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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

                               

               

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.