Poems March 2010

There is a moan winding it's way through the venting of the hotel
A wind trying to get it, sad about it, angry about it
I'm trying to stay out
The wind is me, I'm that wind
I'm that sad angry moan so low in the belly it might not be there
Discontent as quiet as a small finger brushing a pillow in the next room
But as busy and impulsive as the highway we drove in on
But I'll leave by local roads, through the back country, through a long cut that takes years if you're lucky

Tis where no wind blows
And no one finds me
Light but glances in and leaves me

Horn sound far away
Planes soar past and onward
Rain gathers by the stoop

When it's clear
When I choose
We'll sit on that stoop
With summer flavoured ice pops
And sticky fingers
And await the fireflies

The clicks of rain and the alarm clock remind me I'm neither where I belong nor on schedule.

What a fuck-up I've been. What a mess.

We keep a light on somewhere
To guide you in
Or keep monsters out
And stumble about
Like the carpet is calf-deep water

In the red glaze of morning
I lay on my back and rub my chest
My reflection wonders what happened and why didn't we see it
And we shuffle off, crying and arm and arm

Now that she does not love me
Hokey lyrics
What to do

Sell those earrings buy some goldfish
For the children

It's a big mistake to let it end
But when the sun is high overhead
The shadows cover up my eyes
And water flows from low to high

Head over heels is not a comfortable position
nor a permanent condition

But by some act of contrition
6 years hence they're still delivering flowers
I'll relent
but until then I know what to do

What next?
A rose or butterfly wings
Delight and rolls of money
Two prancing lions and a heart of good intentions about keeping appointments and looking at the moon more often

Under the sink, things to do
Papers to collect and young girls at twilight
Never get around much anymore in this lush life

My father knew most of this but I prefer to unmake the bed of my mind, sleep through the best parts of my dreams, and awake with a start beside someone who stll hasn't met me.

There are things I cannot do anymore
I've not forgotten
Indeed, I remember
But to move on I must forget
Memory holds us down
I will not hold or be held
I've been forgetting now for years

The day has nothing that the night doesn't
sun up, sun down, moon out, moon hidden
The house is still there, the walls

It is only in dreams I climb out the window
And in waking climb back in

I want more
I want everything
All in a moment
Lasting forever
Forever remembered
And always forgotten for the experience of seeing it anew

Party like there's no tomorrow
'Cause there isn't
Tonight the Saxons come while we're sleeping
To put the torch and the blade to our taste buds and let us lap up our own blood

It'll been sweet on yonder tomorrow
Older and well-dressed
Perhaps at a Starbucks
Older, with a frappacino
Young girls still not taking me seriously

A long day with odd strangers
The spring has brought newness unimaginable

There are things worse than me at my worst
Because my worst ain't so bad

Reread these words in 20 years
And know exactly what was in my head when I answered with monosyllables

Just now something slid off and hit with a thump

Just like three weeks ago: something slid out, silently, like a slight cry

Whenever I see you I miss it, but I'm better off without it

And to grow it back only to again cut it down

I won't do that anymore.

Just this once
In a quiet night tone of voice
With nightbirds peering over their tucked wings
Bits of paper float down on the wind, which barely holds them
Lowering them to the ground
As dark clouds scutter across the horizon

She emerged out of the trees
Searching, like she was looking for someone
She found me
But now on late winter nights
I see her from the window
Stalk back into the trees
Like she is hiding something
And I'm too scared to ask
And all sorts of pieces are missing

Do I grow as the vine grows?
Limber and stragulating in my discontent?

Or do I grow as the tree, firm and set in my ways until rot or accident moves me?

Or do I grow as the weed grows? Am I everywhere unkept and underfoot, and uprooted do I return again?

I have decided: I never will be the flower - I'm not beautiful. Nor am I the corn or the wheat, for I'm not that valuable.

I'll be the weed, and I'll stay here and return no matter where they haul me.

