the things we burn
you say we are descended
from giants,
but i
am more impressed
by the tenacity
of acorns,
how they worm
their way into the wet
fall ground. inside
their porcupined-cap heads
they are oaks already, & we
mere children
playing in the dirt, watching
sparks curl round the thread-
bare dark. their every breath
threatens to catch the night on fire,
and my eyelashes are singed
with soot-stained doubting.
these are the things we burn;
with smoke in my hair,
will you love me still?
waiting (outside the same cafe where i wrote my mother’s funeral poem)
across the street, two men
argue over the ubermensch,
and a cricket hops brokenly
cross paving stones. from
the corner, scrying: how long
have we sung summer songs
and dreamt of october? running
yellows as they slip to fall,
sometimes it feels
like putting a bandaid
on a bleeder, not tying it off
with knots-in-silk. surgeons
would know these things,
but it is too late
to catch the sun heading
already south, and south
again. across the street,
two women argue
over love & champagne.
the cricket is gone. a maple
tree sighs sickening
as it sleeps in an ocean
breeze, and finally
october yawns & stretches.
day-dreaming in stolen words
children chase the shadows
of butterflies round a fountain
of stone; pink
blooms of crepe myrtle drift in
the august breeze to land
teasingly on skin, clothes, hair.
she finds it strange
how every man who has ever said
he loves her has also said
you deserve better;
hikes up her skirt to let
the late afternoon sun
kiss knees, thighs;
wonders. the moon
will be small and orange
tonight, a plaything
for summer’s dying gods.
who will kiss
her noon-shadow,
chase the butterfly wings down
the arch of her back, crown
her summer-glow
like a prom queen in pink crepe,
carry her home when
august has ended?
meditations on the death of summer
fog curling
off the water makes me feel
like falling
off the world; some-
times it’s damn hard
to feel at home here,
the drips of our lonelinesses
bubbling up from a depth which,
in august, is of consequence
to no-one. the sky is as oppressive
as oblivion, a smoky mono-
chromed sheet where
the saddest lines are typed
in a cloudy times new roman
and tossed in God’s wastepaper
basket. we dream
of dragons and decembers,
snowfallen starlight, autumn’s
bittersweet gold like sun
on dappled saturday
mornings, like the flamed tendrils
of my strawberry hair
in the dark field of absence
behind your closed caramel eyes.
poem ex nihilo
we burn
as the sun sets.
i am watching smoke curl,
feeding sticks into the flames
one by one by one, searching
the shapes of autumn’s shadow
for a metaphor fragile
enough to carry trust
in its silky, river-
fed palms;
for the words to drip
down your open-mouthed
throat like a benediction
and swallow naked, like a sword;
for the way silent twilight
fills the negative space
and becomes a poem
ex nihilo.
chemistry lessons
photo by N.Klapetzky, edited by the author
there is salt, and there is salt.
what’s the difference,
my father asked me at dinner
the other day, between
sea salt and plain ol’
en-ay-see-el? and i said
sea salt is less strict, dad,
more complicated;
but i don’t know if that’s right;
don’t know its bio-
chemical makeup, how late
it lets its daughters
out at night. chemicals aren’t
all latch-key and angle, you know.
for instance, there are some in the brain
more sensitive to love
than to cocaine. i’ve heard this;
that, chemically, love is the most terrible
addiction. crazy women need brave lovers,
the poet said; this i know also
to be true; i’ve seen crazy.
but i don’t know their chemistry, either:
not love or crazy. my professor
used to wear unmatched socks;
he taught the dissociation of salts.
his eyes were the color of sea glass.
he told my father once i
was the most impressive he’d ever had.
i could have loved him, then,
but i was addicted to my own heart-
beat. that rhythm is less biochemical
than electrical: a crazy drummer in my head
banging out signals to my chest.
i hope he is brave.
too much salt can fuck
it all up, cause heart-
ache. like breathing in sea glass.
how long can you hold your
breath underwater? my cousin
and i used to swim in the lake
by my grandparents’ house,
catch turtles on cane poles
with bits of old bread.
the biggest one we dragged up
onto the shore, and my father
sliced her neck while
her jaws were clamped
onto the back handle of an old broom.
that was before i knew chemistry.
or love. or that guilt could be as addictive
as cocaine. i’m not sure if this
is true, but i have seen crazy.
turtles, the poet said, turtles
all the way down.
