May 18, 2010
Metal Petals
“I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep…from 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.
&
nbsp; 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
&n
bsp; 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