Poetry
To me, poetry is far more than words. Words, however, are a way to express it. I like to think about the nature and spirit of Inspiration (which you may see referenced as a Nightingale) and I abhor superficial, pointless description. Big words do not equal beautiful ones.
You can see a running, updated, “subscribable” collection HERE.
I had such words,
Such shiny, lovely words
Spinning webs about one another,
Embracing what each other had to say,
Shaking hands and working out
The best ways to speak
The things most worth speaking.
But shiny words apparently
Resemble hermit crabs
With painted shells and
Saturated sponges
And once-a-week cleaned cages,
That retreat deep inside themselves
When approached with a
Gentle finger.
There were shelves, I tell you,
Shelves of them.
Racks upon racks
Brown and blonde and black and
Colors not of nature;
Plastic parts,
Hidden hearts,
Secrets in slow-release,
Hidden away in places
Only time can reveal;
and they all looked the same.
None with shimmery eyes
That would play an ocean song
If you were to hold an ear to them.
None with joy for hands.
None with warmth for arms
And a croon to caress
A salty soul to sleep.
I had no interest in the shelves on shelves,
The racks upon racks,
Those in love only
With the colors they shone -
They come with gift receipts,
And are worth returning.
This other, though,
That is another story entirely.
There is a cat in my garage.
I could not coax it out with milk
or fear
or love
or indifference,
and now every sound I hear
in the house
is that cat
causing a ruckus
atop China cabinets or
in the ice maker or
creeping into my doorway
to make sure I’m not looking
so that the cat uprising can ascend the stair
and I won’t see them.
I’ve written thousands of sentences today.
Short, Palahnuik sentences
which punch in the face
and leave bloody lips
and rip away belief
from stubborn, clenched fingers.
Long, Faulkner sentences
which say in fifty words
what would suffice with five,
and remind that sometimes
the ambling swing
of dusty tavern floors
and the spacious, flowing rhythm
of lengthy, heavy prose
says more than the mere
letters comprising them.
And each are far more beautiful
than a snapshot of them
could be.
we ran down to the river
in the dead of night
surrounded by -
no, overwhelmed by -
what we hoped would be
a troupe of glistening
butterflies -
and expectation for the
tingly ecstasy of the
cold water lapping at our
curling toes.
we ran down to the river
over red, trampled signs
we didn’t pause to read.
over broken twigs
from weary pines
and already-cut underbrush
from those that preceded
us.
the ache for that river consumes.
we ran down to the river
with plans to quell
the swelling ache
for the water
and took no time
to heed the weeping,
breaking hearts discarded
by those who came
already.
we ran down to the river
in the dead of night
and walked back
empty
when we found it quite dry.
And still we ache for the
cool embrace of the
water as we cry.
There were two ponds in the woods:
One with special scum
That lit on fire
When it stormed,
One with nymphs inside
That whispered wise
To passersby.
I found both
To be equally
Wonderful
Sometimes You sound to me
like silence
to disappear into,
and sometimes
like the thrum of synchronizing heartbeats
faster
until the first strum of a chord,
and sometimes
like nothing, because that’s what I
want to hear the most.
Sometimes You say to me
between struggles for melodies
to stop and listen,
And sometimes you shake me
from complacency
like thunder from a blue sky.
Because sometimes
to make a wave,
I must thrash,
And sometimes
to sleep,
breathe.
Remember when the coolest thing
you could imagine
was a rocket ship
and a perfect day was Pokemon Snap
in the basement
after jumping in puddles
in the pouring rain
and family was your rock
and you were who you were
even when nobody was watching?
Before cigarettes and lies and
skipping class to get high
and “one last time before I’m done,
I swear”;
When swingset marriages were
more intimate than we have
made sex to be.
When you could be people -
not black and white
or boys and girls
or gay and straight;
When you talked with God
like He was there
instead of praying that He is;
When the world made more sense
than it did when you started to
figure it out;
Before the sadness
of the realization
of how far we have fallen.
I’ve been sitting here at this desk
For hours now.
Pounding the week into a pulp
With Call of Duty
and Wikipedia
But somehow it is still Tuesday.
Four hours, now
That I look at the clock.
I could have sworn
I’ve been here for eternity.
seven shots in,
still no story.
no bus number,
no ticket stub,
no barstool companion
to celebrate arrival
after a long journey.
scratches fingernails
through scalp,
combing long hair.
taps fingers on counter,
pushes shot glass up,
downs it without grimacing
(who shoots maker’s mark?),
walks straight line
to my booth.
surely
she has seen
my eyes
burning her
with questions.
and all she says is,
“you rang?”
i had the feeling
she was here
for me.
