February 2012
10 posts
Résumé
.
A life spent wrestling ideas
into real ideas which wrestle
the world that wrestles me.
A life spent tying a rope to
the branch of an overhanging
tree at the perfect swimming
hole on a perfect day.
The Posthumous Affair
.
When I think about you,
I don’t miss you at all.
It’s when I don’t think
about you that I do.
It seems you were right,
when you said I would
miss you when you were
gone - after all.
shake
.
Shake me from this duvet and out of this bed
Shake the plastic squirrels from the fire escape.
Shake the singing birds and the buds from
the branches of the plastic trees.
Shake the young couple out for a ride on
their plastic bicycles.
Shake the daffodils from their flower beds.
Shake the little plastic dog with the bouncing legs.
Shake the whistling mailman away from my door.
Shake...
The longing
.
I fell off a cliff tonight,
and on my way down to
a crashing sea and certain
death, I saw myself in a
photograph of a man falling
from a cliff hanging on
the wall of a gallery.
In front of the photograph,
a mother with a tilted head
stood crying as a young boy,
with the sun on his face,
looked up at a man flying.
in the cut
.
Lately, I have been thinking
too much about meaningless
things and making too much
of the meaning of this; when
I really should be looking for
meaningless sentences and the
scissors to cut them out with.
The lady in Blue
.
Today, the weight of
the world looked me
in the eye. Carved in
her skin: the lies and
disappointments, the
wrong turns, and every
man she ever had; while
at the lipstick end of a
cigarette, blue smoke
lay across her lips,
waiting to see if I had
anything to add.
Reading into it
. A man tries hard
To write a poem.
A poem tries hard
To right a man.
The Expedition
. This story might take some time to warm up, as I am just awake, and it is too cold to write anything other than stories about explorers and men with packs of dogs pulling them across the ice. Alas, the subject has been written about so many times that if I were to embark on such a tale, I would not be the first and, of course, in the spirit of discovery I must be the first; if only, that when I...
1 tag
Thirty Percent
. I was early. I found a seat at the bar and ordered a drink. Several napkins later, she walked in. She was beautiful. The bartender, rattled some ice in a tall glass and made a display of how good he was, at making whatever it was; but, she couldn’t see him - he was the wrong side of the bar. After he set the drink down (on one of my better napkins) and left, she leaned in and said ‘I am...
the surprising
.
While the city sleeps, above empty
streets that will soon fill with the
sounds of impatience, I wonder
if the grazing herd of cows in my
living room are caught in the web
of a half-dream or if the men
painting clouds on the morning
sky, know that I can see them.
In the kitchen, the man who lives
on the second floor, is playing fetch
with his floppy-eared dog, who chases
the ball out...
January 2012
15 posts
The lady on the curb
.
Thrown out of the car, In front of the bus, Under the wheels Of the rest of us.
The Overtures
. It’s the whiskey lips kiss I miss; the late night rushes of blood; the fists; the shallow graves of morning; the dull mirror of memory; the orchestra endlessly practicing.
The rites of passage
. This morning, I turned the house upside down looking for my reading glasses. I looked in every room: behind every cushion, under every chair, in every drawer and on every shelf. Along the way, I cursed the table in the hallway, my bicycle, my bed, the laundry basket, my cellphone, the passage of time, the years of futility, the failed relationships, the sadness of things and ultimately, my...
Come to Me
. As far as my eyes could see, past the Belgium café and the Korean deli; past the Chinese laundry, the thrift shop and the Rite Aid pharmacy; past the hairdressers, the French restaurant and the fancy new apartment building: I could see her coming, but still, I could not get out of the way.
The Well Thought Of Affair
.
Let us sit, back to back: Your apartment door Between us. Free from The awkwardness of pose, To slip notes under the Door of conscience.
Liminal
.
The sky is black with Up and down rain; The wind is howling. Again, the world is Inside and outside And divided.
The excuse
. The shadow of a leafless tree spilled across my desk this morning; its limbs climbing over a stack of books and putting a crack in my favorite porcelain cup, but somehow managing to bend around the picture frames that decorate my desk. In one of the frames is a Walker Evans photograph: It is 1929, a young black woman is standing by the entrance of the old elevated train on 42nd Street. She is...
Hart Island
.
