reflecting as we turn from the water
there was such hope
in this morning.
there were springs
and summers all
jumbled up in our eyes.
there were poems
scrawled in neon, winding
between our fingers:
binding, not bound. now
they slog through wet
descent, flailing, &
here we are at the back
of the notebook, a single
leaf remaining
before october ends.
cold settles in
like a low fog,
like tequila hung-
over, like
responsibility.
the river keeps rising,
and i will miss it.
there was such hope
in this morning.
& i am waiting still.
reckoning season
summer passes. all its hot-
cropped doubts and match-
struck storms leave
a vacuum where we used to sit
on high-backed stools
and sip on laughter. this is
why i fall in love
though it makes me sad, why
we kiss on street corners
and write poems
about poems. autumn
comes welcome and in-
between, filling the sky
with empty spaces
to tell a story
of matched rails
and sunlight-through-leaves.
today is a good day
for the beginning
of end-
ings, wet-burnt
and rising as they carry us
off in laughter and smoke,
leave us fearless, bare-
footed in rain.
it is too early
for sad winter metaphors.
september holds
a hard enough leaving
in her crumpled fist:
dry and caustic and
eager to flame. like
tracing flowers in bleach,
like soaking cattails in gasoline.
drifting
it is august in earnest.
yesterday was almost
autumn, yet here we are again,
dripping. the sticky blueness
of these last few holdout days
clings to the streets like gauze.
by a series of unfortunate
coincidents, i
am thinking of laboratories,
of thinning lines of blood, of my
mother’s dead white hands.
the walls of her hospital room
were that same sticky un-sterile blue,
like an oil painting of some South sea.
it is not the same blue of puddled
dress they found me
in before they called the paramedics
at summer’s end the year of her death;
no, it is deeper and better
for drowning. most seasons i
don’t believe in faith,
but i thank god on august days
for ambles along the river,
for his rich earthy browns.
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.
meditations on language
del amor tampoco o menos;
pero me pones pensar tu
si es posible mancar
lo que aún no haya tenido.
*
*
this morning the light comes
through glass as if it were
autumn, but there is no poem
in it. in english,
one can say only i miss you,
but that doesn’t cover
by half the september sun
he says i need.
in italian, mi manchi,
you are lacking to me;
a lesson in grapeskins
and empty palms.
in spanish the thing,
like autumn morning light,
gets nearer: me haces falta,
te echo de menos,
te extraño: you make me lack;
you make me less;
i miss you. like a third hand
to turn the door knob
when my arms are wrapped
around your waist.
Your Metaphor
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
These days weather
changes overnight.
Smoke filters sunlight;
embers burn all
the more brightly
for the silenced
desire. Yellow
maple sky, old
cracked oak
carpet over grass
that hasn’t even
yet been born.
Dewed frost gilds
homecoming
mornings,
words like
“hunker”
sprouting in
untried accents,
“distrust” burying
its lips in glowing
ash. A hand
can be a hard
thing to hold
in such climes;
fingers all too
easily balled in
anger. Memory
just won’t burn
as quickly as leaf-fall
and faithlessness
doesn’t pass
with the dew.
post-modern urban landscape, no.1
Mono-
chromed skies tie
summer’s bedraggled
kitestrings to the end of
a brief September.
Below on the corner,
yet another dark-
dressed unkempt
with cardboard
calling card:
HUNGRY.
Gooseflesh takes
more heat to burn.
Calories, I mean:
it’s getting cold.
Everyone you know
a paycheck away
from the next street over,
and the days
only getting shorter.
How will he eat
with so many
unthawed
colleagues?
two and a half thoughts on love
(part 3 of 3)
Weary and milk-mild i stand
ankle-deep in wet sand, each
footprint a burden more than the last
as i head away from the solace
of heavy waters and
back toward solid ground.
And yeah, this road has a heartbeat,
hums with the rhythm of some gypsy dance
lost to the world centuries ago…
But i’ve
run up somehow on the sidewalk,
lost control of fortune’s wheel and now
the stones you’ve thrown into the gears
make it hard
to start any fire at all;
glass shards like stars
sparkle
across cheeks who’ve
seen too many streams of blackest mascara
raining in through a late
autumn night;
meanwhile steam rises
out from under the hood
like the ghost of a lover
i thought i’d forgotten,
wish i
could forget.
