile digging up like a sole).

She was a rich man's she,

the glee of a white wine's

taste chasing away the names,

the faces, the days we all

want to forget.

Please come back

and have a drink with me.

A Time Capsule for Yourself

Sad man –

you've gone white in the cheeks –

Man on the Moon –

It looks like death

is beating its breast now,

worshipping

its frantic power (yet,

even with such ambitions,

the wind is the only

thing that speaks

death's language).

You say you read tea leaves

easy enough, yet still you cannot

sleep, eat chocolate, play music or

urge gorgeous love to crush

the air out of your lungs.

Tell me why you're sober

on living – the drink

has turned to water

in your palms, water

which you drink,

then swim in,

then sleep in and

drown, the sound

of smooth bubbles

lurching – then bursting –

too much for you to

handle.

The water's gone now though –

now dance a thousand

flames on one waning

wax candle. The

weak purples that sag under

the storms of red and orange –

they've become the

whisper of grain breathing

in deep like a diamond

beneath the weight

of the summer sun –

no need to breathe out.

But even when juice runs,

your tongue still

feels numb to the touch.

Even when roses rust

the dry, iron fields,

for some odd reason

you can only smell blue.

I know you watch time,

waiting down the alarm

ringing, the sting of the

beeping waking you up

from your sleep, your

sleep of crude, mean

dreams free of the

she's, the we's (though

watching your watch

does boil the moment

into an enormous

eternity dancing

with itself, though

the band's given up

and left hours ago).

But though I've been

writing years until my fingers

ached, rain-chanting

just a single drop

lost by a clumsy sky

full of bitter winters

and lazy shadows drifting by,

I've been dreaming the rough shape

of my goddess from clay –

still polishing the shine

in her evening gown –

I know a kiss on her lips

would stick like honey

and I know this will

happen soon, while all

you have left of love is

an old picture, the canvas

gray as the moon.

A Tumble and a Bluebird

Obscure is not a virtue.

It is the prelude to something greater –

my dancing blind on

the edge in the

hopes I fall down

so that as I

tumble around,

I can

spread my arms

like butter on

your morning

bread.

I grow feathers from the hairs on my

arms, I fly. Like leaves would, I imagine.

And until I hit the ground –

harder than a tired face

into a pillow – I'm both a tumble

and a bluebird, no obscure

tucked away forgotten in the

forest.

ABCs for Poetry

All Baudelaires carefully diary

everlasting freedom, grief,

hurt in joking, kangaroo language –

many need orthodox poetry

(quandary? rightfully so)

to understand vacant worlds,

xylophoning, yearning, & zodiacs.

Act Two

The cottage by the beach still stands inside

my mind, though, filled with giggles, laughter – all

of that still echoes (echoes) like the wind

that rattles a stick along the fence that guards

Old Wilson's Cliffs, the cliffs a mile past

the cottage that my father built. But all

I see is nothing more than beaches, cliffs,

and some old grassy patch that stands in for

the home my father built so long ago.

A lonely grave for some old home in which

I, as a child, battled army men

against each other, helicopters all

a roar beneath the ceiling. Later on,

the army men became a book open

to Alexander Pope – and even now

his Chain of Being shows no sign of rust

although the poem's even older than

myself (now _that's_ old). Looking down, I see

my feet have somehow buried deep into

the sand. I think of hourglasses. Why?

Adam

He could feel soggy moonlight

slur his sight, all while he swirled

the soupy night with his spoon finger.

He could telescope the mess of

stars that would linger and clump

together in the path behind his

outstretched finger.

After giving it some thought,

He called this the Milky Way.

He strummed the silky strings

strung tight across the guitar skies.

He decided to name the strings

after the sounds that they had made:

comets were now their maiden name.

And one time in the night,

He heard someone crying from up above.

He then felt tears splatter on him.

He called those tears the rain.

Against the Thick Wall of the Canvas

In this hard-spun era,

I puppet my reality

as I raise my fist

against it all –

although I know

each step is a hidden

fall. At least, so crowed

the crowd of crows in their

throaty drawl.

But although

I know all's

vanquished, I'll just

mix my own colors

and throw them against

the thick wall of the canvas.

Alarm Clock Squawk

Sometimes, I take my time with waking,

breaking dreams like streams that toss

and stretch around my feet – yet I always

step in the same freezing river twice

for some strange reason.

I will rise now, though,

and writhe like dandelions climbing

wind that winds them up like pocket watches

that always keep the time –

this is good night to the good nights

as I meet the dawn armed with a sword

that's the spine of my pen, a sword that cuts

to the heart of the matter, a pen that

wires blood into the paper's veins,

just to keep this dream alive.

I sing with angels in my dreams sometimes –

and other times they teach me,

reach out to me and pull me

through worlds, each

world a key shaped within a marble

that warbles

metallic as it slips your fingers

and skips the floor.

Just give me three more minutes

to dream my literature and I promise you

I'll give you something worth dreaming for.

And We Drown

" _We have lingered in the chambers of the sea  
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown  
Till human voices wake us, and we drown."_

-T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

It seems I grow older the more I think of it,

what with my knees gone to the dogs

or knowing the dawn's not drawn

with watercolors that the frogs splash in

or where the whooping crane reels in its fill

of dinner. I know about orbits and rotations

and the gravity pressing down on my knees,

squeezing the air and truth out of me.

On my walks around campus, I roll my

ankles like some with their r's, although

I know the sound of my ankles crackling

is not nearly as graceful.

The tasteful comfort

of the past strangles me like

a blanket and I let it, coughing on

the clinging dust rusting the fabric.

Yet despite the charm crowning at my

hair, the grey staring me down in the mirror,

I know that each step I think of is one

more to the door where you're waiting

with arms folded and a

smile frozen on your face.

And so I work my way back home.

Apple Crumble

" _It may be the coldest day of_

the year, what does he think of

that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

perhaps I am myself again."

-Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

Tonight, after we talk,

I think I'll walk through this field

of lights I know of near my apartment,

where each of the bulbs burst like

stars across the galaxy, stars so distant,

some are already gone by the time

they're seen.

The bellows of September

will be blowing the

smell off the glowing water –

it's a scent that will tell me where

my childhood went.

Sometimes, not

even memories are enough, I think.

There will be a

werewolf moon on my right,

the jagged skyline on my left –

I'm afraid that if I would spin,

I wouldn't be able to tell them apart.

September 13, 2011

Apple Splinter Linger

The green apple basket gathers dust on the top shelf

that's held by little, rattled chains

against the aching wall –

I can hear the doctor's shuffles upstairs,

his muffled limp from the war

echoes dull from up there on the second floor.

He walks down the steps, wearing his frown like a grin,

his cigar singed, its tobacco sneaking off in the wind

creeping in through the open window.

He stares into the wall behind me,

the painting on the wall caking with wear.

I don't want to hear the sorry buried in his muddy eyes.

I turn to the window and see an apple tree stump

sitting in the yard. Two sticks lay nearby.

I can only think of drums.

We used to laugh away

the summer days from the branches,

but what happened?

Perhaps it has something to do with

the axe you keep beneath your bed,

a split hair away from your withered hands.

At the End of the Hall

Her name stood tall at the end of the hall

and I stood like a scarecrow, breathing leaves.

The carpet was the drowned blue of the sea,

its ends peeling, wrapping me in its shawl.

And as I stumbled, her

name crept down the hall,

whispering away – even when

I called out for it.

Yet, as sure as clocks spin and time flees,

I, some scarecrow,

row my feet through the hall.

And so I stumbled on,

my straw footprints

following behind me

as they sing hymns and played strings

to the heartbeat of my life's song.

Although I'm now blind to your name,

I'll still make my footprints sing.

As I shuffle on.

Atlas

_And say my glory was I had such friends._ _  
-_ _William Butler Yeats_

I.

Sometimes it feels like

I'm doing a hand stand,

heaving the world

on my shoulders while I'm

walking across the sky.

My shoulder blades are sharpened,

grinding on the rock.

Atlas, am I?

Atlas I am –

lifting the world like bricks

to rebuild your civilization with.

I'll build it stronger than before, though –

I'll make sure it won't fall again.

However, all you ask for is a tower made

of toothpicks for you to scrape the sky with.

You want to poke a hole in the evening

sky, you want to lie in the fields

and see the sun peer through

the midnight's torn curtains.

I wonder if I should birth

your civilization again.

II.

I walked through barren orchards,

wincing through the thicket.

The prickly things are

singing red notes for my skin.

But I ignore them, plunging

deeper into the orchard.

I should torch these thorns, burning

the horns on the vines to ash.

But how would I catch my breath

when I'm burning the orchard down?

And still I hold the world up with my hands,

the rocky shores of New England

scarring at my thumb.

I wonder: if I were trip and fall,

could I catch the World

before I drop the ball?

Nervous at the thought, my hand

digs a little deeper,

clawing out new canyons

in the Balkans.

But the world is no

longer itself –

it's now a basketball

suffocated between my fingers

as a younger me lingers in

the moment, seeing

the hoop and knowing

he's only hoping to make it in.

As the ball clicks hollow against

the rim, everyone on the court

chuckles – all except for you.

In that moment, the World

shrank to the size of the

awkward lady with taped glasses

squeezed tight against her nose –

she was you.

III.

True, this world's grown up

in size but not in mind –

just a babbling man cooing,

curled up in a crib

that's been too small

for some decades now.

But keep this vow: that

you will trust this

Atlas inside me.

Because although the world

is bigger than I am,

my hands won't quiver,

even as I shiver,

drowning in time's

tiny falling sands.

These are the things

we always know of

but never understand.

See, I'm no man –

I'm a being,

being made of strong bones

and nerve to hold fast against

this turning tide.

But mention this

to no one though –

rumors move fast

like fire through dry grass.

IV.

I stare closer at the world,

my eye now a lazy moon.

But I'm looking carefully,

not wishing to miss any

hint of what I think

is a sign that the human spirit

is still alive, that its heart is still

beating rhymes into

the drums of our time.

This human conscience grows heavy.

Our sighs become more frequent,

varying between weary and something

defined only as very...exhausted.

Yet still this world spins,

driving our spirit nauseous.

And so I knead the globe with

my fingers, booming with

pleas in hopes that one

good soul still hears me.

Yet my voice goes over their heads.

They must be too

short to catch the rolling

waves of sound.

But though you are a few inches

shorter than most, you were still

somehow tall enough to hear it.

Autumn Burning

Autumn's burning down

in lipstick reds and bronzer

yellows. The pedestrians

hurrying through with workday

feet cream the leaves

into mascara colors –

some of the specks

of spectrum even darker.

The trees used to chuckle

in the August gusts

with their harvest

greens, the bendy leaves

rubbing against each

other for warmth they

didn't need. The

leaves were fabric and

the fabric evening dresses,

ready and waiting for

those latenight cocktail messes.

Now all that's left

is wrinkled bark, a shock

like your morning look

in the mirror,

a glance that tells

you more than what

you need to know:

that the hushwhite

winter's coming for us all.

October 24, 2010

Autumn Mornings Pouring Through My Window

Laying on my side,

I can see the moon's reflection

playing on the water – the moon,

her reflection a pair of eyes

looking down at the Earth, its daughter.

I say let the world dream. It will only

last the night anyway. Many days,

all I ask for is an autumn morning

pouring through my window – a

river of leaves lingering as they make

their way past the doorstep.

And still the Earth's asleep – the

Sun shakes his gift to hear what's

beneath the seablue and icecream wrapping-paper.

Yet, still the Earth sleeps, a flaw against

a time that's bending and a life

that's moving and a Sun that brings

out the rainbow in the humans.

But as night falls again and the moon

bounces as a marble on the waves,

the world has yet to wake –

and the silence tore holes through

our ear drums.

Baptized Beneath Thunderstorms

You were always afraid the sun would never shine again.

I would always say calmly, "No, see? That's just a cloud passing by.

Don't worry; the sun always trumpets in the end."

You always said, "No! The floods will come and down the wicked men.

That is what my father says. He would never tell a lie.

He says the floods came once for Noah and they will knock again.

No matter what, his will will never be in vain."

I would then always say, "Yet you never ask him why?"

"How dare you say father lies!" You'd always scream. "Of course these things will end!"

"All I want is some peace, and rain puts me to sleep. All you want is pain.

I'll give your thoughts a nod, but I'll only think of death after I die.

You're always talking my salvation and salvation. But again,

until the last act runs, I'll hug this life, enjoy this morning rain."

"You still think my father lies?" You'll always cry.

"I would never say that," I would say. "But how does he know when the clock will end?"

And always when I asked that, the cloud melts away. The sunshine reigns again.

And I would always point this out. And still she would always scoff away my lies.

And so I was always never surprised that – even when the storms would end –

of everyone you alone would always still feel the rain.

Bedlam

I.

When I first met her, she told me her life story. She summed it up real nicely too with a "I don't know what I'm going to do". She shrugged her shoulders. I felt sorry for her. And that's how things began.

II.

We went to the mall because her straitjacket was getting too small. She asked the cashier why the summer-sky blue jacket was made by the trembling fingers of Chinese slave laborers. The casher said "Relax – the slaves were paid well with American jobs."

III.

She has a smile she can hide behind. It's gorgeous. She lights up a room – even when she's not in it. She leaves rolling blackouts in her wake. Flashlights with lots of batteries are recommended.

IV.

She tells me she hates everything. I ask her if she hates hate as well. She doesn't know. She's mad that I confused her. She'll get over it – she hates holding grudges.

V.

She asks me to put bells on my shoes. I think she wants to keep tabs on me. She agrees. At least my shoes will have a job as being bellhops as I skip to the hotel where she waits for me.

Benediction for the Outside

I trust these hands shall never rust

through a flurry of April dust. As

an obscure writing hand once said,

April is indeed the cruelest month,

sadistic with its teeth, waking the

world up from a slumber numbered

in dreams – the only way we

should count things. Our hearts

once murmured that count without

a murmur to its beats.

I trust we will march through the

April, that we will still be those thumps

knocking into the dawn for summer.

I trust there will be big fish in the pond –

I've been meaning to learn how to walk

for ages. I trust that since the weak

learn to speak with kick and fist,

I will learn to talk.

I trust I'll never be what I saw in the morning mirror.

I can never be the push against my pull –

the timid madness would rip me down

the center – antiseptic clean – an equator

pulled out of shape by the poles.

And I trust these watches, these clocks,

these seasons, these calendars, these

times will change as long as we can

change them at the registers.

Bevo

" _I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."_

-Sylvia Plath

Bevo, bevi,

beva...be vamos,

be light, be

truth even though

the old rocky hearts

won't budge

anytime soon –

fray the shoelace's gordian

knot against the stone

eons in the making.

Be the dream sequence

meant for the sleeping –

against the sun's rising,

against the clock's chiming,

ringing in the afternoon –

be whatever you're meant

to be, and I'll be that too –

I'll be you. Even if I don't want to.

Birds Among the Leaves

Even in an autumn like

this one, the leaves never

really leave the trees.

Even if the night sticks

to the trees, a night darker

and colder than blackberries,

the face in the trunk

cracking from the leper frost,

the leaves still sit, perched

like birds on the worms

of branches. The leaves

even chirp, bouncing

on their legs of wires, their

electricity mistaken

in some cultures for magic.

But those leaves are

magic, buzzing and

crackling, showing the

rest of the world

how to stay warm, even during

the human winter months.

October 6, 2011

Black Bile

My spleen bleeds dirt that autumns

down and muds about my feet,

dreaming sleep into

me, the satisfaction of finish

so deep not even you

walking past me could be

my unravel. The rise thrives

around me like leeches,

soaking me down into the

heart's far reaches.

Ah, so this is what sleep is,

the black fizzing at my eyes,

a long sigh drying at my lips.

A smile teaches the bile

how to leave, flooding

like the Nile through

the barren grasses

and littered leaves that

should belong to some

lone lumberjack's dreams...

and it's so beautiful, it's

hard to remember that

too much black bile lost

becomes a sleep that's

hard for me to wake from.

Blueberry Magnet

You're a blueberry magnet

tangled in the branches, drawing the

world in like a portrait while you're

bursting like a planet in the orchard.

Your stomach never goes full on the

empty air – it fills you like a balloon.

All your hot air makes you rise so

now you're a moon. Now you see the

stars and you're hissing them in until you

light like the sun and sink because you're

as heavy as one.

Exit stage left, the scene's all done.

February 18, 2010

Bo

One by one, they lost their voices;

each a record shattered across

the floor, never to play their

history lessons again. Stranded

in the Andaman Islands, they

starved their numbers into

a dwindle, time rubbing sand

into their glassy throats,

scratching the windows

until no song could

look through.

And although I'm sure their

language is saved to a book,

I'm also sure there will

be no one at the bookstore

wanting to pick it up.

Books We Forgot to Write Down

You could take this book to the funeral

pyre, melting the papyrus down into

a liquid which can make the enflamed

waves leap higher. Yet, when the fire settles,

I can still pick up a stick and scribble a story

out of those colding ashes.

Can these words break

your bones or could this

stick never hurt you?

The dancers step out a rhythm

written words are hidden in. The stage is

a spitting image of a page, the edges cringed

at the thought of public speaking.

This is simply the way the game is

said. The singer hums to warm

her voice, her joys bubbling at the surface

of her tongue like a taste would.

The fountain does not

speak, though, until it's given time.

It's only then she follows out the

measure lined across a page, the

staff written as notes in the margin,

the ink hardened as resolve.

We hide in the thin thickness of the paper,

meanwhile breathing and

tapping out words that are

worlds longer and skies higher.

