Runners

And finally, you ask out loud
as another one passes by you,
where, where
in the hell
are they going?

What have they agreed to I have not?
What have they settled on?

And this, your voice saying this, is probably
the funniest thing you’ll hear

all week.

Warm Laundry

Sitting on the floor, sorting it.
In an apartment we’ve already been told
is no longer ours.
Her socks, her underwear, her
night things. All mixed in with mine.
My hands in it.
She sleeps in the other room. I can
hear her breathing, as all other sounds
one by one are eliminated. There’s half a
coconut cream pie in the fridge, I know that much.
I fold the items and put them in piles.
They don’t amount to much, really,
each garment. One particular pair,
turquoise, I turn over
and over to find
which end is up. The cat supervises
this. All this. The cat and the ants
that just moved in.

The little piles make me want to cry
I think, but there isn’t anything there
to cry with. No oil in the engine, no
no water to boil. But the sentiment is there, it’s a sad sight—
so small.

And then, for some reason, I remember
how as a kid
I used to scare myself imagining people
rising into view of my second story bedroom window.
Just floating out there. Smiling,
in the light of my room. And we’d look
at one another, and I’d make myself
continue to look
as my body became cold with fear.
And I went on to recall my many other terrible dreams,
the ones I could remember anyway, over the years, as I folded them
in halves, thirds, quarters. Packages
no bigger than my fist.

And they were still warm then, but
losing that fairly quickly.

Memory Of A Man Who Drank

He used to break ice with a spoon.
Give it one, two, three
good whacks with the rounded side
before it shattered in
the brown
palm of his hand.

He’d put it in the glass. Add
vodka, olives and sometimes water.
The sound of the chipped
ice in the glass.

Still,
I think of it, the
breaking of ice in summer
on the screen porch, moths
at the light, sounds low in the close
wood. And every few nights, a
gunshot crack somewhere off, or a dog, or a siren
so distant it didn’t seem to come for you. I
think of it with the snapping
of dry wood in fire, in the
flap of hunting bats, in ice, in a
spoon, in vodka, or
in even hands.

Landfill

It’s a matter of irrigation, they tell me,
that’s got the park all sawed up.

Trenches cut across the paths, the grass,
like massive crisscrossed stitches.

And in the trenches, seashells, white, while
we’re a good mile in here.

They filled this area long ago, our relatives
and non-relatives, the ones whose bones

are buried in the many cemeteries in and about town,
with mud from under water.

Oyster shells, clams, scallops, just a little dirty
that’s all; turning up toward me on my morning walk.

And they’ve been waiting throughout the years,
once full of eyeless, sexless things through

what series of human crises and
catastrophes, what wars, what hunger,

just to be unearthed
and turned over, under the sky for the first time.

