Friday, October 30, 2009

Poem for Friday, October 31, 2009


Farewell, October

porch steps are lined
      with disfigured pumpkins

             triangular eye sockets
             waxy oxygen ablaze

                       some weigh more than
                             the children who picked them

                                                  some of the children
                                                  dance, dressed just like them

                                                            so all things embrace orange
                                                                   fruit, sun, leaf, power

                                                  clouds, candy, and teeth
                                                  the fingers with which I type

                      and all of the doorbells
                             glow ferociously orange

            on crystal suburban doors
            on tenebrous tenement walls

glowing for years, for eons
without a single flicker

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Poem for Wednesday, October 28, 2009


A Perfect Day for a Funeral

       driving through a funeral procession on College St.
the Catholics are crossing the road in
lonely groups of one
        black umbrellas overhead to hide their saintly anger
the rain, daunting

this man or woman--who
        were they, and will they have a gift
        for the Holy Virgin despite their
bereavement? 
        jewelry of some kind, or a scant chant

        jewelry like the women wear into the church
angelic brooches, earrings given by grand-
children, and you, lady in black--is that
        a pearl necklace?
        the air, pungent with old flowers and mothballs

three dark death wagons brave the train tracks
        unhindered by flood puddles
        unscathed by those conflated
with somber prayers

         across the way
         a cross to bear

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Poem for Sunday, October 25, 2009


Waking Up to a Storm

The prophets left ashes and myrrh on your doorstep
gift-wrapped but it all blew
away today in a violent gust undulating toward the sky
speed and sediment
       
        like the motion of
        the trees     screeching tires     your senses

you think of the parable with foxes and pour a cup of tea
begin the day reading
about third-world politics ending with gunshots
powder and physics

        what they're doing is
        making it rain      harder

The prophets were Pharisees in clever disguises
trying to steal your
thunder boom-boom-BOOMS spreads sheets of clouds
divides nations

        did you forget to
        thank    whoever    made this happen?

Friday, October 23, 2009

Poem for Friday, October 23, 2009


Motherhood

When I found out your mother
     died, I thought back to five
summers ago. We were sitting
by the tabernacle. I was looking
at the pews, sturdy oak and
conviction, and my palms were
    sweating. You were chewing
spearmint gum, smacking it against
your braces (you shouldn't have
chewed gum with braces). Our hair and
faces were much lighter then.

I thought about how young your mother 
was when you were born, the same age as 
    you that summer. You were more reserved 
than her, too timid to dip your toes in 
my cyan pools as you gazed at me. Not even the 
slightest touch because you would stir 
    ripples, and I would scamper away like a 
whitetail on an early November morning. 
I was timid, too.

On occasion, I think of your family. Adoptive
father, two blond little sisters, and a baby
boy whom I have never seen. I even feel sorry
      for you, once blossoming, now thrust into a
tormenting motherhood. Your petals have wilted
with circumstance. Your father cries over
your mother's grave, and you are unsure of
what to do next. 

But most of all, I think of how you have 
lost your timidness, and I still have mine. 
I wear it as a necklace that reaches down to 
my chest, tucked underneath my shirt, cold
      despite the warmth of my body. You buried
yours beside that tabernacle, and it's
still there.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Poem for Tuesday, October 20, 2009


Transubstantiation

And it came to pass that
the body of Christ
has been wedged in your
esophagus for the
past two          equinoxes

Scriptures and parables
echo off your teeth, over-
powering the formation
of palatal and velar
consonants

You can't even say His name
or His father's name

His blood trickles
down your corporeal
caverns, leaking like a
corroded pipe, blocked
by His               body

Just enough trickles to
make you wonder why
you traded your Bible for
bubblegum and if the
ozone layer is merely
God's bathroom

Do stars combust with blasphemy
or are they unrelated

Either way, you suddenly
understand that Death 
occurs when you can 
fully swallow and digest
Him

Heaven is the glass of
ice cold water to wash
Him down, river rapids
rapturing towards your
poor empty             stomach

And if there is no glass of water
for God's sake, don't swallow


Sunday, October 18, 2009

Poem for Sunday, October 18, 2009


Prisms

Each breath, and our lungs are more crystallized. 
     Inhale--more prisms form, frigid, reflecting
the spectrum of light, wanderlust, embracing directions
and fractions of directions. Violet sucked down the
sewer. Red pulsating through a telephone wire. White
     absorbed in nitrogen. Indigo in me and you.
This is the only way we can see the world, see each
other. This is how we communicate--trapping
each other's thoughts in a pitcher of lemonade by
     a porch swing in Arkansas. This is, this is.
Please breathe in these colors: my obsequious
aura, yellow and trembling; your crochet needle, argent
and buried with bones; the rainbow after the storm
     that destroyed our heritage. This is the only way
we can
      see.
      

