It’s when you realize how basic you are.
How much you really need.
Bravery, yes, but also
sadness in all these little choices,
the trivialities.
When our minds are unnecessary, or simply unused.
In the pinochle time, the milk
drinking time.
In the waiting to fall asleep time.
In the breakfast, lunch and dinner time. Fruit
salad time. Time with no noise. Time with
ice and a straw.
Time waiting for test results.
Time that
reminds you it is there. The time in between
visits to cemeteries.
The time we spend catching our breath
at the tops of the stairs. Or removing nail polish,
or celebrating holidays
like Thanksgiving, and New Years.
The time we think we lost but never had.
Spent studying geology, dissecting a piglet, looking
through a telescope.
Mourning.
The time on a mountain. The time
of war, envy or jealousy. Of our treacherous
stabs at love. Whereas, most of us,
our love is so imperfect
it does more harm than good.
11.03.2008
9.22.2008
True Love
One brushes the other’s teeth on a park bench.
She spits in the dirt and the man rolls a cigarette.
“I want McDonald’s, I want McDonald’s,” she repeats
and lights the cigarette he gives her.
And as he rolls his own, she combs his sideburn
with her nails. Pushes the hair behind his ear. The sun
remains aloof. And in the background,
a tree gets sawed to pieces. Fed,
roots and all, the trembling boughs, the creation
and the ends of us, to a machine that eats these kinds of things.
She spits in the dirt and the man rolls a cigarette.
“I want McDonald’s, I want McDonald’s,” she repeats
and lights the cigarette he gives her.
And as he rolls his own, she combs his sideburn
with her nails. Pushes the hair behind his ear. The sun
remains aloof. And in the background,
a tree gets sawed to pieces. Fed,
roots and all, the trembling boughs, the creation
and the ends of us, to a machine that eats these kinds of things.
Ghosts In The Arboretum
Half of you already gone but
this is where I stay. Fingering
each and every one of you as suspects.
Your souls amount to little more than
collections of cheap knick-knacks, carnival
fare. Party favors. The voices of crickets.
Stuff that I keep hidden
in a box and will secretly arrange
to have buried with me. Entombed like a Pharaoh.
And I will hold up
a mirror
to each and every trunk to see if it is real,
and if it is, you’ll be found out
as the sky rouges over
with embarrassment.
this is where I stay. Fingering
each and every one of you as suspects.
Your souls amount to little more than
collections of cheap knick-knacks, carnival
fare. Party favors. The voices of crickets.
Stuff that I keep hidden
in a box and will secretly arrange
to have buried with me. Entombed like a Pharaoh.
And I will hold up
a mirror
to each and every trunk to see if it is real,
and if it is, you’ll be found out
as the sky rouges over
with embarrassment.
9.08.2008
Parentage
You built me from the inside out.
Everything
in me. My bones, my blood,
the pocket that stores my heart
Each resembling
something in you. Or in the ones that made you.
You also manufactured my tomb. Sank
your hands into the flesh of new time
and when you held them up
they were from then on guilty.
What a magnificent sendoff
you gave me.
The bone chief smokes his pipe and warms
his drink. My heart
I see it beating!
A genius of many lives. Many lives
longer
than mine will be. Longer
than I will ever muster.
What is this life you gave me?
Closed between the hands of some
giant.
It is every day
an insolvable universe
enfolding the silk-haired souls
of new human eyes.
Wandering in the jigsaw blue
With lightning hands and clamshell hearts
Our parents. They pressed us through the godly mold. Did they?
Cheesecloth of eternity.
And still when they look at us, we remind them
of nothing recognizable, nothing comforting or familiar
but themselves.
Everything
in me. My bones, my blood,
the pocket that stores my heart
Each resembling
something in you. Or in the ones that made you.
You also manufactured my tomb. Sank
your hands into the flesh of new time
and when you held them up
they were from then on guilty.
What a magnificent sendoff
you gave me.
The bone chief smokes his pipe and warms
his drink. My heart
I see it beating!
A genius of many lives. Many lives
longer
than mine will be. Longer
than I will ever muster.
What is this life you gave me?
Closed between the hands of some
giant.
