Friday 30 June 2017

Haunted



She does not yet know
how lucky she is
because she cannot
remember how
unlucky she was
he made her laugh
he was her best friend

Thursday 29 June 2017

Gone




This sea            filled with raging suspicions

polluted by the debris         of 1000 amazing inventions

not one in which I could believe

were you caught
in the firestorm of a million
conversations
or lost
in a dying admission

because just one thing I can show
and that is I am here                          
without you                         
alone
               
perhaps                 

just as it should be

but in our graveyard of
convictions
one last night
of fading ambition

your promise on the end of my fingertips
and it falls
it falls

daylight a shade too deep

I want to know
one day I must know

was it ever thus?
the clouds mirrored in our eyes
the end of apology
the apocalypse of
us

  

Wednesday 28 June 2017

Tomorrow is Crying for You



Something could break
every word you 
spoke
make you sound like 
you were choking
as you danced that 
frantic ballet 
suspended midair
kicking at nothing 
when the floor had
bottomed out years 
before
I could never save you
I couldn't even love you
but how I tried
how I tried


Tuesday 27 June 2017

Blinded



And if I raise my arms
and try to fly
only the sun will be
out of my reach 
when the sun is
all I desire.
For a century, at least,
I have stood here
with my arms clasped
to my side
waiting for the dew to share
its secrets with me.
For a century, at least,
I have stood here and
waited
my palms facing 
the sky
my eyes turned toward
the sun.

Monday 26 June 2017

A Study in Drowning


When I throw back
my head to
open my mouth
the water chokes me
the salt
blinds me

And the sounds, and the
crash, and the
rage of the flashing
waters
silence my
screaming

But you know I
will float for you
You know I 
will face the 
sky 
for you


Sunday 25 June 2017

Not Theirs but Mine


Listen
the trees are telling a
story of their 
silence
when we knew right from wrong
this is where it will all
begin again
the battle for life


Saturday 24 June 2017

Illusions


I come from the winter people.

They sent me to this sometimes green and hot place for learning.  I thought it was an honor.  I thought it would make me rich with experience.

Since then, at least ten, maybe twenty times a day I have begged for ignorance.   This is wealth with no place to spend it.

"We will wait for you," they told me.  "We will feel every moment of your progress."  I made them swear it.

Yet even with awareness of their presence my loneliness aches so deeply that I am convinced it is burying me.  I want to go home.  But home will not have me.  Not yet.  Not when it is clear even to me that, although fatigued and battle-scarred, I am still standing.  And not until I know all that is killing these sometimes green and hot-weathered people.

Friday 23 June 2017

Far Away


I shivered
walked past the knives 
and lived to be stabbed
a thousand more times


Thursday 22 June 2017

What Cries in the Night



I remember them now
the dark plastic green with ridges  
the etched circles in the base that
scratched my hand 
held the dandelions I brought home
for you
the fortune laying on your bed 
it was an accident it was an accident
I never had a chance
it was an accident
I remember.

Wednesday 21 June 2017

Unseen


The second week of November I came home from the library to discover an envelope on my pillow.  At first I thought someone had mailed me a tardy condolence card, but Bryan always left mail for me on the foyer table, and the piece in question was lacking both a stamp and an address.  Curious, I picked up the mystery envelope and inserted my finger underneath the flap—only to remember Bryan telling me something at breakfast.  Something about how Bob would be coming over to the apartment that night while I was at the library, to pick Bryan up for a basketball game.  

My finger froze in place.

It couldn’t be.  There had been no letters, no glass rocks, no nothing since my first week at Bob’s apartment.  But no one else was in the habit of leaving unmarked envelopes on my pillow, and Bob, Tim's favorite messenger, had come to the apartment that night.   Who else could it be from?

Cautiously I opened the envelope.  As I withdrew the note-sized piece of paper, sparsely dotted with handwriting that I had come to know better than my own, I could feel my stomach seize up.  What if the few words on the page said something like I hate you, or Just so you know, I never loved you after all?  What if he truly were gone forever?  Bryan had taken all of my pills away.  I would have to settle for a kitchen knife this time.  Mentally composing the letter I would leave for Bryan, I lowered my eyes to read the two sentences on the page:

Saturday, 8:00 p.m.   It’s been long enough

I flipped the piece of paper over.  On the other side was the fragment of a math proof. 