Murdered by ambition Murdered by success Murdered by failure Murdered by regret Murdered by accident Murdered by blame Murdered by jealousy Murdered by rage Murdered by love Murdered by lies Murdered by revenge Murdered by suicide Murdered by secrets Murdered by neglect Murdered by disease Murdered by booze Murdered by cigarettes Murdered by vanity Murdered by debt Murdered by steel Murdered...
Floorboards
.
In a room, full of smoke perfume, the sediment of sentiment sits at the bottom of a forgotten glass. For company: an upset chair, a worn-out sofa and the sound of someone moving around upstairs.
You (and me and you)
. You are the girl in the window of the train You are the girl who serves me food in the café You are the girl I am dating’s best friend You are the faintest touch of a dress Against the back of my hand You are the open window above my bed You are the secret between us That everyone knows You are the late night phone call You are the lips that kiss my eyes to sleep You are the girl in the...
Forever and Ever and Ever
. In a late-night parking lot, across the street from the local bar, an eleven year old boy sat behind the steering wheel of his parents car. His mother had turned the heater on to keep him warm, while his father made an amusing song and dance routine out of trying to tune the radio into the game; assuaging his guilt by promising to return with a big bag of chips and lemonade. Then they were...
On the Eve
. Pressed against the back seat glass of a passing car, her face dissolves into pixelated gold, and a kind of magnificence, before the car accelerates into darkness, and she promises herself, that next year, things would be different.
Seam
definition: a similar line made by joining together two sections along their edges
. Wearing a faded yellow I Love Belize t-shirt and oil stained pants, an ageless black man, his eyes clouded with cataracts, stood in the office of the Sunset Motel, trying to buy a little time from the out of sight voice inside the unlit room behind the front desk. In the space between them and the pause ...
The undertaking
. Would you thank my friend, who picked me up when I could not stand and carried me the rest of the way in his arms like a father might carry his son. Would you thank my friend, who sat in the waiting room when they lifted me on to a gurney and gave me oxygen. Would you thank my friend, who looked through the window in the door and saw the doctor shake his head. Would you thank my friend,...
The Christmas Party
. In the years since, she had fallen into traps and been wrong about so many things, including forgiveness. But, when she saw him across the room, standing behind padded shoulders, between raised glasses, smiling with people she didn’t know, laughing at something she couldn’t hear; she could only remember why they had broken up and not why she had fallen in love. It wasn’t recalling the bad...
December 2011
14 posts
measure
.
At seventy three, Alice Ward had long ago resigned herself to the inhumanity of man, but still, as she lay on the floor of the bus, unable to stand on her own, she was deeply saddened when no one offered to help. As the sun’s reflections flicked across the ceiling and the bus gathered speed, she was calmed by the sound of the road beneath, and somewhere in the distance: the sound of...
Diapause
. He drifted with a lingering gait; forged by years of self-doubt and the weight of expectation. She, was a collision of panic and grace; pieced together from the twisted remains; over and over again. Together, they stood in windows: watching the first snow as if it was the last; like attic flies in winter, trapped behind two sheets of glass.
Terminal
.
At an airport cafe,
A silver white fork and
A black plastic knife,
Lay, side by side,
On a napkin raft;
Oblivious to each others
Differences;
Survivors of a world
Gone mad;
The Crossing
. He came to a stop. The headlights of his ten year old Toyota Camry lighting up a Jesus fish on the rusting tailgate of an old Ford truck. Below the low moan of an approaching freight train, and the purr of a neon sign, he saw a red fox, grip, and rip apart a garbage bag with its teeth: shaking its head from side to side to get at whatever food there was. The high beam of an SUV reflected in his...
hopscotch
. On tonight’s cold, long walk home: so cold even the streetlights were huddled together in an effort to stay warm - I thought about taking a cab to the apartment we shared; imagining that when I arrived, you would open the door and forgive me for being late, fifteen years after I left.
The Sway
.
Exiled by fear and partly invisible, We are kids and we are old people; Fingerprints clinging to each other, Footprints tumbling down the stairs.
The Detective
. He had been sitting outside the rundown godless block of flats for almost a day, when it began to rain. It was not Mary Oliver’s speaking rain or the drum of Philip Levine’s rain; nor was it the furious rain of Anne Sexton or the thick, mean rain of Charles Bukowski: By the time he decided it was Longfellow’s rain, it was pouring, and as he watched the buildings melt into the windshield, a...
The public reading
.