It is every day
an insolvable universe
enfolding the silk-haired souls
of new human eyes.
Wandering in the jigsaw blue
With lightning hands and clamshell hearts
Our parents. They pressed us through the godly mold. Did they?
Cheesecloth of eternity.
And still when they look at us, we remind them
of nothing recognizable, nothing comforting or familiar
but themselves.
8.27.2008
The Bathroom Light
There is a light that can be seen
through the window in my bathroom
when the down the hall neighbor
turns hers on.
Each of our windows look out into
this shaft between apartments
with a skylight at the top. I don’t know what else
is in there. I don’t know who built it.
The glass is not clean. It’s textured
so all you see through there is light or darkness.
I’ve seen that light go on
many times in fact when I did not expect
a light to go on at all.
One night I wake up and the clock says
four thirty-four. I go to the kitchen for
a drink of water. The cat emerges from
somewhere unknown and greets me.
Stands in the orange
triangle of light from the refrigerator. She’s
as confused as I am as to why we’re up.
When I’m done, go back to the bedroom
and see my sleeping girlfriend
with one leg out and her mouth open.
I imagine her sleeping alone. I imagine
I do not exist anymore. Lower myself into
my now cold side of the bed. The ceiling fan
roars down at us like the blade of a guillotine.
The smoke alarm’s test light flashes
green as is expected. I replay the argument
we had about hotels. Rehearse it for a follow up.
In blows the night—strangely indifferent.
Cooler than the previous week. “Broke”
as they say about the heat. The room also
seems larger in the dark, a large purple box, which is
I’m not sure how it should be. Shouldn’t it be
smaller, cozier? The cat slinks under the bed.
We’ve got ants. Cold cuts in the car still.
I’ll have to throw them out. Saw a pigeon
get run over by a bicycle. It seemed almost impossible.
The man on the bike wearing a red
backwards baseball cap that simply read, “shit”
in white letters.
through the window in my bathroom
when the down the hall neighbor
turns hers on.
Each of our windows look out into
this shaft between apartments
with a skylight at the top. I don’t know what else
is in there. I don’t know who built it.
The glass is not clean. It’s textured
so all you see through there is light or darkness.
I’ve seen that light go on
many times in fact when I did not expect
a light to go on at all.
One night I wake up and the clock says
four thirty-four. I go to the kitchen for
a drink of water. The cat emerges from
somewhere unknown and greets me.
Stands in the orange
triangle of light from the refrigerator. She’s
as confused as I am as to why we’re up.
When I’m done, go back to the bedroom
and see my sleeping girlfriend
with one leg out and her mouth open.
I imagine her sleeping alone. I imagine
I do not exist anymore. Lower myself into
my now cold side of the bed. The ceiling fan
roars down at us like the blade of a guillotine.
The smoke alarm’s test light flashes
green as is expected. I replay the argument
we had about hotels. Rehearse it for a follow up.
In blows the night—strangely indifferent.
Cooler than the previous week. “Broke”
as they say about the heat. The room also
seems larger in the dark, a large purple box, which is
I’m not sure how it should be. Shouldn’t it be
smaller, cozier? The cat slinks under the bed.
We’ve got ants. Cold cuts in the car still.
I’ll have to throw them out. Saw a pigeon
get run over by a bicycle. It seemed almost impossible.
The man on the bike wearing a red
backwards baseball cap that simply read, “shit”
in white letters.
8.22.2008
Thoughts in a Cafeteria
I.
Maybe it’s that
the one
who does the killing
keeps you alive
in the
meantime.
A nurse. A glad, pale nurse
you never see again.
There is no killer
without that
killer
patting your heart
to keep it beating
in
the night; without
that killer waving hello or massaging
your troubled brain.
Blessing you
with
hands
made out of grass.
You are taught lessons
in the heat of summer. These
lessons
are like baths of
cool water:
On your lifespan, your
need to
love and be loved, how to spell it,
how
to hold on to it.
II.
Then there are the faces
in the glass
reading
books or magazines,
waiting on busses, pushing elevator
buttons
and strollers, damning
their own children for fictitious crimes.
Violent men and desperate women.
