ALL RESPONSES |
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Let me show you the truth.
Take off my clothes.
Peel the skin off, carefully.
Use these sharp, sterile tools.
It won't hurt.
Pull the skin away from muscle,
fat, bone and sinew.
Ahh, that feels good,
like whiskered fish of June,
swimming naked in a bucket
towards the next battered meal,
washed down with light yellow beer.
The cool air touches nerves,
beating veins and arteries.
Here, beneath lies, excuses, and rage,
lies all you want to see.
Here, guarded by heart and spleen,
lives another death.
So life begins, with punishment for passion.
All we love dies,
buried in years, carefully hidden,
locked in layers,
left to rot, soiling our souls.
From this ground grow trees,
whose bark bleeds
at night. Their roots grasp earth in pain,
their branches scream
ancient sylvan hymns to heaven,
windy prayers,
maples dancing in rain.
Storms give way to light,
cool, dry blue resting on earth,
clothed in green, her skin
moist and warm, waiting for seed.
And I, all that has died,
sing naked, skinless,
bleeding, and laughing
a wet and painless truth. |
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Five-twenty-six PM
Johnny Thunders breaks daily sludge off my 25-year-old back
clang shlang it cleans
like bang
residue of the last ten hours
gone
Sound better than a shower
knock knock
I open my door
downstairs neighbor shrinks back in horror
I turn down the stereo volume knob
strut back to the door
face her stare
They moved in with their baby last month
Underneath our flat on the third floor
"Can't you hear her crying down there!
Your
Lousy Damn Music
woke her up"
Glaring eyes betray her exhaustion
Memories of arguments downstairs
waking my sleep
Shouting
Swearing down there
Louder Than Music
Angry Hate words
...and we were here first...
She senses my memory
glimmer of bitterness draws her face
sparking tension
dancing in space between our eyes
I recall my mother
"Turn that amp down
The neighbors complain"
mom always winked and smiled when she said that
a smile that melted glaciers
she never
ever
blamed the music
I look into the tired eyes of my neighbor
and say
Okay, sorry
I'll try to keep it down
I break into a grin
thinking maybe somewhere else
mom's grinnin', too
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Prometheus until twilight
at which time strength returns
arms rest along torso curves before
fingers, those reaching, desperate claws
prune feathers from behind and flying
becomes once again possible.
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If I were buried
I’d want to be here,
on the real mountain,
under near-constant refrigeration
with a view of outstretched wings,
where even the workers’ complaints —
Je m'en sacre,
ils sont tous crissement morts—
sound beautiful
and invoke the name of God.
(Translation...) |
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two speckled sparrows hop fragile legs through the
young blades of infant grass, as tiny flower faces peek from below
brown matter of an already forgotten winter,
this new angle of light has not breathed its color
across my eyes down the tiny hairs of my neck through my veins
for what seems like many, many average days,
reminding me that there is
a break—
an escape, a ladder to crawl up from, or reach out of
like the earth spinning herself into something brand new;
I am birthed from a womb that held me a little too tightly.
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You are a bronzed prayer,
one wing, one bereaving arm
stretched to seek comfort.
The pose, overreaching,
uncomfortable even to the eye.
Something of you anguishes,
perhaps knows my pain.
If you’re still a working angel
and not demoted by God
(minus the wing and all),
can you soften the thorn on the rose
bringing no blood from touch?
Alright, that’s probably impossible.
But what of the odor of lilac
spinning the spring breeze,
the way it fills to bursting?
Can you teach my heart again
how to feel this beyond
my thundering sorrow?
Or perhaps, just one more hour
hold the blessed twilight
to get lost in the loveliness
of ragged shadows, dying light.
And that’s when you could send
a message beyond the grave
slipped through the thin veil
when the other angels weren’t looking.
A postcard would be okay
telling me if they’re all fine and
what the weather’s like over there.