I Know A Guy's In A Coma

He’s the husband of a friend of my wife.
And well, one day he got a fever.
Two days later he’s in the hospital
in a coma
the doctors put him in.
Said they had to do it
to prevent another seizure like the one
made his wife call the paramedics in the first place.
And it’s difficult with someone like that, they said,
to wake him up at all.
It must happen slowly—sometimes a matter
of days just to let the body acclimate, like a
diver rising out of the depths of the sea
while avoiding the bends.
So he’s far away, asleep, and he’s been like this
for a couple of months.
In those months, his muscles atrophied
and his wife had to get a second job. Her father’s
this guy’s boss (the one in the coma)
at a liquor store he owns.
But he refused to give the wife
(his daughter)
the incapacitated man’s wages.
Instead, he would give her
and her children
food in the form of meals at his house
and just about anything else they needed
other than money itself.
Long as they come over, he says, to keep him
company. He’s a widower. He has trouble
with things like laundry. When he comes out of it,
she tells her father,
he’s not gonna be able to go right back to work.
That’s alright, says the father.
And she says, he’s not gonna be able to make up
the time’s lost, with you or anyone.
He might never be the same. The doctors say they
do not know.
That’s also alright, says the father.
He’s not gonna have anything, even if he’s not a vegetable.
We used up everything we saved.
The father says, I’ll take care of you. When
he’s ready to walk, he’s welcome back.
This talk went on a few more months
while the doctors tinkered with dosages
to deal with his newfangled epilepsy.
They’d do one, wait
while he came out of the coma, see how it worked.
Usually, he’d wake up then nearly kill himself
with a seizure. Well, they’d figure, that one didn’t work.
Put him back under and down he’d go.
When we went to see him he didn’t even look alive.
His muscles retained water so he had this
deathly bloated look about his face. His skin
was gray and waxy. His body
approximated a real version of himself
meanwhile you thought
you were looking into some queer nightmare of a person.
He likes hearing his friends talk to him, his wife told us.
He knows you’re here.
My wife consoled her as she cried.
I’d but met the man one time
around a bar pool table.
Now here he was,
in a coma wanting me to talk to him.
I said a few things, I don’t remember what.
How odd it is, I kept thinking, that this has
happened to this man.
What is it like for these people who get put into comas?
Who have no chance to cover their tracks, to consider
the past and the dark future, to attest to god
some good they’d done?
What was it like to skim barely
the highest, most inhospitable, incomprehensible
altitude of life, and hear the
goings on
of your life carried out, shepherded
by other folks as if through
the water and glass of a deep sea aquarium?
What will it be like
to wake up for him, if they ever wake him up
successfully, wake up
with some semblance of peace his body has finally allowed, and ask
those standing, waiting there, looking at you:
you did what?

He Doesn't Need That

This was late November.
Hadn’t snowed in a while
but there was still some left
along the roads, beaten
and hardened into craggy slush.

I saw a blind man
with a backpack strapped on
start to cross the street. But first, he had to
cross the snow.

He took one step on the ice and slipped, fell forward.
He didn’t use his arms when he fell
so his face hit the ice directly. His cane
toppled with a kinkle and the glasses skipped
across the cold sidewalk. His backpack
came to rest on top of him.

Me and another guy helped him to his feet.
I gripped the flesh behind his elbow while the other guy
pushed from behind. He was heavy, the backpack was full.
“I’m alright,” he said, trying to smile.
He said his name was Tom. “Dumb ice,” Tom said.
There was blood coming from his nose
and was spreading in between his teeth.

A number of other people arrived.
One tried to replace his glasses, which were bent
with one lens loose. They placed these in his hand.
Another person put the cane into his second hand.
A third extracted
Kleenex from her handbag
and tried to stop the mess on his face.
The blood came out in lines like water.
She’d wipe it away and new blood would come out.
He was licking it, tasting the blood, and he must have tasted it
very well, I thought.
“You might need a stitch,” she said.
The blind man tilted his head back, and allowed
the Kleenex to rest, stuffed in his nose.
She produced a Band-Aid and put the
Band-Aid on the blood, secured it to his
cabbage cheeks.

Someone shook off his hat and placed it onto his
head. Adjusted it so it was straight.

Then a final person arrived and
held something out in front of the man’s
face. It was a mirror. A hand mirror.
She wanted him to see
what had happened to him, or how
bad it was or whether he was still bleeding.
This was her form of service.
He simply stayed tilted up though, looking
nowhere, trying to hear whatever he could
to make sense of what had happened to him.

“I’m alright,” he said again. “Thank you.”

“He’s blind,” the girl with the Kleenex said,
pushing the mirror away. “He doesn’t
need that.”

Sitting On A Bench In The Morning

Whatever madness resides,
whatever paranoia, perversity,
boredom, ambition;

whatever private violence dwells
in people, there is still this
at least,
and not everything has been hollowed out.

The sun exists. It bleeds
daily
out of the sky for us, it crawls
over the buildings with its shadows.

The green plants push up against the old iron gates,
the animal brains fire in the animal heads...

Whatever loneliness or useless thoughts or
damage, or propaganda;
whatever little need coated in ideology;
whatever gods or non-gods;
whatever harsh or peaceful worship;
whatever distorted wishing or slow vanishing—
there is this.
There is this, still.