March 11, 2010

Branch Gives Way to Leaf

I am someone's son, but no one's father – I'm afraid

of the day saying I am someone's father and no one's son.

My future bores into my buried grandfather

clock, twitching its hands to pass

the hours. I like to think its oak stock

is seed and it will resurrect in branches,

dancing in winds that are chilled but

still steel up the warmth like gin.

But I know the days of being grandson

are already gone. I was too young to

know him so at least I can't forget him.

They say a branch ends at the reach of its arm.

But when a leaf

shatters and

rafters across the fields,

who's to say

the branch stops growing?

And who would

guess it

was time

and nothing else that

willed the

lush wind to

push that feather on?

September 9, 2010

Breath Fast, Stomach Full

The clock's hands are waving at me,

all two of them in their honest glory,

never missing a beat, a heartbeat in

which things are buried, the stories

of my people past and future. All

this is no more than what I want to

know of – the

love isn't there if everything

else is, I think.

At least, that's what I've been told.

Because two things

cannot breathe and dream in the same place

at the same moment, unless they share

a mother and who says brain and love

are brothers? Drummers move the clock

along, the doorbell only bringing in the

noon from the cold.

I look the clock in

the face. I don't think it can

tell a lie. It only dabs

its eyes as it insists that now's the time

to wither my flowers and dry out

in the pavement to look presentable

for the dinner bell.

Burrowed in the Sun

I watched the sun

wash all of the dirty dry,

the spurts of green

dying in growth until

the weeds coffin

into the ground – limper

than hangman's rope.

And still the sun

widens its precision,

turning all the

rocks liquid. Even

at night, the lights

hang there in their

aching suspension.

The city fountains

its lit windows – the

light-switch

flick

flick

flicker of broken

streetlight staccato –

all the lights heavy

in the sweaty summer

evening, waiting to

fall back down

to the ground in

morning like widows.

April 15, 2010

Calm During the Storm

... _train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng..._

-Molly Bloom

It wailed as loud as

whisper, passed about

the chamber like a

rumor, until it autumned

down as thunder –

the law of gravity loves

his company.

The skies all around

thunderclap applause,

hands squeezing out

the friction of scribbled

lightning. They live

as quick as lust

can. The wind kickstands

the clouds, swirling

the motions up – a mountain

mirrored in the

clear lake beneath.

There are few songs as

sonorous as the rumble,

the thunder's chorus

rusting in the rafters,

humbling me into deep sleep,

an ellipsis beyond words.

Yet I still love the

flickers of daylight cutting

through the midnight thunder.

April 25, 2010

Calypso for Excuses

I remember her jumping up, quick as

some slug gummed down with table salt.

Her eyes of ocean blue were swept beneath

the torn carpet as if for me forget before

I could write this. Those tsunami eyes

splashed what it was her mouth couldn't strum:

"You wanted to get lost like Odysseus –

I've been waiting for you like Penelope though,

drinking my coffee slow, sleeping off the sleep

that comes earlier and earlier at this time each year –

when the wind whistles away, walking its

way to work, whispering our names

into the oak trees for all who are near

to hear and see. The leaves are

shakes and rattles now, each a windowpane

in the wake of some train's roaring whistle

muscling its tracks in the

snow glowing along the bend.

I would drink my hair as the wind

blew the strands across my face –

I would sip on the hair and keep on waiting.

I've tried eating oranges to taste away the sadness.

I ate them until they tasted like

I imagine that red would.

I've waited the days down, my thoughts

spinning hard, spinning the hour

hand on the clock around in a dizzy,

until I fell asleep in the bedsheets

of the apple tree's shade, until

the night rusted dawn and the day –

and the wait – began again."

Cat Got

Cat got my foot –

find it hard to run

away from my problems

so I have to walk beside them,

talking to them

beneath a copper moon.

Cat got my writing hand –

got to learn writing

with a pen stuck between

my teeth, writing

more than I can chew.

Cat got my ears –

got to plant my head

against the floor, finally

feeling the sound waves

wash me all over.

Cat got my smile –

have to learn sprinkling

that twinkle in my iris

so that people would

have to look me

deep in the eyes

to see if they

made me smile.

Cat got my "cat got..." –

I'm now whole and full again,

but like always and forever,

I'm sitting here

crippled in dependence.

Chimera

Our marriage? It's a chimera – it's

not enough to say that it was never

meant to live. All things – even

the beautiful pottery – are meant to

fall and break. No, it is a chimera,

in that it should have never lived

to begin with. I see that now,

as we step on our memories like

the crumbs of china,

waking up the baby in the

other room. But even with this

madness, the two of us will still

wake up in the same bed tomorrow.

It's going to take you

saying "I don't love you"

to be the noose to straighten

out my spine. It's going

to take that sentence to make

me pack this bag and leave.

September 9, 2011

Cold August

This cold August rusts the pipes

lining the roof of my house.

The rain – a leaky kitchen faucet

turned on to wash these grimy hands –

comes down in fallen bed sheets

to cover the chilled morning and talk

it back to sleep the way a mother would –

just not as good.

Yesterday was desert, the way

the heat stuck and crawled down

the short sleeves of my shirt,

spinning webs made of beads

of sweat down our backs, reminding

me of late mornings and giggles

we shared before, along with

the ones we haven't had yet.

But now the rubber rain bouncing

off the roof – scoop up

the jacks before the

rain bounces twice – sounds

the same as rolling down

snowy hills did in my youth –

a rolling stone gathers no moss

if it's covered in ice.

The crackle of the rain lingering

in the shingles of the roof, it's

the static, the grey snow that

glows on my broken TV, causing

me to put down the remote,

pick up James Joyce,

read Molly's soliloquy

and believe.

But now we're growing dull

around the edges – with grey

in our hair and a faint to our

talking. And sure, we

could meet halfway at the café,

but I know she doesn't like

to come outside when it rains –

and she knows that I don't either –

so until this monsoon ends,

I'll miss her the way the

sun misses the moon during the day.

Color Me Blindness

Color me blindness because my hands are eyes

and my palms are gloved

and I suppose my sight is also.

All I want to see though

is the spectrum to your

patterns. If only I can warm

the silk between the friction of my fingers

like cats lapping milk between purrs.

If only I could stop playing blind beggar, though,

especially with this moment

still billowing on beautifully,

the furs furling and unfurling in the winds

like tattered battle flags.

November 9, 2010

**Colors** ( **An Old Man to His Wife)**

" _Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?"_

-Pablo Picasso

You were in the corner, crying until your eyes crimsoned

and I wondered if the sun – in all its ambers and orange –

would rise today – like a flower – or hide amongst the auburn

mud, the khaki stones, the withered tiger lilies in goldenrod.

You only used to forget shoes, staining feet with fern green,

holding olive bark like playing cards between

your fingers, doubled over with laughter, burgundy

in the face from smiles and giggles. Aquamarine

was your favorite stone, reminding you of the sea

near your snowy summer home in Beverly –

a town full of rusty piers and champagne houses.

Now though, those are no more than denim memories

fading away into some sort of mousy

magnolia you've already forgotten, doused

by the old age, the ivory hair,

the lemon chiffon paint peeling off the walls of our house.

But though you're forgetting things, and you cannot bear

to think of the things you'll miss, I have colors to spare,

I have colors to mix with yours – your greens,

my yellows together make the most wonderful pear.

Dancing for Writers

I write the same way I dance:

preferably sitting down.

My weak knees are bully, having

pushed me into a desk chair.

You know, some glue up the

walls, calling their cubicle a castle.

They hallucinate wars between the sheets

of their reports, the paper weights cannonballs,

felling the stray notes like trees.

I go steps further with my words.

I wrestle with my sentences, pinning

them down with periods. Or letting

them flap free, not bothering to paperclip

the wings. I grip the pen so hard

I bleed out the ink, let it sink like

ships into the paper's pulp or whatever

it's called. I press the pen so harsh it

drips through. Now a backwards sonnet –

perhaps a better one – is on the other

side, glued there, too full for any more food.

Without saying a word, writing's the rough

growl that dries my throat out.

This is my life

and it will be my death

regardless of whether

or not I can sell it.

But writing has killed

many writers

in a way

the war never could.

And I'm not even a shadow

of that good.

March 28, 2010

Dancing Swans in the Sun

She was dancing swans in the sun,

which settled in its wedding bed on

the ocean yawning, stretching

with a lazy blue and red. On one foot

perched, she spun string in the

wind that leans on the cliffs –

the wind coughing on cigar smoke that

curled and hooked

the skies above. Some

called it the evening, but we

called it the wind's fondness

for hand-rolled cigars.

She leaps far and leaves the world for

two seconds pawned from this

beach we're standing on –

two lovers against one world.

Power in numbers,

the saying goes; at least, that's

what I'm told. And though the

night sticks to us

hard and fast, she knows

where the beach holds its

ragged seashells and waltzes between

them as the waves swell

their chests and pound the shores –

I can feel the sound sink into our

souls like the shipwrecks strayed

across the seafloor of

this forgotten bay.

This harvest moon feels warm

the way a rainbow does when

it runs through dying storms

which forget how to beat their drums.

I can see swans roam the moonlight

that lights the water asleep

against the beach – a beach

within our arms' reach and all

we need for a world.

And it's then she falls for the first

time I remember – she falls into

the love I hold like a wreath

between my arms.

At that, the beach felt warmer as

the skies blushed embers.

Days Stretched Long Like Shadows

For an hour or two, I

walked in the wheatfields –

the cousins' dog

barking like seals,

thrilling some crows

paddling the waves of grain –

their fallen feathers

flocked together

in the autumn wind.

The dog sees a scamper of grey

and a minute and a chase later

it had already caught its

breath – along with some rabbit

stuck like gum in its jaws.

Oh, I love the honeydusk,

how it drips slowly like that color does.

The fields of grain were all waving goodbye –

I waved back at them as I walked by,

walking with the dusk, arm-in-arm,

for the longest day ever.

Desk Scribes

Rap, rap, rap.

I tap my finger on the desk, chatting

in morse code with the tanned oak.

The echo laughs with me.

Even after all of these years,

this desk still boasts the blush

of lumbering, limber tree lumber –

although now in peaces it rests.

It holds my ledgers of writing,

confusing the ink with its roots.

And those ledgers? They're biting

on a weather of hopes. And those

hopes? My heart is tightening

its screw through them, and

the hand is still turning.

And that smell – that smell of

clay bark of the tree that once arched

like architecture over the forest,

the forest under which the deer

and beers once marched – the march

where the winter receded, a change

that was bureaucratically needed –

and so spring sprang forth in hearts.

That desk's writing surface is far from

perfect. True. It shows off all those

deep, subconscious intentions, all because

I write with a stony fist and press down

too hard with a pen. And that is my fault –

I press down with my poetry, all because

I want to impress my words in your

your mind so that you can fall in love.

I will only write it if you will only like it.

Nature's far from perfect, so much

so that it's hugging the true. Still, I'm

glad my desk is bearing its scars in

those record grooves and scratches,

because if you sleep your eyes and graze

this desk with your fingers – it's like

you're running against the tree in which

all those ravens and bluebirds nested.

It's a static shock that will always linger.

So even though it's now just a desk – no longer a tree –

it will always be deeply rooted inside me.

Dream Weave

She looms up our dreams into patterns

we love to understand.

Yet, with two underhands,

she breaks the rudder,

steering us in

a direction we're not

looking for. She said

it was the wind's fault,

knowing how she'll reap the windfall

she seeded and irrigated

with waterfalls just to make sure

her lies thrive, growing into roses, the

thorns cutting our skin like knives,

letting corrupt air in and blood out

in transactions only the thorn determines

when the time comes. And still we rush

away with your answers, never

bothering to question answers

for we're only too gladden to happen

upon an answer to think to question

the stranger who hands out the

solution like dollars to the poor on the

coldest Christmas Eve

since records started being kept

in 1864 when our nation

wasn't even sure to keep the word

"united" in USA anymore since

we were at war with ourselves

and the only thing the North

and South had in common

was that their armies were built on the

backs of the poor who could

not afford to bribe themselves

off those battlefields where

the soldiers wield bayonets

and cavalry horses neighed their death

and dying soldiers called out

for their mothers and their lovers

and prayed beneath their final breath.

Dreaming Muddy Cappuccinos

All you could dream of were

muddy cappuccinos and she

smiled at the thought of bone

marbled homes just south

of paradise and he got lost

in the thoughts of sports cars

spitting poison as they lapped

up the californian highways

and he daydreamed a thousand

loves with a thousand girls and

paying for it all with a newspaper

coupon and she imagined

foamy champagne and he

wondered how much air

you can cut with speedboat

and you dreamed of mixing

up the dinners you need with

the logos you want.

Drenched in Windchimes

For too many years, I've gathered moss

here, drenched in dry windchimes,

which crumble into dust at the mere

whisper of a gust –

but though I could not

have caused myself, I could still

pause and draw myself into a new

painting for the gallery –

but how can I erase the awful

and redraw the good shine into

my body when even my own

paints are humbled by

the troubles of these ages?

Driving By An Amish Couple

We drive past their buggy

so quickly, it is hard to

see them – their colors blend

in so easily with the bales

of hay, the Lancaster timber,

the cattle with their

firsthand leather jackets.

He sits in his wooden seat

like a man who's spent a life

in the fields, a man who's

been built by sunbeams

of steel. But if he's stamped

with iron, then what does

he wear for his armor? He

could wear his Bible as a

breastplate, but that wouldn't

work. True, his God may

have written it, but his God,

for some reason, chose to write

the important things down

on flammable paper.

The lady wears her hair

as plain as the sunlight creeping

through the morning clouds.

She's so pale and thin, it's like

looking through a window at

something else: perhaps

what we used to be, perhaps

what we might become.

August 25, 2011

Drowning Lessons

I'm at the trough, my head

down in prayer like the others,

forcing down the pints –

my medicine – my bloody lips

tasting the murk before

my tongue ever does.

Man next to me takes a

moment to stop drowning –

he comes up for air,

he tells me, "Who would

have thought a rough

night could taste so smooth?"

I agree – I can drown to that.

I mean, if his Jesus turned

the water to wine, who says

that we can't learn to swim

in the bottles? I think I'll

save that question, though,

for when I have the answer.

November 6, 2011

Dry Rain

Rain's the static greying the

hairs in the painted window –

until all's lightwhite like a

mattress resting on the floor.

Old man gone. I close the

blinds with a cold hand,

my fingers wet with the

chill of August's rain. The rust

strains, the house's

strutting lames into a shuffle,

the rain ruffling the

palm tree leaves like feathers.

The eaves are all streams,

greening the cream paint.

I already forget what the sunshine

looks like, although it's been ten

minutes since it stopped raining.

August 5, 2010

**East River Mythology**

**I – Brooklyn Bridge**

In these torn calendar pages since August,

we've watched that shuffle of suns parading

into the East, splashing into the

unforgiven murk. All of those dives

of orange live longer than the darkness

does, throttling the river's dusky

currents against the mercurial rust

in the piers, the statues, the sidewalk curbs.

Only against rock can waves grow taller.

Sometimes – when we look through

your kitchen window at just the right

moment – we can see flickers of that

citric electricity branching through

the thickwick water – it's a fine

live death. Who would've ever

thought that the hydrologist would

have made gold before

the alchemist ever did?

And still more and more raw

temper nuzzles against

the steel, dredging a firebed

from the bottom – a mattress

that becomes brighter than

Manhattan as if by magic.

It's one of those warm beds

in the winter months that –

as soon as you hit it – you

crush into a crater, stitched

into the fabric.

The only time we ever –

even vaguely – wish we're forgotten.

**II – Manhattan Bridge**

All the planets – all of those wandering stars –

hang like swollen grapes, suspended. Each

a globe at its edges, nectar in its stomach.

Suspended until they're ripened, splashing

and swirling invisible with this horizon,

mixing with the currents until the taste

remains only in our urgent imagination.

The clock on the kitchen wall – its hour

hand is a sharp karate, reaping the sky

down because even those stars can

be blown out.

My watch – the one that's

always breaking – is the breath that

blasts them down. Breath is breeze

and breeze is whatever tomorrow is

supposed to mean.

I mean, I dream

that we're not the sacrificial herd

but we're instead the contract tapped

out with invisible ink. Ink that –

when it dribbles – gives us swift

sprints of inspiration. A contract

held together with a morse rhythm –

a rhythm heard by the blind men

and felt by the deaf women.

The whole march down to earth

from heaven is nothing but a meeting

for us, and the stretched hours are our minutes.

Our vows are our constants, leading

us to the end of some run-on,

fragmented sentence.

**III – Williamsburg Bridge**

But the river is our sea and our sea is our

peace. It's all a deep beckon, all of those

waves waving us on with their curves

of hand, a sleigh to some, to others a

sleight that's sprayed and

slain the weaker men.

It's pitch – it pitches

and crescendos

in more shades of black

than they taught us in art

class in grade school.

It's a crest – a crust of some

infinite loaf, darker than

buttered pumpernickel.

The water's stiller than mirrors although

the boats can never see themselves in

their wakes. And the tide's malnourished,

rolling more like the lines on a seashell –

and the piers all along the shores

are their collectors. Hobbyists trading

with all of the wharfs in Portugal and Maine,

in Honolulu and Sydney, until all

gets lost and confused and you don't

know whose baseball cards are whose.

Everything's a variable then in those

churned moments – all you can hope

for is an expanse of unknowns, but

all you really get is a sea of shellfish

clenching onto the night

tighter than scallops.

