ALL RESPONSES |
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You’re a small boat
In a large sea
A goat on a steep cliff
Your home a journey home
From brutal first light
To setting sun
After which
You remember nothing
Of your Self
Or of those who
Remember you
In lengthening lines
On a seaside patio
Asleep in sandy sheets
Sunburned skin
Numbed by wasabi
Saki and salt water
You set sail and float
From mainland to island
From ports into storms
That terrify,
Their tremendous
Breaking waves
Threaten you
With an absolute end
Where you begin again.
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There ought to be a word for the hug you never got from the person you adore...
I wish I could still hear the words of Neruda traveling in the air of your breath;
the passion that his poems never forgot,
the sounds of dreams imprinted in each step I took with you -
when flowers smelled like the desire to travel through your skin and water from the rain felt like dew on our early morning petals.
There ought to be a name for the distance filling the gap between two people with a lifetime of shared moments
There ought be a poem a person can write that erases that pain into oblivion. |
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A steel embrace locking out winter’s cold,
while only breath and friction melt ice and despair.
The weight of the world escapes but for a blink in time,
when lovers create a world all their own.
Fire burns with such wild intensity,
bonding elements and their dark matter as one.
The brilliant light that emerges is the life blood,
providing reason to be selfless, vigilant and brave.
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“How on God's earth can you possibly love a thing like me?”
(Joyce letter to Nora - December 6, 1909)
He takes up a new position at the bottom
of the bed, utterly and comfortably
without pillow or blanket
his countdown begins from seconds to sounds
that will draw her back from her solitude
He doesn’t mind her being so different
as to be distinctive until she wishes
for the impossible and blue and neverending
subtext of his tearing her apart until she’s no longer
whole |
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Really?
You are into this?
In this make-up and outfit,
These tights, this belt,
I don’t feel natural.
I don’t feel like a woman at all.
I feel like a Drag-Queen.
I mean really, what is the cosmetic difference between me and a Drag Queen?
And your kiss, OMG what a tongue!
I can hardly breathe and am certain your next move is to tune in Tokyo.
WEE-YOO Tune in Tokyo!
Everything about this moment is aggressive.
Forced.
Really Superman, let’s just admit it,
I am not into this.
And you are GAY!
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the embrace of iron
seals the present into the foreground
as Cherry blossoms wait
to burst their tiny hearts
the fair of passion seeks shelter
through the quiet night of winter
while immovable lovers
unwind the hearts of dead poets
the background
presses against the hourglass
behind the the warmth of lips
solitude leaves no footprints |
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I could slip into a soundless world of winter,
walk past darkened houses of night,
snow swirling around me,
pulling me down and in
till there is no me.
But love does not cede space:
it comes, in primary colors
love in relief, love is relief,
and I am swallowed by darkness
no more.
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This all happened back when
the railroad engines steamed
into the only roundhouse
between Chicago and Spooner,
became completely reversed
and left sated with freight
back when mother was warm
beside father, when winter
ice hung over eaves like dreams
held frozen in time and mother
would take bread from the oven,
her own private fortress
of solitude, flour dusted all
over our orange kitchen counter
Father would enter and kiss her
neck like chocolate, whisper
“please, walk with me back
to the bedroom, I need help
there, darling” and the loaves
would remain until later,
their smells the smells that hung
like moon dogs and sailors
would cry for on lonely winter
nights as they set off on journeys
into nameless oceans to nameless
Oriental countries where love
was as tight and as frozen
in time as glaciers of clear ice
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It's the yearning of yellow head to toe
that keeps me coming back. And the lost soles;
hidden expressions; but most of all that gentle white
covering unable to hide the written word. |
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In the newsroom, between them the intercourse of
modesty and reserve. This looks as worn as ratty
tan raincoats. Love, love ye Gods, they scream. Virile
has a raw certainty about it like filet mignon.
Had Superman stayed on Krypton all his embraces
would be encompassingly passionate, muscly,
swooningly close. On Krypton that would be normal;
you remember that planet blew itself up?
On planet earth love is toned down.
A kiss doesn’t leap tall buildings in a single
bound. (Still, still, my heart. Contain
the drumming inside the chest. Snare drumming.
And the trembling and rumbling of timpani.)
As Clark, Superman always holds back, reins
his heart in, ready to burst some days from
the slow pace of hum emotions. Some hours
feeling is everything. The Gesamt-embrace
reveals Clark’s myth-sized passion can’t be
mistaken for a boy’s who thinks he and his love
are the only two people on the planet (who matter).
