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.
Your Metaphor
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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?
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.
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.
Evolution
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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.
revolution
snowfall on last october’s dead leaves
fills the silence of a february morning
with unexpected longing, and
i walk slowly through the cold, forgetting
when these paths were green
and hopeful, their summers not yet
brought to bear.
sighs along the north fork (oh, shenandoah)
the river up home
late afternoon in november
has no fishermen
to keep it company;
a new sign
by the old make-out lot
says you can’t
fish anymore. SUVs
and little old pickups
crush the causeway one
cement instant
at a time, indifferent.
the same cement
where i used to catch the sun
in a tank and cutoffs,
dreaming out loud at
the rushing currents
where you used to swim,
slipping over the
tricky sun-hidden bottoms.
sign says you can’t
swim there anymore, either.
even for november, it’s still;
not cold enough for frost, but
the leaves long gone,
husks of trees no
longer any seclusion
for a lone drunk
or a couple thinking
they were in love;
we’re the only ones here now,
the river and me,
both too old and careworn
for cutoffs or pretenses.
coming of winter
frost fell for the first time
last night, softly threatening
like the absence of touch
after the hurricane of your hands
or the misstep in my soul
after too many sad love songs;
silent.
vuelo del otoño
la primera escarcha del año cayó
anoche amenazando, quieta,
como la ausencia del toque despues
del huracán de tus manos, o
la claridad de mi misma despues
de un exceso de baladas tristes;
callada.
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.
late
temple of juno, agrigento
in the perfumed bath where i
sank to drown
my angst
all i could smell was
the stale blood
of womanhood
and all i could think was
if she would miss it.
promethea
Caught up in microcosms
and forgetting to breathe
I dance, shivering
over quicksands baked under desert suns,
phenomenon no less strange
than that I am at home in overcast lowlands
dripping dew and melancholy.
Huddled against a prying wind
and shielding what was once flame
from altogether extinction,
I look for direction
to a changeable sky,
try singing,
scribble in mud, hope
only not to become buried
in metaphor.
convoluted
The how
of yesterday and because
wind back and forth like a snake,
its dry, just-shed skin still crackling with electricity,
refusing to give ground to tomorrow
and yet here
this is post-modern jargon
playing at being intelligible,
straight-faced and sober,
awake and grasping at four a.m.
while he rolls over onto his back,
starts to snore.
I nudge him with the back of my hand,
brushing cells against skin,
deforming microscopically,
pressure-points become imperfections become craters
as with each hour, each minute, each microsecond we grow older
struggle each morning to put names to feelings,
numbers to ideas,
words to paper.
Awaken with hope or with regret,
not voluntarily.
My consciousness cannot be written
but I crave to be understood.
Like the path through the woods
that doesn’t quite reach the water,
iteration of dust-mote, dried bark, mire, leaf-spring;
footfall becomes hollow becomes again perfection;
vistas within vistas,
the last turn never unfolds.
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.
deja vu
for you
my imperiled soul
suppliant
unfelled, infallible
unbounded delirium
strewn with withered strands of crepe myrtle
trespass where dreams run
over sodden fields of trampled turf
fall flat and hard
on unremembered white rock
and wake up accompanied
alone
again