**IV – Queensboro Bridge**

****

The Earth's curves make for the

straightest lines sometimes. On

the dryer nights, that is. Even in

darkness, you can hear the rubber

fog being stretched bulimic, bursting

like pipes of fireworks. But the

4ths of July just make day of the

nights – the green days, the red

ones, the orange and too many others

for me to mention.

But here, here is where

the fog bursts into the

word mirage. The dictionary has

its definition, but no one believes

it – everyone just makes their own.

You say you can only see

the foglights of Manhattan, but

all I can see is Eden, the sprigs

swigging drunkenly off the ground,

sighing hotwhite seedlings that

may dance flagrant but

smell ohso fragrant, enough

to turn you into a sneeze. These

fields are all sparrow, seedeaters

down to their last sunlit veneration.

The tornado of laces tightens on all

of us trapped in the corset, closing

us in as we gasp more from the thrill

and less from the reflex. We're all

hourglass figures, numbers as infinite

as the times you flip us like a page. Yes,

we might be as black and white as

justice, but we're all swans beneath the

dabs of pigment.

Still, we're cygnets

on the water when

we want to be that foam,

gliding as if puffed,

glowing as if smoked.

**V – Triborough Bridge**

We're swimming now like dolphin

fins, homing for all of the homes

we've never been, hearths that are

vanished – never vanquished – into

the distance like a cheshire grin.

The tide is a thick one, bouncing us back

and forth between Manhattan and

Astoria – we're embers tossed

like a good game of ball between

the flames. There is nothing fair to

nature's blind justice – there is

a tyrant working late nights

at the democracy – rustling up

good newspapers for some and a

funeral shoulder for others.

Can't you see the

rosy cheeks in the

skyline?

Ashen but healthy,

vibrant?

Whether those flowers taste like

medicine or perfume, it's all

good luck to me and I burn

for it, all of that

juniper steam that teaches

me how to swim a stroke harder,

a breath faster. I can hear

immortality in our children's

giggles, laughter that's too

diamond for even the sharpest

harvest moon to cut through.

But all I really want from you

is to get lost until no one

can hear me cry mayday.

April 23, 2011

Easter White Pages

She hasn't believed in gravity for years –

so now she's good and stretched out

like gum baptized inside the bored mouth.

She wants to hold her head tall for her God

although she could have found Him

in all the faces she walked past on the street –

all of them are mirrors with even clearer eyes.

She's afraid to touch me when I say I'm illiterate

with a Bible. Afraid to touch me like I'm already lava.

She doesn't let me finish – she doesn't let me say

I read the good book – the phone book.

I've already read through B and I will keep on reading,

until there's no longer a stranger in this city,

until I laugh with millions for family.

February 4, 2011

Encyclopedia Sounds

You and your wine freckles

spill out on the bedsheets of

milk cream, and here I thought

I wasn't supposed to feel

anything inside of dreams like these.

You're a gorgeous persuasion,

you know, dragging me in with your

siren moan, tiring my bones

from the inside-out, driving

my feet down to bald tires.

The covers crackle

through the solstice

night like dried timber –

it's a cold fire.

The rustling guzzles

in all the days we forgot.

And now we're back on the road,

and love's the engine

and nothing more.

September 18, 2010

Englyns

I limp and melt like wax, every flame

wears my name down to flat

puddles – cold of love – which tax

the world slower than clock ticks...

This dirt shoveled on my wings, I feel these

feathers freeze up like wind –

but as I breathe dirt, I sing

for the world that buries me...

### I dropped my heart down the stairs,

### watched it break as shards to share

### with a world picked clean of fair-eyed muses –

### shouldn't have had that pear...

###

### I once slept in a bed of dusty stars.

### Sure, we all dream such love –

### we just cannot grab such doves.

But I have falconer's gloves...

You wore Sunday eyes for me

and though you think they're lovely,

I know with those you can't see...

I dreamt worlds onto paper,

and saved them all for later

when my world's up in vapors.

Essay on Argument

We're running on these sentences, feet swaying on the words.

We can only see periods as beautiful ends, like gun-powdered barrels.

So as the syllables rise and fall, carved like mountains,

we see the path ahead is gnarled and twisted –

rotted sticks live from the ground, their pencil tips sharpened.

You know, if this isn't real life, it would make great cartoons.

But this has to be real life, not the laughing cartoons

we wish for – instead this is really us, warring with words,

sounds alive with death on their breath and teeth sharpened.

We paint our pens black and aim them like gun barrels

at each other, and, with smiles grown twisted,

we made sure they would hear this on the mountains.

And, with hands bloodied by syllables, we shake the mountains,

watching them sway unnatural like cartoons.

We spit our words until they're meaningless, twisting

the other's words to serve our purpose. Our words

are blood painted on the canvas with gun barrels

by an artist wanting to be famous, blade to his throat sharpened.

On the bedrock of our love, the teeth are sharpened,

us breathing harder as we climb our mountains,

lugging our past behind us in sherpa barrels.

We wish we could fight and not hurt like those cartoons

but even best intentions drown in the worst words.

Sometimes, like dandelions in the wind's roar, love gets twisted

and twisted and twisted. We find dimension

in those twisted words

like vampires find broken hearts in sharpened sticks –

like lawyers find a circus in words –

like hunters find their souls in the mountains –

like elders find youth in dusted-off cartoons.

That's how we feel, looking deep into each other's barrels.

But as we look into each other's barrels,

we don't see bullets but instead our twisted

souls, drawing blood like cartoons –

the artist with brush sharpened

by the rocks atop the highest mountains.

And they say sticks and stones hurt more than words.

Essay on Evening

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

-Socrates

I.

The years snow through her hair –

the pier shows itself at the end

of her eyes, a pier that slips

into a lake long since died and

dried. She used to move

with springs dug into

grooves that would echo sound across

the bottoms of her shoes.

But now, she walks with

shuffles, digging canals

as she walks as if her

shoes are shovels. She

forgot – and I forgot –

that we can make

gravity surrender

just by raising our

little finger as our

hands are pressed against

the table – we run our

dinners cold as we try

to read our lives into

the yellowed pages of

English fables – fold the

page, love; I can't forget

where I stopped for the evening.

We used to move

the way a lemonade

stand would stand

through the Julys –

we used to make the

phoenix sleep and

keep the whole world

in the shadows and

as we walked, a league of mysteries

kept our footsteps

warm for when

we got lost and

needed to follow our tracks back.

II.

I used to know how to skip –

but now I've become

nothing more than

limps and walking sticks –

I'm slowly becoming

factories, my nerves

and joints are now

no more than

cords and screws and

bolts and knees that

are steel and steal away

my right to say that I am

man. When they

bury me, I'll more likely

rust than turn to dust –

but machines are born

to know not to be afraid.

At least, that's what the instructions say.

III.

I've lived a life through

stories I've drawn

on a canvas until

the ink stained my

hands blue and storms

rained through the

hole in my roof

I never got around

to fixing. I've watched

the ink mixing together

and my neat little

words slide down the

paper as I said,

"If my legacy can't

outlive me, then

my love for her

cannot live forever."

And at that, I was afraid.

Even The Sun Has to Hide

It seemed that the way the clouds were layered

(because I've never seen puffs twist like a staircase

until that pipe-dusk, painted rust, came)

made it seem the sun was gliding down the stairs.

I like to think she wanted to walk with mortals

even though she knew she'd be betrayed by our souls

that would turn on her to get lost in the night,

flicking off the sun in all her glory and fight.

And of course people would later ask the sun

if she wouldn't mind killing the night with her hum.

Everyone's afraid of the crush the thick night brings.

It would seem that people are afraid of almost everything.

No wonder the sun would never walk among us.

I would never trust us either if I was a sun.

Fieldhands

I sprouted the flower from out of

my hands, clenched fists

to mimic the sun's blanket,

flicking my wrists for the wind.

Can it be that my hot blood

now envies with green, the

veins intertwined with all of the vines,

its roots now mistaken for mine?

We breathe our air back and forth,

pass it off as conversation.

I am its basement,

it's now my roof

that shades me,

graying out the thick sunrise daily.

I hold it up to the sun, the buttercups

collecting grease until it sloshes

over and glistens on my skin, trying,

just trying to find its way into me.

Floodlight

In the lampshade's floodlights I dream my

real because outside, the sidewalk graves the

curdled buttercups. Time turtles

to a starved standstill – all things paused in

the wide-eyed wake that life left behind, death

foaming in its raft of teeth. See, only

smiles can motion here, the past Sunday

evening dinners shimmering in their sliding silk

milked from memories buried in this

earl gray matter that tries to wake up

morning with a liquid vortex so vivid

you cannot help but to forget its limits

and let it in for an early lunch.

Fluttering Gold Standard

Everything grows golder with time,

the seconds bricking up from dust

until all is berlined up into either

west morning dew or

east afternoon rust.

Of course, people still look regifted horses

in the mouth for any runny crumbs.

But lunging strums of bass guitars

are carved out of the

wino red, sheet music

lines bled of life and dried into

sunyellow statues that rhyme.

Everything's golder with age –

just like a sun that doesn't set

but rest with the bed bugs in

your August hammock,

stuck between the strings

that drink in heat and rest

in dreams. Dreams that fall

between the bedsheets

and you and me.

But even with the

walls of golden standards,

it's so easy to confuse this

cream comfort with a

sick green and that with a

tanned gold. Or so I'm told.

September 5, 2010

For Autumn

Leaves in the autumn

trees are dying beautifully,

their greens turning to

bee yellow and

some of its fellow colors, whether

as calliope reds from a circus

or the slow urgency of orange or

the yellow of the spent sun

in the early evening, running

before the night's fury hurries

down with its cloak soaked

with some squid's ink,

darker than the long blink of an eyelid.

For Sylvia

" _These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis."_

-Sylvia Plath's "Stillborn"

Sylvia –

when I read your biography, I like

to read it backwards – the funeral

your birth, the oven the womb –

the countless wounds that gas

cut in your lungs, watch each

bruise get soaked up (each and

every one) – the friends, the

family gather, their mothwings

beating drums against

the lantern, each of them

in awe of the lady born

on a deathbed made on

a kitchen floor that will survive

two wars, two poets –

I understand Yeats will

want to buy the flat

many years before,

watching in awe as the flat

repairs itself – the crackled paint

wetting on the ceiling, the old

floorboards no longer creaking.

But as I watch an affair become

a breakup that led Ted Hughes to

you, I see the poems that you have

written, the ink for each disappearing like

some cheap magic trick. Gone are

"Lady Lazarus", "The Arrival of the Bee

Box", "Tulips", and "Colossus".

So as you forget Ted, go to college,

and vanish away into the comforting

obscure of some corner of Boston,

I wonder if it's time I read your

story from page one, this time

reading forward.

From Where I Sit

From where I sit, the world refracts

inside me like logs turning into

eels in the water. I'm the waters

you dump your failures in, stinging

my pacific, thinking that no one

would see your abandon.

Drowning a drowning is a trick

I only wish I could pick up

from the magicians.

From where I sit, crescent moons

fall on their backs all of the time

but shout their pain into bitter

reflections into the zodiac above.

It's in that crowded pain

that I have found the proof

that everything – even the sky –

is alive and biting with

icy teeth – teeth that hail

with old age, crumbling

and snowing all around me.

In the field near the farm,

there's a pail we forgot

to pick up after the harvest.

I know it's there, gathering

up those shivering teeth,

I know it. And one day

soon, that bite will evaporate

back into horizon as dentures.

Galatea

I'm her project. No, really.

She built me out from

summers of popsicle sticks

and that cheap glue that crunches

like autumn as it dries.

She lunches on a toothpick

sometimes when she's working on me.

Shave the chin a bit...

maybe add some plaster over there.

Yes, I guess that would have to do.

She leans back in her chair at

the end of each day, waving the

cigarette smoke goodbye from

her face, looking at me

curiously, as if she's waiting

for Aphrodite to breathe

me alive to set me free.

Get Lost to Get Home

I squeeze the decades into my

sleeping bag and head the

wrong way home, through the

citybright nights waltzing

at the tempo of spark.

Through the bear country, where

molten fur molds the tiding

grass...that is, before winter's pull folds

all down into parchment cranes.

A gorgeous lush.

And dead and sunk except in wind.

So many routes to rout my way home,

my t-shirt puffed by the run,

fluttering like moon-drenched flags.

So many strings yet

all are cross-armed, pursed lips.

All the maps and their road names

are more us than us, their veins

recycling their papery blood. The

cycle is a muddy one – clinging

to my winging migration.

It will take me a day from now to

love this lost cartography, where

the sun and moon keep

trading places without meaning to.

October 1, 2010

Gettysburg

For William Iddings Mackey –

_Private, 148_ th _PA Volunteers Infantry_

Sunstroke nearly erasered him

out, pulling his steps out tighter

than a hangman's noose. Sleep

was his only eclipse from the sun,

and, at one point, that sleep was nearly

a long one. The light

of the noon ruined

him more than the Confederate

advance ever did. He watched

the Southern cavalry

slide like melted butter across

that pan of Pennsylvania.

The drums stretched taffy with

the heat until the cadence marched

backwards like the Army of

Northern Virginia's retreating feet.

William forgot Bavaria for America,

loving himself into the fields of

Pennsylvania. And although Gettysburg

never buried him, it still

followed him into his decades, plaguing

at his heart, his brain. The sunlight

from that July was enough to rob

his mind and sight. His left leg since

went limp as well, melted lead still dripping

through the muscle. Before the war

he was a carpenter – after that, he

held a constant tremble in his hands

like the rifle he once had, the shake

whittling him down as a father, as

a husband, as a good man.

March 28, 2010

Ghosts in Subway Windows

" _Yes, a pity...never to have studied history in_

the weak calligraphy of songbirds' cages"

-Elizabeth Bishop's "Questions of Travel"

Between you lovers and the

madness – the train clicking

along in a drawn-out fall, tripping

on tracks that it never made –

the camera flash hangs, mirroring

your faces on the window ahead,

the faces dazed, confused, still

asleep in this midnight of an

afternoon. You bury your looks into

the glass, the window gasping

in the lights as anyone might,

turning the corner in a tunnel

one might mistake for a cave.

Between you lovers and the madness

shakes the sadness – the years now built up

around you in paper beams, all

waiting for its drug in strong

summer winds to bring it down –

paper beams once graffitied with

poetry. Now the paper beams are hugged

in measurements, the math hatching

in bills you're only too thrilled to pay.

Years ago, it was his sideways

look that tumbled you. Now,

he'll rather look sideways than at you.

Wipe your eyes, though, because the

camera flash has already grown past,

shadowed against the tracks,

still sparking at each touch against the rail.

March 28, 2010

Gold's Fool

Ma'am, you're little

more than gold's fool, what

with your rings holding hands

together in a chainlink

fence to zoo you from the world

in which you live. You

turn your back, not knowing

that even in reverse, the sun

still rises east, stronger

than even alarm clock people

ever were or would.

You know, this is all larger

than your diamonds baptized

in Angolan blood. My muddy

eyes see a world beyond

the gemstone mines and it's

gorgeous down to the

sandstone that imagined

the canyons – see, even the

wrinkles are beautiful.

Plains are boring.

And still you sit there,

your earrings glinted

in constellations which should

have a universe of patience.

Yet you cannot dredge any

strength to wait

for this checkout line

simply to die.

May 31, 2010

Goodbye to the Goodbyes

Goodbye goodbye...may I never

see you again even when the day

grows thick like cold water,

sinking through the soil while

night sticks oily at our shirts.

Goodbye goodbye...may I never

see you again even when the

droughts soak up the lawns

like a sponge gone so thin

its bones bulge through the

skin as I imagine muscles would.

Goodbye goodbye...may I never

see you again even when our

hug grows weak like weeds

at the knees before you cross seas

so deep even the currents

get lost like my voice does at times.

At times like these.

Granite Rain

Rain's slipping on the shingles – sounds

like shoes crunching broken glass.

I'm hoping for the storm to outlive

the afternoon, because this June sun

soaks through me and pulses against my

egg-raw nerves. I stir my sugar and jet

tea, seeing the heavy drops of water

dig up the sundried garden, curving

the debris of rigor mortis leaves

into soup to soothe the grass.

The rain's drowning everything into

life and it's wonderful, yet I'm

waiting for the sun to knife the

granite clouds that somehow

crumble as slick as bread.

Sometimes I wish it wouldn't.

June 18, 2010

Gypsy Mistress

My Gypsy mistress stands

between me and sunset,

as if I would be able to

see it if she wasn't there.

Which is often – she's

always on the walk like prowl,

raveny hair bouncing off her

shoulder like rainwater

diving from storm drains.

She's old Parisian – a tangle in the

threadfolds cold

with hickory November.

Nothing more than rags

patched together, the

quiltwork world enough to

keep all her sides warm –

the Monday side tired,

the Friday side warmed.

She's the modern day

from a century back,

squeezed huglove between two

wars that crack sprout like

roots, all liquid in the sticky soil.

She barters for her shoes,

the only expensive in her life –

besides the notepads that

she jots her writes in until

the pages weigh her down like sin.

Sometimes she confuses walk

with talk. It's then she draws

footprints like ellipsis dipped

in paper snow.

Her glow shadows

her steps – so when

I think I've caught her,

I'm left instead

with this nightlight silhouette.

And you know

what? Sometimes such

things are just enough.

May 2, 2010

Harvest Down the Branches

I bit the apple in –

collapsing its crackled

green skin already blotched

by the fall. It bruises black

and blue as easily as I do.

Some say the apple withers

with the bite. They never

stop to think how the apple

stretches, the long spit

of apple juice making its

way down to the grasses.

