Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Reverie

I have tried to keep my memory of you
Filled with what was best about us.
Warm breath on the mourning pain
Melting away any bitterness
left untouched by idle worship.


So when you came back yesterday,
I wanted to push you away,
because it meant that I would have to destroy
the you,
I’ve come to love.
The you
who stayed.

In the restaurant you were unrolling your napkin full of silverware,
And I watched you with the same speechless joy
I would have had,
Were I given permission to be near Michelangelo
watching him untie a roll of muslin
where he keeps his beloved chisels
and selecting
just the right one.


You began stirring even before you began pouring.
Steam was climbing up the pillar of cream,
With the same wispy arms and legs,
as the last words you spoke to me,
in the cold night air
so long ago.

I will never forget the sound of your voice back then-
Every word wrapped
In a tattered gauze of frosted breath
As it rose quickly past your beautiful face.
The face I knew I would never see again.


I stood there helpless as the shape of you,
disappeared into a thick white oblivion.
I remember an unbearable sadness coming over me,
and looking around to make sure no one was watching.
The same way I do when I slip on the ice
And look around.
Hoping no one saw me fall.

Monday, October 1, 2007

When Ends Meet

I went into the kitchen,
to make myself a sandwich,
Only to find,
A rolled up plastic bag
with two familiar shapes inside:
No one ever wants the crusts,
And there are always two,
Abandoned at the bottom
of every twisted sheath of cellophane.

Even though they were just as kneaded,
in the very beginning
as the rest of the loaf:
To avarice children,
With dirty hands,
It’s as if they’re not really bread;
nothing more than stale book ends
to push aside,
in pursuit of a flawless row,
of perfectly cut portions.

I stared at them for a moment,
and felt so sorry for them;
Alpha and Omega
Facing each other,
Little bare backs
Exposed and tanned.
And made myself a sandwich.

Lunch Break

I watch the sparrows,
Scavenging around the tires of parked cars
For the crumbs of careless humans.
Or a colony of lost bugs,
Led across an asphalt desert,
by a wingless Moses.

Prurient wind,
Pulling on the skirts of women
passing by.
Forcing them,
to hold their summer dresses,
against their hips and thighs

Out Of The Way

A night filled room, exhumed
by the songs of morning birds,
pick away the darkness all around me
Until I begin to see,
Some pencil drawn trees,
On a grey tablet sky,
Opened up on cardboard feet.

She came by,
To help me get ready,
with a coat and tie I had never worn,
Stuffing in the maple twirls, acorns
Shaking her head and saying,
it was time
for me to know the Lord.

Lumpy white socks,
conceal the roots,
coiled around the bottom of my soiled feet,
pulling me along the winter street
with the string of souls,
To knit and purl the front row.

The reverend spoke of a boy,
Who perished on a tree,
I wondered to myself if the carpenter’s son,
Had hewn the poles himself,
with drawknife and spade;
how cruel it must have been,
had no one told him.
He would die on the very cross
he made.

People stood to speak in tongues
with esoteric words.
She held my hand and smiled at me
Thinking I agreed,
god would speak to us,
with such ambiguity.

It felt so sad to let her go
Because I understood,
The difference between the pew’s veneer
and the feel of living wood.

When I walk beneath Cathedral limbs,
where all things move with ease,
and Jehovah whispers his Pentecostal hymns,
Through the boughs of evergreen trees.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The other

If this is all I will ever have,
Then let me know soon enough,

But maybe, I don’t want to know.
The reason why the birds in the sassafras,
Grow silent before a storm.

Your stillness keeps me hanging on,
Like wood clothespins, caught on the swell of old rain soaked rope,
Strung between two poles, swaying in the back yard.
Waiting for long sleeve shirts and sailing sheets,
That toss and turn on the inside now,
since the dryer was fixed.

I still believe.
There is time to get home before the lightening strikes.
I want to keep you the way you were,
before I knew,
The way the air feels,
after it rains

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Snowman

As you melted away,
I tried to build you back up,
To what you were before.
But there wasn’t enough of me,
To keep you anymore.

Snowmen don’t have knees,
To beg or plead,
With God,
So I knelled beside you,
And prayed for one more day,

A scarf and pipe,
came floating by.
I reached over to touch your face,
And you were gone.

Excerpt from ACT IV (The King’s War)

"But thou has never known the need for solace daughter!
Thou hast yet to bear the weight of an empty heart:
Thou knowest where thy true love is,
Yet unlost in battle, or to another’s curve.
Thou shall see one day, my dear!

“Though, I wish to God, that thou wouldst not.
I pray thee, that thou couldst remain,
As thou art presently:
Full of strong heart, but with eyes,
As dim as thy lamp of oil is to the brightness of day.

“I pray thee, that thou shall not stand,
As I do this hour,
Sorting out with one hand, the harvest of such a small garden as thou has grown thus far!
And smile,
That thou perceiveth it’s wealth for thee, as vast and encompassing.
When thou has had neither past nor present feasts to prepare;
When thy house has only been thy tiny loft by the hearth of thy mother And father.
Thy steed, a besom who neither drinks nor eats but a fare share of dust.
Who neither jumps nor startles thee.
When thine only guests, have been made of clay and little dresses,
before thee round about,
at playful supper and meat.

“Dearest, I pray that thou, changest not,
And keepeth with tender heart,
What thou dost still crave, with a child’s unknowing:
That thou believest in a walking God, and not a stillness,
That robbeth the Night of all its stars,
And the day, its handsome men, on riding horses."

LOST

Far away from the road,
in the thickest part of the forest,
I pretended I wasn't scared,
by pretending I knew the way.

In a half closed eyelid of sky,
I saw those crows and barred owl,
as omen in the cold-
earlier in the day I watched them,
and didn't feel this way.

Faster in a larger circle I wandered,
shoved ahead by boney finger thoughts:
of how my skull will frighten a hunter next year.
And the rest of me scattered by coons,
grateful for the good meal.

It was then,
that I saw the smoke,
rising from your chimney.
Your cabin was close enogh for me to shout.
You waved ,
and never knew,
how glad I was,
to see you.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Walk On Water

He went ahead of me,
With trembling legs.
“Listen for the sound”, father whispered.
“The lake will let us know, if we are allowed.”
“Don’t be afraid!” he spoke aloud, drawing me near.
Convincing himself that his words were for me.

He stopped and looked around,
For a crew of other fishermen,
hanging on invisible crosses:
Bragging of the Bass and Salmon they had stored away,
in buckets of ice last year.

Or was he listening to the creaking below our feet?
The groaning of scale,
When the lake weighed us out to see,
If like the grocer’s scoop of candy,
we were enough?
Or would we be the extra piece or two allowed
the favorite customers?

Father kept his quiet,
Until the groaning stopped.
But I could hear him drawing on his briar slow,
As I listened to the landing of the falling snow,
On his denin shoulders and cap.


When we started to move again,
He told me we were over the deepest part of the lake.
I asked him if this is what Jesus did.
He laughed and called me, “His best day off”, and put his pipe back in his mouth,
We walked along more quickly then,

“You shouldn’t be afraid son
Even though, you could fall in.
Sometimes, this is the chance you have to take,
If you want to go fishin’.”

WHILOM

We will never be as loved,
as we were then,
lucky us his children;
whom heaven chose this angel for,
and when our hearts adore,
his memory,
he will never be,
surrendered to this grave.