You wake up and you’re still at the wheel. No-one can say how long you’ve been driving, no-one knows where you need to be. It won’t stop them from making up stories. It won’t stop them from telling you where to go. Sure you can keep your eyes on the road if you want to. Sure you can tell them where to go yourself. It might not be the road you’ve chosen. It might not be a road at all, but there it is and here you are. Waking up is only part of the battle. Waking up is where you are.
The scenery unfolds, from tree line to strip mall, from asphalt to billboard to hazard lights it goes on and on. There are maps and there are guide books, and sooth both said and unremarked. The head dissembles while the heart denies. The heart provokes while the head plans and plots. You can choose to listen. You can choose to speak. You can choose to drift and to drive. It isn't a matter of miles per hour. It isn't a matter of daylight left to burn. The timer is always on, the count is always down. The road either stick or swerve, one way always spent for another. We only ever believe in one direction at a time.
If you really wanted, you could stop for something. If you really wanted, you could go all night. There probably isn't a reason, there probably isn't a rhyme. Fate most likely didn't need you here, and that voice that told you wasn't really God. Still, it is nice to have a plan. It is nice to have all the numbers ready if you want. Dawn long gone, and the night will soon be tugging at the skirts of dusk. You might as well head towards someplace better. You might as well follow that unseen star, the one with all the wishes wallowing in its wake. There's no telling how long this will take. You might as well follow that dream, now that the dreaming is done.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
all this fecund magic
I speak the spell of no forgiveness, I loose the breath I took from you. These narrow halls, these apparitions. Plate glass windows and eyes like tombs. Words condense as if on a mirror in a shower. Slick impressions left shining in the gray. I keep this pace in place of ghosts, my tongue dull and slow. I keep this pace beneath the surface, where the writing meets the way. The venom of this lack of charm, never more subtle than failing every strength. Palms pressed to bear the burden. Words burning out little fires in the rain.
Memory eventually steals away the story. The mind shifts away from the heat and the light. We slip into our earnest verses, we slide along each lie. Light condenses against the blinds, painting out a drag and draw. In justice we strive to show each flaw, every sin striped and chained. In clemency we forgive ourselves our blemishes and brawls, our reasons always angel winged. The least crime begun with when the alibi arrives. So starts each seduction, remembering what we please.
I wrote it down first to bend the tension. As if time would abide by the music. As if the declaration was any less because the seams are so hard to see. Then it was the habit held to wear down the adhesion of the order. The blunt incantations stone, cement, and bone. The brickwork winds down into suggestion. That furtive glance, that vacant ache cinched on a bit too tight. The romance told in florid third person so every angle gleams. The light collides inside my eyes, spilling spark and wish. Pressed against a photograph, all this fecund magic.
Memory eventually steals away the story. The mind shifts away from the heat and the light. We slip into our earnest verses, we slide along each lie. Light condenses against the blinds, painting out a drag and draw. In justice we strive to show each flaw, every sin striped and chained. In clemency we forgive ourselves our blemishes and brawls, our reasons always angel winged. The least crime begun with when the alibi arrives. So starts each seduction, remembering what we please.
I wrote it down first to bend the tension. As if time would abide by the music. As if the declaration was any less because the seams are so hard to see. Then it was the habit held to wear down the adhesion of the order. The blunt incantations stone, cement, and bone. The brickwork winds down into suggestion. That furtive glance, that vacant ache cinched on a bit too tight. The romance told in florid third person so every angle gleams. The light collides inside my eyes, spilling spark and wish. Pressed against a photograph, all this fecund magic.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Alice (dreamy weather)
The moon hung so high I could hardly see it, still stunned by all the stars and secret words. The day crawled along, toting that bale, dragging them chains. Dawn drawled by without any complications, my eyes jumping from bird to building. Every brick and feather seen and believed. Every tree and car parked just so, the revelations all small and patient. The mystery worn so thin it all but glows. It dreams and shimmers, pretty as a pile of wishes. If it wasn't for my color-blindness, I would swear it was the color of your eyes.