And Superman’s, who knows he and his love
are the only two people on the planet who matter.
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I don’t know which superheroes you are.
It does not matter, as you tongue each other’s glide
Up into the stratosphere, forever—
Forever for a moment inside;
This is the moment at which you release me
To suck in some other’s breath.
This is the moment you release to me
To coddle, and hold, and bless. |
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a ballast of French bourbons
lay beyond the door
on the table that blocks the window
from opening
onto the rose garden
his hands hewn from lifting boulders
from the fields
weave through water
that’s cut through rock
longer than the seed that grew the thorns
has grown the cane
the new cuts smile brightly
as his body reflects back at him
then follows the water back down into the rock |
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Any thoughts on the last line most welcome
Cold Indifference
Breakfast
That warmest of meals
Cheap bacon shrinks in the pan
Eggs sunny side up at odds with the conflict hanging in the air
And you
Wearing your familiar cloak of cold indifference
The desire to reach out and touch you bleeds from my fingertips
Somewhere in the haze of last night’s angry words
A bitter truth stretches between us
Drawing the breath from our lungs
The make believe that once surrounded us gone
And that’s the thing about words
You can never really take them back
Pushing a smiling sausage below the eggs
You re-create the faces of our first night together
The muscles in your face relax
The laughter that has always bound us crosses the void
As our eyes meet, a recognition
We are laughing from memory
Both having lost the appetite for sharing
just the one sausage
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the most powerful man on the planet
but the kiss was empty
a planet that he vowed to protect
with life and limb though
he was never in any real danger
he served to protect fragility
as it was something he
could never have
but the puppy dog eyes of a world
in need of saving soon lost their luster,
the nostalgia for a snow globe
with countless cracks glued
together countless times
a domed existence he could not
be a part of, only piece it back together
again when it thrusts itself off his shelf
sits on his mantle like a hobby,
a pathetic infatuation
while he whittles away eternity,
a sombre reminder that he cannot die
the promise of an after-life,
the hope of a great beyond
is lost on him
it was with that kiss
he realized all of it was empty
and decided there was no more need
to waste his time
saving the world |
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There it is.
Time and place
Do not matter
Even if I feel like
A superhero
That kiss changes everything.
It becomes clear
How much I need
Contact…
Connection.
It strips away
All pretense.
I become human…
Vulnerable.
I want to touch her
And have her touch me.
Clothes come off.
I feel her skin
And she feels mine
The connection goes deeper.
We kiss
We stroke
We move against each other.
And then it is time.
We enter
And fuse.
Another world.
All molecules line up
To magnetic north.
Compasses become true again.
Direction clear.
We can return
To the world…
Clothed for our work.
Truly powered now
From within
Easily seeing the mission,
Human
And true
And good.
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The trip was too long.
Long enough that eventually homesickness gave way to the feeling she was home already, when she wasn’t; long enough to believe in the friendships formed there, even though within a few weeks of leaving she never spoke to anyone there again.
The trip was too long.
Long enough so that calls home became an obligation - an obligation that made her irritable.
It was work that brought her over. Maybe it was work ethic - survival in the face of separation - that kicked in. But it seemed so glamorous, of course Geneva seemed glamorous: Dinner out every evening in a quaint or chic café, drinking fancy French wine that someone else paid for, in the company of intellectuals, or so it seemed; the way they smoked, the way they held their cigarettes; the timbre of their voices surely discussing art and death in a language should could not understand.
So that when the trip was finished and she did come home (really home), bringing with her a belief that she had made an impression and formed bonds in the wake of a promise that she would return, she felt – well, briefly – that she had more in common with those she’d left behind in Geneva than those she returned home to, and considered (rather seriously and even morbidly for awhile) that there was someplace else she belonged.
After so long in a hotel she resented having to make her own bed. She resented eating in and, for a week or so, found no charm at all in a home-cooked meal. But only for a week or so.
It shook her up for awhile, the idea that something that seemed so significant could in the end prove to be so pedestrian: Just another in a series a fleeting attachments; the ones before Geneva somewhat less intense perhaps, the ones afterwards notably more suspect, but still infectious in their way.
Her colleagues in Switzerland said, “Super,” all the time. “Super” as “Yes”. “Super” as “Cool”. “Super” in a such a way as to become the soundtrack of Geneva, not unlike the the synthetic tones of slot machines forming the score of Las Vegas.