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Poem for Thursday, October 15, 2009


Why Orpheus Looked Back

past the treacherous gray canyons
to his left, to his right
the pungent fetor of mortals' last
breaths
            Orpheus trudged upward
            unsure of himself
past Tantalus' fingertip fruits
grapes, mangoes
dripping slippery juices and
breaking bones
            Orpheus could not hear
            his specter bride
past the palp-palp-palpitations
hellenic heart, fear
Eurydice skating three feet
behind
            Orpheus knew men lied
            but gods lied better
past her vanishing
past his memory
out of
            Hades

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Poem for Tuesday, October 13, 2009


Another Goddamn Charlie Daniels Band Song

Tonight I saw
for the first time ever
a black man slide a
fiver through a jukebox and
pick seven Charlie Daniels Band
songs. I mean
damn.
Rocking out to "The Devil Went Down
to Georgia" like he had a
tattoo of the Confederate flag on
his left ass cheek.
Mike and I pondered this as
we downed a couple of
pitchers and sucked some cancer
sticks, and then we danced 'neath
a disco ball on a white diamond to
Girl Talk at midnight. He's a true
            fucking friend.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Poem for Monday, October 12, 2009


I Love You, Sailor

                        The sand tickles the arches of his feet, gripping/sticking
                        to them as 
                                           faithful

       as the man who carried the cross.

       Poseidon's bathtub separates him from the Mexicans, and
       a child stares across the same water many miles to the 
       south       to form
                                       180 degrees of
                                       understanding.
                        Even the
                        gulls are silent. He realizes he mistook Jupiter for
                        Venus all of his life.
       
                                   All of his life, walking

       on the sand above sleeping crabs, cigarette
                                                                       butts, lost
                                                                          wedding rings--
                         the tide (Poseidon's faucet) gargles salt
                         up his ankles into his blue jeans.

                                   How great it is that so many things are
                                             alive
                                                     at night!
                          
                He breathes 
                               not a scent            but a sound 
                               from across the water
                                        past the frothy crests
                                              past circling fish and knotted kelp
                                                     past another nation      that says

                               I love you, Sailor.

                               If there was ever a moment to
                               dig to China, it was now, but
                               he had
                                             no shovel, just

                                     scraps of weathered wood and a
                                           soul
                                           freshly exculpated
                                                   by Jupiter's touch.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Poem for Thursday, October 8, 2009


Water Moccasins

           no snakes, but my feet are wet and untied
           cheap ruined leather or suede I abuse
         
                                                                            a bathroom mirror, streaked with secretions
                                                                            my body is becoming but all bodies have

           flaws.

           what would be different if I never met you before:
           I think I would be wearing a red shirt right now

                                                                             bathroom mirror, my premature beard
                                                                             light wispy and I decide definitely a red

           shirt.

           how did you lead me here
           how did you fool me into washing my face

                                                                             burying my face into my tap-watered hands
                                                                             smiling while mellow rock reverberates behind the

            door?


Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Poem for Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Happy B-day, Mike Lambert.

Doggie

Bleak drive, dog fur, dead.
Smeared against the highway asphalt;
I hold back tears, I hold back. I
hold. It lived, I live, it doesn't.
It's not like
hitting a deer; no iris headlight glance,
no warning. It's just there. No blue-green-brown
understanding.
I apologize for your domestication; you don't
belong here, dead on the street, and neither do I (but
here you are!).

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Poem for Sunday, October 4, 2009


How a Season Changes

                  Cool air wisps through the maze of tree branches
                  between the            veins of leaves
         just strong enough
                  to make them rustle with minor kinetics and we
ponder.
                  It    s  l  o  w  l  y  sucks up all the chlorophyll
         through the same straw nature uses
to blow water down upon whatever is down
                              (a thin stream of air that playfully
betrays us, like
                     an expatriate does his native country).
                 This is how a season changes--
    gradually, painfully, perfectly.
                 We retrieve our sweaters from the
             backs of our closets, our scarves from our dusty
  boxes and drink coffee with new stimulations &
       musings
                    about the weather and existensialism
        about
                 lovers locking gloved hands and
s h i v e r i n g.
                 The sun is retreating
                 and the birds
                         are fleeing fast towards Mexico and then
gray.
                 Everything is gray, but the ice
      hasn't smothered us
                                             yet.


Saturday, October 3, 2009

Poem for Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

I have to be at work in less than 7 hours, and I'm wide awake. Nice.

Hero Worship

        I        can't          help    it
    those who mentioned honeysuckles worth of
    facts             and               love will go
  unmentioned

       sorry sorry I
    can't dawdle along speaking of y'all open-
            mouthed         and          childlike
     but
           please         know          I remember all
  your extraordinary feats       and intergalactic
  tirades for peace (two bread
     crumbs vying to be scooped up and disposed of)

     just keep on hitchhikin'
          that's             all                   I              ask