You are a smile upon a midnight winter, a beacon in a season of ice and ruin. You are the moonstruck cliffs, you are the clockwork tide. You carry a thousand patched up sacraments, the bittersweet trinity of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You are the smoke and the sear, the rattle and the rail. You are the sweat of love and labor. You are the song set free in the wind. I know you are caught red-handed like the rest of us. I know you leave a trace of trouble upon everyone you meet. Your fingerprints and footfalls have all gone missing. With-in these clumsy margins, the world so broke without.
I am that hour of poison upon the clock of no hope. I am that land where you cast your shadow, walking off into the setting sun. I am the line stricken through, the candle flame lit. I am there in the burning empty hours, written upon the lining of your ghost. Sharper than salt. paler than false pride. My name waits unspoken, an incantation entangled with your tongue. That welt of light that paints the bare flesh of your mornings, that ancient craving amid the savaged bones of your nights. A glistening upon your skin, a crease bourn on your brow. Always there in the clot and flow, carrying your busted crown. Always so close you could call out across the thousand miles. I am with you in this silence, as near as any dream.
You are a smile upon a midnight winter, a beacon in a season of ice and ruin. You are the moonstruck cliffs, you are the clockwork tide. You carry a thousand patched up sacraments, the bittersweet trinity of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. You are the smoke and the sear, the rattle and the rail. You are the sweat of love and labor. You are the song set free in the wind. I know you are caught red-handed like the rest of us. I know you leave a trace of trouble upon everyone you meet. Your fingerprints and footfalls have all gone missing. With-in these clumsy margins, the world so broke without.
I am that hour of poison upon the clock of no hope. I am that land where you cast your shadow, walking off into the setting sun. I am the line stricken through, the candle flame lit. I am there in the burning empty hours, written upon the lining of your ghost. Sharper than salt. paler than false pride. My name waits unspoken, an incantation entangled with your tongue. That welt of light that paints the bare flesh of your mornings, that ancient craving amid the savaged bones of your nights. A glistening upon your skin, a crease bourn on your brow. Always there in the clot and flow, carrying your busted crown. Always so close you could call out across the thousand miles. I am with you in this silence, as near as any dream.
Monday, September 3, 2012
errant
It’s all a blur. From the parking lot to the produce section, it is all odd forms and strange words. Bright colors from the cars to the beverage aisle, slivers of shine pinned to acres of dross. The found poetry of the cereal box, the practiced elegance of the butcher’s case. I move from aisle to aisle, section by section following my script. I pull each item from its place, leaving holes and gaps. There is nothing I want, and little I need. My cart still ends up full.
Look, I know my cup is overflowing. I haven’t been thirsty for years. And the people don’t mean to assail me-- they are ordinary everyday jerks like me, just going about their business. They only seem to think the world turns for them, blocking lanes and shouting dumb words into their smart phones. They only seem to believe they are immortal, crowding a character like me. I navigate through all the lapses and hesitations, calculating the least impediments and the least impeding possible, ignoring the blood bath in my head and ten thousand years of bad habits. I lean into the precipice where all the years of lucky breaks and good history ends, the world painted in such desperate hues. A shopping cart and a pocketful of greenback dollars aren’t enough to secure this purchase.
There are walls of wealth and providence. There are towers of sustenance, mountains made of loosed desire. There are hours burning in the open, sight leaving every eye alone. The list asks on and on, never ended, never emptied. The parking lot clangs with car doors and shopping carts, the tarmac scolded by a loud and caustic crow. The heat crowds the air away, every breath fast food thick and exhaust flavored. The lost cause and the emptied cart, I have nothing that I wanted and less I will ever need. I check each item, I look and look. The list will never end.
Look, I know my cup is overflowing. I haven’t been thirsty for years. And the people don’t mean to assail me-- they are ordinary everyday jerks like me, just going about their business. They only seem to think the world turns for them, blocking lanes and shouting dumb words into their smart phones. They only seem to believe they are immortal, crowding a character like me. I navigate through all the lapses and hesitations, calculating the least impediments and the least impeding possible, ignoring the blood bath in my head and ten thousand years of bad habits. I lean into the precipice where all the years of lucky breaks and good history ends, the world painted in such desperate hues. A shopping cart and a pocketful of greenback dollars aren’t enough to secure this purchase.