One Sunday morning they drove her to the country where they took a tram up to a mountain top and ate brunch outside together in the cold. At the time it seemed so intimate – not at all like locals, obligated with entertaining her, taking her to an obvious tourist attraction they themselves would otherwise avoid. Still, the setting was beautiful, you can’t deny that, and the seed of Swiss sonics bloomed a song into her head, a pop song from college called “Supergirl”. “Supergirl”: For the balance of the trip it played over and over in her head. It made her feel happy and young.
When she first came home she dug out the record and played “Supergirl” again and again, realizing music previously trapped inside her; trying to quench an ache, or maybe trying to make it act up again. Because home in a suburb of the American Midwest, the idea of missing Geneva felt romantic.
But when her second round of letters went unanswered, and eventually her foolish third, home started to feel like home again; the place she was actually missed.
Now if by chance she hears that song she doesn’t think of Switzerland at all. It conjures up a less personalized vision: “Supergirl”, heroine, possessor of unexpected strength and
the ability to avert disaster.
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Everywhere it is cold.
But here it is August hot
in your arms my heart
a beating force of transformation
locked in the brevity of Superman’s lust.
My home a mere likeness
of its former apparition
settles into the aperture of dreams.
We are cartoon heroes who take on
stick figures and shoot them up to the stars
forgetting their names as they
explode in the air. Their tentacles reach
the sky then dry as dust on the landscape.
There is no understanding the why
we were chosen for a world stage
of maps and mazes, stirred together
by the hand of God
like two lumps of sugar
placed in heat.
You with your magic shield
block my thoughts, you
hold my arms
until I cannot manipulate
steel, no longer can I touch the sun.
I miss the feel of falling
humans from my previous life
have nearly forgotten me
it has been so long
rarely do they utter my name. |
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I sat at the back of the coffee shop,
with its wooden floor warped in waves,
reading of a young man who arrived late
to the tall building with stairs all filled by elderly,
too weak and tired to climb higher.
Salt water reach down my cheeks as I read how,
unable to move, the man watched an old lady,
incapable of any other action, sit,
salt water reaching to her nose.
(All around were those too infirm to climb,
and youth barreling through those,
for salvation up the stairs.)
The man reached for her,
under her armpits,
hauled her to the steps,
and handed her to the next man
and he, the one after,
as around them,
in the room,
the ocean destroyed the same humanity
it caused. |
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It was on the sixth that Britt posted this painting -
two superheroes making out in Japan.
How did he know You'd be needed close by
so soon?
On the eleventh,
Earth shook and cracked,
Ocean lurched,
On the eleventh,
thousands of people
ran for high ground,
hoping for someone like You,
to sew the fissure and
rock the water back into its crib.
There's been no Superhero on the scene -
small acts of bravery and love
that lead enormous lives,
small lies scampering
with nuclear explosions
on their heels.
One dog approaches a news team, then retreats, guarding
another who cannot move.
The Superheroes have all lost their capes
and the sun seems blocked by scars.
How am I here, you there,
when so quickly
nature might exchange us?
Light reaches us
without a thought. Unless we think it.
Yet it burns away the snow here
and in Japan,
as it sings a siren's song
to all things green
that hide for just a moment longer
while it readjusts its course
along Earth's new equator, a few feet different
from the last, the weight
of so many lives carried
away on a wave.
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the earth is shaking
the seas are swelling
places are burning
men are killing
come back to us, Superman!
we need you, please.
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sitting in my chair
watching the news
i feel a very slight vibration
not uncommon during a minnesota winter
it’s a train on the tracks
that cross willow street
it makes me wonder how it felt
to stand on land that rolled like waves
no place is safe
the ground could crack
under your crumpled body
or the roof could fall on your head
imagine
i once thought
japan was safer than here
for my son and his family
my adventurous son
has never left me many
carefree days
i’m contemplative
so tired of worrying
and some days i’m tired of living
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It was a loss most sudden.
One great sucking sound and then the lights
disappeared behind fog, fear and denial.
You proceed forward because to stand still
would admit defeat.
In this place just beyond the border of existing
lies a scorched field of earth
occupied by dark shadows
bending like stems of unworthiness
in a wind generated
on the breaths of ghosts and gods.
This is not life but a microcosm of a world turned to dust.
A sadness roped around and around
with two ends touching
intimately.
No methods remain which disturb a conscience here,
no feelings speak of inner peace
the silence of nothingness
is broken only by the soft tapping
of a Heart.
Tattered – you sell grief
in exchange for canned goods
you sell love as a trap door
which drops off into nothing.
You straddle shattered pieces
of an almost imaginable self.
This is how you stay alive
in a place where the problem of pain
has no resolution.
Meanwhile the world hums of mystery,
not even noticing
everything human has changed. |
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