My eyes filling with tears, I went to my closet.  I needed to find something good to wear.  I was going to see Tim—on Saturday, his 22nd birthday.

Tuesday 20 June 2017

Out There


In the mirror I touch my lips
the oil from the nightmare 
dirties my fingertips
I remember thinking about balance
the teeter totters scared me
they jumped up so fast
no time

Monday 19 June 2017

Transparency




I see a man
on top of a hill underneath 
a tree
I turn to face him
we stand there for a while
the grass is green from the rain
he does not know my name
I turn to him
I open my mouth and nothing gags
he listens
I turn to run I run run run
down the hill my arms stretched wide
I dive between the tall grass
the grass is tall from the rain
he calls for the daydreamer but I am 
gone
it is too late
he does not know my name but he knows
there is no turning back

Sunday 18 June 2017

Shadows & Lies


Because for some easy breathing I 
would trade you
we were born of dust and air and
clouds
evaporating
you want to cry
but you have been dry for so long
that despair has cut a 
dirt rock river
through the canyons of your 
lungs

Saturday 17 June 2017

Bullets



I wanted to trade the
violence for something 
holy
transform sky into
reality
Everyday my face seemed 
the same 
until the morning I no
longer recognized 
what
remained

Friday 16 June 2017

Paradise Lost



Listen to me.

We are the paint peel chipping
dangling over the prickly
bushes
waiting with an eye
toward falling
I wonder who I will be
when I am cut and
bleeding 
I wonder who I will be
when I have
given up

It is like the blanking of
a color screen
the bleaching of dark
green carpeting
hold my hand for just
a little while
We are moving
and fading
on and on.

Thursday 15 June 2017

Pieces


And when I choose to come here again                                                                     
will it snow how it did in my dreams
                        will I be

a story worth telling

                  because the sadness—

it crackles in the night
           
for you           
the mistake worth regretting

                           the faraway voice        filled with belonging

do you see where eternity ends

did you know that you were my friend
this planet a box that holds me


Wednesday 14 June 2017

Atomic Pain


Old truths fill the
black hole where
I buried the leaking need
for you
I know all about incurable wounds

            So much and for so many weepy and
            lonely afternoons 
            I meant to leave you
            for so much, my friend
                        and I did


Tuesday 13 June 2017

Never more


I have considered you as
I watch the creeping
mould overtake the
fading paint on
the walls.
As the dampness of an
unventilated room drowns
each molecule of
air.
And I wonder which certainty
chased conviction away.
But whatever took me down the
other road—
it becomes simply another irrelevant,
better left unknown.

Monday 12 June 2017

Through the Backward Lens


“What are you going to do now?” Mrs. Clancy asked me at the cottage.  “I’m going to write a book,” I answered.  The last confession of the sun god, told by the little girl he’d loved beyond all reason.  Except, as it turned out, he was no god at all.  Just a weak, damaged man who had lost everything, and who had known even less.  But in the end truth is irrelevant.  History is written by the winners.  

The sun god is the biggest loser of them all.

Sunday 11 June 2017

The Day After Tomorrow


Spread your arms           wide

dive

the snow envelops my knees
it makes me want to believe         in you

your candle is dim          a flickering light

in sight on top of the hill
I am pushing

a thousand clouds to insulate the sky

only the beat of the ice crunching             underneath my feet

purple the color of your hidden majesty
in this river flood of oncoming night
                               
play your sad drums for me
underneath the tree

up there on our crayon hill

keep it steady           keep it still

but in a minute I am undone
I cannot cannot leave you now

in the world all gray I wanted to feel
zephyrs and sunrise against my face

it looked so warm
                it looked so warm

from the other side

so I strapped on my wings
took to your sky

                blinded by a million sparkling dreams
                snowflakes falling into infinity

the howling drums of wind and war echoing
around me…

 and then the
candle

                went out
                               



               


Saturday 10 June 2017

Walls


The pen bothered me.   So I asked him, “Where’d you get this again?”  It was fat and plastic and full of colorful ink cartridges.  Being something of a pen connoisseur I never would have bought it on my own.