The appled ocean is enough

to drown worms if it wants.

If I could bottle up the

city-bright sounds that come

with biting down to the core,

I'd sell it by the gallon – to

myself. I would recycle

the apple crunch until

it was a tired grunt. Then

I would pour it in the weeds,

let the autumn sun greed it up.

This is a simple, apple-picker's

dream – it's good that this

basket is just Act I, Scene I.

March 26, 2010

Here's to Sleep

Please, carry me in on a westward wind –

rock me to sleep on your whims

that tock with a pendulum's tongue,

humming like the rain splatter on drums.

Please, my sleepy muse,

hug me like a blanket,

loving me with the past's ashes

gift-wrapped, all to breed

new flowers from the ground –

all so I could put a new blue

rose in your hair when the

next hour sounds.

Please, put a smile on my face

as I fall asleep so if

I die, people would believe

I died happy. Hug me and

keep me warm – the night feels cold

against this bold fool's soul.

Please, close the blinds –

don't let the sunshine in

and the night unwind

and curl backwards

along time's own spine.

Just give me five more minutes

in your arms and then, and only

then, can I face the world

ready and alone.

Hold Your Breath

Even cemeteries see need

to breathe at times - although

it's hard, the way the vines

around the tombstones

pulse and wither and squeeze

stones free from the

ground.

So it seems our departed

die twice - even someone's

old sweetheart's heart has

to lie asleep through two wakes

too. It's hard to think

this world has billed them

twice - the bureaucratic

charm of the tree's roots

stretching arms throughout

the soil,

not seeing nor caring

that their late morning

rising is scratching the

bed where someone's

Uncle Ted or Aunt Kelly lies.

Honeysuckles in March

I'd love to love a Norah,

a florist whose floral arrangements

floor you as soon as you walk

through the door to her little

flower shop, her little flower shop

with the mallow plants rotting

through the bottoms of the wooden flower pots.

I'd talk with her, her with that white

lilac – distracted in the tangles

of her hair – purpling with blush

as we'd speak with hushed voices

so as not to wake up the poppies

floppyed over with sleep. I would

dream my dreams then and keep

on talking. I would drawl slow, I would stall.

I'd keep the moment living as long

as I could... _stand tall,_ I would be thinking,

no one likes a slouch.

She would say she wouldn't have loved

me a year ago, back when she'd

passed her time with

singing, drinking, charades, and other

games with her friends who lived

just around the bend, friends pretending

to be her stilts, but simply being

her crutches instead. I would be surprised

that she could breathe and see back

then, when one thinks of her friends'

ivy quietly wrapping around her head.

"I'm glad you became a florist," I would say.

"I'm glad you aren't allergic to flowers," she would say.

I would take a rose that bled to death with red

and tuck it into a nook hidden in her

hair. Somewhere, a clock would chime noon –

_back to work,_ it says – but I would forget to care.

how a speed bump destroyed the world

the globe bounced

as our station-wagon conquered a speed bump –

I looked in the backseat

to see the little plastic, little fragile world

spin nauseous, crying over losing gravity.

I watched the world downfall

into a floor splotched with

stains of coffee and oil.

now the USSR is hugging the spare tire

we keep in the back like comrades at the bar

(it's an old globe, mind you).

the US is on top of the

world at this angle, yet it's

lying on its back,

looking up at the roof

and making me wonder

if the real world

is as much of a puppet

to whim and chance

as this outdated globe is,

sitting in the back of

my station-wagon.

How an Elephant Forgets

You always had an elephant's memory,

freely recalling the raindrops falling

on every picnic to which you've gone –

all those songs you sang with the church

choir, how your voices still ring to

this day in the bell in the highest

tower – you remember that too,

or so you say.

The walks in the wheat fields,

you remember those too – how the

scarecrow was starving until you stuffed

him with straw. You still remember the

shivers spinning webs and crawling

down your back as he

waved goodbyes with

his scratchy claws. You don't

remember the wind blowing that day,

and I believe you.

You remember old walks along

the beach, daydreaming your arms

into fins so you can swim and live

in the seas.

Which makes it all the more painful

that you forgot about me.

I am my muse's own right hand

I am my muse's own right hand,

dizzied up in a Ferris

freewheel spin as I

scorch words into paper,

my heart rubbed raw enough

to warm the chill in the

December all the fallen

will remember.

I'll sing a

winter call, though, that rustles

the leaves from the mud like

cattle from the plains – speaking

of which, don't these fields stumble

rich with frosty brandy?

The world gets drunk on this

last drought and gets caught

up in the moment in which

jack-frosted funerals and lovers'

lost kisses all gather to march.

**I Am the British Empire,** **You Are the Sun**

Once, I forgot a bucket

outside for the month

of July – when I found

it hidden in the thicket

behind my house,

sunlight was scurrying around

inside, its rays its legs

while blinding me with

a heart that it

offered up with its hands.

So I've been walking around

with this little tin bucket even since,

the sunshine splashing around inside

and washing the sidewalk

behind me – and though

I've been walking for miles,

the sunshine is still in there -

I don't think it minds

the bucket, but I think

it might be riled up by

my wanting the day

to be by my side – see,

I've always had this

slight fear of the nighttime,

so no wonder when – for those

rare times when I forget

and leave that bucket behind –

I like you being by my side.

I Am the Smiles You Haven't Smiled Yet

I am the smiles you haven't smiled yet.

I am the unseen cove in your favorite bay,

which, if you saw, you could never forget

as you plunge deeper into the vignette

waters to hide from the dying chill of May.

I am the smiles you haven't smiled yet.

I am your favorite brand of cigarette

laying forgotten by your clay ashtray,

which, if you saw, you could never forget

of the time we'll speak through smoke, hair wet

with the rain that weighed down that day –

I am the smiles you haven't smiled yet.

And even though we've only met

and you may not believe the things I say –

if you don't believe me, you will now just forget

of the good times we will have – with that regret

singing in your ear like a widowed blue jay.

I am the smiles you haven't smiled yet,

which, if you saw, you would never forget.

I am Who You Say I am

To the bell-tower's top

I rise, riding on these

ghostly rumors, pushing

bony schooners across

these seven social

seas. I am whoever I say

I am, although my definition

used to fit the notes

you passed around our

high school classes.

And even when I got older, every

shoulder that I bumped into

knew something about me,

but who am I to judge?

Because a liar who calls

a lie is a fire who calls

a candle shades

too bright. I've been

told it's frowned upon in

many circles not to be at the top

of the bell's curve, but my hours

atop this bell-tower have taught

me this: a bell's top is not what makes

the tolling sounds.

I Stand Three Inches Taller When I'm Sitting

I stand three inches taller

when I'm sitting down. When

I'm walking, I shake like circus

flamingoes on their walking sticks.

When I'm at a chair, I sit with

a swan glare, ruffled as the

pages I turn in my book.

To many, to stand is the turn,

when you could cower the shorter

down even further. I haven't

learned to be that kind of man,

and I doubt I'll ever learn that

curve in my spine.

The pen isn't a sword – it's

a scythe. And I know how to

harvest the fight with what

I write – sitting down,

drawing a line.

February 6, 2011

If Medusa Could Talk

This professor's talking is the brooches I

squeeze in my hands

until I draw a painter's red,

ready to slam the sharp against

the mud in my eyes.

With a smile stretched into a

nothingness that, in turn, dresses up

with a clown's lipstick (which

itself was once a warpaint), her voice

rises and falls –

a balloon in the wind –

yellow snowballs rolling downhill –

city water mountain-climbing a used napkin.

In An Unchecked Anger

In an unchecked anger,

we waltz like dancers

to the beat of feat

stomped into the earthy

cadence of the soil

and although this

page from the history

books boils, I

can feel this thin-lipped

moment grow colder,

measuring its height

on the kitchen wall

as it stunts shorter and shorter

until it vanishes, leaving

us to imagine a love

between us was as

real as the tear in the

eye of the ghost that

walks a dryrot floor

and sweeps like a broom

through the blushing

doors of our summer cottage

spotted with nail scratches

of hail that reigned during

the first age of

the hurricanes,

hail that still remembers

that beginning, just enough

to see that this is an ending.

In the Trade Winds

You're the papers

for my writing.

Me, I am your exception –

because your rule

is you can only love poets

from a distance.

Yet we comb our hair

to meet the wind

lingering in between

our palms, filling out

the space our fingers strum.

You're my lady in red,

the lady from which I read

my words. Your dusky

scarlet hair is pulled back

like low tide, your cheeks'

glow froze in place from

stuttered, december days.

These trade winds raise and

gaze this love between ourselves,

the current sweeping us up

as the time piece runs.

March 28, 2010

I've Forgotten What You Look Like

I've forgotten what you look like –

I've forgotten what you sound like,

leading me to think your talk and

sunsets in the mountains sound alike,

sunsets that wisp away like sand

in the ocean, the colors all crammed

into the pot atop the iron stove.

I doubt it's something you'll ever understand.

I like to think you look like a deep apple grove,

that deep green sea where we once dove

for apples before the winter called.

Or that you look like the day we drove

until the car's engine stalled

and – until help came – we crawled

up to the top of a hill

and saw our world small and sprawled

like toy cars on the basement stairs.

Jacob Marley's Moment of Silence

This silence speaks a lake's rush

to me. Sometimes I feel

it all should pulse out like

a fervent jet engine – where

all of the mousy small talk

is finally deafened. The

silence is itchy,

scratching lessons in the

chalkboard on the cold brick wall.

I'm just some student – too glossy

with that coffeehouse fatigue –

too groaning to take some lecture

home with me. And when the silence

eyes me, it bedlam buckles with

chuckles, jotting me down as just

some man who runs with the

sunset to escape his shadows –

shadows which long ago

stopped growing by the inch –

now instead they flow by the mile.

October 18, 2010

James Welsh

James Welsh is a sentence fragment.

A fragment that forgot its meaning.

Its purpose.

James writes. But what for?

A mere period holds him at arm's

length from answers.

What would the object, the purpose be?

Linguists think it's a lost love, others think it's glory.

And others are not sure if they want to be sure at all.

They just know that if he forgot the period,

the two sentences would be sewn back at the hip.

And all would be right with the world.

But what would be the point

of him finding what his poems sore for?

An answer ends the puzzle.

Nothing less or more.

Perhaps if he were to use an ellipsis...

yes, that final piece of the jigsaw puzzle

"accidentally" thrown out with the trash –

then that will keep him searching,

the periods standing in for footprints

that follow him in the desert's sands...

Judgment of Paris

I have these muses crowding me in,

Shouting my thoughts into a thick quiet

As I try to riot with a deflated ballpoint pen.

Just One More

The bride was a porcelain doll, ready to break

hard into little shards of tears at the touch

of a clumsy hand. Not to say the groom was a

soldier at all – he was a pillar swaying in the breeze

of earthquakes. He shook off his shaking hands

as nothing more than the shame from

being in front of people.

The roses – all the roses – were wilting

down the minutes to the ritual. The ritual

of chants, of vows, and a kiss to seal

the deal from going stale. Then comes

the dancing, all the feet working out

their tremors as the bass taps out

a 4/4 on the speakers.

Just one more drink and then I'm good.

Just one more drink and then I'm good.

Then comes the limo drive for

the newlyweds, the car's

colors already bled and

lost to the jet nighttime.

For the rest of us – those cab

rides home come,

our woozy feet still

shivering that 4/4 rhyme.

LaGuardia

Can't tell if the jetplane's the wind now.

Can't tell if the wind's the jetplane.

Maybe the wind's mechanical.

Maybe the engine is what's curling our hair.

We could look out the window, prove who's right.

But really, I just love the fact

that the jet and wind are singing in the same choir,

their throats burning with that same gasoline fire.

November 10, 2010

Lighthouse at the Garden's Edge

I knew windy afternoons would be here

long before the days could stretch

their arms inside that blinding yawn.

I could hear the rumbles in the rocky hills

spilling around the town like waves

around a lighthouse world. Thirty years ago,

I would have written it off as the mountain trolls

bowling, roaring over a strike that knocked down

half of the trees in the valley.

Even knowing, I'm still left out here holding

on to Sylvia Plath with all my heart,

trying to keep her bell jar from slipping,

wishing itself into shooting stars of glass shards

the wind would shuffle through my backyard.

The afternoon pushes hard, making the

book's pages bite down angry on my fingers.

I'm angry – I bite back.

The wind isn't there, yet still

it dizzies me on my hammock –

I look up from the book to see the garden

just beyond my feet sway back and forth,

the green now algae warming up

a coarse storm sea.

I call me sailor.

I hang on, my keys

clanging like anchors,

dancing on the edge of my jean's pocket,

impatient with its scratching just like a pencil.

Like Mosquitoes

If I went deaf, I wouldn't miss this,

how the sounds get thrown

into the stew until they brown into a

hiss, the snake's lisp, the dishwasher's fritz.

But you aren't this and this isn't you.

Your song is more than taking a violin

bow to your strings, playing the vocal

cords down to the last measure.

You're no condition, an inscription

of voice written down – how ironic

that that's how the scholars

will talk about it one day soon.

February 18, 2010

Lions and Tigers

He's the lion, and I'm the tiger –

each of our hearts burnt clean

by fire leaping off the Irish Sea –

from his ashes, smoke rose and twisted,

folding into forms of soldiers standing

shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to fight at

the general's shouted orders.

But see, he always lazed about, yawning

to show off daggered teeth that

wreathed the edges of his mouth. Always

standing at attention, never marching

with a purpose – a snarling lion wrapped

in chains at the circus while the

audience cheers and points at him

all dressed up in his Easter Sunday war paints.

From my ashes, the shadows followed,

each a past I couldn't run from

even if I tried. I dress myself in those

spirits – you will never hear my footsteps

when I wear deaths of loved ones as my shoes.

Their deaths make up my soles.

Their deaths make up my soul.

They pull me forward

through the forest as I stab

the air with pencils, writing

thoughts that could crush

anvils if they want. I am the tiger –

I stay hidden even against the fire.

Yet I make worlds happen – I create

actions as I please. I write

and make things right and

make wrongs gone in the

heat of night, yet all you hear

is a rustle of leaves.

Living under the Graveyard

After a hard day's work

of looking at a lake, alchemy

seemed easy. We kettled

up some of the lake

water and hummed and watched

it boil. We made a tea's weight

in gold. And then, more than

the steam from the kettles in

the breeze, we settled in the ease.

While she stirred her sharktooth

sugar in her tea, I stirred the fire

awake with a branch. When I did

this, I carved out whole herds

of something wonderful, the smoke

seeming to gallop instead of floating

upwards. I watched the incense press

through that orchard of midnight

over us, between the thick branches

of dark and into a sky of light.

Don't you remember earlier in the

night, when we were at the lake, when

I was skipping stones against the

struggling waves? We watched

as that whole mirror of stars

shattered with every skip, with

such a loud noise for such a small stone.

And she said, like she always said,

that we lived under a graveyard. I asked

her how, like I always did, and she pointed

upwards, at a fool's golden sky.

What she said was right – the Ancients

buried their foxes and bears and wolves

and lions in that same speckled night

thousands of years ago. And some nights,

when the wind gushes, the dark soil

in the sky blows away, and those scattered

bones shine through like day.

Constellations may have been something else

before, but now they're only skeletons. Sometimes,

the remains are all that remain.

But here's to hoping she is wrong.

Here's to a night like a guitar of stars,

where strings of comets are being tuned,

where constellations are songs groomed and waiting,

with just barely enough patience

until they're played and come alive.

March 21, 2012

Lost the Red in Her Lips

She lost the red in her lips years

ago. I mean, she's still alive

but now she's suffocated beneath

a moss of paperwork –

the crows are gathered on the

windowsill, their shrill, eager

calls remind her that someone,

after all this time, is still paying

attention to her, but this does

nothing for her wince.

I don't know why she makes

me fall down for the first

time in years. I never met her

before, don't even know

her name, but she could be a mother,

a sister, a cousin – she was

at least someone's daughter –

I mean, after all, our family tree

grew from just one seed

so I guess that could mean that

a stranger and a loved one are the same,

but still we ignore her just because

we don't share names like ice cream cones.

Love is like a Cliché

Love is like a cliché,

the way it sways like

the sizzled sun in May,

like flowers drizzled

with drips of rain,

like dusty, old men puzzled

by the game of chess in

the park, the black knight

having affairs with his

rusty queen, asking politely

if she wouldn't mind

leaving early the next morning.

Love is like a cliché –

no, wait...a cliché is like love

composed of one quarter

note and rests that

dance on endlessly

even though the music's

stopped and the band's

left – a cliché is like

love made up of single

glances and...well, that's it –

a single glance, maybe a

"Pardon me" or "Excuse me"

then it's back to walking down

the street. Don't bother with

looking back, because she's

already turned away.

Loves Whistles Nighttime

If you'd only

give me a chance,

I'll love you

for the way

you never shut up – no wait,

hear me out. Because

nothing is more thrilling

than hearing you

talk about your

day until the sun

rises. And I'll love

you for the way

you always lose focus

like my cheap

camera does,

because I love

making guesswork

out of a hazed,

glazed fog.

I'll love you for

the way

you drink yourself drunk,

until your veins

pump rum

because I've

never

had a good

challenge that I've run from –

so give me a

chance to love you

the way the

desperate loves the fool.

Man with a Cigarette

You seem to open

your mouth only

to smoke. That said,

the way you

hold that cigarette –

lazy, but still trying

to make a point –

I find myself listening.

