Poem for Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Lagerstroemia

You, under dirt and lime, still speak to me
through sudden startles of wind and the bottoms
of my feet. Like this:

Angels are dressed as bread bums, you say.

Don't forget to bless your food, and one time,

How are my prized crape myrtles?
Are they clumping pink or white?

See, I learned about you through porch stories
those humid afternoons when I breathed in
intervals between cloud bursts and swatted away
the bumblebees.

Again, you speak. The wind screams against
everything then stops to reform. I nod down at you
in complete concurrence:

I will not take love lightly when it comes.

You were born in the summer
just like your flowers.

Poem for Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Talking about Existence on the Roof with Nadeem

I.

What he wanted to say was the
ineffable. The dogwood buds drooping
against humid night. The lights refracting
through the hospital windows across
the street. The magic
of hyper-awareness



II.

We smoked through the millenniums as the
occasional car trudged on to nowhere. Religion
then big bangs then the human brain and
all its synapses. The most poetic thing that could have
occurred then: a breeze-plucked leaf spiraling
towards the indifferent ground



III.

He was wearing a red polo and glancing at his
dangling feet. Then he gazed up at the
sloping wooden fence and remarked--as if on behalf of the
entire universe--everything has
meaning



IV.

Propellers in the sky interrupted. They sliced through
sleeping stratus clouds just because they could. They whirred
with the power of celestial acoustics. God
they could have delivered Derrida's gift
without warning or bow
 
                                       *

Something cannot come from nothing, he proclaimed
before the helicopter overtook us.
We descended

Poem for Friday, April 5, 2013

These Days Have Passed

My grandfather, who gave me my round countenance and sharp
ears, was a butcher by trade. He could cut and slice shanks just
like he could breathe.


One afternoon long ago, when most roads were gravel and Russia
was our main concern, he was fired from his job at a local super-
market. The manager


happened in the walk-in freezer, and there stood Angus, cleaver
in one hand and shiny silver flask in the other. Bloody-aproned.
Expression unknown.


I cannot say who was the manlier: the butcher juggling whiskey
and meat, or the man who had the courage to terminate him
without wetting himself.


I cannot remember from whom I heard this--my mother or my
grandmother--but I listened to them tell it, probably on a blue-
skied day, over a glass


of iced tea or a cigarette, against the background noises of my
lost generation, like it was the most important thing my ears and
heart would ever accept.