journeys
The grumble of a distant train shakes
me from dreams,
metallic smell
of her crusted veins lingering
in the moist air like a coming threat
of thunder. Fumbling
for the bathroom
light i
find myself
staring at a mirror
turned back to sand,
a shoreline of grainy morning
shadows where
the loneliest word is written
and erased by creeping tides,
traced and non-existed
like the back-and-forth
of a crosshead whose engine
chafes
to be off down the tracks,
my breath like her whistle
steaming for what lies
around the next stretch
of coast.
where the wild horses run
as the sky re-
writes its own
geography, dancing
the horizon in
and out of focus,
we
follow the road
to its end, lead
it shyly on
into wet glowing
thunder
underneath
the footfall
of uncorralled
dreams.
though the darkness
that falls
is implacable,
its night twisted
up in borrowed
sheets and a bed
as big as a desert,
there is
dew
on the floor
with the softly
waking dawn,
and angel
trumpets that
whistle forlornly
a prime
for coming
home.
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?
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.
left for dead
folded up into a puddle of
blue-stained nightmare
she woke from the bottom
of the bathtub, shivering.
strange because
the tap was turned
all the way to the right,
streaming showerhead rain over
her best dress and dreams
hitherto undisclosed;
maybe it was the nakedness
that caused the goosebumps.
last night i dreamt
i was a princess; this morning
i looked out with disoriented eyes,
dizzy like the laughing child of five i once saw
in Venice, strewing confetti
as she spun along the quay
in a pink dress and plastic wings, flying;
i saw the words you
had spilled at my feet,
picked them up piece
by piece and tucked them away
in the empty space between
your arms and
the center of my soul,
safe for a rainy day.
solitude of a sun at midnight
awake from dreaming, she
hoards this unbearable
weight, keeps it
hidden between mountains
and the folds of her soul.
she holds the minutes close,
gathers them together like
down feathers or memories
to ease the chill of her skin;
unties the knots,
shaves her legs,
rocks back and forth
on naked haunches
in a room closed off by darkness,
looking for meaning
with her eyes closed.
virtue of the starving artist
some days I get worn out
by the balance of life,
fall asleep exhausted and
dreamless but
am up again suddenly and
before the sounding
of the alarm, terrified
that I won’t awake
hungry enough
to feed the tortured
soul of the poet who
paces in time with my pulse,
thumbs through the pages
of my right brain
and finds nothing
more of interest.
distance
one day you wake
from no nightmare in particular
up to the truth
of how far your reality
is from what you
dreamed it.
it’s like you’re frozen or
drowned and no
one gives a damn;
time turns his back and
walks on without you,
air presses down
on sloped shoulders as
if to bury the husk
remaining and the
mirror whispers
in laughter
“now you know
how I feel.”
perspective
The man at the counter
sells dreams
in exchange for breaths of air:
for an hour’s worth of 12-cycle-per-minute
minimally deep inspirations
he’ll hand over all possible worlds;
a single gasp will get you
a glimpse of the stars.
while I tally up my assets,
considering;
he leans in at me with his bright eyes,
persuading, confesses
that he’s behind on his mortgage:
People just don’t look up at the sky anymore.
translate this
In my dream,
vultures big as wild turkeys
sat hunched on empty trees
and watched me
draw my own
death in bold
true lines, painstakingly.
Funny;
I went to sleep
hearing rain-wet magnolias,
not the clamoring of decay.
the conquest
Sitting splay-legged
on a dark pavement
still warm from the day’s exertion,
she draws an invisible sword
from the tight inner pocket of her jeans,
tips back her head and
laughs, close-eyed;
this, all re-covered ground
and still echoing with the footfalls
of dragon-drawn chariots;
she has long since
learned the danger
of thinking twice.
Music plays softly overhead,
incongruous;
impersonal and plastic,
soaked up by new brick and sponged
inexpertly into the pores of her bare feet.
One by one worlds pass by:
parents with children, couples in love,
impregnable youths.
They glance and turn,
watching without seeing;
unaware.
Her mind, a thousand miles away,
kicking the shins of impossibility
with those calloused feet,
unwinding threads through a maze
and gazing skyward,
always skyward.
