March 28, 2010
I’ve Forgotten What You Look Like
I’ve forgotten what you look like –
I’ve forgotten what you sound like,
leading me to think your talk and
sunsets in the mountains sound alike,
sunsets that wisp away like sand
in the ocean, the colors all crammed
into the pot atop the iron stove.
I doubt it’s something you’ll ever understand.
I like to think you look like a deep apple grove,
that deep green sea where we once dove
for apples before the winter called.
Or that you look like the day we drove
until the car’s engine stalled
and – until help came – we crawled
up to the top of a hill
and saw our world small and sprawled
like toy cars on the basement stairs.
Jacob Marley’s Moment of Silence
This silence speaks a lake’s rush
to me. Sometimes I feel
it all should pulse out like
a fervent jet engine – where
all of the mousy small talk
is finally deafened. The
silence is itchy,
scratching lessons in the
chalkboard on the cold brick wall.
I’m just some student – too glossy
with that coffeehouse fatigue –
too groaning to take some lecture
home with me. And when the silence
eyes me, it bedlam buckles with
chuckles, jotting me down as just
some man who runs with the
sunset to escape his shadows –
shadows which long ago
stopped growing by the inch –
now instead they flow by the mile.
October 18, 2010
James Welsh
James Welsh is a sentence fragment.
A fragment that forgot its meaning.
Its purpose.
James writes. But what for?
A mere period holds him at arm’s
length from answers.
What would the object, the purpose be?
Linguists think it’s a lost love, others think it’s glory.
And others are not sure if they want to be sure at all.
They just know that if he forgot the period,
the two sentences would be sewn back at the hip.
And all would be right with the world.
But what would be the point
of him finding what his poems sore for?
An answer ends the puzzle.
Nothing less or more.
Perhaps if he were to use an ellipsis…
yes, that final piece of the jigsaw puzzle
“accidentally” thrown out with the trash –
then that will keep him searching,
the periods standing in for footprints
that follow him in the desert’s sands…
Judgment of Paris
I have these muses crowding me in,
Shouting my thoughts into a thick quiet
As I try to riot with a deflated ballpoint pen.
Just One More
The bride was a porcelain doll, ready to break
hard into little shards of tears at the touch
of a clumsy hand. Not to say the groom was a
soldier at all – he was a pillar swaying in the breeze
of earthquakes. He shook off his shaking hands
as nothing more than the shame from
being in front of people.
The roses – all the roses – were wilting
down the minutes to the ritual. The ritual
of chants, of vows, and a kiss to seal
the deal from going stale. Then comes
the dancing, all the feet working out
their tremors as the bass taps out
a 4/4 on the speakers.
Just one more drink and then I’m good.
Just one more drink and then I’m good.
Then comes the limo drive for
the newlyweds, the car’s
colors already bled and
lost to the jet nighttime.
For the rest of us – those cab
rides home come,
our woozy feet still
shivering that 4/4 rhyme.
LaGuardia
Can’t tell if the jetplane’s the wind now.
Can’t tell if the wind’s the jetplane.
Maybe the wind’s mechanical.
Maybe the engine is what’s curling our hair.
We could look out the window, prove who’s right.
But really, I just love the fact
that the jet and wind are singing in the same choir,
their throats burning with that same gasoline fire.
November 10, 2010
Lighthouse at the Garden’s Edge
I knew windy afternoons would be here
long before the days could stretch
their arms inside that blinding yawn.
I could hear the rumbles in the rocky hills
spilling around the town like waves
around a lighthouse world. Thirty years ago,
I would have written it off as the mountain trolls
bowling, roaring over a strike that knocked down
half of the trees in the valley.
Even knowing, I’m still left out here holding
on to Sylvia Plath with all my heart,
trying to keep her bell jar from slipping,
wishing itself into shooting stars of glass shards
the wind would shuffle through my backyard.
The afternoon pushes hard, making the
book’s pages bite down angry on my fingers.
I’m angry – I bite back.
The wind isn’t there, yet still
it dizzies me on my hammock –
I look up from the book to see the garden
just beyond my feet sway back and forth,
the green now algae warming up
a coarse storm sea.
I call me sailor.
I hang on, my keys
clanging like anchors,
dancing on the edge of my jean’s pocket,
impatient with its scratching just like a pencil.
Like Mosquitoes
If I went deaf, I wouldn’t miss this,
how the sounds get thrown
into the stew until they brown into a
hiss, the snake’s lisp, the dishwasher’s fritz.
But you aren’t this and this isn’t you.
Your song is more than taking a violin
bow to your strings, playing the vocal
cords down to the last measure.
You’re no condition, an inscription
of voice written down – how ironic
that that’s how the scholars
will talk about it one day soon.
February 18, 2010
Lions and Tigers
He’s the lion, and I’m the tiger –
each of our hearts burnt clean
by fire leaping off the Irish Sea –
from his ashes, smoke rose and twisted,
folding into forms of soldiers standing
shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to fight at
the general’s shouted orders.
But see, he always lazed about, yawning
to show off daggered teeth that
wreathed the edges of his mouth. Always
standing at attention, never marching
with a purpose – a snarling lion wrapped
in chains at the circus while the
audience cheers and points at him
all dressed up in his Easter Sunday war paints.
From my ashes, the shadows f
ollowed,
each a past I couldn’t run from
even if I tried. I dress myself in those
spirits – you will never hear my footsteps
when I wear deaths of loved ones as my shoes.
Their deaths make up my soles.
Their deaths make up my soul.
They pull me forward
through the forest as I stab
the air with pencils, writing
thoughts that could crush
anvils if they want. I am the tiger –
I stay hidden even against the fire.
Yet I make worlds happen – I create
actions as I please. I write
and make things right and
make wrongs gone in the
heat of night, yet all you hear
is a rustle of leaves.
