Poems February 2019

Lay me down
It’s all I can remember to do
Stare up
Empty
Blindness at the ceiling
Wondering if my back side
Might be left outside
And the curve of my spine
Is it taking me down tunnels
Where I remember I’m a girl
I’m a woman
I’m a mom
And I hear summer crickets
Hidden in the lawn
Calling my feet to the beach
And there’s someone in the darkness
I’m not sure who he is but
I’m sure he’s mine
And I’m lying very still
And I can hear all of you
Mumble prayers
Soon enough he’ll come
Take my hand
Walk off with me following
On feet that haven’t felt this small and lithe in ages

The creation of everything started with a tired god, in His chair, overlooking the nothingness

Anything can be made - with a gesture that could yank a mountain up, another gesture that could carve a river and fill it with water

And the god saw it was good, and napped at around 4

Later, after the nap, he resumed: the car port, the workout area, the sort of cloistered walkway

At the end of that last day, the god stood tall, pretending it was at a parapet and was smoking, and each puff brought forth something new. Cars! Money! Appliances! Calls from friends soon visiting! A speaking engagement! Something mysterious and perhaps erotic! Dinner!

Overhead the lights dim as he sits to eat

Lately, he dreams constantly, and can no longer distinguish between what’s real and what’s invented

The wind is amped up tonight
It could be a long train miles off
Car and after car pulling by

There’s an ocean in the neighborhood tonight
It even drowns out planes heading to Europe

This could be any city, especially not here...

A windy night with espionage on its mind
It’s black and white
Suits and cloche hats
Merciless eyebrows and unfiltered smokes

At the station there’s the 10:33 waiting, steam in its teeth
The merciless eyebrows soften for a moment
Her hand reaches down a moment late
He runs along side
This was the sign he was waiting for
The hand always just out of his hand

The locomotive screams
He’s out of breath awash in leftover steam
She vanishes
The rhythm of the trucks like his mom’s clucking tongue: She never loved you she never loved you

He’s an empty garment bag tossed on a slat bench in a station house wondering how he’ll get home and explain this abortion as an adventure to himself
Beg for his old job back
And let his mom hold him and be right as usual

And in the distance there is still the plowing of the wind like worry that never stops

Good days

Bad days

They come and go like rain
Like strangers passing on a sidewalk
Like cracks stepped over

Don’t know them
Don’t stay long enough for more than a taste on the mouth or a smile intercepted meant for someone else
And then that embarrassing feeling
Pretending that wave to someone not there
or
Acting: “Oh, I thought you were someone I knew.”

I though you were a day I had
A very good one
When I was in my 20’s
I read the kinky parts of romance novels in line at the supermarket
You were embarrassed but laughed too

Later that night we fell asleep and it was taken from under us
pulled away between blinks -

-and back on the street
The cracks
The quick faces
The spaces between the raindrops

It’s the most wonderful night on earth
From Finland to Costa Rica
and the Celebes to the Thousand Islands

Everyone is outside
And it’s night everywhere and the sun giggles from the hall closet

We shrink and fall through our clothing
And scamper about
We’re flexible naked mini action figures in perfect health and beautiful breathlessly

And the lad is in the north - Copenhagen, or Helsinki? The Aurora’s overhead and it dyes her tiny huge eyes green

Miles melt to inches
There’s good music playing
It finds them through the street and kicks their feet into action

And everyone dances into the night and on towards morning that never comes

I opened the widow wide
To let in the sound of new snow fall
Let in the very breath of winter
It’s hours away and I’ll be asleep
Drawn off by the planes from JFK
And the hum of a dying transformer on a phone pole
The radiator chuckles from steam

When technology replaces all this, and snow no longer comes
When winter stops breathing ‘round here
What will bear my consciousness away
And will my dreams require extra props to be interested in me?

Emily
Has love crushed you yet
Daffodil of a girl

When you were a kid
Would you run around the park
Make up games yourself
In a fertile henhouse of imagination

These days I don’t have the energy
Why, he’s scattered about lawn clippings
What a worthless celebration

Maybe a clutch of daffodils
But not a whole damn garden of them

When you are finally crushed, dear girl
You must write me and tell me every detail
So I can miss the past too.

Doof laugh
Like a horse in pleasure
Like the time the sun was low behind me and I played with my shadow, distorting and remaking myself until the family of strangers (also behind me) couldn’t contain their laughter anymore

Laughing with me
Doof laugh

Is my delight annoying you, dumbass teenager? So much so that you clip my wings and now I sit like a kid that didn’t quite last to the potty.

Learn from me now: 30 years ago, a girl I loved would make a funny face and then kiss me. One day I imitated her. She never made that funny face again, and I’ll miss it forever.

The crow cackles a call to find a mate: the one that hears music in the metal on a blackboardness of it.

You would prefer the crow silent and alone just so you’re “chill.”

Get up and fly, dragonfly
You can’t sit there on the paver
Awaiting an errant foot
You with your multifaceted eye
Surely know what’s coming

I’m so tired, he said
I’m at the end of my week
There’s almost nothing left

Wind that just took him up
What will you do with him?

I know a place, said Wind
Because I visit everywhere, don’t you know
That is quiet, and I have crocus in mind there
And that’s where I’ll leave him

And then I’m coming back for you, said Wind
Because, as I pointed out earlier, I know everywhere and I have something in mind for you

Where? Where will you place me?

But the wind just blew cold
and I buttoned my coat
to wait