what giving creature is this

something like a whispered song

mere touch

her meaning is like the texture of the perfect

my mother has escaped love

that love is no mere enthusiasm

savannah

how comes the muse to the latched-upon artist

swing

she wears galaxies of memorabilia

Saturday, August 24, 2019

light through a window


his smile was a type of
camera, and we talked about
the girls in the halls,
and we had scarlet

conversations about how
glazed everyone else was
and how they were the dead

straw of life and how Karen
Carpenter knew how to
make us feel exalted.

we stole books from the
book fair and he became ripe
with guilt and burned them

in a small pile behind his
house to hide the evidence,
i kept mine of course.

parts of our youth were
sulfuric, and we sat in the
pews and passed notes

about going to camp,
would my folks mind?
we can swim at night.

we did not swim at night,
though, because he feared
we'd get caught.

he was studious to the point
of a quivering leaf; i
failed what i hated

and walked the halls
among our peers as
if a sword blade of dusty light.

the triumph was in the
pilgrimage of stars in
our separate infirmities;

how we were of a certain
small tribe of people who
wander against latitudes.

i suspected that his
indifference to the passions
of love was a deep,

meticulously hidden
mask of thieves, and
that what he craved

he could not speak of,
not in our age of dissecting
interrogations.

his truth was a spasm,
really, it was a wrinkle
of sheets and he slept unkindly.

he asked me if i liked
being a father, and i said
yes of course.

he asked me if i liked
being married, and i said
yes of course.

his drowsy questions
were inclined to
disentangle his myths,

i believe; to remove those
walls briefly and peer
though an open window.

i believe he loved me,
but i can't be certain, but
i was never certain with him,

the one who walked the long
way through rows of
suspended shadows and

was never one to share out
the tenderness in the deepest
parts of his tissues.

i should have told him that
i loved him, if only to assure
him that what i valued

was that he was real to me,
that i was not as pleated as
i seemed to be at times.

i took a picture of a window
recently, through which the
last light of the day

yawned, and made the
interiors seem like hope
was not without shadow,

that life was not without
delicate betrayals, that
love was not a feeling.

dreaming souls have it
worst, all leaping urges
left alone to die.

his last escape came
in the night, when no
one could see him.

which is the way he
liked it: obscure
and unassuming.

there is no significance
in things not said between
people, to be honest.

what is spoken is there,
and everything else is a
closed window.

i tell myself that,
but really, it's not
the least bit true.

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

lifted


do you remember,
she danced in our dreams?
- and how the questions were all
ominous, like first-of-night
touching the landscape?

do you remember,
everything was so badly described?
- and how the shallow valley of
old winds just wouldn't
cease to vex us?

do you remember,
naked flowers under a bruised moon?
- and how acrobatic fate was all we
had to clutch in those moments
of blanking losses?

do you remember,
the obscurity of wanderlust?
- and how her arrival was
like a mad impulse of
mystical stones?

all terrifying thrusts
and shapeless sounds
and un-gemmed words
and primitive dance-songs
became our mediums.

now, splendor in her
kingdom, and serenity in her
legend, and nourishment in her
veins of delight are come to us
like an avalanche of lovers,

burying all those dead
agents once and for all,
and leaving us the beauty
of a girl in a swing who is
none the wiser, but lifted.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

i'm not certain in which room


well -

i'm not certain in which room
He thought you'd ought reside,

since -

square is round as square can be
when all you do is hide

from -

all His hurried days that race
across your pebbled street,

since -

blades of grass ignore the touch
when faced with His retreat

toward -

lightness chalked by blackish coal
that's dug with bitter hands

which -

bleed upon His stretch of time,
congealing where you stand.

//

i'm not certain in which room
He thought you'd ought reside,

so -

do your best, son, do your best,
and let the Fates decide.

Monday, August 5, 2019

stonecipher


you crack me open and
the split receives your
relentless flow;

you jest - your wit is
wicked - and you release
great waves of silly.

if i were to remake you in some other art form what would you be?
what i have now is poetry, that dance of watery concessions to language.
i would draw you, then, with crayons made of blood-wax, blindfolded;
pin it on a surface, drink it daily, and not sign it.
this stone, molded by heat and pressure, time and violence,
has its ancient faces placed by ancient foes,

you decipher them
with action figures
and bicycle wrenches and

you find no correlative
significance in the way you
use your feet and hands poorly.

your innocence is a pouring
over, a soft-droplet shower
of powder-blue questions.

you ask certain things
multiple times in your
quest to stay afloat,

and i answer them as best as i can, but i'm better with a pen.
for example, i have no idea which Avenger i would be if i could,
or which weapon i would prefer in the event of zombies.
your tongue and your lips are transmitters that wash
a signal over me until all i can hear is the sound of you dreaming,
a perfect pitch that buoys me to points above the compass.

you sweep away the surface
dust and get to the
chiseled truth;

your instruments of that
undoing rest in the palms
of your thirst.

you kneel at the site
with magnificent calm and
approach my stone with care.

your blood on the skinned
flesh has dried and it looks
like spilled Kool-Aid.

my brother once swung me from the feet in cyclonic carousel circles
in our old living room until my head struck the corner of a brick on the mantel.
i blacked out and bled and he brayed with laughter. the blood on my shirt was alluvial.
i sculpt with ink, bearing down on the truth in the rock.
i harden my resolve and whet whatever appetite that growls.
in this way, i am dependent on your graciousness and untied sneakers.

i am a stonecipher
you crack me up good

Sunday, August 4, 2019

she comes to terms


she had no agency,
and she never spoke.
impoverished, wandering, cool-eyed,
intricate fabric of hand-spun hopes.

there was once a riot of beautiful
people on her small stage, a cult
of the tired who danced between
great oaks of the living and the dead.

with bright thoughts on all harbors,
she was one of them to be sure,
but an old wind wound up and
carried her into an uncomfortable home.

she had to make it all out of bones
again, the foundation to the tower bell,
unearthing rocks to remove them,
singing in the darkness of blood.

life is a caste; a glacial, atomic,
tribal dance; a slow water in
the crevices of the fingers for
a woman made of confessions.

so she must endeavor to
wail at those old faces, so that
she might unmask her furious
hurricanes of fate and love.

she comes at this differently
now, deciphering as she goes,
uttering prayers beneath a
breath made of ancient dignity.

to poke through the pains of glass,
to bite down on her lip
and relearn harsh principles
that she can then discard.

everything has been left
half-eaten for her. everything
has been left to wash up
on the shore.

everything is soapy and
feels like it was just not
meant to be, and whatever
generous bounty was someone's else's.

but in this new face,
but in this new graciousness,
but in this new center,
but in this new sacred text,

she comes to terms