The sparrows and pigeons awake,
bathe in a black pool of our accumulation,
dry themselves
on the toasted steps to the fountain.
The fountain.

The beach, somewhere in Oregon
with its foggy features of black sand
and maybe a dog, or in Florida
the green waves depositing shells
prehistoric,
compounded with the eyes, teeth and limbs
of unknown, long extinct things.

In the Midwest the doves hoot, and a man
crouches at the flat grass of his own grave
and admires it.

I am somehow glad for the
population of ghosts inside of me.
As they gather
like dark birds gather, still with a
place to gather,

And have not been replaced by the same
no nothing
that has been conceived of, and is easy, and is easily imagined.

I Know A Few Things

The scent of Chinatown.
Perfume or truck exhaust.
The flowers newly stuffed
into loose dirt.
The fruit in its window. Tree roots
at the point of entering the earth.
The waterman. The meter running.
Legs. Bare legs
coming out from new dresses.
All the different
kinds of dogs. It’s true—they do
look like their masters. Chasing a ball,
or simply sitting. A child in a pink jacket
that’s half the size of one, a person
half the size of a dog.
The sea in its sway in constant darkness.
How it does not open its eyes.

Then there are the things I do not know.
I have a feeling I will live to be 85.
I also have a feeling, same time,
that I’ll remember claiming that one day.

Following

I go to the door, check the lock again.
Poke through the mail.
The city is quiet. It sleeps
under a blanket of conflict and doubt.
Observe a rectangle of faint light
on the kitchen tile, follow it to its source.
End up this time
at the window watching the moon.

The not knowing
of what’s coming is very present;
what can possibly be generated
out of this still air, the darkly
coiled ivy; what areas
can be circled, what inventions
are even possible.

Shell Full Of Stones

Munificence is of the Sea
which you cannot explain, nor do,

Because it is too Big.

At first, seem quiet, the
continents dragging themselves along, their immense

Books of Wounds
like black stones ribboned in white

doodling on their own bandaged pages.

At first, a gray doubt. Like a dove, almost
not there; like an

elephant’s eyelid
opened

already, it comes.

Cobweb Encased Hands

Something in it harkens to the hungry past
inside the thin skeleton of a shrew.

The sound of a plastic bag on the counter
pushed by the wind of a fan;

It is a ghost, a wing moving in the concentrated dark,
the dresses in the closet swaying in the dark
so dense you can feel it against your skin.

I put one hand out to find the wall.
Something God knows
scratches inside of the wall.

The chickadees will
wake up
when the cows wake up and the
misers
of mummified boardgames
make up their minds;

And when the larvae has been harvested,
their eyeless, mouthless, mindless
ends moving

in the infirmary, reaching for their parents.

Cold Coffee

At noon
you are delirious, and you speak to the sea
in a language, like a dream

Language that you find romantic,
but she cannot understand. The next thoughts are automatic.

You imagine sex with her

as you sweep cat litter off of the floor. Pour water. Contemplate
the deadliness of a fan.
The knifed bread, the sounds of doors

Somewhere

opening and closing.

One dog’s low bark.

To the daylight in its forms like white bodies in the waves.
Figures in the green folds of waves…

Waking up
re-Waking up
each minute, it seems,

is an account of the day—

Testimonials typed out
by ghost stenographers in the john; secretive
ladies for whom

there is no room. No

opening,
no sequins or pearl.

Old Hands Hold Money, Children Roar At Birds

Looking out at the great puppet show.

The dogs, dogs
of all kinds

chase balls.

The roots crawl out of the ground
and reach for us.

Birds skim the land
like
bombers.

This is the best part of living
well,

and this is pretty nice.

Some birds fly right through men
as you eat a sandwich in the sun.

Bicycles
ride without men or women, a whole

Armada

of dead bikes,

Honest-to-God, it’s day again.

The male pigeons waddle after the females, more
well-fed
than

most of the humans,

land on the peak of the fountain. It isn’t
that hard for them.

Should it be for us?