In a room made small with unfolded chairs And bigger again by Unfilled seats; On the barren notice Board’s a gathering of Brightly colored pins; Beneath a silent hum; In a fluorescent din; In the clutches of doubt And these bent pages Of memory; In this corridor lined With paper arrows, Which led me here, Then followed me.
The Night Library
. Richard Ford sits in the window seat, blowing smoke out of the fifth floor window, flicking ash on passers-by; while Raymond Carver has said all he is going to say and fallen asleep on the couch. In the kitchen, half in the bag, Bukowski has been waging war with a pear-shaped Richard Yates and after relighting his cigar on the hot rings of the electric stove, is now puffing demonstrably...
The price of gas
.
He spent the night
Playing oldies on
The jukebox and
Pouring gasoline
On an old flame:
Trying to convince
Her, he had changed.
And, at midnight,
She finally agreed,
He had changed.
But sadly for him,
So had she.
The Minor Key
. He walked in a minor key, past the record store and the amusement arcade; past his own reflection in the window of a cafe: where clouds hung from the ceiling, a shiny teaspoon stirred sugar into tea, the face of a little boy looked up and away and a bus with backwards words, drove through them. In the street, between the back of a parked car and a yellow taxi, a man on his knees prayed...
The Invisible Man
.
I can see right through me today; through this empty chair and the striped walls of this room; through the sidewalk beneath my window and the subway below. I can see right through me today; flying over chalk hills and villages, church spires and smoking chimneys. I can see right through me today; to a five year old boy sitting in the back seat of his father’s taxi. I can see right through me...
The Foreclosure
. In spite of all the mean things she had said, and the terrible things he had done; when it came time to leave, they just sat there; with everything that was left to say, on the tip of their tongues and nowhere else to go.
The Blue Day
. Today was the first day I didn’t think about you. Today, my cat was on fire. Today, I opened the door of an airplane, dove beneath the ice of Joni Mitchell’s river and watched the roof of the world skate by.
November 2011
9 posts
Thanksgiving Day
.
Beach chairs on sidewalks; coolers, full of sandwiches and soup; families in funny hats camped out on curbs, draped over barricades, oohing and ahhing at giant balloons; in cardboard boxes, asleep on stoops, under blankets of dirt, beneath tarpaulin roofs. This parade is for you.
out of the sun
.
Two magpies fall from the sky in a dogfight over diamonds and oil, in this morning’s age-old battle between sorrow and joy.
Adeline
.
On the nylon carpet, patterns of drying mud lead from an open door to a desk beneath a window, where fruit flies circle a bottle of wine, a poem curls over a paper finger and a wool overcoat grips the back of a chair; its pockets filled with stones from the river.
By and By
. He finally became what she saw in him, and now there was nothing left to see; just an empty place where he used to live and she would visit.
The fugitive pigment
. Tossed and turned by Turner’s sea, I dream I am the rise and fall of waves, that hold you in eternity; while you, in my arms, asleep, dream you are the oil in Titian’s Orpheus and Eurydice.
The surface of it
.
Water trembled
Under the film of dust;
In the glass,
On the bedside table,
Next to us.
The Margin
. Across from this quarrel of ink, a beautiful phrase stands alone in the drifting snow of a white page. Its teeth, chattering. However, in this journal of revealing and concealing, ineffable and often illegible thoughts; it is with the ill-conceived and poorly written, the childish metaphors and the downtrodden memories, that I must begin. For, in the back and forth of all this, the hope, is...
Afterglow
.
The next time I think of you, standing at the top of the stairs in that see-through summer dress; backlit by a late afternoon sun and the expectation of what may become of us; I shall imagine sitting here, all these years later, alone at my desk writing this.
The rabbit's foot
. Her pale grey bunny rabbit slippers, now grotesquely deformed by his size twelve feet, were all that was left of their relationship. But, it wasn’t until he lay on the floor and reached for the slipper which had found its way beneath the bed, that he saw the rabbit’s squished, tormented, lopsided face and knew it was his fault.
October 2011
12 posts
Birthday Poem
. In the wind, An autumn leaf Not yet fell. On the horizon, The brow of My hill.
The Dust Storm
.
The sun-bleached car was new, but everything else was where he had left it that morning: The forlorn pink Barbie bicycle; the house with its curtains forever drawn; last years Christmas lights wilting from the eaves; the yellow ribbon tied to the ebony tree. The white Cadillac with the blue starfish sunshade, sitting in the driveway of the for sale clapboard house; the orange towel and the ...