The strange animal character on the screen jumped over a crumpled brick wall with an appropriate boing sound.  “I found it,” he told me.

“Oh.  Okay.”  I walked into the hallway.  But not entirely satisfied I called back, “Where?”

 “In the library,” he shouted from the other room.

“Okay.”  But I still didn’t remember.  And that was the worst part.

Friday 9 June 2017

Still Here


I was one fear closer to here
lost in a night too dark for sleeping
was it me on the ledge        or was it you
whispering
                                                               
                         don’t give up too soon
don’t give up
too soon                                                                                                                                                                                              
when I am breaking           

I am a fool

where do I stand

I am a piece of stone mixed in
with all this sand
                                                               
yet full of proof
of what died         
with you
                               
                why did you bring me here to my cyclone second
when rage engulfs this bridge from earth to heaven                    
cinder through and through                                                                                                                                        
you ask too much                               you do

for one whisper like the hint of water splashed on embers  
for one storybook of dreams with its message tethered 
to the fading metal moon

the sun  it can  be cruel
now that I gave too much                 too soon                  
  
Is this your plan

is this your one    
your great             
your smoky last demand  

or
my intention
my blue-flame doom

because
burned across my heart your forgotten message
the language lost in time with the words rewritten
resuscitate the girl she is out of breathing
collapsed under the hope she could not believe in
the soot was in her eyes she could only cry

was this my one great truth

did I give up
                too soon?

Thursday 8 June 2017

The Last Rationalization


to remember is to 
fall
memory the betrayal of
what decorates the 
hall
a collection of explosions
kept
in an open jar

Wednesday 7 June 2017

Bereft


Yes you were a picture in a book        nestled between a cranny and a nook       where I could close my eyes and see       but the library locked its doors      and I am prostrate on the floor       you do not belong to me       you do not belong to me

Tuesday 6 June 2017

Beautiful Escape



I don’t really know what to say, I tell him.  Well, I do, but I don’t want to write it down.  

We could obliterate them into a million zillion pieces, he answers.  Or turn them into cartoon characters that we can erase, and then crumple up and throw away.  

I want to fly amidst the stars I want to fall splat on the ground, I return.  This could go on forever.  Fat and wore cheap suits.  There, how’s that for something?

He rolls his eyes.  How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

An excellent question, I reply.  But unfortunately there is a party conference going on.  

Yes, he says.  And no one is winning.

Lonesome


I lost my travel book centuries ago
burned the forest where you
were my favorite 
tree
You are the reality I cannot close in on
what flew through my hair that 
mistook for 
permanency

Monday 5 June 2017

Survival


Just when I was about to crawl out of my bed and find something to hang myself with, an elderly man wearing a clerical collar walked into the room.

I stiffened.

He held up a hand.  It was covered in age spots.  “I know I’m probably one of the last people on earth you want to talk to, so I won’t stay long,” he said.  “I just wanted to sit with you for a little while, if that’s all right.”

My finger that had been hovering over the call button relaxed when he smiled.  It was not the smile of a maniac.  I knew what that smile looked like now. 

He took a step closer, enough for me to better see his face.  There was nothing special or particularly memorable about it, except for his eyes.  Green and blue swirled together, so that they reminded me of satellite photos taken of the earth from outer space.  “Don’t be afraid,” he told me.  “God is with you.  You can rest now.”

He then patted my hand. 

I wanted to ask him where God had been yesterday, but the words didn’t come; exhaustion had, for the moment at least, extinguished my rage.  He settled into the chair next to me.  I could hear him whispering prayers to himself as I fell asleep.

Saturday 3 June 2017

Awake




I wonder what those big oak doors
are saying
I wonder if I could read something carved
into their polished lines
because I am down here searching for some
sense of believing
when God isn't sending me any dreams 
tonight

Friday 2 June 2017

Aftermath





I am sinking straight through
right down to the 
briny deep
You were the tank full of
butterfly breaths
I so very much wanted 
to breathe

Thursday 1 June 2017

The Ugly Cannot Always be Made Beautiful


Tell her the devil is pounding
on the gates
salivating
waiting
God reserves a special place for you
it is where the clouds burst and bang
the loudest
It is His business to forgive
not mine
His
Because now even the furniture is different
And the ugliness way down here
it smells like you