She doesn’t see me watching, I know.
Glassy eyes in straight lines fixed ahead,
set on a construction site
behind her.
A glow, red peppermint stripes
on folded, shaking hands,
all I can see from here.
To the left, under light
thrown from frosty, festive bulbs
quaintly installed on our street,
open car door and
mmm-pah-pah mmm-pah-pah:
a waltz about banderas or orgullo
or amor or something.
a boy and a girl:
he smokes, she twirls,
their shadows dance green.
Before I know it,
I am a tide curtseying to this
splendid winter moon,
headlong inside the rhythm.
During daytime, around dinner,
I’ve seen them defend their door
from ding-dong-ditchers
who snicker
and attack with renewed laughter
and an onslaught of giggles in foreign tongues.
The brave tenets
fire broomstick machine guns,
and the kids play dead in the street
the way their parents did
after tequila
celebrating the Cinco.
But tonight, against the drawn shade,
the flickering silhouette
of sleep-embrace
from the television screen.
Her head in that crook
where arm becomes shoulder,
still, breathing, asleep.
From this porch I see
respiration,
relaxation.
Tidal ebb and flow
drift me ashore,
pulling me gently to
heavy-
lidded
forget.
The lady,
a statue in her candy-cane doorway,
suppresses a shiver,
a sigh, and waits
in the foggy breath
of the road.
Jarring.
the sounds of the dancer and her boy,
and mmm-pah-pah,
and banter,
gave way to a jazz-singer’s vibrato
like amber.
The girl stopped her dancing,
the sleeper her slumber,
this watcher, his synchronization
with shadowed figures
on the shade of a window.
hermosa, the dancer breathed.
If I weren’t at home
I’d be sick for it.
The girl and her boy then
alone together
as they waltzed inside.
The sleeper and her shoulder also,
as the television no longer painted
on the window shade.
And the singer and I
as we sat
in the light thrown
from the headlights of a van.
of all the cunning tricks
the devil could have played:
cunning licks
on rusting guitar strings.
why should I be doomed to never find
another quite so beautiful as you?
why, in singularity, do you laugh
and tease my hair
and marvel with me across at
a winding, wooden stair?
among all that I have known
and will upon their time know soon,
why must all fall short of you?
your timeless eyes, that, to my mortal ones
donate mist, that into my windows
pour light, that whisper calm through
thrashing, wild storms,
speak more than plastic faces,
than painted, plastic faces
can, even while channelling
or reciting
or lying
of all the cunning tricks
the devil could have played:
make them want to lie
even to a mirror.
could the weariness
not be conquered
by simplicity?
and would the burthen
flee beside
your immortality?
That was before I met her
for brunch, when I bought our coffee
with a borrowed dollar,
before we brought out the snakes
(so to speak),
before dancing was more than dancing,
but still, sometimes, yes was yes.
before breath whispered
across necks
to curling, delighted toes
stunk.
For brunch, when I bought our coffee
with a borrowed dollar,
was when I said it
and she it back.
And we sat for a moment
in the moment.
And tongues became words alive,
and words lies,
and lies like fire to warm feet,
at the foot of the bed.
With a borrowed dollar
I was bought.
Before we brought out the snakes
(so to speak)
we would lie differently
together
to others.
And at one point perhaps
I love you
didn’t mean
say it back
but that was before I met her
for brunch.
To days like this
when no longer are we specks
on separate snowy peaks
where shouted echoes sound like
what strangers say in passing.
Swallow to remember, sweet muse.
Burns, don’t it?
and my heart beats well again.
Two days were unexpectedly at hand,
worth four penciled
on a calendar
on a wall,
when we sipped quietly on scalding beverages
and you padded notebook with beauty.
We promised to last
and at last, I don’t know which of us disappeared.
Today’s too desolate
with words of wondering
just what I have become:
stuttering, a pile of spilled somethings,
stained verse set a-freeze,
mugs atop a stack of discarded thought,
a mess of wasted words.
Too dazed to hear your song at the window,
to feel you sneak back
beside me in the sheets,
to ask in what still corner
you crept
to appear often enough in foggy dreams
along the banks of rippling streams
to make me feel
somehow
constantly alone.
Imagine for a second with me
That instead of owning televisions
we owned books
and instead of owning mirrors
we owned our souls
and instead of pinching excess skin
in the quiet dread of our bedrooms
we smiled at strangers
and instead of listening to that small voice
that loves so much to tell us that we cannot
we simply did
and that all of the energy we devote to painting ourselves
we focused on creating something we could be proud of
and tell me how beautiful a place that would be
and realize that all that keeps it from us is ourselves.
I.