We grow corn and mustaches,
amass wealth, build houses,
aspire to love, operate on one another,
dismember our feelings,
wait silently in the bathtub

and contemplate cancer, and our
histories,

and our fear of pain.

When it arrives like a shark’s face

in the aquarium

We know it. We know it is an
apparition but we

cannot leave the room.

The Play

a moth limps out of his cell like an afterthought.
he is to perform a little play for us, a
play based on our lives.

we let him do this, offer a respite from his
torture etcetera
so we might be entertained.

without our consent, he drops his trousers
and begins to dance. this isn’t supposed to happen, they think.

this is
an outrage.

cancel the orders for season tickets: this art is fake.
he found it folded in a shoebox next to
dead mother’s nightgown, the maps that led us
to father’s grave—one big joke. his props are
bones, his set is a pair of false teeth. we forgot the
way to our own memory.

lingering there in the lamplight
we are in trances.
the shape of the night is in lines and dots.
the origin of the drawing cannot be attributed to god.
fancy seamstresses have been hired to fool our
laffy-daffy souls.

the reflection of one dot in particular resembles a baby.
there’s one baby that we all know quite well, right?
what is this baby in the black dot? that is ourselves.
where do we find such white clothing? in the hexagon of earth.
when does the river turn back into the ocean? calamity junction.
the field was a maze of many colors. it was a lineup of our years
like criminals.

they were fairly obedient in their assembly.
do not turn them away or laugh at them, or deny them.
they appeared here for you, all in a row, so pay attention.
one could only lead to the other, and that one could only lead to the next.
there isn’t much mystery here.
the only mystery is in the moment of convergence. beyond that, what?
an idea is only possible with the previous idea,
like a person is only possible after many enfolding lifetimes.

a lapse in time forgot its naming. people provide the details.
jewels unfurl along the road.
they blast the brain with light.

remaining on stage, the quietness of his monologue
makes us sit forward in our chairs. our ears are little white dwarves.
the mass of the stars is measured in lives.
the chairs are shaped like circles. gallows may or may not be in the fly.
an usher in the shape of a mouth reminds us not to leave our seats quite yet.
the spotlight man, who is a head of a hair, pops it down. he’s in his
roost, the room of quiet deformity.

for the first time, we hear his jokes, though.
they refer to our secrets. they refer to everything that accumulates
like sewage in the clogged drain. but this is mostly unknown.
before we can hear the punchlines, down comes the curtain.

intermission is a time when we can mull about and pretend
it doesn’t matter.
some go to sleep.
some kill thyselves.
some remain in the bathroom or the coat closet for a number of years.

the moth’s understudy is a bear.
he is unconvincing.
his costume is nothing more than the clothes in my closet,
but also the clothes in the closet of another man,
and the clothes in the drawer of his wife. he is armed with a bowie knife
and a muted trombone.
everyone’s clothes on everyone’s bear, are everyone’s understudy
in everyone’s play.

the moth has entered the moon as his vanity.
he reminds himself that he is a terrible faceless creature with no memory.
he hears screaming from the house. also, music.
what is he supposed to do?
the backdoor is propped open with a garbage can.
the noose he tied is in the garbage can, along with his letters
and his lipstick.

with much regret, he feels his way out into the night.
he sees nothing but flying the color red yellow. jesus, he is limited.
his brain is limited, his body is limited, he wants nothing more
than to be completed by whoever started him.
out in the dark blue scene the mountain is wearing his face.
the evergreens are waving him into the cold grave of the ocean.
the reflection of the moon is smaller than the dot.
without eyelids, eyes are unnecessary.
the highway feels its way across the map.
the plains are sprouting with hair.
the winter isn’t over and neither is the summer.
in between perhaps there will be some melt. in between,
perhaps, there will be some reminders of his performance;
there will blow large scraps of paper bladed into shreds by the sun;
loose wind unties his wings from his shoulders;
there is no blood in his single vein;
the audience is tired and traumatized, but oh well,

they’re gone, and it’s not his problem anymore.