In Pittsfield

The ride was slow
like brunch.
Supplementary to coffee,
a reason to still get up on weekends
if you don’t have a lawn
or a hobby.
Western Massachusetts
rolls beneath us like
the hunchback of the state
with clouds like heat
rising from the black.

You haven’t noticed
that you are back
where you were born
until we pass a familiar
grocer on the corner.
You tormented the neighbor
boys with toads.
How those summer days still
taste of lemonade
and earth,
and giving it your all.

A hand-print lingers
on the seat
once you have gone.
Clay once shaved in small
amounts from a vase of some kind
now deposited, if not lifted,
from the leather
like an anti-fossil.
I can’t bring myself to clean it.
I rub it like lipstick into
my cheek.

Iconoclast

Growing up on a lake
it was easy for us to test
the buoyancy of every school
necessity from pencils
to protractors.
Between us we didn’t know
about origami or the pacific ocean’s
end, but we did know the news
could be folded when father had left for work.
The invading tides, relentless
as the end of summer, ate through
a picture of Reagan’s face.
A perfect circle showing teeth
drawn by some lifeless hand
dripping with ink.
The assortment of erasers
were too heavy to achieve grace.
We sent out little army men after them,
a search and rescue playing dramatically
against the setting sun like Ms. Saigon.
They too would be lost
to the relentless sea.
Changing to unmanned planes
we dive bombed the serene lake
with classifieds and obituaries.
Each plane making it mere feet
before a dramatic kamikaze
surrounded by imaginary pyrotechnics.

I read my news online now.
And live on a hill.

Block

I don’t know.
The water runs
over the humming heater
and something invisible
makes everything go
but what enemy of freedom
tucked under the hem of nature
makes this so?
I don’t know.

I travel in time
but not in space.
Like a stone.
A sinking stone
with water like hell
around me,
and a thinking stone
to make it all tragic.
Why must I feel this way,
and why burden you?
I don’t know.

I drink a coffee
with ghosts rising
to tickle my nose.
My baby child having escaped
his crib is silently stacking
blocks.
Each a pixel of color,
a letter of meaning,
and the shape of foundations.
He laughs when the tower is no more.

Going

She ran.
Pathways weaving like a seamstress needle
below and above fabric.
Under the lights of the gently bending street lamps
vision became unbearable
just long enough to be plunged back into darkness.
Alone with her thoughts
and her headphones.

Music in these times
is useless.
It makes her long for
skipping records again.
Like the scratchy heart beat
in her chest.
The way the arm claws at
a dark worn groove
only to hop back again.

If he could see her now.
Keeping beat
with a loose necklace
bouncing against her chest.
How he would laugh
as she ran
nothing but a silhouette
pressed against
the river banks.
The moonlight
catching on its
cold ink surface.
He always laughed at tragedy
and when she would cry.

She ran
until she saw the bench.
Her old dirty friend.
Falling like a fig into his arms.
Not to cry, but to laugh
and to skip stones
against the worn black
grooves of the river.

City of Seven Hills

On Wakefield Street
the skyline
is a landscape
of earth thrown
at the sky
dotted with constellations.
Ursa Minor
is Main Street,
the north star
is the old church
where State Street
intersects it.

I go to point this out,
but her finger is already
dancing. She says
the fireflies are lovely
tonight as they surf
the darkest edges of the city.
How the arms of their swarm
curl like a galaxy
around the gravity
of the old church
at the corner of
State Street.

“P”

Anticipation.
Practical in every part
but punctuated in the “p”.
And in the mirror
she is staring back at me
with pressed red lips.
They separate below human speed
to mouth a word.
Anticipation.
As if kissing the air
or a fish feeding
from the surface of
a world it cannot understand.
And a wish is there
a reality pleading
to break out -
begging -
Please. Please let me out.

Sevenfold

100 years
are created
in seven days.
It took a week
for me to arrive
at this decorated skull -
made of fired earth.

It spoke in Spanish,
the end of a century
written in words
around its eyes -
its smile. And I
couldn’t speak. An exile -
within myself but outside.

Hands covered in clay
being balled
and spun like the earth.
Seven revolutions and each
revealing 100 secrets.
100 revelations like paint
being removed
to create.

Layers fall away
and a pair of arms
awaken me from my week
of solitude.

The Forget

Ben built a boat.
Actually he fixed her.
His hands gliding along
her bowed edges like some
remote island.

She never left the docks -
not by his hands.
He drank beers while
they bobbed in the ocean
by the peer where people walked
to jostle the sand
out of their shorts.

The sun, her large and massive orb,
rested upon the sea
like a pupil rests upon his tears.
The black body bobbing in the currents
as it floats, and in Ben’s hands
a broken rope.

Reflections on the Revolution in France

We are just gaming.
With just words.
Only words. I don’t mean to say just.
I mean to say
that we are merely men.
We fuck and kill.
Kill and fuck.
We justify it all by saying
“we are just gaming”
“These are just words”
Its okay to do these things
if we have a reason. Reasons
make things better.
We are the reasoning animal.
So fuck ‘em.
And kill ‘em.
Just don’t come to me
with your just words.
I have no need for the just.
I have need for the lovers.

Once Removed

This is why Plato kicked us out.
Inside this five windowed cave
I can’t help but think about it.
This is why.
My idea, with her snaky hair,
looking for a people
but finds only statues in their place.
Solid. Made solid.
My idea, she wants to see her face.
Made solid. Tears of stone.
She cannot cry,
She is too much less than alone.
When you are alone, you atleast have
yourself.
I reflect upon this.
This is why Plato kicked us out.