Into my brain, like little shards of glass,
the placid white shoots pulsing blasts
of pain. My eyes are far too sensitive
to see them say that here I”ll start to live,
for the first time, free of the headache eating
my soul, my heart, my thought, my plagued, defeated
skull. They tell me, “Trust the hospital
to take away the throbbing bullet’s kiss.”
I took the pills, I drank my fill,
but they do not make medicine for this.
II.
Immobilized by leather limb restraints
atop the sterile bed (beneath my quaint,
clean linen gown), they shot into my veins
a liquid they said healed my body’s pain
and dulled my mind to free it from the things
about which I complained more than the ringing
in my ears from shell-shock. It started softly,
made its way beneath my troubled thought;
it trickled slow like brewing coffee
and gently quelled the spreading, ravenous rot.
III.
For just a moment I beheld with fear
the curtain circling my bed draw nearer
than it had been before. But they told me:
“From isolation comes the remedy
you seek. In darkness wait the yawns before
the sleep.” And soft, the darkness then implored
my eyes to shut. They punctured muscle deep,
their needles pumping in manufactured mirth,
and when I woke from embryotic sleep,
the room was wet with joy from childbirth.
In darkness lies discarded thoughts misled
From less enlightened moments; Underground,
I’ve heard, is where the muddy, tepid, brown
River stands still; they lie and there are bled:
No resurrection, no reuse. Instead
A sordid porcine slop is how it’s crowned -
To be consumed again by wretched hounds
Of mud. To be forgotten, ever dead.
And then – the thing which led to my dismay,
As though the thoughts I had came bounding back
Alight with joy, beaming, even, their lack
Only distance – the words I threw away
Dazzled me with genius, the sad kind
That makes one cry “if only those were mine!”
She raised up her hand and said to the class:
“I don’t shower because I don’t conform
to the oppressive standards imposed
on women from men about what makes them
beautiful.”
I told her I agreed and that her rights
should be upheld and that nobody should
care about her smell, for beauty is more.
“But,” I said, “you also have the right to
be walking across the street, taking full
advantage of right-of-way, holding up
traffic for your conversation on the
phone,” and nobody would mourn her getting
hit.
An Encounter With The Dream-Maker
From the midst of restless sleeping
came dark, after the light from
behind my closed, dreaming eyes,
revealing to my being
the stark, wrenching awareness
of a man in the corner.
Though I looked upon him not,
his gaunt and stubbly visage
stared blankly at me. I wished
to move, to diffuse the thought
that now plagued my consciousness:
this paralyzing stupor.
His eyes then enraptured mine.
They hypnotized, in a sense,
reminded of innocence,
lulling, inviting, benign.
The trance inevitable,
I resumed in peaceful slumber.
A Conversation With Poetry Herself
Well come back in then and we’ll talk and eat
And drink. Though wine is scarce today, I may
Have but a few drops left, which are for thee.
For what is sacrifice without a prayer,
A conversation ‘twixt two ideal beings,
One wronged and right, the other only staring
Across, with teary eyes, the gaping hole.
Though I do not posses the milk of Paradise
Nor flashing, glittering eyes and floating hair,
Because I stare ‘neath bowers ripe with lime
Some fruit of thought should burst from inside, where
The Lark, dear Muse, is gone from me. Gone,
(I do not know if she was ever mine)
Still deep within I hear her lack of song.
Napkin Sketches on a Bathroom Break
The chime of entrance from the door
And the following footsteps
Towards the occupied booth.
Her name, again, as he
Stood, still stuttering
His hello.
Disbelief at the low cost of a cup
Two sugars.
Black for him,
One after another until early tomorrow,
For tricky, treacherous time
stood still, stuttering
Rudely to 3:30.
“Perhaps one more,”
and then a cliche and
What should have been forced laughter
But instead was a smile. His hand was,
After Nature whispered and then she
Stood, still, stuttering
Not with ink.
Aporia in the Case of the Moral Father
The velvet, red cloth on Mahogany
Caressing the ends of his fingertips
Hands in tight fists clenching around the arm
Sometimes, to stop the tingling needles
Stomps his feet
Beats the chair
And returns to his seat, resuming the
Thousand Church-yard Stare of one who’s seen too much.
Rank, overtaking in the air the smell
Of sweet, smoked pipe tobacco lingering
To remind whoever comes in the room
That there all visitors were welcome once
Mixes stench
Mixes fear
Makes the pleasant invitation background
To the horror of a strangled man
He wages war on absolute values
Behind the eyes that cannot even blink
Under the stare of tattered book covers
“We murder to dissect” a poet wrote
Was he right?
“Love your foe”
Say the Holy Books, further, “do not kill”
So what of when we murder to protect?
