Route 108
To drive on 108
is to be part of a cut-rate folk song,
Jersey barriers prevent you
from going where you never would,
A junkyard rises up
next to a strip mall church,
Save your soul
while you salvage for tires,
One-room apartments offer space for a couch
but no room for ambition,
A neon sign flashes Chinese food
specific in its ambiguity,
And a fallen oak pins down a windowless van
both metaphor and meta force,
On a road where passing through
counts more than passing judgment.
Below the surface
At the end of every day
I collect the new memories
and etch them into my skin,
deep below the epidermis
where the connective tissue lives
It lives to link the days
through sweat glands and fluids,
transporting my recollections
to hands, knees, back,
where I have carved our time together
the trips to the market,
where we have been known
to flicker from existence,
shopping for bread, only
to appear again in the dairy aisle
the trips to the dry cleaner,
where I change my identity
to fit the clothes I am given –
withered monk in vintage punk
suburban princess in Versace
the trips to the movies,
one eye watching the screen
one eye on the projector –
producing a double double-vision
that lets me read your thoughts
and those of everyone else,
except for the old women
who cast a spell of concealment
to stop the night ushers
from taking their avatars and their popcorn
popcorn that I summon
through my legs and my fingers –
brine and butter
lingering on my lips
along with the story of our last day together
On being somewhere else
Where do you go
when you get the far-away look,
when the world fades away?
Are you following a trail,
a trail of lost thoughts
misplaced along the way to today?
Do they lead you to one place,
or everyplace?
The old thoughts take you to yesterday,
the grand thoughts lead to omniscience,
the empty thoughts lead to the void,
where you envelope yourself
in the warm comfort of nothing.
Are these paths that only you can see?
Is that why you don't take me with you,
because you fear I will get left behind?
Do you discover new planes,
states that you never new existed?
Do you plant your flag and claim them
for yourself,
for us,
for no one and everyone?
Do you ever get lost?
If you do, just follow my voice –
it calls,
it calls you,
soft at first, but always urgent,
a magnetic force
with you at one pole
and me at the other.
Do you want to come back,
or are you content to be somewhere else,
someone else,
lost in your thoughts –
your deep impenetrable addictive thoughts,
or are you just hopelessly self-absorbed?
How shall I pray
shall I
study scripture
ponder Aramaic mysteries
relish the discovery of knowledge
hunt the heathen
vanquish their scourge from earth
unwrap my mind
fall to the wonder and the world
retreat to a monastery
live my life in silence
receive the holy whisper
throw myself into a moment
proselytize to the unconverted
shout eternity to heaven
attend to the singing god
or write another line
The great white wall
He rides omnipotent, casual in his certainty,
surveying all before him,
undoing what nature has wrought.
Waves of white overwhelm my path,
a crash of winter horror instant and complete –
my labors are nothing to him.
What have I done to deserve this,
which of my sins justify this retribution,
this great white wall?
I mean seriously, do you know how long
it took me to clear that driveway?
God, how I hate the snowplow.
My angel wings
my angel wings are broken
leather bound, pride heavy
fractured by one more fall from grace
my frantic fall, my search for ...
my angel wings are mounted on the block
cartilage wracked by iron slag
forged with blazing antipathy
a wrong kind of trophy for ...
my angel wings are rudely exposed
stripped of remembrance and wind song
righteous no more
a sweet sacrifice for ...
the sightless
the gypsy scholars
the circus cannibals
my angel wings are gone
they are gone for ...
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Beyond the veil
I saw your ghost today –
you seemed happy,
but how could I be sure?
You'd think with an eternity ahead,
you might take some time
to work on communication,
all that wailing and moaning
is so unhelpful,
what should I take from it?
That you miss me,
your feet hurt,
you want Chinese food ...
If you're at a loss for words,
just think how I feel –
left behind without you.
Rated R
hallowed kiss
hollowed shells
lethal and soft
luscious and harsh
coat my lips
pierce my heart
with leaden gloss
with lovely spite
lightly shatter
coldly caress
my life
my life
with bullets and lipstick
A man of letters
As he writes in the dark,
words slither from his pen,
the remains of deep red dusk
outline each letter
while they lie in repose,
waiting to be woken.
The words bunch up in his head,
causing his temples to throb –
he must let them out
or his brain will burst,
they race through him,
through heart, lungs, liver,
to gush forth, corpuscles
spread across paper.
They stalk him at night,
taunting, scorning, mocking,
until he turns on the light
or the sun rises,
and they scatter,
first the adverbs,
then the gerunds –
running is a craven act.
The words are jealous,
they clamor and cling
to their intangible life,
wary of signs and portents
that foreshadow their demise,
the immutable erasure.
But it is dark –
he does not notice their anguish
or hear their pleas,
he disembowels the vowels,
castrates the consonants,
leaving nothing,
not even a notion.
The ones that survive
are bound to him,
by an everlasting geas,
he tells himself
these words will serve him,
but it is an allusion,
a pair of red shoes –
it is he who serves them.
Another day
The cauldrons are bubbling again, replete with shades and wraiths,
packed and parted in civilization's stink,
I have been left here or led here or birthed here,
my origin a question buried too far down to care about,
Diesel sweat drips my fortune from above, high above –
the stalagmites grow tall with it,
Statued in crowded isolation, a lone brick,
I wrap myself in marrow and the rumble smell,
What if I embrace the mortar and steam,
build my barrow and fade, become elastic,
Or tunnel out, escaping the caves and commerce,
lungs bursting with aspiration, and exhale a new age.
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