There are walls of wealth and providence. There are towers of sustenance, mountains made of loosed desire. There are hours burning in the open, sight leaving every eye alone. The list asks on and on, never ended, never emptied. The parking lot clangs with car doors and shopping carts, the tarmac scolded by a loud and caustic crow. The heat crowds the air away, every breath fast food thick and exhaust flavored. The lost cause and the emptied cart, I have nothing that I wanted and less I will ever need. I check each item, I look and look. The list will never end.
Saturday, September 1, 2012
dragonfly
I know you only as the dazzle in the air, as the shimmer of your fuselage. Such a tremble in the air, wings all buzz and work. Such a bolt in passing, the hunt forever everywhere. The rules are older than we can know, all the evidence in the architecture, the traditional perfect armor of endless trial and error. It is a shine without time, painted all in hotrod sparkle and helicopter cool. It runs along yet another vast border, between me and all I will never know. This life so much more than we ever use, it stuns to think of how much more is more. Use and beauty reasons too many to count.
I walk less than wade, the tense and circumstance seem to fold and mingle, the time a clumsy 3/4. I confuse and misremember, noting mostly my gravest errors, my most brazen mistakes. I ramble and stammer and never seem to need the point I missed. Love is on the long ago, love is a reflex hard to unlearn. Still you burn and burn, flesh and scent and lush intent. Still you whisper from the wilds and the hovels, lingering half aware in my desolation. A flavor still hinting at my lips. Designed to hold the heart and trap the mind while the eye delights. The champion despite all these contenders. The lost limb of the story of my life.
I want to watch the stars at night, to see the pretty girls pass with each season, to mark the sun in its demise and ascent. Heaven a direction, a lode pole of human longing, a ratio of want and grasp. I want to sing along to the song in my head, this retinue of ghost and ache the bent of a lost cause and lapsed belief. The tangled depths of language speaking to me with the common natal tongue. I want you without sense or reason, without law or limit. That sense of perfection, that distance, that primal desire. I recognized a wonder, and was at once rewritten. I saw you and could not look away.
I walk less than wade, the tense and circumstance seem to fold and mingle, the time a clumsy 3/4. I confuse and misremember, noting mostly my gravest errors, my most brazen mistakes. I ramble and stammer and never seem to need the point I missed. Love is on the long ago, love is a reflex hard to unlearn. Still you burn and burn, flesh and scent and lush intent. Still you whisper from the wilds and the hovels, lingering half aware in my desolation. A flavor still hinting at my lips. Designed to hold the heart and trap the mind while the eye delights. The champion despite all these contenders. The lost limb of the story of my life.
I want to watch the stars at night, to see the pretty girls pass with each season, to mark the sun in its demise and ascent. Heaven a direction, a lode pole of human longing, a ratio of want and grasp. I want to sing along to the song in my head, this retinue of ghost and ache the bent of a lost cause and lapsed belief. The tangled depths of language speaking to me with the common natal tongue. I want you without sense or reason, without law or limit. That sense of perfection, that distance, that primal desire. I recognized a wonder, and was at once rewritten. I saw you and could not look away.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
all the words take wing as one
This is not a good day. On a good day, I speak to no-one. This is not a bad day, either. On a bad day, I parley, I kibitz, I oblige the step and flow of commerce. Today it is mostly the unspoken and the unheard, my dull little life somehow both maddeningly entangled and utterly alone. I hold no creed, I take no counsel. No waiting lover, no near-by allies, no grace or strength or current employment. I lurk outside in the dust and the heat, scolded by birds and assailed by the brainless yapping of neighbor dogs. I linger outside, tangled in ancient tongues and glib spells, gathering the ink and blood of my bereft legacy. My last labors, these fitful words.