What am I doing in this bed?
I belong at the mouth of a river
Or exploding a lab
Not here! Anywhere but here!

Me - ME in a room with a humidifier running
Alarm set for a day gig
Four door cars everywhere

And there aren't songs, but there is soap, and chatchka in the bathroom
While I'm old enough for mild gum disease and comforting a small kid
having a nightmare.

She comes like a boney little girl
And taking me by the hand we run up the stairs to a secret room
The windows are open, a chill breeze floods in and
Gathers at my feet
I tiptoe across, wave "bye" to the skinny girl and head north

Of umbrellas we spoke
And covering up
And medicine in what amount

Cars drift past
My slack tired jaw
Advice from the misbegotten

Someday
In maybe 4 to 8 years
I'll sit on a bench in the summer
Under a purple night sky
And have my company kept by fireflies.

The big night was a week ago
When yelling changed everything

Even the bugs moved out
The yelling changed everything

When no one bothers to write a card or list thank you names
You know there's Taps waiting in someone's bugle
And this thing will soon smell dead

Because yelling changed everything

Should have slept hours ago
Climb a rickety framework
And lying down in a pillowy pyre
Commit myself to the serious business of forgetting

Should have slept forever.

Twice now I've fallen asleep after finishing a poem
to wake up with a start, poem lost, a finger had hit some button

Sleep calls and I follow
To a warm place I can't remember
Where I am known in deep ways
By friends I'll never meet
Where things are over
or never started
And new things begin
and never finish

I awake sad, and lost
Forgetting things I've never remembered
Missing someone I'll never meet

I have something I'll never have
Knowing
It is better than anything I'll ever get.

The night tightens
He turns up the collar of his coat
Turns his back to the teeth of the weather
It turns out badly

She's across the other side of the bed
Through the window
Corner of the 2nd floor by the left edge
Down near a bodega and looking up

The night descends damp
A wet blanket
Of unstrung piano chords

we are each the flaw in our diamond
a skip in the shine of an otherwise fine life
the filament of it twisted yet glowing

when light hits me I try not to cower
and when they put questions to me I try just to answer
say nothing wrong, and scared as a boy
because everything wrong is already know
they all but turn and stare on New York street
at me
and then finally making the train
I imagine it going somepace with unaccesable romance
the whole ride home

When they ask who is it we live for, tell them we live for our children

Even though it is killing us, taking away everything we ever dreamed of

For we are artists, and a house was never the goal, the neighborhood, the mortgage, any of it was never the goal

The children, we stumbled into them, loved them so much that we agreed to pay the price

For we were artists

Those voices in my head which are merciless to me
Of late are coming from your mouth

I can know all that is wrong with me sans your help
What is wrong with me is written with the debris of dumb decisions and failed plans stretching back to birth

I read my own map all the time, cursing my wrong rights and lefts
I have access to the horrors of me that you'll never know

But I'll ride elevators above
the me made petty
Above the dread at the sound of a car door slam

A chain, this chain stops now with me

Walk on walk on
And always walk alone
Always walk alone

Through the window
Over the house
And the neighborhood
So forgettable
Like the phone message
Must remember the message
And the paperwork
To San Francisco
And your cousins
And no goodnight
To the wicked
From the righteous
Who is who
Who is who

Walk on walk on with head held down
Cause we always walk alone
We always walk alone

I'm a slow, sloppy man
tardy on my path and lost

To stride into town two gun hipped is too much to ask

But quietly, beside a brook
a robin lands feet from me
It knows the quality of my mercy
of my nature,
which, lost on you,
is ever my loss

A full day of you is too much and yet not enough.

We both grow older with ever diverging orbits.

You, my little moon, too soon off in the stars without me.

I'll wizen those days, become hoary and dottering.

Maybe alone, ever waiting for your arc back.

Knowing that in the now I'm the pull that also pushes you away.

Forgive me for me, Boy O.