Or perhaps it's a

whisper,

beckoning,

calling me closer like a

fly to a light-bulb

that's buzzing even louder.

I'm not sure if I can

trust a man like you,

though, a man whose

face is painted

by the light of the

fireplace, a man who's

half-light, half-shadow,

a schizophrenic

ornament in this house, pulsing

and shriveling with

every flick of the flames.

August 25, 2011

Marinha Perto de Marselha

Based off the painting Monticelli's "Marinha Perto de Marselha"

It looks like someone

once tried scrubbing the

town with a cloudy eraser,

mixing the professors –

stitched together with elbow patches –

with the growth of drunks

spilling from the pubs. The

afternoon sun wakes them all

up, even deeper than coffee.

The daylight's white against the

yawning water sprayed

on the dock. The ancient

boards don't creak, but they

talk in sighs that whisper

ages. There's one

lone boat spun like a top offshore,

the sailors flipping the pages

in the sails, reading the tales

of a future like past, where

nobody's risen higher than the

tallest mast of the biggest

boat in town. The skyscrapers

drift in the harbor, waiting.

There's the occasional soul

who wanders like lost geese –

they sail through the

harbor, dot themselves

into the horizon – mixed

like oil colors with

the story of distant clouds.

Their boats always loop back at night

as shooting stars, sailing straight

home through sky like kites with tails

between their legs.

April 26, 2010

Mattress Light

The spotlights are lazy arms, painting

the long swatches of stars in the

crow-drenched colors of the attic,

the paintdrops falling slow enough for us

to wish our dreams on.

This is the way that paint should

dry – the lines already dust by

the time we seem them cross

the rust of metal November

sunsets, strong like ancient

pipes that line the walls like

grid. Here's to hoping for that Tuesday

deep in the Madridian summer

where the sun builds cityscape shadows

like Mandarin, the lines coming alive,

dancing in the slightest wind the

way some spiderweb might.

I get lost in light more than in night

colors (the night hugs like mother – the light

scatters confetti, simply disappearing). Back

to spotlights dripped in a deepheart haze,

which I dip my eyesight in, wetting

the edges of the iris until all I see is

mattress, a magic that I earn a

hard day's pay to be trapped in.

May 18, 2010

Metal Petals

" _I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep...f_ rom limbs that had the measure of the worm"

-Dylan Thomas' "I Dreamed My Genesis"

From the stems that crawl with the measure of the worm,

I storm as petals, which chain themselves to the ground while

raindrops knock savage down on my petals.

Excuse me for

wilting, wondering about she-loves-mes or

she-loves-me-nots, but I am at the finer gunpoints

of this love and my freewill, which used

to fill and thrill me, doesn't matter

too much anymore.

While others urge themselves to

bed early with slippers in one hand

and a glass of scotch rotting in the other, I purpose

myself beneath this solstice of an evening.

For some reason, I murmur my

freewill still, but with love as

an opposite, I can only stay as

metal petals chained to the ground.

Migratory Paths along the 7

This station's some aviary.

We break jokes like eggs

to tickle the rafters

that laugh out birds.

The flocks thrive up

into the sky, almost as tall as

the city sprawls wide.

The birds tide out,

burning the morning skies

into some winepress night.

And even after the

birds flee east, the ruby

wine stain still

hangs up in the air, dried.

September 16, 2010

Miltonic Writes

I cannot tell where

I end and the next creature

begins. I can feel the teacher

breathing down my neck,

making me telegram – with

a shaky hand – sentences on the

blackboard, telling me

that if I want to dream, I have to plant

one foot in reality first

and teach myself to wash

in the fear of it all.

I've always

hated the staring faces, the

stifled giggles and

so on and so forth,

but I cannot hope

to climb the washboard

and clean myself on the grill

that thrills the dirt from

me like maggots

on the heart –

I am a fool's part, played

by the actor with the brain to

feign kings and writers

but he retires to

the role of the fool

in the end and I cannot pretend

to ignore these rich tears

that tear and wear

me down to nothing more

than rumors and shotglassy

eyes and I spy the blue muscle car

that's tacked in the far lot, beautiful to

begin with but cursed to ugly

endings but who's

pretending to know otherwise.

I sometimes root

myself in other lies

and I cannot feel anything

at all except the fiction in

which I'm living and I

fret the death of my muse because

when – and not if – she's

gone, who or what do I use?

I am nothing without

the loving eye perched

behind me, pushing

the waterwheel

within me to float

the whole world

with my words.

Mowing Dandelions

You know – I once wrote this song for you,

some song strong enough

to have evolved on its own

hind legs – even while growing

up out of the soil

from which it came – a soil

boiled over with daisies and the

beginnings of ivy. I wanted my

song to rise high enough – climbing

over itself, its petals metal

rungs on a ladder – until its roots

were sucking rainclouds dry as it grew

by, growing higher and higher

until it fell up in the sky. I wanted

this song to grow up like a weed until

it wore the sun like a hat, a baseball

cap to keep its head warm even

during the new york storms

that shiver down our spines.

That is, although we're drowning

in June here, downing

warmth like a chilled glass of beer.

But you've always been

a pair of gardener's hands,

a pair of scissors,

a pair of gardener's eyes

that can only see the seeds it needs

to preen from the yellowed

pages of this song,

this song I could only wish we would finish.

Mulberry Napkins

Here we go round the mulberry bush,  
the mulberry bush,  
the mulberry bush.  
Here we go round the mulberry bush  
on a cold and frosty morning.

Once, this cupholder

broke us the width of

the foam cup, the

coffee spilt like milk,

oceaned in the tray – as we stopped,

the sea sprayed out,

staining sticky

hellos in the carpet.

Now, the cupholder gulfs us like islands –

it's just a shame that we never

learned to swim. We wait

to wake, but the closest we

get are our waists dragging

the wake like some albatross

as we step out on the waters.

This silence of seagulls and hulls,

though, is enough to

smother us lovers back to sleep.

And still a lone finger hovers

on the remote control,

scratching the mute

button like wool.

I keep the time in looks out the

window or at the radio. If no-man's

land could talk, this is what it'd

sound like: shoulders dressed

up in bedsheets like

cream summer dresses.

It's funny how a face turned away

can still send a message.

You're sitting there now, folding

your napkin into origami, anything

that could bleed wings and float up

quicker than leaden leaves drop.

The medics flutter out like

dandelions to splint the silence

– here's to the wait for the

next barrage of arguing.

Good, more mortar

shouts for us to hide in.

April 12, 2010

My Hands Are Wings

"Hold fast to dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly."

-Langston Hughes

I flew before I ever had dreams of flying,

sitting there on a phone book on a

chair, watching constellations

float over like clouds do in the afternoons –

that cloud looks like a dog, that

cloud looks like a spoon.

I chewed the gum like food. Although

my ears hadn't popped, I still could

feel the life of the loud propeller

filling up my empty stomach first,

then my veins, drowning me

from the inside out. I starved

for the droning sound – as a child,

I always used to fall asleep

to the vacuum cleaner working.

I played with paper airplanes before, sure,

bending wings out of them,

pretending a fighter pilot

into the folds, shooting down the dust

crusting around my dresser drawers.

A year or two back I had a dream –

the skin on my arms feathered and I

called myself bird although it was

just for awhile. When I woke up,

the first thing I did

was look up at the flecks

of paint peeling from the ceiling,

dreaming them into constellations

where they should belong. That paint

looks like an eagle, that paint looks like a cup.

My Own Zookeeper

On nights like these,

I'm my own zookeeper –

kicking up the dirt in these

inside wilds, my curvy

hand – clinking with

wishbone fingers –

tossing scraps to myself

on the other side of the fence.

On the other side, I catch

warm fish with bowed

teeth stronger than a Polish

name or absinthe on

your tongue.

And I snap and leap

at the crowd of

familiar faces behind

the fence – a crowd

that roars applause.

My Newspaper Kites

I've watched time kill

off all of my gods and my heroes

softly, their breaths drawn long

and sickgreen on the canvas.

The dreams they've imagined and lived

are now funerals shrouded in

these textbooks that I write, these textbooks

that I can only hope will be glanced at

by some myth class in some

other place and time –

and I hope those snored students –

some using breath mints

to rinse off the rawgin coughdrink

they had the night before –

I hope they grind their eyes on each page

until their sight is as polished smooth

as those gods and goddesses who once moved

my finger through the sand,

digging a line – and though

the winds pick up and the sand

moves, that groove still stands

and, hugging at it still,

I have yet to move.

But those gods and goddesses?

They've since moved north and I cannot

join them for another year or so.

They've since moved up north,

where it cries snow –

I sometimes see snow, but it only

shows up on my TV screen,

a TV almost as old as me

and – at least these days –

is always in need of fixing

so it seems.

And here I am, wishing I could outlive their deaths but

no word has outlived its muse,

the hand that breathes the clay.

My name is word.

At least, that's what they told me to say.

And though I'll watch time bury me,

making me work off my death as a gardener

amongst the sun carnations and honeysuckle,

I still madly carve holes in this

long-winter sigh of a nighttime sky

and call those tears my sea-bearing stars.

Names to Grow Into

You know, I remember when

she gave birth to you.

We didn't know what

to name you at first.

It wasn't until I took a picture

of us three that we saw your eyes

glowed embers that fought

off the night. The red-eye effect

throws some off, makes them

think of paintings torn by

vandals' hands.

It's enough of a startle.

However, we knew better. One look

at those strawberry eyes in the picture

made us know what to name you.

And that's how we came

to call you Rose, and all we

did after that was

feed you water and light

and sit back and watch you grow.

Nautical Compulsions To Get Lost

The city grows in charm, the

skyscrapers a glistened pink

in the morning

currents – refracted sunshine

dries in the river's tea waters,

adding that lemon flavor.

The froth in the waves takes

its quick white strides to

shore, leaving footprints

inside the plucked soil.

Each tower is a hayblade grazed

in frosty clouds like harvest

gone wrong yet nothing's ever

looked so beautiful frozen.

Picture is the scripture, darling.

Nothing's clearer...not even

air in a bottle passed

off as fresh tap water.

May 23, 2010

No Stop Between Karaoke and AA

Your singing is wind drinking in the

aluminum like rum until all

is mumbles and all is peaceful for you.

That's until you finish and I wish

you wintered into the stage, holding

your tumbler closer to your lips

than you have with me.

You walk past me,

you forget how to speak.

I'm starting to think that

the only time I hear you

talk is when you sing. And

I'm still not sure

if I like that or not.

September 16, 2010

Nobody Goes to the Nursing Home to Live

She's just an old house now –

gone grey

in the hair, though

still with Christmas tinsel

of that old red here

and there. She

wears a pair of glasses

that are older

than me. But with

her blues turning

darker than the

Atlantic at midnight,

what else is left for

her to see?

She's seen nothing but

dark hallways for

years, but that's

fine with her.

When you talk

with her, that's

all you see too,

behind those shuttered

windows of hers,

shutters so splintered

they almost look misty.

August 25, 2011

Not Sure If We're Sinking or Floating

I can hear the wine bottles,

even from here,

rolling around in the

liquor cabinet like

torpedoes in a sunken hull.

They must still be cold – let's taste

chilled Elysium together.

I already feel the

floorboards swaying after a couple

drinks, the house rocking like a marina,

a marina rocking like Venice.

The sails in the curtains

are pushing us forward,

back into the hull,

where you know we both belong.

September 9, 2011

October Coup

" _Natures first green is gold." – Robert Frost_

Nature's first gold is green, cash wilting from the

hardwood trees. The last week of October

is rarer than sapphire – but just as brilliant –

with all of the fiery colors dying down,

cut to pieces by the trampling that hardens

it all into smote jewelry. We try to stand

on these plutocratic mountains, but we seem

to be too heavy, even for autumn. We ashes

fall down and when we rise, we're weaving

the autumnal crowns in our hair like kings

and queens – and for that bitter week

we keep ourselves honest in all

of the ways that nature shouldn't be.

November 18, 2010

Ode to a Mountain's Oil Colors

I ran my hand along the painting,

feeling the drumtight canvas

hum in the spaces

between my fingers and

my thumb,

and when I tore

the painting, I could feel

all the different paints

spill off, staining my hand

and when I looked down

at my palm, I could see

the calm browns and

greens that once

colored the painting's

mountains

and when I saw

that, I was

the strongest

that I had felt

in days.

Off the Book

To some people, there is nothing more

gorgeous than math. For others, there's

nothing more leprous. We run

in huffs from the crime rate, the rise

in the mortgages, the dotted lines

on the contracts, all of those straight

and narrow numbers – more rail

than your marrow – dipped in

their evening blacks.

So I'm not surprised that no one

thinks about the airplane ticket,

a price steep enough for

anyone to fall into.

February 20, 2011

Ophelia

I can feel your shouts drown me out

as we break dishes and our English

against the walls – I was once

a lover and you could be love

but we've long since lost

our sense of touch in the

darkness and the candle

long ago melted its wax,

leaving us to thoughts

that wax on our waning

love that hugs closer

at the tides –

and we wonder if we're

Ophelia and if this moment,

this house, these screams

and these shouts husked

in the limelight of the dying fire –

we wonder if this could be

our Hamlet, the sound

drowning us down.

**Over The Pencil Breaks**

As a child, I could captain my hand  
steadier than ships through  
the midnight. Forget those

New England superstitions –

nighttime is little  
more than a cloudy day. I wrote  
with jeweler's hands

back then, even my  
glasses standing in for  
the magnifying lens.

But now my fingers quiver with hunger  
in the waves of hellos and goodbyes.  
The knuckles are a contortionist's  
soul, collapsing inward into  
a weak and brittle-haired pebble.  
And I know a pebble throws the  
world's longest shadow like an outfielder  
given the right light. I know, because  
I lost count of the times I've  
been told. Still, some nights  
I throw my pencil across the room  
longer than that shadow.

Even then, though, I refuse to let  
my hands die quicker  
than me. Because I will only live as  
long as each of

these ten fingers breathe.

Jan 18, 2011

Rorschach Pantoum

One time I accidentally bit down on my tongue,

drawing blood in all its shapes and sizes –

first, as a house, then as an orange

and it was at such falls that I was an artist,

drawing blood in all its shapes and sizes –

whether as swimming elephants or bitten onions

and it was at such falls that I was an artist

whose failures served in place of his cunning.

Whether as swimming elephants or bitten onions,

my art lives in the blood, sweat, and tears I give – I am a man

whose failures served in place of his cunning

and whose pains and hardships served as his pen.

My art lives in the blood, sweat, and tears I give – I am a man

trying to live inside the imagination

and whose pains and hardships served as his pen.

But really, nothing comes close to

trying to live inside the imagination –

first, as a house, then as an orange.

But really, nothing comes close to

one time when I accidentally bit down on my tongue.

Pantoum – Those Two Years

For those two years, she never stopped talking.

She spoke the human tongue, stuck between

two loves – "I love the art of wishing

and him with his eyes...it's like swimming two deep seas."

She spoke the human tongue, stuck between

pushing dreams across the canvas with a pen

and him with his eyes...it's like swimming two deep seas.

There I go, speaking like her again,

pushing dreams across the canvas with a pen,

wishing on stars that fell like saints years ago.

There I go, speaking like her again

with that dreamy smile that never wakes up. Although

wishing on stars that fell like saints years ago

is no way to live, it somehow still is

with that dreamy smile that never wakes up. Although

me wanting nothing more

is no way to live, it somehow still is

two loves. I love the art of wishing,

me wanting nothing more than

for those two years she never stopped talking.

Papercut

Love is the papercut's sting,

winning me back to this. If

it's just for moments – the pegs

and gears all groaned awake –

it's moments enough. I

thunderclap the fantastic

close like a book, watching

dust fly and thrive from

the pages. The dreams live on –

picking at the trash sunbaked

on the boardwalk.

The papercut talks as I curve

my writing hand, breaking

ground on sonnets that would

work better as songs I think.

I blink out words too big for

my mind. I have a brain for haiku

thoughts. I guess no space on the

lifeboat for you, darling. The

papercut's already dragging

me in the waters –

if only I could swim.

April 11, 2010

Papyrus Revolution

In the streets they whisper screams.

Reams of yellow pads, all recording

the words of this revolution.

This revolution will

not be trapped in

the evening news.

This revolution will

be scribbled in riddles

we will not understand

until ten years from this

point in time.

The revolution will be

Glass muscles already

beginning to crackle

and shrink

beneath the world

that Atlas

could never lift

but we thought we could.

We thought we could do

many things – but one

thing we never thought

we could do was think

outside our heads.

We never thought

a piece of paper

could think for us

like a robot,

like an origami robot

we write instructions

on with pens and pencils

in hopes it could read itself.

And they say the world

is not flat, yet when I look

across a sheet of fresh paper,

I can see the world at my

fingertips and it's a flat one.

And it's a flat one.

The pencil touches the paper

like lightning lights the ground,

burning away the old

and bringing around the new

rush.

The revolution will

True, a touch of change

is always needed.

Like fingers hopping from bar

to bar on a piano,

our hands can make sounds

when we write.

Each curve and twist of my writing

hand makes a word, and each

word makes a certain sound

when spoken aloud,

yet each mind that hears it

will react different.

The revolution will be written.

The revolution will be scribbled.

The ripples are as certain

as the fact that my writing hand

will not wobble.

The revolution will be written.

Paradelle Per Lei

I read your name off the page like music.

I read your name off the page like music.

Each letter a note that sounds like skipping stones on water.

Each letter a note that sounds like skipping stones on water.

I read off the page, skipping like stones on each letter that

sounds your name – note a music like the water.