For the past twenty-five years the bulk of my non-academic writing has been poems. Free verse only occasionally unrejected, published sparingly in dribs and drabs until ten or twelve years ago I stopped the silly cycle of submission and rejection all together. Some years after that I dumped the boxes of my notebooks and journals into the recycling bin. Gone is the ghost of all those wants and woulds, futures alive only in other worlds, tomorrows buried long ago without stick or stone to remember their graves. Gone is the odd ambition of posterity, poet another dirty name only I call myself, stopped abruptly by my own obdurate limits. The only new poems left of me are these scant postings. Such an odd assembly of patch and spatter. Such a piddling plume of smoke left of a fire too long dwindling.
The heat takes its toll in sweat and ambition, beating out the last aestheticism from my brow. The curve of the turning earth doesn't throw me, though I often cannot find my feet. Years counted in notches on the hilt, days numbered in marks on the wall. The wake of the world that was. always half-solemn, half-roused. The world turns its face away from me, all starlight and silhouettes. Of all the mistakes to wear through life, ignorance of one’s true affinities is a mark no mirror will witness. It takes time for some candles to gutter, time for the proof to accrue. I am not now, nor have I ever. And all the words take wing as one.
For the past twenty-five years the bulk of my non-academic writing has been poems. Free verse only occasionally unrejected, published sparingly in dribs and drabs until ten or twelve years ago I stopped the silly cycle of submission and rejection all together. Some years after that I dumped the boxes of my notebooks and journals into the recycling bin. Gone is the ghost of all those wants and woulds, futures alive only in other worlds, tomorrows buried long ago without stick or stone to remember their graves. Gone is the odd ambition of posterity, poet another dirty name only I call myself, stopped abruptly by my own obdurate limits. The only new poems left of me are these scant postings. Such an odd assembly of patch and spatter. Such a piddling plume of smoke left of a fire too long dwindling.
The heat takes its toll in sweat and ambition, beating out the last aestheticism from my brow. The curve of the turning earth doesn't throw me, though I often cannot find my feet. Years counted in notches on the hilt, days numbered in marks on the wall. The wake of the world that was. always half-solemn, half-roused. The world turns its face away from me, all starlight and silhouettes. Of all the mistakes to wear through life, ignorance of one’s true affinities is a mark no mirror will witness. It takes time for some candles to gutter, time for the proof to accrue. I am not now, nor have I ever. And all the words take wing as one.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
of hand and hip
Again you bite off more than you can chew, and you choose swallow where spit would do. You can either choke out or struggle on, working for every word you loose, aching for the only thing you own. I would admire that about you, but that is my way too. I start out knowing how bad it is broken. I begin the story knowing how things get worse. The story always wants to keep something of the getting told. The eyes never really bigger than the gut.
So it is one more melting of the moon, another circle around the sun. The starstruck stagger, the mayday dance. The whole mess undone again and again. The furtive touch, the hush and crowd of hand and hip. The languid days, the breathless nights. Moments that entangle the bones of eternity, time nothing next to the salt of your kiss. Another memento stitched to my shadow, the daylight playing out the usual procession of flies and feathers. Another season of drought or drowning, never even a slip or fever in-between.
The romance always burns away, scorch marks everywhere. The weight of remember, the wait of want, all these words we leave when we forget our long residence. The horse before the cart, the flesh before the soul. You wish once, and the rest is surrender. You look to the sky to hold you to the ground. It is prayer, it is process, it is patching the holes in the weave of the world. The warm sun grasps you skintight, your teeth both bite and smile. You follow every hunger, always the answer, always the ghost.
So it is one more melting of the moon, another circle around the sun. The starstruck stagger, the mayday dance. The whole mess undone again and again. The furtive touch, the hush and crowd of hand and hip. The languid days, the breathless nights. Moments that entangle the bones of eternity, time nothing next to the salt of your kiss. Another memento stitched to my shadow, the daylight playing out the usual procession of flies and feathers. Another season of drought or drowning, never even a slip or fever in-between.
The romance always burns away, scorch marks everywhere. The weight of remember, the wait of want, all these words we leave when we forget our long residence. The horse before the cart, the flesh before the soul. You wish once, and the rest is surrender. You look to the sky to hold you to the ground. It is prayer, it is process, it is patching the holes in the weave of the world. The warm sun grasps you skintight, your teeth both bite and smile. You follow every hunger, always the answer, always the ghost.
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