Mistaken Identities

Rewind to find
a start to which we affix
this place – where we are who.
Hope it sticks.

The body is only part of us
if we love or hate it.
Otherwise no – it cannot be our who.
Hope we can sate it.

The me that is free
is too good to not be true.
But the plant that grows has roots.
Hope its you.

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The Year Away

It wasn’t all whiskey and away
but also taxes, and car crashes,
subtle declarations of faith
like blowing eye lashes held by angels
on a finger tip,
and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

It  also wasn’t a year.
I could only wait 315.
Curiosity had burrowed through,
somewhere in between.
A blank white sunroof
in my cave to patch.
The light is more than I can bear.

I expected you to think I was dead
but not to care. I casually thought
of myself as invisible. But to you
I was a tiny angel clinging to an eyelash
caught in the wind of a wish
you wanted back. I thought I would die.
But I kept going instead.

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She Broke

She broke up the pieces of her day
into manageable chunks
floating in a settled stew.
The hearty potato of daily meetings
and busy commute orchestration.
A sprinkling of chopped vegetables –
complimenting a stranger
affirming the mirror.
Sinful red meats, like love,
are saved until the bowl is almost dry.
To taste last. To end with a glass of wine
on the patio they built together.
Motionless.

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On the Playground

At play
there is a boy
jumping infinite chasms
between re-purposed
truck tires
bridging an imaginary castle,
propped up like a Hollywood set,
to whatever a slide
is supposed to symbolize.

Two girls gossip on the swings.
The pendulum uneasily rotates shadows.

Those who once played tag have
crumpled into the self awareness
of constant photography
a war of thumbs waging in their eyes.
The last one to ever be ‘it’
is removing loose rocks from his
poorly tied shoes.

From inside the jungle gym she can see it all
and wishes for panopticism.

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Been

Where have you been?
The mind races with possibilities
ripe with untrue juices
none the less savory and delectable
Spaces with prophecies
in the rear-view mirror can become
anything so long as they are closer than they appear.
Can I lie to you if it means that you will believe
something more true than
if I were honest?

Is that allowed?
Is the point of being honest
giving the right impression of events
or feeling guiltless in the fact
that you have successfully listed
every mundanity as it appeared
rather than as it was felt.

As a child I pissed myself
and in that moment Rome burned
on each of my cheeks.
I felt the ground rumble and dissipate
in an earth swallowing quake.
I knew that every pretension I had of being great
was a puddle beneath my shamed shoes.
Now is that true?
Is it?

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Listless

My days lean heavily to the left
and to the beat of the pandora
which knows me better than myself.
Hunched like an ape
at a computer I write poetry
and attempt to tactically
add “running for my life”
to my resume.
As if people would hire me
knowing that in desperation
I would do anything
to breathe clean air.
The dream of doing anything
bobs like a lure
in the ocean of surviving long enough.
Some fish are caught
and furnished in tropical fish tanks
with bright colored friends
and a tiny castle to call their home.
Others are eaten.
I eat a rather depressing tuna fish sandwich
with light mayo
on wheat bread
to stave off the sensation that I too am dying

and it works. The tuna works.

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National Poetry Day

All I can do this day
is write.
We awoke tangled
but not in the cocoon
of soft feeling we  recognize
from movies and day dreams.
Still sour I was up before
you – without pants and vulnerable.
You are of the breed
who talks to the future
for money, so you sleep late.

Yesterday’s formal attire
is crumpled by the door.
They still smell of power
and so I wash them for you.
You, not knowing,
in these very clothes
had said that I reveal, that I must
because of what I do.
Because it is what you do.
I push the fabric to my nose
and inhale one last time.

You told me that the point
of this was to reveal myself
to others. That this was my gift.
How empty I must feel.
Why can’t I add layers to the world
instead of remove them from myself?
That invitation brought you here,
a cacophony of snores reminds me of this.
Suffice it to say, it did not convince
and I will undoubtedly be the subject
of two poems by this afternoon.

Flattered by the faltering
I watch the machine come to life –
spin and soap and soliloquy.

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Scissor, Rock, Paper

The summer of 2008
is still neatly
cut away from my forgetting mind.
Protected by a holy space –
a vacuum that the eaters
of words cannot
travel.

Our apartment
was a typical
triple-decker. Cluttered
like the 20 somethings
that shambled its
ancient wooden floors.
Everything creaking.
Underneath discarded shoes
separated from their pairings,
scattered papers,
and underwear
there existed a skin I don’t
think we ever saw more than once.

The action atop that firmament
played out very differently.
In a room discarded by everything else
I sat with black coffee,
keeping time with circles in a cup
to the constant heart beat
of the house,
and I wrote over the prayers
and whispers that came through the walls.
It was isolated but not lonely.

You
were more interested
in unions than exposition.
More than one person
lead by an extended hand
past the womb in which
I feverishly wrote.
The bright light of the kitchen
silhouetted your umbilical march.
Sometimes slurred or staggered
yet always like a salmon returning
to the place of its birth.

Laying amidst
so many discarded half-poems
I could keep time
to you and be jealous
that while a fire raged inside you
I was left only with messy sheets
and a laptop. It wasn’t until 5
years later that you told me
you always felt the same.

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A Chapter on Dostoevsky

The story,
smelling of vellum
with bandages
still covering
fresh ink
unfolded her
meandering plot
thusly;
naked and face up
on my desk.

The distance
between beginning
and ending
is razor thin
and tucked
in the curves of
open pages
where clean light
cuts shape
into the darkness.

Words and words
and words
have piled and collected
to give density
throughout her middle
like a Russian novel
with ordinary details
arranged in extraordinary ways.
Open and confessional
she had been saved
from the firing squad.

Not a word wasted
I devoured every detail.
My youthful
education
is finally serving me.
Precious meaning
having been hidden
with metaphor
and misdirection
was now stripped
and blushing.

This story
made me a novice
again.
Bad habits of pressing
your hand
too firmly
on the spine
bending
it against the heft of
the book,

sloppily ear
marking spots to return
to later, and highlighting
every detail.
She is soon covered
by my own ink
rather than the authors.
Too curious,
I remove the bandage.

We both flinch.
The sting
that flesh
is heir to.
Here is our
denouement;
Gauze removed
slowly
to reveal
a cross,
the smile
of Dostoevsky.

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I am Bic

Carve.
The father and the bird.
The hand of Bernini
guiding each
subtraction.
The food we eat.

Words were frantic
on our first date –
nerves mortising
our stories.
The effect
was shortened distance.

Squeezing away the spaces.

The heroic couple.
Nobody rhymes alone.
Born of wood
and kerning,
nature, the hand of Bernini,
forged us
into symmetry
as he holds every
atom in check.

Squeezing away spaces.

Sometimes
when we hug
I imagine one
body subsuming
the other. Unity.
Prosperina’s meaty
thigh sinking into
a tight grasp. I have to remind
myself we are stone. Not blood

Squeezed from the spaces.

 

 

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