I get lost and swept into the corner.

I get lost and swept into the corner.

I feel rushed by my trembles, the stutter in my voice.

I feel rushed by my trembles, the stutter in my voice.

In by my corner, I lost the rushed feel –

my voice, the stutters and trembles I get swept into.

You are all soft smiles and softer eyes.

You are all soft smiles and softer eyes.

I grow wings, fly through the blue clouds of your eyes.

I grow wings, fly through the blue clouds of your eyes.

Your blue eyes are softer and grow wings.

You and I fly soft through all the clouds of smiles and eyes.

You rushed off on your wings, and I

read your note that sounds like my voice, all a stutter,

skipping stones through the letter. Each page of

music and the like all lost. I grow wings,

fly into the corners in blue-name clouds – the soft smiles are softer.

I feel my eyes tremble a soft blue, get swept by the water.

Pecking Order

Confusion sprang and rang

amongst the lilies –

and with the wind

weaving the dust into

the setting sun,

I could taste riot in the air

for the first time and I liked it.

I will right this,

though, to show

the world I own it,

but know this,

that I do so with

the most utter

of reluctance.

I could let the petals fall,

and stand above

and watch them hit

and compose the ground,

each composer writing notes

that gently wheeze from dying throats.

But no, I will blow them kisses

into the wind, give them a future

to rustle off to.

In due time, they'll speak

of me as an oddity...no, as an oddity

who makes the leaves

turn themselves over

and lets the wind

move them forward...yes.

Penelope's Lament

He's late again – Odysseus is. Zeus!

I spent _(or tried to spend)_ this afternoon

in feathers that I plucked from some old goose

while baking wings like Icarus _(too soon?)_.

And now I'm sitting here with empty suit-

ors, only sure that if _(and not when)_ that

Odysseus comes walking in with boots

in need of twenty years of repair, that

I will go up to him and say to him,

"My love, you better have some really grand

and truthful reason for why you're late." "Hmmm,"

he'll say, "Believe me, love...I lost my men

to Scylla, that Charybdis, and wretched Cyclops..."

and that is when I'll smack that liar with a pot.

Pygmalion's Still Life

I've built you up enough to breathe,

but still you're ink atop the page -

you're not alive if no one reads.

Your audience has marked your age.

But still you're ink atop the page -

you seem to move when I tell you to.

Your audience has marked your age;

their clapping's spun your heartbeat too.

You seem only to move when I tell you to,

ink blotches scotching your high heels.

Their clapping's spun your heartbeat to

a fevered pitch, believer's steel.

Ink blotches scotching your high heels

always follow me into my dreams.

A fevered pitch - believer's steel \-

will keep me asleep while sunshine spills.

Please follow me into my dreams -

you're not alive since no one reads.

Will keeps me asleep while sunshine spills.

I wish I built you up from the reams.

August 5, 2010

Red Wine Mathematics

Although I may have

a limp in

my walk along

this garden path, I

know no limp in my

handshake as I add up

the math, walking

past old friends,

subtracting wispy embers

in old lovers' eyes.

I dry my wet lips with

a few sips of wine

as I rewind the clock propped

up amongst the coffee

cups which stand at

attention along the

summer kitchen wall.

Redbird Pillow

We're swimmers in the bed's pacific

covers, legs slowly kicking,

floating on springs dried with salt

and staircase creaks. You squeeze

the pillow hard – like harvest cherries

between finger and thumb. You

became blushing reds in our bed of blue,

a burning ship sailing across the

only ocean we ever knew.

You squeezed until I thought

the goose feathers would burst out and tar

your arms. If they did, I wonder then,

would your arms become wings?

Would they flap instead of hold?

Would they whisk you from my world?

Have I tarred you enough that, if

we walked in the dark, you would

camouflage against your shadow?

August 25, 2011

Rest is Silence

I'm the idiot who deserves the ink

washing my fingertips – this cleanliness

coming from holding a pen so close it breaks.

I hold it close the way I hug my

shadow in the middle of the day.

Keep close, shadow, I want you

to haunt me like a ghost.

The ink drips like a faucet on the pages,

rusting away the empty poems I write

simply to keep me awake. At times,

the jet waters rise and flood

my eyes shut and that's when the

nightmares drown me down.

Please keep me awake.

Right Hand Slip

The pentrail slips the page

easy as grease –

the drop drips jumping

in skillet like

hot dogs for leftover

biscuits.

Sea: Columbus proved his

world was robinround enough –

for him. The oceans and the

billows in their sheets dreamed

on even after the

bed is made.

But when I leave paper –

walking out through the back

door corded between

the lines graffitied straight

and bored – I'm outdoors of

myself.

And though it's (gr)easy

enough to lunge

off the page, it's

magic trick to puzzle

piece together the pen

and pad again.

May 23, 2010

Rose Bicycle Pedal

"She loves me, she loves me not,"

I said, picking petals off the rose,

watching them fall like autumn winds

amongst the whistled willows.

I am the sail before the wind -

I move wherever it wants me to,

the wind giving me shape and purpose,

filling in my pockets and

my grooves.

The petals trip like fallen heroes

until there's only one that stands.

I know which side this man

will be on; he will be

a soldier – not a romantic.

He alone will win the war

and rumor my awful flaws

to the seagull flocks

that rock the midnight air to sleep

while high above they talk.

They talk of so many things;

they say, "the petals on the rose

undid the love you loved

with all of your heart

and pumping blood.

Did you not stop to think

why? Because such things

were not meant to be.

So that leaves you here with us

so we can rock you deep to sleep

as you swim in the flood of tears

that you tear at with your hands

and we hope you sleep and drown

before you reach the riverbanks."

I'm not done picking the petals yet though.

Let me finish what I have started.

Then once it's done, let the seagulls feast

on the blood that pumps me, the deep-hearted.

Rose in the Snow-Garden

Remember December's embers

were always raining down,

coating our world with silver dust?

Like then, we have to keep up

now – we must. No matter if

the weather blasts away

our hearts or not.

But I remember then – how

the evergreens always seemed

to glow that golden green,

so bright that they seemed

to scream the spring – even

in the night. Then, there were

still paw-prints in the snowdrifts

and remember what we wondered?

Not what animal walked there,

but why an animal walked there.

Why? Because no life deserved

to be there. The smoke in our breath

was all you expected – and what

I wanted – to hear. Even then:

Life. Has always. Persevered.

Remember how we kept walking

until our feet slipped, until we

were standing on the cracked

and chapped lips of some frozen

ocean? No – we were floating –

we stomped our flag down like

a foot and declared the world

to be ours for the taking. Although

the world was lost in all directions.

Still, we were afraid to shout

our joy – after all, worlds as

brittle as that could crack

at any given noise.

We wiped away the snow beneath

our feet. We saw the fish cradled

in the ice – they looked dead, but

their eyes still spun like globes.

We wished they

had actually been dead.

"This is eerie," you had whispered softly.

"I don't know if this world should

be alive or dead."

And whenever you said that, the world

howled wind and bled more snow,

that time in deep, innocent gushes.

When will this day come? When will it come?

Even the sunlight seemed to sleep.

We dug holes in the snow and slept in coffins –

at least, we did for a while.

The wind was still knocking on

the door that the fallen snow

had made for our home.

"Go away, no one's here," we whispered. And still:

Life. Has always. Persevered.

We woke, we rose,

we felt the knives

of ice pressed to our feet.

Is this our life? Why can't we die?

We thought – we shook off sleep.

We dug ourselves out and looked about.

Ice stuck out of the tundra like unearthed bones.

A long time ago, we would have

called it a graveyard, but then

we called it home.

Though snow-damaged,

and winter-ravaged,

and ice had managed

to kill off the world's core –

still we talked, and

still we walked, as if

we could have forgotten the

punctuation against our world.

It was hard – especially with

those winds whispering to us

mutiny against each other.

We just spoke louder to drown

out their offers. And still

we talked, and still we walked –

our pace by then matched to drums.

And then came that one morning –

we knew it was morning because

a soft light scraped the skies

like a butter knife. We knew then

it could have been the closest

we would have to day.

"Listen! I hear whispering!" I muttered.

You had turned, listened, then, with eyes misting,

You sighed that familiar sigh, "Love,

you're hearing things again."

Maybe I was – my mind has been

gypsy for years, coming and going.

It was then I realized we are all that's left –

that we are what we hear.

But still – one thought still ran my mind:

Life. Has always. Persevered.

We had walked until we tired,

cold sleep dousing the fire in our feet.

Once more we awoke – we rose

inside of our own snow garden.

But what are roses? What are gardens?

Neither of us had ever seen such things.

I only heard them then from what

the winding wind had been whispering.

It always whispered to me the same thing:

"Your world was once emerald.

There used to be a sun

that would wake up the roses.

You all once had those gardens,

but frost has now made the waving leaves harden.

Why bother dancing still now that

the music's stopped playing?"

Because our life together. Has always. Persevered.

Sailboat Away Yesterday

I cast off yesterday like some sailboat

I hope would float everywhere

except down to the ocean floor

that's dusty in the corners.

Yesterday's little more than venom,

calcified harder

than caves, bending these veins

into origami caricatures

that bleed pain through the

panes of suture.

Or maybe I could bury the day

over there by that bench

sitting in front

of the picket-fence –

forgetting that cemetery

to the shopping list of anniversaries

and such we always seem to

miss. But this time we mean it.

That day seems overrated,

anyway – I could shut my eyes

like door and trick myself to night.

I could wake this off like

vague dreams. Know what? I think I might.

And it's true I'm afraid that

I'm waiting for what might

be yesterday disguised in

tomorrow. But it's true

that I can bury tomorrow

just as easy as yesterday too.

But I hope I don't have to.

April 22, 2010

Sailing through Windstorms

Our shirts are sails –

our short, ragged breaths

the gale winds that

wing us across the floor,

scraping our shins and

knees on the hardwood.

The dog is our white whale

that we'll never catch,

its nails scratching up

the floor as it scampers

towards the door, out

of range of our harpoons

made up of shoes, shoes, shoes.

We riddle the floor with

scars, our fingernails digging

grooves in the wood telling

more tales than a poem or

painting ever could.

Years from now – when they

forget how to speak our language,

forget how English sounds –

they'll read the scribbles

in the floor and decipher

love out of them.

Saint Crispin

The twilight's echoing against the field.

Keep still – we don't want the night

knowing that we're here.

I'm still clutching this card

of spades in one hand, bottle in

the other, standing over Crispin's grave,

drinking to a brother's honor.

Are my shoes sprinkled with rust

from a walk along the bridge

or are they martyred with

the blood of these freezing saints?

I know no more than you do

about these sort of things.

All I know, though, is that

we need to walk with pride –

the harder we step,

the further the blood is flung –

I always heard St. Crispin's blood is

good for irrigation.

And so his name lives on –

Crispin keeps the worlds revolving

even after the worth of his name

had been washed away

by our earthy aims.

We happy few, you and I, all

standing in lands that all men

fear to step in. St. Crispin,

we need to know, are we all pawns,

bleeding ivory from the rook's

hacks and slashes in this

checkered chess game? Those,

after all, are the only games

I know – I'm still learning

how to read these cards –

this five of clubs does nothing

but taunt my illiteracy.

Our St. Crispin, read to me

and teach me how to fight,

how to run to this Age of War.

Tell me too how I should walk the floor.

I've always wondered about that:

should I walk bare-foot or clothe

my soles solely to keep my soul clean?

I was always told my spirit

was what had moved me forward.

So I always assumed my soles

were my souls.

And it's then I hear the war drums roll.

And it's then I hear the war drums roll.

Samson Sheared

Without a beard, my chin just sits

there, weak like Samson sheared,

now no more than a beak

with no plumage blooming

like embarrassed plums. For the sake

of the beard, everyone confuses

a guitarist for the madman living

between pieces of cardboard damp

with the drought's sweat. Enjoy

this metaphor for as long as it lasts.

A beard holds power, an age –

the same why we turn to wine

for wisdom. Dwindle your

beard to a clean-shaven face

and you're mistaken for fools

or for businessman, both of whom

have martyred their wits

for the now.

A beard doesn't

have now; it has to wait until

tomorrow to grow. Your

wishes are as simple

as missed sunsets – you hope

for something not there,

but you can find the wise

lying in a puddle of your hair.

April 4, 2010

Sargasso Sea

Sometimes, I wonder

if I'm some sea –

a motion in a thousand

places. I don't ask who I am

at times, but I do ask

what sort of crowd

I am. Maybe I'm a

train of strangers'

faces, a train roaring by

as you sit at the station,

patient with the arrival times.

I need to be more:

I can be learned behaviors –

I can be marbled rivers flowing upstream –

I can be a being of cobbled words –

I can be the milk the sun

delivers to your doorstep

in the morning, all to the beat

of dew drops falling.

But all I am is what you are.

Sea Pagans

The grandfather piano chuckles smoke through its pipes of cellars

as each note folds and grows origami wings, singing oriole

cries – we talked with our ears and worshipped idle

thoughts of pretend dragons and cornfield laughter,

back when we were children, back when we were pagans.

We used to hunt Marco Polo's ghost in the South China Sea.

But see, we now must sail through this Black Sea

of pavement meant to wear down soles to their cellars –

we age quick in our dog years as, like all-seeing pagans,

we chant commercials and jingles until oriole

paints our cheeks; we die with unheard laughter

because it's only in death that we could only be less idle.

Like shattered china dolls in attics, we float idle

in debris of forgotten memories as the sea

throws us, as the seagulls crow with laughter.

We age like the whisky in the cold reaches of the cellar:

at each sip, our cheeks slip and drown in an oriole

sea as we watch TV like good commercial pagans.

We've stumbled in fog for so long, I forget if we're pagans

or Christians; we've fallen into a snake crawl and snarl idle

threats to the boots that thunder down, leaving us as oriole

stains in the grasses. We've swam senseless in the sea

that's dressed with a headband of seaweed. The cellar

calls to us, begs us to come down with a case of mad laughter.

So we all ashes fall down, crackled with laughter,

bowing to ourselves like human nature pagans.

We hear faint laughter and shouting from cellars –

we hear our inner children, idle

with play, pretending they're princesses and captains of sea.

For the first time in years, we cry, our eyes turn oriole.

It's been too long since we flapped wings like an oriole.

It's been too long since we've tickled out our laughter.

It's been too long since we kicked and swam the sea.

It's been too long since we have let our minds grow pagan.

It's been too long since we've sat in on rainy days, grown moss with idle.

It's been too long since we were last afraid to enter the cellar.

We flutter blind in cellars like lost orioles

as the grandfather clock ticks with idle laughter.

Yet we're still pagans at heart, worshipping meadows and seas

and I like to think that in the end that is all that matters.

See Icarus Jump

Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo

I bury myself into the tremble of the bluebird

with its fur of feathers, its two quick wings a thousand

ghosted leaves fluttered in the strong,

March-long breeze.

I feel a need to lay

down in the clouds, but I think

that's just me. I always wanted

to drown in the sun.

So I just jump up and down,  
dreaming dreams  
into the feathers glued onto my  
sleeves.

But I'll mend, my wings will learn once  
more how to breathe, all in due time.

One day I'll swim up the streams of rain

that drain down from the skies.

Shaking in Your Skates

How many angels can dance

on the head of a spin?

Just one or so

she wants you

to think. She digs into the

bread of the ice with her blades –

she waves herself up, she

gives herself up to the glow

in the lights that coaxes

out the cold in the ice.

She twirls into a clean blur,

greening out like wheat in a field

during a summertime

that's in its early rise.

Her spin tricks her two raised arms

into a hundred, the arms becoming

snakes – she's now a

Medusa on skates.

Any man who looks her

in the eye is plastered still,

lumbered silent as a statue.

So this is what awe is supposed

to feel like, raising applause out

of our hands like they're loose kites...

that is, until she trips and

spills down like warm beer over

the sides of your dirt-smoked glass.

March 18, 2010

Sharing Eucharist

She balled up

her fury into the

finger point,

her pilotblue eyes

ruffling into scales.

Her fingernail's a

swordblade to

my caesarian chest –

shaking off stuttered

words like dust –

her spit rusting

her teeth some lipstick red.

She rinses me off with her spat baptism –

not so much that I am sin, but that I am her past.

A pagan love that rubs apart with

some Christian friction that turns

the mere thought of an us

all fiction.

October 19, 2010

she cherished her thoughts, held on to them tight

she cherished her thoughts, held on to them tight

against the snarl of the world's own might

dawn day dusk night

she shoved away rid she ignored forbid

the wind, it whispered, the wind, it called

for her to follow wherever it galled

but its pleas fell on hard ears

laugh yell pain tears

she always knew the sky breathed blue

and towards south the birds flew to

night dawn day dusk

but to force lies, the world felt it must

and when the world took her joy like thieves

she smiled and glowed and shimmered relief

because now on nothing she's eaten her fill –

no longer do those hunger pangs stir

while the world grays as the time runs

she stood up and gave chase to her chance

and stretched out her arms to hug the day

squeezing until the day's breath did stream

laugh yell pain tears

because she had known the love would remain

after she smothered the jealous ember

(which birthed smoke and let ashes fall down)

and it was then the world was impressed

(for she suppressed the world in its place)

humanity rose, freed the denied with

kisses by kisses and hugs by hugs

tall by tall and steep by steep

people stood up to play for we keeps

and to play in the rains of April

love by know and maybe by yes

all of the people (both follow and wise)

dawn dusk day night

cheered as know rose and naïve fell

laugh tears pain yell

She Smiled Fists

You could see it in her smile –

it was a warm raised fist

against a world that whirls

too quick for anyone to

keep up with. Some let

knives or rope dig and break

their skin, yet she always

sit there, absurd but gorgeous

with that smile of hers –

the sweetest raised

fist I've ever seen.