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blue sky blends
into a somber fog,
soon darkness
will drop the ground
a little bit lower
and if i am to be translated
like this winged she creature,
she of bending back and black
wings of stability, if i am ever to be
as permanent, let it be here
in this northern field
of rest where i have stopped
among fifty white stones, long & flat
above me returning geese
glide in instinctual rhythm
to the pull of warming spring breeze--
they too must toil before rest,
before being rewarded
being here is less like surrender
than desperate justification; fifty
years will do that to a person looking
for signs of duration, looking
for any reason that having been
here can be almost as lasting |
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I often rise awake
to sunlight cutting
West through the window
stained and etched by over one hundred years
The imprecise sadness of the fog that hides
the lake, the trees, the elusive morning runners
with their freshly unleashed expectations,
hasn't changed, my naked perception of morning
The opening of shutters strike me, blind
to the hopes of visitors, flowers, birds alike
My soul, unceremoniously cemented here
yet my presence dispersed in the landscape
I, once, reached for
the ephemeral gift of permanence
now I offer my place, because I need to rest. |
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Intimations of Mortality
i
This morning I dreamt
my train left the station, without me
I watched as my future stole away
called after it, protesting:
Wait! Come back!
This can’t be! Take me along!
Checked my watch
I’m on time! I‘m on track!
It was the train
had come and gone too soon.
Too soon, I gasped
then forced spent air
from my lungs, making conscious
space for the next breath
ii
When did death get so personal?
When young, I felt its
unspeakable awe, the hurt, the fear,
this mystery of life-ending
obdurate, uncompromising
I stole comfort
from the fiction that death only
came to elders, long-lived,
now tired and ready for rest
(though I knew it a lie).
I next saw death
as a mark of failure, somehow,
not sure now, looking back,
which terrified me more.
Death, always a distant relative
Unappealing, I’d hear news
from time to time but never cared
to form a close connection
dreaded losing others
lost some.
Only in theoretical terms did I ever think
of my own future spilling out
but timelines drawn, indelible
Death needs no reason
no invitation. Without illness
without catastrophe, still it comes,
unbidden, marching forward, claiming all
no defense against it --
brave intellectual pretenses
religious faith and virtue
the best that money can buy
the deepest love
pure innocence --
death rolls over all
its power total and unmatched.
More now like an older brother
or sister who tries to lead the way
Death, at times, clasps my hand
whispers to me, tugging me in
some uncertain direction.
iii
Death calls today
for a personal introduction
don’t want to answer the door
so pretend I’m not home
suck in my breath, lay low
while just beyond the threshold it lurks
Today, I’m going to die (say my bones)
Damned, though, if I’ll go in terror
So swinging wide the door
I step out, driving back the fear
embracing in its place the calm of surrender
never feeling freer.
iv
As morning light blesses my eyes
the dream, the moment
passes on.
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Among the birches
in a field away from man
is a small graveyard
holding my history
like pages of a
dusty novel
So much of my family
rests there from
the first settler
to my younger brother
The graveyard
is not a sad place for me
when I think of the
quiet walks holding
my father's hand
as he introduced me
to my roots
He rests there now
among the family
he held so dear
Among the birches
a quiet peaceful place
down a dusty road
off the busy highway
where you hear
songs of birds
a rippling creek
the ghosts of history
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Joseph, after a night wrestling with the angel,
staggers and falls into the healing bush,
one arm raised, still ready to push
away the weight of his bear-like fear.
His skin shines with sweat.
A beautiful, cool smell of eucalyptus
bathes him dry. Under his spine,
a bed of leaves. It softens his fall
to earth. His? For a moment,
I’m not sure. I check the naked
body for a penis, and find it,
asleep between his legs, tucked
away, tame, while his up-
raised hand groans, “Help me.”
Obelisks and carved angel wings
stand silent, unmoving around him.
Only light and shadows’ hands--
impossible to hold--see and feel. Joseph
reaches out to that impossible.
