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.
This night, there are no stars.
watching sky darken,
we contemplate
words like leaden,
sultry, in-
digo. but leaden
is closer to
the slivered prison
of my rib-cage,
bars behind which
this ache pro-
creates. sultry
means barefoot river
afternoons and indigo
has always been
grotesque, except
on peacocks.
so instead i watch
raindrop veins
on plateglass,
think of melting &
the sublimation
of misted breath,
remember sweat
on glasses,
graveled chaos,
rug-burnt morning
sunlight before
the world changed.
but these windows
will not open and we
feel guilty for
our guilt, wonder
why the stars
stay absent. are
river afternoons so
different, now?
we watch and already
rain is slowing; veins
close & strand drops
in streetlit glass,
almost like star-
light. almost.
still life
i slept last night in our bed alone
cramped tight against sweat-
smothered pillows and wrapped up
in winding-cloth sheets
wilted like the flowers you left
on the kitchen table a lifetime ago,
lily petals sagging and baby’s
breath crumbling to ruin
amidst a jumble of empty glasses and
yesterday’s neglected news;
this morning even the coffee smells
lonely.
_____
il mio cuore selvaggio/ my savage heart
breathes uncertainly,
each seething beat
an inscrutable master
dancing over the graves
of my ill-sung epics and
leading me on hands
and rug-burned knees
through sunken grassblades and
gravelled shag, leaving me
curled up and fetal in the center
of a white-sheeted bed
too large
for a single person,
too small to hold me
safe
from the nightmares of escape
that press into my back again
and again, fingertip-pulses
of flashing neon slipped
between shoulder blade and sinew,
laced tight into the wet hollows
of my soul,
promising.
drowning
In the chaos of raindrops and leaf-fall
you can hear her crushed sigh through
the smeared windowpane and almost
almost discern the lap of pale flesh
by dark waters, gasps uttered for a shadowy prince
from an untried throat, their echoes left for dead
against the cold of the floor;
salt stains her thighs and the glass while
smudged mascara runs down flooded cheeks,
her fingers groping for an anchor, a body, anything
to stop the inundation of her soul.
dirty laundry
they are
of no consequence,
the little secrets
i hoard cupped
in jealous hands
because
when given the opportunity
to use those self-
same hands to bring you close, i
absently tuck them away
like old receipts
inside the tight back
pocket of my careworn jeans,
finding them only
incidentally
weeks later, crumpled
and incomprehensible
in the wash.
tunnel vision
i have buried my secrets
far underground, left
their evidence in the same
dark corner where i
abandoned my day clothes,
my pretenses and my decency, but
i keep my virtue wound
close and tight, a thread threatening
the circulation round my left wrist,
reminding me of a lost autumn air
or a late summer’s mourning rain,
soul myopic in the dawn-light of
memory, unwilling to forget;
unwary of its step;
hardly daring to breathe.
lost
like a child in a cornfield,
unable to see over the ears
but knowing he should be
among heads of lettuce.
or like Christmas in a warm November,
tottering with cogwheeled gait
toward the brink of a wrong season
i find myself
running headlong
into the shoulder of tomorrow,
sometimes forgetting how i got here,
even why i came.
fear of falling
damn this
restlessness,
leaving me to walk with
an uncompromising swing down
uneven steps and
stare with glassy eyes up
at dark-stained,
chipped fingers,
looking for eternity
under every rock
and left amazed by its transience,
the catch
in my throat keeping
me from completing a
single
breath.
acknowledgement
these insatiate old thoughts
demand justice for their restlessness;
they are the demons i keep lashed tight
inside my fists and the early-morning dreams
i refuse to voice on paper;
an unbridled verse
wrapped up inside all the pretty words;
a vengeance
for all that ever died quietly
but was not at peace.
running nearly barefoot through the semidarkness,
they clamor in my chest
out of time with my heartbeat,
stumble over roots as they dig down deep,
truths as they reach skyward.
goosefleshed and bitten, their heels as they fly
are soaked through with dew or
something more sinister;
like you, they desire only that i would be more clear.
alive
intrigued but
uncertain a drugged heart
paces in my stomach,
makes me nauseous in the speed
with which it moves
up my throat,
catching the indrawn air and
hanging weightless,
remorseless,
reminds me of the fragile
shattered exchanges
of breath that came before,
leaving me lightheaded and doubtful
that they ever came before at all.