They say great poets are thieves. I must be on my way to greatness, then. The lines I took shamelessly came from the inestimable Claudia Schoenfeld, here, and the Bard of Liminga himself, Ray Sharp, to whose poem “of the salt and the light,” this was written as a response.
words taken from the last line of a samurai creed
Ryoan-ji, the Temple of the Peaceful Dragon, is known for its Zen gardens. Kinkaku-ji, The Golden Pavilion,
was burned in 1950 by a Buddhist priest who had been seduced by its beauty; a replica stands today. Ginkaku-ji,
the Silver Pavilion, stands at the end of Tetsugaku no Michi, the Philosopher’s Path.
in the swirl of shinto-smoke
that reminds me of nothing
so much as my dead mother,
the absence of myself
is a sword undulled by blood or lust
and too bright for eyes
that have not known tears;
like coins thrust for luck
or safe passage; like
dappled morning on Ryoan-ji pond
where cranes stalk salvation
beside the unanswered prayers
of lost fingertips;
like broken glass
on asphalt in a hot Kyoto night;
Kinkaku burning in the sun;
Ginkaku-ji at journey’s end.
question i will never ask
there is a Hebrew saying that means: the world is a narrow bridge;
the most important thing, not to be afraid. yet the night here begins
to forget itself, and there is fear in the darkness. you have your gloves on, thud-
squish, my heartbeat as heavy bag. i sink slowly, unrepentant.
the air stickens, and like good fighters, we each face the lightning alone.
a coolness rises off the river, wishing it were the sea. tideless, i
am drowning in the honeysuckled tears of a frustrated blue-green.
the march of dandelion clocks ticks onward, dug-in: six months, some-
odd days and twenty-seven seconds. slow mornings filigreed into chains
of summer hunger; wonder if when i reach its length, i will still find you waiting?
diary, friday june 27 (redact in hindsight, monday march 12)
it’s late on a friday and i slump barefoot on a couch that isn’t mine
picking at dead skin on the bottoms of my feet, red & raw from the dress shoes
i wore to a wedding (which also wasn’t mine–
but where i arrived late & had stopped only to dance one slow, slow dance.)
it’s nearly quitting time on a friday; i’m looking out a window which
belongs to someone else but i’ve opened the shades halfway and they rest,
crooked, on a curtainless sill.
someone’s thrown a rock, and the glass is cracked in one of the center panes. i don’t
wonder at this, but i guess at what the window-owner did to deserve it.
i’m dreaming of home on a friday and my fingers as they type this don’t smell like my own,
as if they knew i were pecking out a destiny which i surely didn’t sign up for.
strangely, the smell is of mice: caged, fed and raised for breeding. i do wonder
what that means.
as the title suggests, this piece is a revised version of a much earlier piece, which i re-discovered recently and was consequently re-enchanted by. the original can be found here. interesting how our writing changes with time, no?
untitled
she sets out
alone.
it’s one of those barren january mornings
that seeps into your bones, numbs
you from gut to skin.
the engine stutters, coughs, cuts.
she curses, turns the key
again. reluctantly life grumbles,
holds. it’s still early, only other
traffic the insomniac and the
overzealous. too
early still for the world
to know. she’s mapped out
the route in her head a
hundred times now, in
secret; she
had told him, told him
and told him and told
him: we have to be
more careful. this could
ruin
everything.
she never
felt so
small. and yet,
and yet and yet
her face set now against
the cold and the consequence,
she spares no thought
for him, for the whatifs
& the ifonlys, shoulders
this moment like a
good girl her school-
books, looks only
ahead, prays
the engine won’t drop
before she reaches
the clinic.
Consider
consider this
the heartbeat of twenty-
seven stolen seconds, dead
reckonings in
bitter January birth-
pangs; consider
this the end
of beginnings, letters
upside down
on an unfinished
page written by one
who breathes the last
gypsied breath
of penance wearing
chipped midnight
on her toes, walks
the iron-dark canals
like some soulless
wild thing, all the while dis-
(re)-membering:
once upon a
time, i knew
how to write
love songs.
Relativity
Academic vigours
lose their science
when it comes to art.