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your boy is perfect
in every way, more
perfect than you
could have imagined
even his flaws are part
of his perfection, such is
the curse of being human
and you often wonder when
the exact moment descended,
wonder what you were
doing and where you were
when you realized loving
him would never be enough
that it would take nothing
short of a miracle for you
to keep him, and an even
bigger miracle to let him go |
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As pale indigo light
orphans shadows in my room
claimed by neither
night nor day, I wake.
Across town in the hospital
your love of fear sedated
as you labor under the oxygen mask
with face calm, affirming surrender
attached to life’s umbilical cord.
For whole moments, I think of escape,
of finding things to do to avoid
the centurion hours clearly laid out
to be my day’s destiny, guarding your bedside.
All the cleaning to be done.
Or the untouched bills spilt
across table in silent complaint
could give purpose to knocking out an hour.
Someone will call if the end is here, I think,
but the end lives here now.
Instead, I go into the shower,
letting hard drops trample my skin
liquid shock-waves. It feels like life.
My body hairs rise in salute.
But it’s too much.
Tears from me but
of sound outside myself
unleash deep and raw,
a coyote vicious
ripping flesh from bone.
All at once, I am the coyote,
I am the prey. I weep
until no more tears come.
At the hospital, they’re all waiting
for me. In due time,
the nurse wheels in a lamp for
soft mood lighting and
a radio playing Gospel music.
We are the ghosts around your bed,
taking turns at goodbye.
You can not respond,
largely unconscious,
floating on morphine’s lovely dream.
They remove the mask,
we stare you down with wait.
I suffer the naked shame
of a first-time voyeur
as if invading your privacy
is stripping away your life.
Long pulls in and out,
we humans do without thinking,
each breath, a gain, a loss.
The last came not as I envisioned
in one long, drawn-out sigh
but mere respiration held
as if you had all the time in the world,
a pebble across a pond
skipping and flying long
the wind before immersion.
Then the short final exhale,
a slight wave of air
passing over your tongue.
Without close attention,
I may have missed it.
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Here I am again, falling. Nothing new there.
Every morning must begin this way, now.
Probably. Tumbling in bronze, one arm extended
to grasp futiley at whatever I wanted
before the fall began. Suppose I had it coming.
Figure whatever I wanted cast me out.
Or destroyed what brought me there. Same story.
In the spring, snow
will crevice my cold musculature
and mourners' feet will mark paths past
snow-crusted crocus. The cemetery
looms larger each moment. Look away. It
begs to break my fall. Make it wait. |
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Dance on a knife edge
Sharpness gives focus
Your shoe-souls thick and strong
Deep callouses on fingertips
Behind you glass bottles of fire
Decorated suitcases
Required for the trip
Translate Moves
Into currents
Shaking Magnets
Shaking Paper
Shaking Air
Shaking Eardrums
Immediacy of contact multiplied
Translated universally
Hold that note
breathe in, climb the ladder
You can
spazz petulant fury
foreshadow the coming hook
groove into the pocket
step outside into the abyss
jump right off into oblivion
unexpected revelation
thrill
breakthrough
The Unknown
Known Now |
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He hovers in shadows
and all eventually meet him
He stays so near me
I can feel
his breath on my neck
He's tried to take me
with him twice
and I know him well
I sense him
waiting for the day
he can wrap his wings
around me and take me home
His breath is fragrant of spring
his home is where the Master
of light and love lives
His feathers brush my cheek
and his shadow covers me
as he waits persistently
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Singing something
to walk through the walls marketing the world
Singing to imbue a horizon
Singing a prayer of spirit
Redemption may come through sin
But it is not the ribs enclosed in flesh
that give definition to man
It is by the singing we are defined
Judgment comes by how the songs of midnight
meet the songs of daybreak
Sculpting an innocence
is easier in the blindness of the womb
than in the world
with its mint of the unfamiliar
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