I know her past the smile, though.

I know she grins to bare her

teeth, that she puts up that

warm front to hold back her screams.

I know she wants to pull out

her hair like the strands are vipers,

simply breeding a new pain to

drench the old, shoveling another

foot of dirt on the lover's tomb

until her hands blister and bruise.

And still, she smiles.

Even though I know it's fake,

I also know it's the masques

we craft that gild us into

who we are. And as you

smile that crowd of raised

fists, I can only wish I made

the same decision, crafting

myself the way you are.

Shrink

My clothes are ill-fitting, whishing around me

like a cold. I'm a syncope of me from

before, back in a moment when I was

muscle – as chicken lean as that was. A product

of years spent running away from myself.

But now, I've given up the hunt, strutting

back in clothes that stick as well as tents,

faintly bending where the elbows and knees should fit.

This, this is not the way

it's supposed to feel.

I'm supposed

to grow up like ladders, but

instead I'm melting in, learning how to bend

my arms and legs to fit myself within this

Houdini box – amaze the crowd, make them

ask "How can he live like that and not

suffocate?"

It's simple really – I just try and not think about it.

It's true...I weigh lighter than memory –

you'll have to look down in the

floorboards in order to find me.

Even then, you reel me in like

a stick in the waters – nothing

but shadow-puppets and glances.

Something you might as well

have never remembered.

This is how someone fades

to a whisper, as faint as a yesterday

kiss – perhaps even fainter.

April 10, 2010

Shuttle Launch at Evening

The runs of light make

their highways through

a countryside of dark, like

raindrops washing windows,

like pebbles skipping

ponds, playing their

summer hopscotch.

But even with this flurry, this feat –

graceful like a swan unfurling its

wings like a flag – the light is only

felt if it is seen. We stand within

an arm's reach, and you stand with

your eyes struck open, letting the light

shave your face colder than any blade.

You said it curled every hair and nerve,

but that you never felt warmer.

I kept my eyes closed, though –

I felt nothing but your breath snatched away.

August 25, 2011

Sibylline

The overhead lights stretched

out the wrinkles in his face,

adding river valleys

sloshed with their slow age.

We're both young – true –

but only from different angles.

You seem to have strangled

so many more birthday

candles in your time, all

with the licking hunger

of an exile back to home.

You grow – village elder –

into a deep shrink, the breath

squeezed out, the balloon

settling down into a nice home,

complete with leftover beef

for the pound dog and an

edge of crisp picket fences

(although if I may say so –

mind you, simply as a

friend – I don't know why that

always needs to be the case).

April 15, 2010

Slow As Possible

I watch the family leave

behind their picnic trash:

the hollow cans with

drips of cola, the mask of

a potato-chip bag,

the napkins crumbled like a

poet's secondhand work.

I only sit there for

a few minutes, watching,

and I already see

the magic of the plastic

vanishing. They say

it can take thousands

of years for plastic

to break up, but

here I am, seeing plastic

wash away as if

a magician wiped it with

the wand of a tree branch.

The plastic composes

into the grass, composing

the sheet music for a

song that'll be beautiful

deeper than its skin,

but one that I won't live

long enough to hear.

September 9, 2011

Spectator's Sport

Our hair's still greyed with ash,

the cloud of withered drywall's

still stalled, and only

now the dust is raining

where we sit. We can only

wish those wintered

showers back into the house,

hoping that it could put the fire out.

The fire itself? It lioned its way

from the oven and – when it

got too hot in the kitchen – headed

for the living room, coloring in

the carpet with felt-tip pens.

The smoke choked us out of the house

while the melted house slipped

back into itself, and – unlike when

it was built – it did so now

without our help.

The neighborhood's

gathered, warming their chattered

mouths with the cold, fooling

no one but themselves about

fires being a spectator's sport.

March 28, 2010

Sunrise Sea

Your grin floats like sunshine polish

on the waters –a mirror that

bends without a radio crackle. Your grin

spreads its wings like butter and tosses a

pebble upwards. The rock curls the

water, casting off a thousand broken

yous in squints of light like shipwrecked bottles.

They say it'll take a thousand years

for that broken-tooth smile to

sail around the world until the

freight-train currents see it home.

But what they don't say is that a

thousand years from now there will

be someone else looking

out at that same sunrise sea,

desperate for something but not sure what.

November 2, 2010

Swings of Fists

When I was just another child, the only

times I never cast a shadow of iron

was when I was swinging on my swing-set.

I was a pendulum of glass

and metal in those accelerations,

throwing a reflection of light like

diamonds and diamonds like

a baseball, underhanded.

My glasses were as large and thick

as the tyrants who broke them – yet

somehow, the sunshine still filled

the glasses, brimming, until the

afternoon sloshed over the edges.

And the glistens of light washed

through my braces, an engine of

metals and wires – in the end,

the light was either clean or sterile.

Collected, it was all a silhouette

with precious stones sewn in, and

I would toss it, watch as it

wrinkled in the soil. The swing

would pull me back in those

moments – I watched as the world

took away from me my years

of machinery. I felt natural and

cracked again – a man among gods.

Then, the swing pushed me forward.

Then, I watched the world rush towards

me, my metals in its hands.

March 9, 2012

Tea Kettle Rinse

We rinse off

our "sickness" in the

tea kettle in the kitchen,

fishing our trembled hands

out of the sterile,

boiled water,

spoiled from our panic

and slaughter of

sense and good order –

bordered with misunderstood

whispers and rumors –

this flu's a ghosted

tumor heavy

enough to drag

us to the drug store

for tissues, soap, and dust masks flanked

on all sides

by magazine issues

hawking front page ads

that rank with the taste of bitter cigars,

each ad charred

with that slow, early evening burn.

Turn bird flu in its grave;

we got a new fear on the way.

At least, that's what the reporters

and TV doctors all say.

The Art of Reading

I shake, rattle, and roar my way

across each page

and count my years in verses read

and prose once said by

men who walked the gardens

and talked thoughts for a living –

that was when you could buy

food simply off

what you were thinking.

Food for thought,

thought for food.

And though my stutter

is coming back and I lash my words

with tongue in hand, I drink

the words that run the page, I

drink the wine out of their shells

and leave these words

as no more than

husked, burnt

rice in the winter's swell

as the snow drums up against

the walls of my frozen home.

The moment I learned to read,

I evolved as I was no longer an

island flung out across the world

as I then found hopscotch

to hop upon, every square a word.

The Diamondlands

I remember the blizzards there being

more than splashes of cream. The

flakes would scrub the ink out of

the asphalt, and the roads would again be clean pages,

waiting to be written.

The snow would dig deeper than

a heartbeat and plant its garden.

For a few minutes in the morning,

a fog would hang over the packed snow.

Counting the helicopters of clouds

overhead, you could say there were

three shades of white on those mornings.

Welcome to the diamondlands,

where your feet could never tell the

snow from jewelry dropped into

the seams of the pavement.

We could never tell the difference,

and we never cared. Everything's

meant to crunch. A million pairs

of new boots breaking new ice,

the walking falling into the lakes at the street corners.

But somehow through the blankness,

there was still a cinema of moving light,

the beams scattered like the roaches,

but they were still there like the roaches.

The traffic lights sent out signals

to each other, and so did the doors

when the doormen opened and closed them.

There were a million lighthouses

reaching out in the dark whiteness,

blind but still reaching.

In those moments, that city wasn't

the hottest place in the universe – but

it certainly was the warmest.

April 17, 2012

The Funeral Home Library

The coffins stared back at me

in the living room, their eyes

as empty as they still

will be after they're stuffed with

bodies. The guys stood to the side,

gnawing on cigarettes, the

ends in a glow. Each inhaled

slow, dragging the light

down deeper – until it looked like

they were chewing on the sun,

trying to usher in an evening,

and all before there should be one.

"Let's see this library of yours,"

I said. I was already forgetting

how to breathe, thinking of how

bells were once built into coffins,

remembering the stories about

people waking up underground.

Some say that doesn't happen

often, but even that is too much.

I turned my back on those final

rasps petrified in wood.

Instead I buried myself into

the library in the other room.

Those books too were dreamed

from wood – but those trees

were slashed down

for a much better good.

March 29, 2010

The Hand that Moves (The Stranger)

You are the hand that moves me –

you are the hand that moves me to move my right hand,

to move my right hand to write hard,

to write hard on a piece of paper –

ah, the peace of paper –

the piece of paper that I fold,

that I fold into a paper airplane –

a paper airplane whose destination is you –

you whose left hand moves me,

you whose left hand moves me to move my own,

to move my own right hand to write and

fold the paper into a glider,

a glider for and to you –

you who guide my hand

with your own, and it is

at those times that you

have another right hand

and I have another left,

and though we keep each other

company, at the same time we are alone.

The Heart Buried at the Tower

Every time you see that tower, the first

thing you think of is death. You say

it's because of the tower's colors, how it

looks like a bucket rusted over, tossed away

like garbage in this deserted desert. And

of course, red means death, although red

means blood, and blood means life.

Red is the cream in the kiss.

Red is the pump in the veins.

Me? What do I think? I think the

mystery ends with its name. Everyone

in the village has called it The Tower.

They think there used to be a castle there

centuries ago, but decay grew up the brick

like moss, and so the walls fell down

like curtains at the stage. Some archduke's

plot of land, turned into a cemetery plot,

a conspiracy of artisans and masonry.

Don't you see? That's the thing: when

a creature dies, the heart's the first to go –

it's a drum stretched tight to rip.

And when the heart goes, so does the

blood, that hot spatter of grease. Some

people think that when something

stops moving, death is nearby. But

I think that when a creature dries,

only then does that creature die.

But this tower – this tower is different.

Its skin of walls and moats and parapets

has long since vanished, but that heart

in the tower is still standing,

still breathing, still beating.

Maybe it's the years of the afternoon sun –

hanging over like a ceiling fan – that have

baked the tower's clay tougher than work even.

Do you really want to know what it

is? I think that as long as that

tower never sinks, that heart forever lives.

August 26, 2011

The Midnight Sings

Floor me with your

metaphors while we

walk these civilized

garden with

their flowers bowing

to one another,

laughing away

the hours on

the dizzy clock

towering over the

greenhouse green. We talk

as we walk, watching the

moon's glance getting

cut and broken

up in the silhouettes of plants –

we notice this and

so we string

the leaves, making

them waltz on

the floor of the

midnight hollow.

The stars

see this and

they follow, until

the sky's full with

lightning bugs –

the dew sees this

and it follows.

The plants see this

and sing their

love and raise their leaves –

this time without

us holding the strings.

And at that, the midnight sings.

The Night and Moon as Water Colors

As a boy, I used to watch old movies

and be amazed at how the world

used to be the black-and-white of

my pencil digging trenches in paper –

and I remember being saddened

as I looked away from the TV

and saw a world painted over with

too many coats of color, a world

I knew could never grow on me.

And even now I'm thinking

if I could go back to those

black-and-white times, would I

be the lazy strokes of a dull

pencil, grayer than even my best friend's

face as she trembled the vase

of her last breaths in buttery hands?

Or, if I could go back, would I

be the sting of a sharpened

pencil, scratching initials

into trees, digging into

the bark the shorthand

for you and me?

I think, though, if I fell back

in time, I wouldn't hit the ground

as some lampshade of twilight –

I would fall as a dripping black of midnight –

a surface that glass

could never scratch, even if it tried.

The Night Brought Rain

I imagine it must get lonely

behind those sunglasses sometimes.

I see them and I think

of a crowd of alleyways that

see my way home in the evenings

as I'm leaving work or school

or any of the other hurts that pest

at my heels.

If I'm lucky, I sometimes

see you peering over the

sunglasses, your blue eyes

water lapping over like some

thirsty dog at the bowl's rim.

Sure, you may still be

the smiles I knew last year

but not even sunglasses

can cover up the rogue

tear running your cheek,

looking for the nearest

ocean to dive in.

The Night Wears Black to the Morning

I will, I will

guide you by the arm

and walk you

through this darkness

drawn from a pitch sky

alive with snuffed

stars frowning through

death masks for faces.

I will blindfold my notes

in half and pass them to

you as we sit through this

crumbling lectern of a class –

with the blinds pulled

closed as shadow puppets

grow wings and float at the

mere change of the

puppeteer's hands.

I know the room's too dry

of light and that my writing

is hard enough to read at

times – especially in this

dark room of frozen tears

and frostbit lips splashed

across negatives. So

I strain my hand and spray

the paper with a pen until

each word sloshes with ink,

until each word is a Black Sea.

Let your fingers swim through

the inky waters, learn to read

the calm songs I sing

as sticky words like _love_

dry against your palm,

as black drips down

and stains your sleeve.

North Wind

" _Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I_

but when the trees bow down their heads,

the wind is passing by."

-Christina Rossetti

I'm growing old,

I'm growing old,

as the day wilts petals –

as the night's might

revels – while the moon

rises up to say it's bold.

I have begun learning

to pronounce the lines on

my forehead. I have begun

learning to read between

those lines, waiting for my

life sentence's period to rush by –

although I hope it's a comma instead.

As the days drag on,

the clock-face sags down.

We can tell from its frown

that it's 7:25 in the evening,

leaving us to find candles

to handle the load that

the sun pulls. And still

this north wind rolls as

the world freezes and folds.

But although I know my heart

stops at the tick-tock of midnight,

I know that the clock's pendulum

still rocks to a 1 o'clock,

a 2 o'clock,

a 3 o'clock,

4....

The Rubicon Through London (Eliot)

" _We had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem...I think it was called The Desert. And first the girls got the giggles and then I did and then even the King."_

-The Queen Mother, describing a reading T. S. Eliot gave to the Royal Family

Pendulums knock the hours between the

orchestra sections – all those different

tongues, all greeting the same morning.

They're all earthy voices, rising as Babel fell,

like sunflowers that rose as the moon fell in mourning.

The sun is wrapped in her sooty blanket of midnight –

it has suited her rather well in her frostier years.

Meanwhile, Ben counts down the hours, his face

atlantic blue as he trumpets from atop his tower.

All any of us ever wanted was more time and time

and that was what we got as the day dragged on,

clinking the minutes behind it like chain links.

I remember being younger, how we would jump

around on the smoky stairs of the city,

the chimney tops laughing ink for steps

that we stepped like the kings and queens

we pretended to be. The kings and queens

we were supposed to grow up to be.

We would push our toy trains through those

underground rails, flicking miniature boats

beneath those bridges, all before Ben called

us to dinner deep in the Abbey's shadows.

As we grew older, the city grew older,

as we grew, the city grew,

as we grew older, the city grew.

Little did we know our homespun city would lose itself in its ambitions –

to the point that when we looked back at the paths we carved in the streets,

we asked ourselves, "Are these still the streets that we remember?"

The Sun Rose from Our Sinking Boat

The sun rose from our sinking boat,

the light rising like candles tossed up at the sky

as if Grandpa wanted to catch

the moon on fire. But Grandpa's sun

fell quicker than lumber at

the lumberjack's hands. We

watched our sun dive down and drown

in the night waters that chopped our

balsa boat down to wars and peaces.

"Get another flare ready," said Grandpa,

"and be ready to fire."

Another morning came

a few moments later.

The Whales Sung

It's a modern world we live in –

I can dance my eyes

across this universe,

seeing stars that burnt

out years ago yet

I'm still learning to

wash the day away

as I stand out at sea,

wreathing my legs in barnacles.

I always wanted to hear

the whales sing their

whale songs and I always

wanted a violin so that

I could hum my fingers

on the strings and play

along

and I always wanted

to run away from my office

mind that I've divided into

little cubicles, each

of which never seem to mind

their own business.

I have

a wish list of loves I want

to hold like music on

the phone – yet all

I have is a want to run

the shores of some island

or world that we've never

seen before.

So I cried wolf

and grew blankets over my

head and slept in the river

bed for the evening.

Their Deaths Held Roses

Their deaths held roses which

winged their hands with blushing feathers –

each feather rusted – each feather

a phoenix climbing the steps

of embers the

setting sun drenched

this world – our world – with.

All the sleeping hearts lap

up the sun to keep warm

through these blindcane nights.

But while we crawl

and thirst on a fickle trickle,

their deaths become

a phoenix and climb the water of

the sun falls.

There's No Reckless You

I always thought that you were

a barnstormer's climb – two, maybe

even three steps at a time –

far from a careful Icarus. They

called you reckless, but I should

have called you humble. Why?

Well, the Father always called

heaven a home for the meek.

But the Father never

said there was anything

that heaven looked up to –

there is no modest heaven, just like

there is no reckless you.

September 9, 2011

Third Rail

A railroad is like a lie; you have to keep building it to make it stand.

–Mark Twain

Our spirit was laid before us like train tracks  
that stitched steel into the bleeding cracks.  
Those tracks will carry us on its back over  
the valleys and gorges, speeding up to  
show us the gorgeous tomorrow for  
just the price of today.

When night falls and bruises her palms,  
we lay our heads on the

open windows and gaze upwards,  
pretending up is down and down is up  
and that we're bouncing between the stars –  
this time, the tracks follow our lead  
as we trace out the constellations,  
our fingertips for pencils.

We fill the stencil in with a shine,  
the spilt ink dripping up  
and pooling in the overhead lights  
of the train car.

And sure, you're the third rail –  
although you make me run,  
you could kill me simply

with a little hug.

