Category: poetry

Portrait

You sit
Here and invest in the part of you 
That has no beginning. 

Eyes fixed on the wooden
Fireflies.

A deserted city for a headband.

Shoulders like Heisenberg's uncertainty 
Principle. 

The to-do list of dusk in the air. 
Which you have always taken seriously.

And a tattoo
Of wings put on the bottom of the feet.

The
Void for what it is, the thread count of 
Existence. 

You think, 
Did the universe inflate, superfluous
Of compass, all in one go of it? 

Behind you the sky, 
Not knowing how many
Keys make an accordion, 
Shoulders the long way 
Home. 

This is clear. 
As it is uneven, and croaked like meaning.
Like a portrait. 

What the words have to do with this,
Is an emergency.

Unknowing Poem

This I will say plain,
I will not 
Sabotage distance with 
Preoccupation, I will not 
Dirty the socks of the moon 
With pleading. 

Let them be.

That’s why shadows are important,
They tend to adhere to you,
So you are what you are not,

Jumping atop lost pianos
In factory made shoes, singing
The birds are the perfect cents. 

Originality is propaganda,
Certain exaggerations
Must precipitate into fairy tales.   

Like November helicopters 
Gathering up the body slams of dusk.

Pillows that are fire
For this garden head.

Is There Anywhere for the Universe to Pull Over?

Is there anywhere for the universe to pull over?
To park, to fall in love?

A well-kept bike, a stack of poems in disarray.
What if these poems really did mean something?
How terrifying. 

The menu of poets
Is full of branches.

The books on the fridge. I'll get to them soon. After a walk and a few   
    more months of procrastinating. I’ll write poems too. Small ones, by   
    an open window. The moon like a dog licking a plate. 

Mirrors reflect, yes, but they
Don’t know left from right. 

A group of dusk is called a vanish. 

The wild arteries of stars
Do they feel it too?

The quiet celebrity of being alone.

 

 

(revised from an earlier post)

Notes in Windows

I would have me emptied, and to remain behind.

A plastic bag gripping a winter tree, in the wind, and the sound it makes is empty.

You hear shoes down the hall, though you don’t live in a house. They sound as if they are approaching. The truth is, they are not getting any nearer. And you remember you have been left behind.

Reflections in a bowl, sometimes city lights, sometimes the stars, for dinner. 

You stop to read the graffiti, and the notes tapped to windows, posted from the inside facing out, written on, leaving no margins: I think this happens more so than it should, in poorer cities. 

I would have me slapstick readied, though I remain on board. I know the captain has burned the charts. I know the city birds are one big computer.

The notes in the windows sometimes include pictures: an angel with the living earth for feet, or burning trees with typeset for flames.

A skirmish of ghosts, folding in on itself, breathes its last. I am at sea. Without a bathing suit in the arms of stars.    

The Self

Is 
Pummeled
Dirt
And cosmic
Spat,

A shoreline
Of 
Alien coast,

More fictitious than thunder
Disappearing
Between the fingertips of the moon,

Is utter non
Sense 
Played without jest,

A box of giggles
Forgotten of hat,

A grave contest drawn in
The dust of stars.

You will not know the self.

The self is not enough. 

But you will burn nonetheless.

Just Saying

 The beginning stands 
  
 Like an old shadow
  
 Waiting for rags
  
 For rain in paper cups.
  
 Put the house up for sale. We’re starting over.
  
 I stand on an ineffable table.
  
 I borrow a folding chair and break the kitchen dishes.
  
 I mop the floor as if I was in a movie, even if I was a movie. 
  
 I botch my words. I am smitten. 
  
 Beauty wears the seams of transience absolutely, and the seams of the 
     absolute transiently. 
  
 The amble of gravity over the hills and through the voids 
  
 Bare knees howl.
  
 ~
  
 I will not have words for you
  
 I will not do right
  
 I will not do ill
  
 I will not truth
  
 I will not loathe  
  
  
 Just Saying

The Opportunity

 There is an oblivion 
 Just next door
 Recently relocated.
  
 Here one visits 
 If one is willing,
 A returning
 From the future
  
 That’s been with you
 Before you were born. 
 A pumpernickel dawn
 Of abandoned hospitals.
  
 But some fool
 Cut off the wings.
 And misplaced 
 The spelling bee. 
  
 So, you hold up 
 The rainy bicycle
 With the perfume 
 Of your arms, and
  
 Into this pinch of creation,
 And pinched by creation,
  
 Till your knuckles have as 
 Many stars as a galaxy. 
  
 Laughter is a tree truck
 Without a ride home.

Shapes of Self

 I know how the clouds fall into place.
  
 And it matters now most of all because it is over.
  
 Put all your tears back into the pockets of your brain, put back
 The shadows and fevers, put away the stubborn impossible
 Flowers, the trembling,
 The not yet beaten-
  
 The sudden is spent 
 Without preparation,
  
 Like a crescent of light that holds the moon 
 in place. 
  
 And it matters now most of all.
  
 We haul the ingenuity of our lives,
 In shapes of self that cannot keep pace.
  
 The pain is such that we will have to wobble home 
 Uncanny with bliss.
  
 And we are better for it. 
  
 This sorrow is ample
 And bright as it is blue,
  
 This sorrow is simple, 
 Hardly here and hardly true.
  
 And it matters now most of all.
  
 Against this city smothered in machines
 That pretends it’s not a ghost.