Living under the Graveyard
After a hard day’s work
of looking at a lake, alchemy
seemed easy. We kettled
up some of the lake
water and hummed and watched
it boil. We made a tea’s weight
in gold. And then, more than
the steam from the kettles in
the breeze, we settled in the ease.
While she stirred her sharktooth
sugar in her tea, I stirred the fire
awake with a branch. When I did
this, I carved out whole herds
of something wonderful, the smoke
seeming to gallop instead of floating
upwards. I watched the incense press
through that orchard of midnight
over us, between the thick branches
of dark and into a sky of light.
Don’t you remember earlier in the
night, when we were at the lake, when
I was skipping stones against the
struggling waves? We watched
as that whole mirror of stars
shattered with every skip, with
such a loud noise for such a small stone.
And she said, like she always said,
that we lived under a graveyard. I asked
her how, like I always did, and she pointed
upwards, at a fool’s golden sky.
What she said was right – the Ancients
buried their foxes and bears and wolves
and lions in that same speckled night
thousands of years ago. And some nights,
when the wind gushes, the dark soil
in the sky blows away, and those scattered
bones shine through like day.
Constellations may have been something else
before, but now they’re only skeletons. Sometimes,
the remains are all that remain.
But here’s to hoping she is wrong.
Here’s to a night like a guitar of stars,
where strings of comets are being tuned,
where constellations are songs groomed and waiting,
with just barely enough patience
until they’re played and come alive.
March 21, 2012
Lost the Red in Her Lips
She lost the red in her lips years
ago. I mean, she’s still alive
but now she’s suffocated beneath
a moss of paperwork –
the crows are gathered on the
windowsill, their shrill, eager
calls remind her that someone,
after all this time, is still paying
attention to her, but this does
nothing for her wince.
I don’t know why she makes
me fall down for the first
time in years. I never met her
before, don’t even know
her name, but she could be a mother,
a sister, a cousin – she was
at least someone’s daughter –
I mean, after all, our family tree
grew from just one seed
so I guess that could mean that
a stranger and a loved one are the same,
but still we ignore her just because
we don’t share names like ice cream cones.
Love is like a Cliché
Love is like a cliché,
the way it sways like
the sizzled sun in May,
like flowers drizzled
with drips of rain,
like dusty, old men puzzled
by the game of chess in
the park, the black knight
having affairs with his
rusty queen, asking politely
if she wouldn’t mind
leaving early the next morning.
Love is like a cliché –
no, wait…a cliché is like love
composed of one quarter
note and rests that
dance on endlessly
even though the music’s
stopped and the band’s
left – a cliché is like
love made up of single
glances and…well, that’s it –
a single glance, maybe a
“Pardon me” or “Excuse me”
then it’s back to walking down
the street. Don’t bother with
looking back, because she’s
already turned away.
Loves Whistles Nighttime
If you’d only
give me a chance,
I’ll love you
for the way
you never shut up – no wait,
hear me out. Because
nothing is more thrilling
than hearing you
talk about your
day until the sun
rises. And I’ll love
you for the way
you always lose focus
like my cheap
camera does,
because I love
making guesswork
out of a hazed,
glazed fog.
I’ll love you for
the way
you drink yourself drunk,
pump rum
because I’ve
never
had a good
challenge that I’ve run from –
so give me a
chance to love you
the way the
desperate loves the fool.
Man with a Cigarette
You seem to open
your mouth only
to smoke. That said,
the way you
hold that cigarette –
lazy, but still trying
to make a point –
I find myself listening.
Or perhaps it’s a
whisper,
beckoning,
calling me closer like a
fly to a light-bulb
that’s buzzing even louder.
I’m not sure if I can
trust a man like you,
though, a man whose
face is painted
by the light of the
fireplace, a man who’s
half-light, half-shadow,
a schizophrenic
ornament in this house, pulsing
and shriveling with
every flick of the flames.
August 25, 2011
Marinha Perto de Marselha
Based off the painting Monticelli’s “Marinha Perto de Marselha”
It looks like someone
once tried scrubbing the
town with a cloudy eraser,
mixing the professors –
stitched together with elbow patches –
with the growth of drunks
spilling from the pubs. The
afternoon sun wakes them all
up, even deeper than coffee.
The daylight’s white against the
yawning water sprayed
on the dock. The ancient
boards don’t creak, but they
talk in sighs that whisper
ages. There’s one
lone boat spun like a top offshore,
the sailors flipping the pages
in the sails, reading the tales
of a future like past, where
nobody’s risen higher than the
tallest mast of the biggest
boat in town. The skyscrapers
drift in the harbor, waiting.
There’s the occasional soul
who wanders like lost geese –
they sail through the
harbor, dot themselves
into the horizon – mixed
like oil colors with
the story of distant clouds.
Their boats always loop back at night
as shooting stars, sailing straight
home through sky like kites with tails
between their legs.
April 26, 2010
Mattress Light
The spotlights are lazy arms, painting
the long swatches of stars in the
crow-drenched colors of the attic,
the paintdrops falling slow enough for us
to wish our dreams on.
This is the way that paint should
dry – the lines already dust by
the time we seem them cross
the rust of metal November
sunsets, strong like ancient
pipes that line the walls like
grid. Here’s to hoping for that Tuesday
deep in the Madridian summer
where the sun builds cityscape shadows
like Mandarin, the lines coming alive,
dancing in the slightest wind the
way some spiderweb might.
I get lost in light more than in night
colors (the night hugs like mother – the light
scatters confetti, simply disappearing). Back
to spotlights dripped in a deepheart haze,
which I dip my eyesight in, wetting
the edges of the iris until all I see is
mattress, a magic that I earn a
hard day’s pay to be trapped in.