|
|
 |
Rainy Night in the Writer’s Mind
It,
ancient, accomplished,
strikes the roof
like a cascade of crisp magma rocks,
batters the black silhouette
of the tree outside,
leaves portals to other worlds
on the muddy roads,
deepens the sidewalks
with heaven.
She,
contemporary, ineffectual,
sits indoors,
where tea steam wafts –
house silent,
smelling like legend
and the electric tang
of the monitor’s constant buzz.
The blur of the storm
melts into the subtle blue blitz
of her computer screen
and the flailing of fingers on keys.
Paying no mind
to the leak in the roof,
she demands that the rain
(and indeed the world,
all the ash-scared children
of that unforgiving mother)
come away with her now,
to the places where true heroes rove,
where dragons call, where banners fly,
where the salt wind slaps the hull of a pirate’s ship.
But all that remains is herself,
and the rain.
They clatter away together.
10/22/06
Necropolis
Shadows crush the commonplace –
the sketchy sights on the winding, dirty, crowded,
palm-lined city streets;
the dusty, sandaled vendors, the cheap
tables of tour guides and postcards, the laundry
hanging from railing and broken windows.
And three pyramids
spring from the apartment-lined horizon
of the windless Giza plateau.
Fixed anciently, permanently,
against the too-blue desert sky,
they stand stoic, unfathomable.
Brilliant white casings of white stone
have long been chipped away and scattered,
and still the monuments shine blinding yellow-gold.
I could touch them – taste them,
richly metallic and seasoned with death –
from here, the backseat of this
cheap, cheesy, kiddy ride of a tourist van.
I’d like to tear the tinting from the dusty windows
for a clearer view. It’s no small wonder that kings
committed their blood to this place;
I would do as much – want to
run my hands along their gritty
limestone faces until my palms
come away glistening red with life.
But the van drives on, and I don’t move.
Instead I sit, like a child on a school bus,
sticky against fake leather seats,
pressing my face to the glass.
9/23/06
|
|
Kitchen Dream
A white horse canters over a field of salt,
his hooves thwack
on a trial of bright gold
that melts like chocolate
on a warm summer day,
and he tracks ribbons of music
behind him as he runs
for a horizon of strawberry waves,
to where the wall stops the sunset
until it, too, melts, but this like
a brick of butter –
and the door evaporates with it,
leaving one open sill that frames
colorless light
and sugar sound
and one great open laughing mouth
that tilts and slips its
red satin tongue, a slide and a twist,
past chapped lips,
and there caresses the golden honey
dripping from the sky.
10/16/06
|
|
Memorial in Asystole
Tell me, love –
Why do you let that incense burn
as if this were a church?
I know it to be consecrated
consummated ground. But
Tell me why the room feels
no longer even like a mausoleum –
more like
a morgue,
or a body bag
than anything truly holy.
Tell me, why does the scratchy sheet of morning
fall pale black over this place?
No longer nights in white satin –
What did you do with those letters
full of “sacredness” and “essence”?
Love, I’ve burned mine –
They curl-smoldered away, but unlike
that incense in the corner,
unlike passion shadowed smoke and ember,
they’ve burned a clear fire,
flame-scrubbed clean clinical perception
into my mind, a highbrowed brain which picks over the
remains
wearing white rubber gloves.
Tell me, do you notice that I
can no longer swallow –
that you can no longer even tube-feed –
that romantic vampire song,
that old photograph sepia tone,
that plush Victorian rose,
the black one you gave me
the night we danced on an empty stage,
sheet lacquered audience vacant?
Tell me, love –
Can you hear the static, the long
hollow “beep” of my cardiac words
lying thorn and fang ridden
on that operating table?
Tell me,
do you revel in this coma, this half-life?
Tell me, love –
Why does my body become
the graveyard?
11/13/06
No Fear
Loss is loud, petulant -
like a child who hangs
from the gray branches of your brain
and refuses to get down,
to go home. A savage child,
painted with bitter tattoos -
the kind time attempts
to scrub away, as if loss
had the patience for holding still.
You and loss -
clumsy together,
you waltz your postulate grief,
your disbelief, your questions -
please’s with too many e's,
no’s with too many o's -
to gesticulate the unfathomable tsunami,
the wet-cold feeling of now quite knowing
what to do with your hands,
the whispers of Lampades' –
those nymphs of the underworld
who hold the lamps for the dead –
whispers that breathe
question marks into the air,
marks that plant themselves in
the crooked eyebrows of
sympathetic observers.
With loss, you dance a chill jig
in sharp-pointy grass.
There is no longer any place for your feet.
I know loss. And his sister death -
but she dances no ice, no fire.
Just incomprehension.
Perhaps that's why,
if you're like me,
you'll jump from a perfectly good airplane
for no particular reason.
11/20/06
|
| Secrets in the
Thrill Park
I walk today with girlfriends seeking out
a modern thrill ride of a day,
and a track of gossip pleasures.
In doubt,
in silver-vague reflection, I pray
their minds trek elsewhere – past my lying lilt
to our joy in the ridiculous, the swift and
fleeting time we spend.
But it’s a safe ride, I think –
They can’t taste my tangy guilt
in secrecy
when all we swallow are the screams
of the thrilled.
To ride a roller coaster, after all,
is like being strapped into an orgasm.
What mind can they have for lies
when we’ve become these
prisoners of delight,
these gypsy’s captives?
We’re all shameless
in a park of guilty pleasures.
So I don’t care if they forgive me,
in oblivion, stark obsession –
I keep the blame; it is my one possession.
10/30/06
Green Jazz
How lucky
to sit where coffee smells this sharp,
lucky to catch this mocha awakening,
overbearing zing singing chemical intervention,
lucky to lean under the shade of this green
canvas, the wind seeping cool
and damp in a southerly trickle,
lucky to be chilly because it’s winter,
lucky to sit across from this girl whose freckles
I could probably trace into a map of northern Europe.
How lucky
to taste sugar and feel this numb
blur in my fingertips,
lucky to tap those fingertips together for
short snap bursts of warm energy,
lucky to watch the birds scoot down from the rooftops
to listen as chatter drifts from glass doors,
lucky to hear a radio spewing jazz.
And this girl’s hands grip recycled cardboard,
because the coffee is barely warm enough.
When this verdant shiver shudders out,
I’ll surely wonder… Was it the caffeine
that made me think:
We have time, all the time ever,
all the time in the world.
11/28/06
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