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.
insight
squinting at the
clock in the kitchen as it winds slowly
toward the end of an hour or an epoch,
i sit at my window, look away:
at the ground below bogged down
in indecision, up brooding at gray skies,
out at the flowers i planted
with so much care, coaxed in
by another season, another lifetime;
now they too are grown
wild and inaesthetic, incomprehensible.
isn’t this always how it ends?
the state of things
bleeding heartdisgusted and displaced
grubby fingernails scraping
cheeks far too often turned away
until they are blotched and swollen,
hair unhung, awry, indifferent
to the shape of a mouth
or the taste of blood;
and eyes–most definitely
–closed
until with a stricken bang and
burst of floodlight
their blue-green-brown wariness is
startlingly revealed for
a world which has already
turned its back
to see.
just talking to myself
now that you’ve broken through the glass,
shattered your soul-boundaries into
thousands of rough edges
and seen the ocean waiting on the other side,
breathing feels here so borrowed,
a heavy wet nostalgia and
mildew on skin that bruises too easily.
put your small hand in mine and unwrinkle your forehead;
the tide may be coming in but
we can still build castles out of the sand
that remains.
glancing over my shoulder
there’s a small blonde girl
sitting in the window
on the third story, her legs
kicking the old brick
haphazardly as they dangle.
*
from here
she looks insignificant,
an oversized old grey
sweatshirt all but swallowing
everything but the randomness
and those legs.
*
maybe she’s thinking of jumping,
headfirst onto pavement;
sure it’d be a clean dive
if angled properly.
maybe because she was dying
already, from the stale haste
of her daily perceptions,
flat-lined perspectives
and want of fresh air.
*
or,
maybe, from above,
just sitting on the edge could be,
would have to be,
enough.
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.”
what i see when i look down
mirror shards
under a sky faded
with the overwhelming shadow
of the dead feeling
that hides in the cold
white skin of my blighted
youth, this place seen
through the smoky filter of
could-have-beens, tomorrow’s
hunger, a Possibility blurred and
almost not there.
diary, friday june 27
it’s late on a friday afternoon and
i sit barefoot on a couch that isn’t mine
thoughtlessly prying dead scabs from my feet,
red and raw from the dress shoes
i wore to a wedding
which also wasn’t mine,
a mere courtesy of presence
where i arrived late and
stopped to dance only one slow, slow dance,
smiling at the camera all the while.
nearly quitting time on friday, and
i look out a window which belongs to someone else,
but i’ve opened the shades half of the way
and they rest, crooked, on a curtainless sill
deep enough to sit in;
i don’t dare.
someone’s thrown a rock, and the glass is cracked
in one of the center panes; i can just see it through the blinds.
dreaming of home on a friday but
my fingers as they type don’t smell like my own.
it’s as if they knew i was dissembling,
that they should be doing some other work, following
a destiny which i surely didn’t sign up for.
strangely, the smell is of mice, caged, fed
and raised for breeding. i wonder
what that means.
metaphor
yesterday is burning.
not cleanly, but like an oil fire with
lots of dark smoke and haze;
it’s not clear anymore what
lies on the other side.
i should try and save
what i can, i suppose,
sort through mouldering triumphs
before all is ash, but
the acridness singes the hairs inside my nose,
makes me want to squint my eyes and duck my head,
forget it ever happened.
blind mice
uphill over the skeletons of roots
clotted with dried earth i stalk,
not sure yet if i’m on the right path
but sure i had to come this way uphill,
always uphill, by the curve of the lake,
hot dense air hanging over the surface,
dulling the reflection of a too-bright sun
on my thoughts, which, broken,
flutter on a non-existent breeze:
blind mice, caged by a fate
with a sense of the melodramatic,
caught at the water’s edge and afraid
to look back;
we skim the surface like those heavy
dragonflies, biting at the bitter air,
as significant, as singular as the dried
leaf from last year’s autumn, which
hangs still on an oak dripping over the shallows
and brushes against my cheek as i pass,
whispering of things which have not yet come.
transfusion
words the color of frozen blood
fall from my fingers and onto
a blank page, breaking its indifference
with a cracked smile:
like the rise of empires,
lucid and prepossessed,
my every truth is only transient.
title track (these are the tears of things)
i have never been one to let scabs heal,
so how can you expect
me to let this pass painlessly, fade
into a diminished humanity?
i think really what i wanted was a
cataclysm, catharsis,
but all your outstretched hand withdrew
was a sunset, crimson glow fading
to leave goosebumps on a hard-worn dignity.
The last throw
went to balance, and though
she tipped her hat
to fire, to ecstasy and wild joy,
i’m left behind in a frosted limbo, wondering
where i will find dancing stars
now, surrounded by this nebulous,
ebbing reality.
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.