February 3, 2010

This Denmark Still Smells like a Barnyard

Pushed against these spine-tingled masses,

I see defeat seed its way into the

chipped lookingglass, which ripples with

cries and gasps. I see the mentor's slap

give way to the banker's greed; I see

the bullwhip lapped up while the

chained world gets catscratched up in

the acid rainfalls.

The tide is turned,

the fire's burned,

yet this Denmark still smells like a barnyard.

This Green is Golden Now

This Green is golden leaves now –

each of them fallen like crimson saints

or fainted Victorians – rotting

their way into the soil

while the oily maple air flames its way

through the grasses. Those

snakes beckon us towards

the syrup bleeding from the trees.

The creaking of the branches

mention the bench we're

sitting on, the legs cackling

as we lean forwards and backwards.

Our words mute the

brittle old man legs as they

count down into splinters –

the dreams of being matches

is somewhat gone but not forgotten in its

lingers.

This Is The World

This is the world that confused you.

Here's the me

that loves the world that confused you.

That's the too-short life

of the me

that loves the world that confused you.

Here's to the simmered winters

of the too-short life

of the me

that loves the world that confused you.

This is the point where all makes sense.

This is the picture in the hole in the fence

of all the simmered winters

of this too-short life

that splinters the me

that loves the world that confused you.

I write with erasers smudged with ink

to point where all these things make sense.

I draw out the picture in the hole in the fence

that simmers in winters, trying to stretch

this too-short life

that sheds off the me

that loves the world that confused you.

And with other hollow followers beginning to think,

I spill world into words with erasers of ink

to point out the word that makes all sense.

Can't you picture the hole in the fence

of the winters that shiver and all makes sense?

True, this too-short life

flower petals off me

but still I love the world that confused you.

This World Is Too Large to Contain Me

This world is too large to contain me –

these vast plains fenced in as

backyards – the picket fence

bending in the wind –

these seas called lakes

I only wish that I could

swim– all this I get

lost and caught up in,

a massive empty that

I cannot measure myself

against.

Thunder Through the Valley

Sound waves whip and trip

through the sounds of time,

filling empty hands

with a five and six of spades

to give us a full house

to sing our hearts

to.

We whirl and wind

the microphone cord

in a whirlwind

about our finger's spine

as we try

as we try

to find the best way

to stray from common minds set

to stone.

The tears we've wept are stone-

cold, swept across our cheeks

like storms that thunder,

like worms that wander

through the center of an apple

grown from the earth,

an apple that is the Earth

for a lack of better word.

Everything is tempting –

even this microphone looks

like a slice of heaven

mentioned only to those

who know how to flip the switch

and turn it on.

We are poets, drawn to the words

we spawn from muses that have

long since died or moved on.

We are what we build upon.

And when – or if – you applaud,

your flick of wrists can make

my house of cards

fall down harder

than any crisp glare

or fist can.

So when I hear you clap,

I know I must build my house again,

but this time, I know I will build it stronger.

So please, I beg of you,

please clap harder and longer.

Tonight as the Beginning of Always

Remember tonight as the beginning of always,

the end to wilted flowers,

the trickling ticktickticking of

that clock of ours – the one that

was beginning to forget the order

in the hours – the end to green

Mays that gave way

to crackled summers –

the sonnets that ended

a line too soon – the bread

that fell as it grew in swells –

the days that drifted as clouds

between us and the loud stars of space –

remember tonight as the beginning of always.

Too Short To Play Your God

You're too short to play your god,

even with your trembling.

Still, you try so hard in rehearsal.

Although your words can only

dream up some deity – they're still

too wild with forgotten commas

and rushed speech that seems

as if you want the troubles

to end as soon as they begin.

They're human in all the wrong

ways – the mistakes

fated to be too deep

a stain for your rugs to cover up.

They aren't human with the

love that, in theory, the

centuries have drummed into us.

They aren't human

with the heartbeat sympathy –

not the swollen cheese that

sweats in the greeting cards –

but the sympathy that we

are we. This is something

you've forgotten – that you've

wanted to forget – and so

you are just you now,

dripping alien to the rest of us.

November 14, 2010

Trading Postcards

She painted my mail with postcards

and put the whole world in

my mailbox. And in a way

the poor mailman became Atlas,

having to drag the world behind

him in his brown canvas bag.

Through pictures,

I walked the mountains with her,

saw the Northern Lights

with her, and we both

swam through the blue

sea and saw the coral

that was burrowed deep

beneath.

And I wondered if she would like

postcards from around here –

of the crumbled highways,

of the railroad tracks,

of the flat lands that have

looked the same since the last day

she saw them –

postcards of a lackluster town

that we've been condemned

with since birth, from

which she somehow broke

free to see the world.

But I don't want to give her

more reasons to stay away.

Tricycle Worlds

I became a god by the age of three,

my hands, my sleeves choked with

chalk dust as I drew a house on the

sidewalk, the concrete drunk

on the simmered summer day.

They told the parents that the boy

was clumsy, dropping and breaking

English as he walked the floors of his

home. They told the parents that

the boy would never learn his Rs

or Qs or Ss or Ts or Hs or Zs,

all this while they sat and watched

the boy play alone.

And the parents could do nothing

but sit back and watch their son's

dreams bleed through the slurs

and stutters in his speech – the other

children on the playground not so

willing to learn a foreign language just yet, leaving

him to play with his babble at the swingsets.

They left that young boy to

his mind and wild noise and so he

built within his heart a world of fighter pilots

and dinosaurs and all this

before he learned his phone number

at the age of four.

He was a muted,

broken trumpet until they noticed

that he could speak through his

drawings, his scribbles of a cup –

a cup dripping water on a tabletop –

speaking more English

than his foreign words

ever could. And so they told the

parents to let the boy write and

before the ink had time

to dry on paper, I learned how to talk.

Turn of the Screw

We pass around the three-faced shame –

those tricycle wheels

turned assembly line

turned push

because we're frozen,

turncoat cowards against momentum –

Newton's law-book is

on the shelf,

the title scratched off, forgotten.

It's a game that just goes

on and on until we're playing

grown-up in daddy's three-piece suit.

April 15, 2011

Twist

You curve and twist with that

famous bluster of yours,

mustering thousands of storms

spinning in the distance, a distance

that wisps with steam in the summer

heat – it takes me back to my first

and last home in my mother's womb –

how fitting.

You shout and scream and pound

lean fists against the lumber

table – making the wood crack

like trees in the mortuary

of winter. Your snarls break

like eggs, but instead of

birds, there's words

like "how could you" and

"why won't you"

and it feels rather marvelous to

wrap myself in the blanket

of all of this.

You could

be screaming because you care,

or you could be screaming because

you aren't for or with me anymore.

Either or, it doesn't matter because

I could feel the strength to your gravity

since you brought my head

in on a silver platter as if

there wasn't any food left

from this winter frozen over

with vanity and pride and judgment

and – oh how the cold brings

out the clarity!

Umbrellas Swept Up Into Trees

We're both umbrellas swept up into trees

on cold afternoons that forgot the sun

and when we forget what the sun looks like –

I like to think it's the

orange pulp that crowds

the bottom of my breakfast cup

(the only time you could say you

were looking _down_ at the sun

instead of _up_ ).

Instead, as we stretch out

like scratchy wool blankets

on the cold lawns of November,

we see the pale yellows murmuring

beneath the surface of the clouds,

the dull sunlight whining,

sharpening its claws on the

front door. He wants in,

but we're about to sit

down for dinner anyway.

He can always come back later.

Perhaps tomorrow,

perhaps another day.

I wrap a butterknife blade

of grass around my finger

and try to remember

this moment out

from beneath the rug

and onto the

coffee table, using

the memories to

warm up conversation

in the moments before

our forever of dinners.

Under Construction

" _To build all solid."_

Sylvia Plath, a journal entry dated February 25, 1956

This glue, this tape is déjà vu –

the wind reads the pages of

the instruction manual

as, for the fifth time, I pound a patch

into the roof, my clumsy hands

raining nails and screws into the

pail on the floor below. The holes

in the walls – "Who put holes in

the walls?" – the tired calls

to plumbers, electricians – the exposed

wires hanging from the ceiling,

the ends sparking like lures –

it reminds me of fishing...

I know there's more to all this,

though, than yet another trip

to the hardware store.

The faucet's constant drip drips

remind me of the honest slips

of "Well, maybe I don't love you

anymore" or "Where were you

tonight? How come you never

pick up your phone?"...all this

is more than what another trip

to the hardware store can fix.

I don't even know if I want this

pain and hardship anymore...

But I remember back when

the house was fixed, when

we never had to hold

a hammer, instructions,

or a piece of tape.

I remember a kiss

in front of

the kitchen sink

that we never had to fix.

And though the exposed

wires were still hanging

from the ceiling – even then –

we never thought of them

as fishing lures and lines,

but instead we used to flick

the light switch and wish on

shooting stars without

ever having to go outside.

Unfolded Maps Can Sprawl

The blood smears my television. The

blush dripping from their heads – a leaky

fountain of life.

As these lotuses raise their

fists and shout, more of their strength

runs down. When it hits the soil, it doesn't

puddle – it becomes stars that streak

like the bricks from the roofs, the whips

in the streets.

It streams with the shadows and pavement

into their flag. They say you

would need an atlas

to find the Nile, but you can read their country

off that flag like a map if you want.

And with that map on the street and with

you at your height, you cannot help but

to look across it. And then you cannot

help but to rise above it.

February 6, 2011

Van Eyck

She painted herself into a canvas,

canvas as smooth and soft as

jazz notes tumbling down

the king's mattress, canvas

as smooth and soft as she is,

as she was.

True, she'll sink in time –

her eyes diming from

a sharp noon sky to a

moonlit sea where the seaweed

rots and lies. Her face will

wrinkle at each new worry,

each wrinkle just

another line for her

life's story. Her midnight

hair will snow with flurries,

her youth further buried

in the pages.

This painting will survive its

inspiration – it'll stand guard

over this gallery, soothing the

rally of tourists' eyes.

But when the portrait

begins to curl its corners

into a skeleton's grin and

the canvas ghosts away

as dust into the day,

not even van Eyck or

even van Gogh could

put life back into

such a painted ghost.

Vintage Dreams

I seem to dream in black and white.

You always say you dream in greens

although it's night and there's no light

in which to cast your meadow lights

upon the bedroom filled with screens.

I seem to dream in black and white

like ancient movies without lights

or cameras, without Wilhelm screams –

although it's night and there's no light

and shades grow monsters out of sight

beneath my trembling bed unseen.

I seem to dream in black and white.

However, you are rolling right

through creamy fields of Irish green

although it's night and there's no light.

You tell me sleep's a gorgeous machine.

I want to dream your dreams...but see,

I seem to dream in black and white

although it's night and there's no light.

Warlord

This singer's cherished, although he

hasn't yet been snuck out through

the exit, with the funeral sobs

an understudy for the mousesqueak

of the door hinge.

He's praised like some saint,

an ant given picnic instead of

squished into orange by

some misplaced footstep.

This is the part where it all

becomes clear to the singer –

the world becoming picture

under the wide-lensed empire

focus, the mountains flatter than hills –

or at least it's as clear

as night-hidden lion roar

to the singer, drinking his

cigars like whisky until

he gets his train pass –

first-class I might add –

to wherever his god is (probably hidden

in the pond in Narcissus's backyard).

May 20, 2010

Warm Saint Monica

Her husband picked her scars like birthday gifts,

her fullmoon skin ripped like scrap notebook paper.

Her mudhair's ruffled against the flatscreen

TV. I can almost – almost – feel her pain.

She doesn't lecture a word – it's hard

to scream against a crowd of cuts

he drumbeat on her with a five o'clock rhythm.

She's silent as dam, her minutes pooling into

hours and days and months. Years.

So now the raining of

fists against the damwater

is drops too weak to startle her.

But we can see the murky water

sloshing over, slashing through

the cracks in her wood.

She still doesn't cry still,

so I flood for her.

October 5, 2010

Water Stilled

The daughter was born royalty

into purple tides, where the waters

churn pink like flamingo wings.

The river herself was dazed, shallow

breathing, under the spell of

chemical daydreams that can kill

and yet still make memorials of memories.

This is where herons flew away from,

their wings either vagrants or settlers.

This is where the fish are little more

than forgotten flashes of silver

spilled in the indigo waters.

Still, just like silver, this wildlife is pure –

just like silver, these fish are still valuable.

The river's trying to mine the fish

for their shine, growing them up

like cornfields, above the irrigation

and into the sun. The writhing

silver is brighter than any sun.

The river's a mother trading

breaths with her child –

when mother exhales,

the child inhales.

And what if the daughter

has the same color

eyes as her mother? What if

the moment mother

shuts her eyes to sleep,

daughter opens hers to wake?

Would it be less of a death

and more of a blink?

October 30, 2011

Wear Thin

Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

like an old man's walking-cane grin

or the blue in the lake

where us as kids used to swim.

Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

like a cloud that skates the wintry evenings

when the leaves have fallen and the

evergreens are heaving, seeming to stand

proud while deep down they're freezing.

Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

like faded wedding rings that show

that although the years pile on

and the decades grow,

that lovers still remember their poetry –

no prose.

Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

like a clown whose painted face

starts to wane and fade, his life

showing through the curling smile –

if only he could trade

his kingdom for a game.

Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

like the gears inside that grandfather clock

you keep in your living room. A clock that

used to keep the hours, but now chimes

at ten past noon.

Where Fireflies End, Where Lightning Begins

I could never tell where

the fireflies end and

the lightning begins –

they're all blank, jagged

splatters crowded

on the deep night

canvas. All an origami

landscape creped

around this world – our world.

We can goodbye

across continents

and still the sunset that I sleep to

is the sunrise that wakes you up.

Our dusks and dawns

all look the same,

each a chord tight on our

black-and-white nights

and days – all songed together

into a sun that weathers down

as rains of rays raise up

the cornstalks while at the

same time raze them down.

All these things are different – like you and me.

All these things are the same – like us.

June 23, 2010

Whim Sea

I row

my boat

across the Whim Sea.

I heave

the oars,

wiping away my

sweat with my sleeve.

I can't tell

if the salt is from

the sea spray or from me.

My boat's crushing

against the waves;

my good

arms lift and wheeze.

But it's no good,

so now I share

my name with that sea.

Who Holds Your Hand

Who holds your hand?

I hold my own in

applause forever,

the clap clasped

together like love's

last kiss against the

glassed December.

I transform into a

closed-circuit in those

common moments,

the static jumping

ship between the fingertips.

It's in those thens that

I become less wiry

and more of a wire –

my nerves twisted together

in a fibromyalgiac crush

that could raise the bald

man's hair at a ghost's

forgotten – but never

forgiven – touch.

I become lush with fervor

and learned to be pilot-blue.

But while I burn like matches,

the shouting distance

between me and everyone

else grew more than

by an atlas – it all grew

by a moon.

12/20/10

Wilted Feathers

These feathers

were once a mythic gold,

these feathers

were once a dusky red,

these feathers

were once a blue you can find in tears.

But now all I see are ruined feathers

clumped together on the floor of this

rainy weather, the raindrops

drowning the legacy

out of the feathers.

Yet when I let them go, they still

float off into the soft wind together.

I guess that even the drowned

souls can fly sometimes.

Winter Black Funeral

I'm here to stay like chalk

glyphs picked into the pavement,

waiting for those drops of drought

to flop down like workday feet

and gasp me out like birthday

candles. That's just as

well since I was

born only for this.

I'm no different from you –

I've been shackled to orbit

around a thick wick light –

funny how the closer I

get, the more I breathe night.

I dream for the sleep,

I retract my claws,

and I breathe out prayers

as cheap and wasted as air.

October 24, 2010

Winter Ecumenism

It seems like this winter is

just giving in – what with the snow

crunching beneath our feet

like loose change just jingles

faintly now, rattling like

keys in pockets do.

Our heavy coats unthread into

blankets bled on beaches leeched

by waves in these days of night.

The sun's taking lazy bites

at the soil; the plants yawn

up through the bite marks,

waving us closer, trying to find

the right words to say.

The bitter British winds

begin to oven into sprays

of kite-winds that raise all parachutes

until the strings break for lunch.

The hinges stretch on the screen door

as we slip into the outside

that we've been dreaming for.

March 9, 2010

Winter Solstice

You live for just one moment

in my seeing, but even that's too much –

You slip between the floorboards,

flooding out my thinking.

You live for as long

as it takes me to walk by,

and I already forget everything. Even

down to what color your hair is – it

was either rust or jet. It was either

or maybe neither.

Yes, I forget things that quick.

March 28, 2010

Writer's Cornerstone

All I need is one good line

and the rest will steel up

from there – twisted out

of the heavy summer air

and stuck back in the sky

like Macbeth's dagger plunged.

Feel Jacob's ladder rungs

turn string at the weight

of words that I can barely

carry in my pocket, the seams

spitting fabric at the vowels

massive enough to drip worlds

like sweat from brow.

This is not the way that these

things work, though – instead

the hesitation mosses on me

until when you see me, you

see forest. Even stones buried

from the world in coffee soil

like coffins are still more

porous, lighter in all definitions

than my words are, than I am.

I pick words denser than gravity,

waiting for the magic to free me

upwards to paint-speckled skies,

stars carved in its thousand

horsefly eyes. I reach for the

scatter, pretending they're

the crumbs of the apple pie.

Yet somehow in all my crinkled

pages, I'm still amazed to think

that it's because of this that

I will write as if this has never happened.

May 25, 2010

