death of a houseplant (Rowdy’s Revenge)
photo courtesy of Josue O. Colop
.
Beside the chair
of sweatstained red
where I watch the city’s
freckling swelter
on sticky noon
Tuesdays, a lily
lies dying. Nothing
noticeable, mind;
a faint fading into
the badly primed
walls; a slow
yellow march
into composted
tomorrows. Wilted,
ailurophilic leaves
pulled floorward
by a gravity that could
kill us all. A lily lies
dying, and no amount
of hydrostatic
pressure-infused dew-
drawn drippings
can save it nor sweet
lullaby reverse the
slow spiral
down. A lily
lies dying; a lone brave
blossom lifts its
lily-head above the decay,
perches birdlike
poised for bloom,
an unfurling of pale
trumpets some unknown
dawn from now,
a defiant farewell.
present tense
unprogram yester-
day, its yellowed heavy
footprints. reset, re-
breathe
the borrowed air
he gave you in fistfuls
until sighing it drips
purified by sleepy gasps
of oblivion.
there
never was a forever; gold
greened with a patina
of rust-encrusted openings,
tetanus in a tumbler
that
you needn’t
carry with you
though the weight
pounds systolically
after your shadow
like a one-legged man
left behind
at the bus stop: lub-dub,
lub-dub, crutches
on hot cement, a coronary
noose you’ve
slipped up and over,
unknotted
to land
on two feet, square.
you needn’t carry it with you,
the whiplashed flagellation of
if only,
up the slopes of
tomorrow’s mornings
and into your first
real today
in years.
untame, still
Her eyes
are like young mares,
dashing wildly for some escape
to the chains her body has thrown round
tomorrow, tying it down
to this sad bed, these muted
walls.
It wasn’t like this,
once.
There was a house with a garden
and a man who tended it.
He planted figs in the side yard
and brought home fried chicken for lunch on Sundays.
Together, they sat by the lake
and in the summer, the kids would
feed bits of stale bread to the ducks and turtles,
or string them on the old cane lines
to catch little sunfish.
There was no pain.
No drifting off into morphine clouds where
maybe, she still dreams of these things,
of painlessness.
Can she smell summer in her sleep?
Taste blackberries? See the walk
lined with purple flowers, hear
the wind over the water?
She scratches at the oxygen lines
as if at mosquito bites, moans.
Her eyes, underneath
pale lids, are like young mares
searching for some lost meadow.
Can she hold my hand
and remember
him?
when rivers die
When
rivers die,
there is
a silence
of stones.
Like all good pall-
bearers, they
carry the weight
down low, standing
straight while
the lament goes on for
miles.
The sun
unfolds
across old stretch
marks in soft mud. Slow.
Time breathes out
a dirge in oxidized
inspirations,
gasps a
violet ending.
Sentinel cancer,
the wise acridness
of dried riverbones
exposed
to eyes
that do not blink.
Slow.
A despair in sepia.
All graces
abandoned,
broken glass
dropped in faded weeds.
Brittle; brutal. Quiet.
None know her
suffering. None
can say
if she cried
out
at the last.
When
rivers die,
there is
a silence
of stones.
They keep watch
over what was,
blessing
each raindrop
in their stolid way,
dreaming
of waterfall
caresses.
(she spends) April’s Tuesdays
Massaging quotidian
heartaches and
pouring
poison
down the kitchen sink,
clipping coupons from Nike’s wings
while lip-synching to gypsy notes
caught on the tails
of fast-moving clouds and
sipping salted spring
sunshine
left behind in
other languages.
Drawing flowers
from rusted faucet drips
on smudged
granite dreams,
breathing deep
of coffee steam
and bleach while
ironing out
the imperfections
of pore and
past. Studying up
on forgetting.
Practicing
for her
prime time
debut. Playing
barefoot and
dancing naked
and whispering
loudly the
secrets
no one wants
to hear and maybe
even
writing a
poem.
an overstayed welcome
Feathered pressures
filter through the slightly
wilted scent
of hyacinths, a spring
reneged of its
promise before
bedtime, all daydreams
on layaway until
a tomorrow when
the threat
of snow is once
again passed
and Easter flowers
forget their bitter-
tipped Lenten promises.
Then,
then the poets
will grow like grass
fed on a sun in song,
open windowed-
coquettes batting
long-lashed verses
at the heart of a city
and spilling secrets
from bound pages tucked
in unbuttoned sleeves.
(Until then let
the runners run
and the dreamers
drink. You and I shall
close our eyes
and breathe deep
of dying hyacinths
as we
wring the holy water
from our best Sunday
sheets, making nests
from nightmares and
sweatstains where
together we’ll lie
down to
wait.)
thaw
Deep
footprints sunk in swift mud,
tire treads of a season
shedding loneliness like
unneeded garments by an
open door, shameless
and dripping and pre-
possessed. Beauty
unleashed with the
ferocity of tightly strung
pearls
suddenly set free from
a shapely neck,
tossed violently
to a ne’er-do-well of a wind
beside a skirt
puddled brashly on
cold stone.
