some are already gone by the time
they’re seen.
The bellows of September
will be blowing the
smell off the glowing water –
it’s a scent that will tell me where
my childhood went.
Sometimes, not
even memories are enough, I think.
There will be a
werewolf moon on my right,
the jagged skyline on my left –
I’m afraid that if I would spin,
I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.
September 13, 2011
Apple Splinter Linger
The green apple basket gathers dust on the top shelf
that’s held by little, rattled chains
against the aching wall –
I can hear the doctor’s shuffles upstairs,
his muffled limp from the war
echoes dull from up there on the second floor.
He walks down the steps, wearing his frown like a grin,
his cigar singed, its tobacco sneaking off in the wind
creeping in through the open window.
He stares into the wall behind me,
the painting on the wall caking with wear.
I don’t want to hear the sorry buried in his muddy eyes.
I turn to the window and see an apple tree stump
sitting in the yard. Two sticks lay nearby.
I can only think of drums.
We used to laugh away
the summer days from the branches,
but what happened?
Perhaps it has something to do with
the axe you keep beneath your bed,
a split hair away from your withered hands.
At the End of the Hall
Her name stood tall at the end of the hall
and I stood like a scarecrow, breathing leaves.
The carpet was the drowned blue of the sea,
its ends peeling, wrapping me in its shawl.
And as I stumbled, her
name crept down the hall,
whispering away – even when
I called out for it.
Yet, as sure as clocks spin and time flees,
I, some scarecrow,
row my feet through the hall.
And so I stumbled on,
my straw footprints
following behind me
as they sing hymns and played strings
to the heartbeat of my life’s song.
Although I’m now blind to your name,
I’ll still make my footprints sing.
As I shuffle on.
Atlas
And say my glory was I had such friends.
-William Butler Yeats
I.
Sometimes it feels like
I’m doing a hand stand,
heaving the world
on my shoulders while I’m
walking across the sky.
My shoulder blades are sharpened,
grinding on the rock.
Atlas, am I?
Atlas I am –
lifting the world like bricks
to rebuild your civilization with.
I’ll build it stronger than before, though –
I’ll make sure it won’t fall again.
However, all you ask for is a tower made
of toothpicks for you to scrape the sky with.
You want to poke a hole in the evening
sky, you want to lie in the fields
and see the sun peer through
the midnight’s torn curtains.
I wonder if I should birth
your civilization again.
II.
I walked through barren orchards,
wincing through the thicket.
The prickly things are
singing red notes for my skin.
But I ignore them, plunging
deeper into the orchard.
I should torch these thorns, burning
the horns on the vines to ash.
But how would I catch my breath
when I’m burning the orchard down?
And still I hold the world up with my hands,
the rocky shores of New England
scarring at my thumb.
I wonder: if I were trip and fall,
could I catch the World
before I drop the ball?
Nervous at the thought, my hand
digs a little deeper,
clawing out new canyons
in the Balkans.
But the world is no
longer itself –
it’s now a basketball
suffocated between my fingers
as a younger me lingers in
the moment, seeing
the hoop and knowing
he’s only hoping to make it in.
As the ball clicks hollow against
the rim, everyone on the court
chuckles – all except for you.
In that moment, the World
shrank to the size of the
awkward lady with taped glasses
squeezed tight against her nose –
she was you.
III.
True, this world’s grown up
in size but not in mind –
just a babbling man cooing,
curled up in a crib
that’s been too small
for some decades now.
But keep this vow: that
you will trust this
Atlas inside me.
Because although the world
is bigger than I am,
my hands won’t quiver,
even as I shiver,
drowning in time’s
tiny falling sands.
These are the things
we always know of
but never understand.
See, I’m no man –
I’m a being,
being made of strong bones
and nerve to hold fast against
this turning tide.
But mention this
to no one though –
rumors move fast
like fire through dry grass.
IV.
I stare closer at the world,
my eye now a lazy moon.
But I’m looking carefully,
not wishing to miss any
hint of what I think
is a sign that the human spirit
is still alive, that its heart is still
beating rhymes into
the drums of our time.
This human conscience grows heavy.
Our sighs become more frequent,
varying between weary and something
defined only as very…exhausted.
Yet still this world spins,
driving our spirit nauseous.
And so I knead the globe with
my fingers, booming with
pleas in hopes that one
good soul still hears me.
Yet my voice goes over their heads.
They must be too
short to catch the rolling
waves of sound.
But though you are a few inches
shorter than most, you were still
somehow tall enough to hear it.
Autumn Burning
Autumn’s burning down
in lipstick reds and bronzer
yellows. The pedestrians
hurrying through with workday
feet cream the leaves
into mascara colors –
some of the specks
of spectrum even darker.
The trees used to chuckle
in the August gusts
with their harvest
greens, the bendy leaves
rubbing against each
other for warmth they
didn’t need. The
&
nbsp; leaves were fabric and
the fabric evening dresses,
ready and waiting for
those latenight cocktail messes.
Now all that’s left
is wrinkled bark, a shock
like your morning look
in the mirror,
a glance that tells
you more than what
you need to know:
that the hushwhite
winter’s coming for us all.
October 24, 2010
Autumn Mornings Pouring Through My Window
Laying on my side,
I can see the moon’s reflection
playing on the water – the moon,
her reflection a pair of eyes
looking down at the Earth, its daughter.
I say let the world dream. It will only
last the night anyway. Many days,
all I ask for is an autumn morning
pouring through my window – a
river of leaves lingering as they make
their way past the doorstep.
And still the Earth’s asleep – the
Sun shakes his gift to hear what’s
beneath the seablue and icecream wrapping-paper.
Yet, still the Earth sleeps, a flaw against
a time that’s bending and a life
that’s moving and a Sun that brings
out the rainbow in the humans.