The lonely and
the
out-of-time.
There are the folks who read the paper
out loud to hear some
voice
of reason.
There are those with their arms in slings
waiting alone
in
the dark to heal. With prescriptions,
essays on hell, the best way
to care
for an orchid. Listening
to tiny choruses
gracing
miniscule graves.
Ants in the cracks of diamonds,
cigarettes
in the hands of
unemployed
angels.
III.
Feed and wait.
Breathe in and wait to breathe out.
Marry and wait. Pray in
flea voices
over ten dollar breakfasts
and wait.
Moving down the line
with trays of grapefruit, oranges,
yogurt, breakfast pastries. The scent
of suspicion; they are
missing
in their own minds.
IV.
The executioner leans
on the lever.
He is a retired bookie
with an
owl heart and dysentery.
His own burial plot is wider
than ours.
Full of his nameless
predecessors. Their birthdays
are
our birthdays, their deaths
tell
the future in messages
of stones.
And there is no cure.
There is no cure for the body
you’ve been given. The
mind and spirit.
There is only the sun’s radiation as it bids you good morning,
the close hum of
decrepit
bones, the insignias
of
lost men. White-
faced, blue-eyed, whiskered
and
shaking
in front of the shaving
mirror.
Glowing partially in their own eyes, and partially
in a new time, a new fatherhood, new
action. We all have them,
every one of them
inside
of us more than halfway flickering.
Believing someone good was supposed to be waiting, that someone
took us from
our real homes. We must have been
kidnapped.
V.
The cemetery grows hair
in between the slabs. The cold beds.
Roots grow
into our cellars and
carry our bones
on
even deeper. Further
down. Disassemble
them and pound
them
underneath us,
underneath our land
like
joyous drums.
Maybe it’s that
the one
who does the killing
keeps you alive
in the
meantime.
A nurse. A glad, pale nurse
you never see again.
There is no killer
without that
killer
patting your heart
to keep it beating
in
the night; without
that killer waving hello or massaging
your troubled brain.
Blessing you
with
hands
made out of grass.
You are taught lessons
in the heat of summer. These
lessons
are like baths of
cool water:
On your lifespan, your
need to
love and be loved, how to spell it,
how
to hold on to it.
II.
Then there are the faces
in the glass
reading
books or magazines,
waiting on busses, pushing elevator
buttons
and strollers, damning
their own children for fictitious crimes.
Violent men and desperate women.
The lonely and
the
out-of-time.
There are the folks who read the paper
out loud to hear some
voice
of reason.
There are those with their arms in slings
waiting alone
in
the dark to heal. With prescriptions,
essays on hell, the best way
to care
for an orchid. Listening
to tiny choruses
gracing
miniscule graves.
Ants in the cracks of diamonds,
cigarettes
in the hands of
unemployed
angels.
III.
Feed and wait.
Breathe in and wait to breathe out.
Marry and wait. Pray in
flea voices
over ten dollar breakfasts
and wait.
Moving down the line
with trays of grapefruit, oranges,
yogurt, breakfast pastries. The scent
of suspicion; they are
missing
in their own minds.
IV.
The executioner leans
on the lever.
He is a retired bookie
with an
owl heart and dysentery.
His own burial plot is wider
than ours.
Full of his nameless
predecessors. Their birthdays
are
our birthdays, their deaths
tell
the future in messages
of stones.
And there is no cure.
There is no cure for the body
you’ve been given. The
mind and spirit.
There is only the sun’s radiation as it bids you good morning,
the close hum of
decrepit
bones, the insignias
of
lost men. White-
faced, blue-eyed, whiskered
and
shaking
in front of the shaving
mirror.
Glowing partially in their own eyes, and partially
in a new time, a new fatherhood, new
action. We all have them,
every one of them
inside
of us more than halfway flickering.
Believing someone good was supposed to be waiting, that someone
took us from
our real homes. We must have been
kidnapped.
V.
The cemetery grows hair
in between the slabs. The cold beds.
Roots grow
into our cellars and
carry our bones
on
even deeper. Further
down. Disassemble
them and pound
them
underneath us,
underneath our land
like
joyous drums.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