Skin
braised
with gooseflesh
from the nascent breeze,
her secret
petals
unfold.
prayers in rough wood
My prayers in rough wood
are strung up with twine and hope,
spiral like incense
to an unhearing heaven,
float back to the ears of men
Who with gentle hands
unfold my finger-petals,
suck out from cupped palm
the splinters of unborn dreams,
catch the bleeding dew of faith.
…
…
This poem has been re-posted from its original appearance in Poets for Tsunami Relief, a blog-zine by twitter-friend and colleague Heather Grace Stewart. In keeping with the original intent of the poem, and the publication, I ask that you please consider contributing to relief funds through the Red Cross by clicking on this link or texting (details here). Peace and love, —jsl
grandfather on God and Richmond, right-justified
………. I’m not sure about God.
I’ve seen too much of ugliness for it
to be intentional,
………. too much
of beauty for it not to be.
………. ………. Take,
for example,
……………….. the downtown silhouette
from across the Manchester Bridge
on a winter’s early evening, the
moon just shy of full, blushing
behind lit twelfth-storey windows, the soul-eyes
of a city half-wrapped in rivermist
and dinner plans, grinning teeth
of January jack-o’-lanterns reflecting
over rock and rapid.
……………….. Or
Fourteenth and Main
on a rainy rush hour, drops
………. spilling river-ward through traffic light
and streetlamp, tires
leaving splashmarks across
the footprint of cavalry and
………………………… slave.
Better yet, walk with me
through the whispers
at Belle Island, where the voices of fallen prisoners
haunt the college kids sunning like
………. sea lions out over the self-same
rocks. (Have you seen what they feed them in those cafeterias lately?)
……………….. When autumn comes,
the waters will rise in waves, creeping up
………. on the empty beer cans and cigarette
……………….. packs, washing them down
past Chapel Isle and the ruins of the Confederate boatyard
as the river runs home.
………………………….. When
I’m dying,
take me to the old hospital
where McGuire’s successors taught
medicine with stolen bodies; no
chain-linkedSaint-named designer cure
for this gentlesoul. Andwhen
I’m dead
take me to
Hollywood
………. and a spot
……………….. where I can see the river
………. from a grave
without a cross:
I’m still
not too sure about God.
fluffy black nothings
It’s eleven twenty-two
on a Tuesday;
my head feels hollow; I
shake
and it
rattles like a piggy bank
with fragments of melted
Twitter streams swirling their
candycaned stripes
of dandelion beauty through
the wine I had
with the dinner I
didn’t. Acid and sweet tickle
neurons toward misfire, furrow
forethought, torment pulse
with a pounding
in time to the blink of the cursor
where blind fingers
on a blank page
fill a void with fluffy black
nothings in twelve-point
Helvetica that you’ve somehow
managed to read
to the end.
lunera
the young moon is
strung up
above the river looking
like a pale imitation
of herself,
a soul-thief who
gypsy dances
her way though mid-
winter madrugadas seducing
me to desperation
with silken slipknots
hung
between each
shadowed star.
You can find the original version in Spanish here. I’ve kept a few words that just didn’t give the same feel in English: madrugadas are early mornings— think partying-all-night-till-three-or-four-a.m. early. Lunera itself comes from “moon,” but, well… two WordReference sites, a handful of language forums, Google translator and a Guatemalan boyfriend all failed me in finding a direct translation. (Thanks anyway, Omar. 
) The sense of it, though, for me, is making the moon “personal,” i.e. addressing it more as a person and less as a far distant chunk of rock. And it definitely has something to do with a lullaby. ~jsl
Shockoe
My world
is the sinuous
curve of freeway
that flies under
glowering heavens
while herons wade
in cold waters;
the sound and
the peril
of stiletto on
stone
and the scented rhythm
of catcalls from yellow doorways.
Graffitied desperation
and the thunder of trains that run
beside old brick
under new construction
in a city that when
pressed clings
to its past as to a mother’s loving hand
but with the next
breath
dismisses her like
dog piss
on the master’s second-
best rug….
[My words
smell
of rust
and river-
rot
imbibed
not through the pores
of cortex
where
moments
become
memories but
through the primordial
pocketwatch
in the back of my
skull
telling me
when
to
breathe.]
In this land
of frozen locks
and thawed oblivions
where treachery and tolerance
sidle arm-in-arm
down cobblestoned alleys,
My voice
whistles a freedom song
to the same soundtrack
you fucked your girlfriend to last night;
rising broken-winged through the
dead smokestacks
as you haunt the canals
searching for loose virtue
or lost inspiration,
it will find you
undone.
Needle-pushers and nutmeg-peddlers,
you have been warned.
rejection letter
there is alchemy
in my blood; it draws
you like wildfire, indifferently.
my words build the bridges
your absence pulls down;
while i connect the stars like needlepricks
between synapses, mapping
consciousness and constellations
with the electricity of a penstroke,
you sleep pressed tight
against the cottony pillow
of paper dreams. i am the
metaphysical mistress
to the truths you never knew,
the quiet rejoinder
to all the hopes you ever surrendered.
if one day our tongues meet
across a coffee table or a revolution
don’t speak to me of love poetry:
i prefer your bitter
silence and the offbeat
of brokenhearted arrhythmia.