But as night falls again and the moon
bounces as a marble on the waves,
the world has yet to wake –
and the silence tore holes through
our ear drums.
Baptized Beneath Thunderstorms
You were always afraid the sun would never shine again.
I would always say calmly, “No, see? That’s just a cloud passing by.
Don’t worry; the sun always trumpets in the end.”
You always said, “No! The floods will come and down the wicked men.
That is what my father says. He would never tell a lie.
He says the floods came once for Noah and they will knock again.
No matter what, his will will never be in vain.”
I would then always say, “Yet you never ask him why?”
“How dare you say father lies!” You’d always scream. “Of course these things will end!”
“All I want is some peace, and rain puts me to sleep. All you want is pain.
I’ll give your thoughts a nod, but I’ll only think of death after I die.
You’re always talking my salvation and salvation. But again,
until the last act runs, I’ll hug this life, enjoy this morning rain.”
“You still think my father lies?” You’ll always cry.
“I would never say that,” I would say. “But how does he know when the clock will end?”
And always when I asked that, the cloud melts away. The sunshine reigns again.
And I would always point this out. And still she would always scoff away my lies.
And so I was always never surprised that – even when the storms would end –
of everyone you alone would always still feel the rain.
Bedlam
I.
When I first met her, she told me her life story. She summed it up real nicely too with a “I don’t know what I’m going to do”. She shrugged her shoulders. I felt sorry for her. And that’s how things began.
II.
We went to the mall because her straitjacket was getting too small. She asked the cashier why the summer-sky blue jacket was made by the trembling fingers of Chinese slave laborers. The casher said “Relax – the slaves were paid well with American jobs.”
III.
She has a smile she can hide behind. It’s gorgeous. She lights up a room – even when she’s not in it. She leaves rolling blackouts in her wake. Flashlights with lots of batteries are recommended.
IV.
She tells me she hates everything. I ask her if she hates hate as well. She doesn’t know. She’s mad that I confused her. She’ll get over it – she hates holding grudges.
V.
She asks me to put bells on my shoes. I think she wants to keep tabs on me. She agrees. At least my shoes will have a job as being bellhops as I skip to the hotel where she waits for me.
Benediction for the Outside
I trust these hands shall never rust
through a flurry of April dust. As
an obscure writing hand once said,
April is indeed the cruelest month,
sadistic with its teeth, waking the
world up from a slumber numbered
in dreams – the only way we
should count things. Our hearts
once murmured that count without
a murmur to its beats.
I trust we will march through the
April, that we will still be those thumps
knocking into the dawn for summer.
I trust there will be big fish in the pond –
I’ve been meaning to learn how to walk
for ages. I trust that since the weak
learn to speak with kick and fist,
I will learn to talk.
I trust I’ll never be what I saw in the morning mirror.
I can never be the push against my pull –
the timid madness would rip me down
the center – antiseptic clean – an equator
pulled out of shape by the poles.
And I trust these watches, these clocks,
these seasons, these calendars, these
times will change as long as we can
change them at the registers.
Bevo
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.”
-Sylvia Plath
Bevo, bevi,
beva…be vamos,
be light, be
truth even though
the old rocky hearts
won’t budge
anytime soon –
fray the shoelace’s gordian
eons in the making.
Be the dream sequence
meant for the sleeping –
against the sun’s rising,
against the clock’s chiming,
ringing in the afternoon –
be whatever you’re meant
to be, and I’ll be that too –
I’ll be you. Even if I don’t want to.
Birds Among the Leaves
Even in an autumn like
this one, the leaves never
really leave the trees.
Even if the night sticks
to the trees, a night darker
and colder than blackberries,
the face in the trunk
cracking from the leper frost,
the leaves still sit, perched
like birds on the worms
of branches. The leaves
even chirp, bouncing
on their legs of wires, their
electricity mistaken
in some cultures for magic.
But those leaves are
magic, buzzing and
crackling, showing the
rest of the world
how to stay warm, even during
the human winter months.
October 6, 2011
Black Bile
My spleen bleeds dirt that autumns
down and muds about my feet,
dreaming sleep into
me, the satisfaction of finish
so deep not even you
walking past me could be
my unravel. The rise thrives
around me like leeches,
soaking me down into the
heart’s far reaches.
Ah, so this is what sleep is,
the black fizzing at my eye
s,
a long sigh drying at my lips.
A smile teaches the bile
how to leave, flooding
like the Nile through
the barren grasses
and littered leaves that
should belong to some
lone lumberjack’s dreams…
and it’s so beautiful, it’s
hard to remember that
too much black bile lost
becomes a sleep that’s
hard for me to wake from.
Blueberry Magnet
You’re a blueberry magnet
tangled in the branches, drawing the
world in like a portrait while you’re
bursting like a planet in the orchard.
Your stomach never goes full on the
empty air – it fills you like a balloon.
All your hot air makes you rise so
now you’re a moon. Now you see the
stars and you’re hissing them in until you
light like the sun and sink because you’re
as heavy as one.
Exit stage left, the scene’s all done.
February 18, 2010
Bo
One by one, they lost their voices;
each a record shattered across
the floor, never to play their
history lessons again. Stranded
in the Andaman Islands, they
starved their numbers into
a dwindle, time rubbing sand
into their glassy throats,
scratching the windows
until no song could
look through.
And although I’m sure their
language is saved to a book,
I’m also sure there will
be no one at the bookstore
wanting to pick it up.
Books We Forgot to Write Down
You could take this book to the funeral
pyre, melting the papyrus down into
a liquid which can make the enflamed
waves leap higher. Yet, when the fire settles,
I can still pick up a stick and scribble a story
out of those colding ashes.