I tell myself i’m happy,
unfold myself from the driver’s seat
and start walking; maybe,
Maybe this winter
will be easier than the last,
holding hope beyond the frost;
maybe my breath with steamy
tomorrows will dream yet
in tachycardia, untame and
headstrong like the pulse
of the ocean…
Maybe.
But let’s
keep this between us as
these are secrets
for a December
that no man yet has seen.
autumn landscape from a downtown window
This
is my world,
cut into horizontal ribbons
of dirty glass like some
perverted jail cell
set on its side and left
to mildew’s ruin in
a late September rain.
It’s five thirty
and the streetlights are coming
remorselessly on,
beacons of promise
or spotlights
preventing escape, depending.
The traffic pulses with an
irregular heartbeat as the hand
on the old clock
tower ticks past quitting time
and the dull cement of
parking decks becomes
breeding ground for ghosts.
Drops of wet climb up the sides
of crumbling brick
seeking release from an
overburdened asphalt
and the friction of
steaming tires as car
after car slicks past,
owners gripping
steering wheels
as if they were the leashes
of poorly trained pets,
tomorrow’s dry cleaning
hung like gallows
in the back seat. After a second
or a century the light
at the corner of Fourteenth and
Main clicks from yellow
to red, bringing life to
a shuddering halt as
wiper blades huff
back and forth in frustration;
brakes chafe; engines grumble.
Only the rain continues
to fall without surcease,
clinging to the skin of sky
and city alike and saying with its
every chilled breath
a farewell to summer.
it’s a process
head tipped back and lens out of focus
i sip the last dregs of sunlight
from a summer fast fading,
etching her colors black-inked into tomorrow,
tracing my words into the wet cement of eternity.
my steps quicken to match the fall
of the leaves over old brick in the city’s
East end, my footfalls small
miracles of blurry substance in a brittle
dream.
but the words
just won’t flow like
they’re supposed; they start and they
stutter over roots in the sidewalk, getting lost in the
mutter of leaves and passing traffic and sometimes
when the light recalls just perfectly
the way it used to fall
through your bedroom blinds in
September’s late mornings, then
the muscles at the top of my throat
close up and in the sudden rush of air
that i swallow to
push the memories back
down into oblivion, they
vanish altogether,
leaving my shadow to
walk alone through the early October
sunset.
verse, unhallowed
….
….
….
….
….
….
….
….
photograph courtesy H. Del Negro, edited by jsl.
i forgot
how to write
anything
but heartbreak,
emptiness
and the hollow
carved into souls
who dared be
lit
from the inside.
expiation in flame
a season’s sublimated energy
blushes in the embers, rises
to kiss chastely
an indigo sky; rebuked
by a breath of cold night she
returns sullenly to earth,
glowering out briefly
at the darkness,
autumn’s air but ashes in her mouth.
illusion
November crept softly
this year, whispering
caresses with the subtle hiss
of falling leaves, the door
creaking shut behind him; a child’s
sun-filled breathless instant
just before impact
on a playground swing flown
too high. Still
winter comes, the ground
unforgiving, cold,
immutable to graveled knees;
the moment of invincibility
crashed and vulnerable, lying
in defiance even with
her naked eyes.
as the year falls
the scent of secrets
lingers and i crush dry leaves
consciously underfoot,
listening half afraid
to their whispers of what
the darkness might bring.
abstruse
last night the sky lost
its normal shade of midnight,
shone a deep purple
in the orange-ish glare of
the streetlamps
as we walked through
late august
to the attentiveness of early fall,
me clinging to your hand in
desperate denial of
what eternity, for one
blind instant, might
just mean.
indian summer
riddled with heartache,
a spider’s web sways between
the branches of the old walnut
tree in our back yard;
who did the weaving
and what their intentions were
is written somewhere
in the empty space
between each thread,
invisible to predators and to
the innocent. stained and
knowing fingers
reach up to decipher
a single, shimmery strand,
knowing that with
the season’s first storm
the fruit will fall and the echoes
break, the spell,
as all deception,
end.
she walks blindly through the fall
year turns yellow, lingers,
twisting the thin threads of my hair
between sticky fingers;
summer’s promise
yielding to the pressure
of ten degrees too few.
soul sickens
just a little
in the face of another winter
bitter and sterile;
blue shadows etched
over what was once white skin
and green grass.
sleep, sleep;
forget this realm
of might-have-beens
as spider-webs gather between the toes
of last season’s dream.
