Poem for Sunday, August 24, 2014

The Consequences of a Falling Sky

I.

The oceans reflect nothing; everything will shrink in the cold.

All the ships drift towards Lethe; everyone will grow thirsty.

II.

Molecules scatter like frightened sheep; our blood will turn thin.

The sun is not as bright as we thought; the wind will not relent.

III.

Language becomes paralanguage; we will kiss our words goodbye.

Poetry becomes our last concern; we will kiss our words goodbye.

IV.

The storms inundate the fields; all the earth will be a single field.

Our bodies are drenched; we will droop like naked stalks of wheat.

V.

When everything succumbs to darkness, my reaction will be to

extend my hand in your direction, to wait for the slightest brush

of your fingers.

Poem for Sunday, August 17, 2014

The Inventor

One night in August, I retreated inside from the thin summer air
and encountered an old man already three or four drinks deep.
We secured a table for a friendly game of eight-ball. The dim
bar light above betrayed the scratches on the green felt, and I
don't remember who broke or who hit what first, and I don't
remember much about physics and not enough about geometry,
and that's really all the game is.

A couple games later, and I don't remember who won. We cut
through the lobby and went outside for a reprieve from the
ruckus, the mangled music, the dead skin floating everywhere in
the air. There was enough light to see the streets and the people,
engrossed in dozens of conversations, trickling by. But the
silhouette of the mountains had long been veiled behind the still
darkness to which this town is accustomed.

The old man knelt on the sidewalk and began to roll a cigarette.
He mentioned that he lived down the canyon, that he was
designing some jet pack and had been a small-time inventor
for several years. He mentioned that he'd been an alcoholic for
even longer and had fought in a war. He lit the cigarette. His
weary lungs accepted the first trace of smoke before it plumed
upward towards the indifferent sky.

Which war, I asked.

He said it didn't matter. He said life itself is the greatest war
any of us has ever fought.

Poem for Monday, August 4, 2014

The Monsoons, Reluctant to Fall

By late July, it is brazenly summer here, and everyone takes some
heat with them, unknowingly hiding it beneath their skin. The rest
seeps into the sun-punished land, beige like unbleached wool,
cut by yucca and cacti madder than hell, and there is a dead raven
lying on the side of the road, desiccating while the world spins,
and its beak is beautiful and curves like a sickle.

And then, some respite: rain. They say monsoons here, the gravity
of the term lessened compared to when it emerges in the drawled
speech of the lush, vine-tangled south. The monsoons, then, are
reluctant to fall, but they must fall. You smell them, the freshness
of newly split atoms mingling with the pines. You watch them
pound against the orange Chinese boxcars until they glow.

Think of it this way: a memory is inevitable. It may be some other
rain-covered moment in your past; yes, you were playing in some
puddles that had collected on the slope of your driveway. Your
hands were much smaller. You cut one of them somehow, and the
blood sprang from its own well dug in the wound, and you had to
stop it quickly, very quickly, because it is so hard to get back
what is lost.