An array of space-point-time
lines foretelling
the devil’s future
in tingled palms,
they predict
useless fiscal gymnastics
in a landscape devoid
of tumbling mats. And
the earth? Upstream
folly commanding clocks
to run backward. We’re
left iceboxing in a desert
on the centennial eve of never-had-
existed. Avenue upon
avenue of comatose
dreamers, smiling at
the sun. I burn, therefore I am.
Kandahar
Dark clouds march across blue skies
like battle lines drawn in damp cotton.
Below,
a quiet frenzy in other azure
as surgeons sort glass
shards from bleeding veins,
debride the dirt
from twitching muscle and
sew a soldier
together
again.
Someone had sadly forgotten to tell him
the war was winding down.
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.
penitent
he walks backward
down a philosopher’s path
racing threat of rain
with the unmeasured cadence
of his breath, burying
regret deep
with each unhurried
footfall, denying every silvered
drop
the treachery tattooed
on his soul.
You can read about the author’s own journey on the literal Philosopher’s Path here. 
flight and contemplation
metaphysics is the drag and
lift of some aerodynamic dream
cradling you to the height where
your head scrapes cloud but
you look up and find only
the heave and sensuality
of the breath of God.
difference of opinion
it’s been said
in more languages than i
can speak fluidly
that i am not quite…
normal
that i drown
in the things
others drink to
forget about
but if
they had seen
unstigmatized the light
in these eyes they
might think differently if
they had read the
hurt between my lines i
wouldn’t have had to
spell it out
in broken glass if
they had listened
when i said i
think i’m dying there’d
have been no need
to call the paramedics but
me i don’t think
feeling is a thing
to be floodwalled
i
think “they”
is just an ugly
numb.
intranquil
my desperation isn’t quiet
but goes yowling straight through
to the other side of winter with her foot
pressed to the floor;
a seeping solace with every mile north until
she finds the cold that
numbs the hole in her chest,
hope in gaping oblivion;
kicks then
back feckless by the window at street level two
blocks above the flood line, exhaust-
stained plate glass a membrane
between art and the river which could
carry her away.
it was a good thing (he knew CPR)
the morning after
december’s first snowfall i
woke up in clear eyes,
borrowed pajamas and with a
chest bruised
from where the
doctors had pumped wild
air back into lips and
lungs that for too
long had tasted only
salt.
solitary, confinement
……
……
…….
…….
…….
……
……
…..
…….
…..
what color is your soul
when shadow ceases to exist?
who are you
locked in at night
behind the darkness
of your eyes?
are you even human?
every dignity gone,
all your dreams naked,
autumn branches
scratching at a bolted window.
the last question
they will ask you is
“If we have to use restraints,
should we call your family?”
last primeval answering cry from
deep in the forge-fires of
your heart, knowing:
there’s no one
you would want to tell.
naked
….
….
….
….
….
….
….
….
….
albatross’d shadows
wing their way across
the spongy caverns of my
heartbeat, their darkness
keening into the cup
of my palm and slowing
my hand, swallowing
piecemeal my
spirit until
there is nothing
left of me but
fear.
Evolution
…
….
….
….
….
….
….
…
….
…..
I’m different now.
I wear shoes and don’t walk
in the woods anymore.
My world is smaller
and my hair is redder
and i forget how
to sing.
I look down a lot.
Cement-colored thoughts
prick the backs
of my arms, sending
goosebumps
up into an unconsciousness
i thought i’d left behind
years ago.
I miss my mother.
Sometimes i don’t
remember how to breathe.
There’s a hollow
just above heart-center
whose sternal contours i can
trace with a finger and
in the darkness sometimes
knock gently, listening
for sounds of a soul.
perfection
his crests are almost golden
in the sodden heat that folds
over these valleys like a heavy cream,
his eyes so
liquid they seem to pour
out of the angles of his face
as he looks at you,
contemplative.
he moves as if
he hadn’t a single care, as if
the troubles that brush
against him through your hands,
the hands of hundreds,
soak into the matte of his skin
just enough
to be reflected in the steadiness
of his gaze,
dripping down strength through
the stones to your feet:
they do not linger.
zen
watching the dawn
drag itself up out of this
utter east from my
hotel window, i
open my eyes to
the truth that though
my skin and soul are
across the world
from the ring of barbed wire
strangling the hollow
inside my chest,
my demons are
no farther
away.
