Friendly Cove

Down an overgrown drive, translucent, I can see through
to the muck below but choose instead to search for
starfish and shells in the calm ripple. Seems
a miracle to be dropped here, up until
and including tonight, myself of foreign metal born
and you asleep on the latticework, my head
up in the rafters and your heart tending the radishes
(for the rabbits!) two innocent bystanders trespassing together
the one gate beyond which lies freedom, death, release
(though not always in that order) which warbles somber safety,
set at a distance from the lighthouse rocks, from the
gladiolas, irises and tulip bulbs.

Sometimes it takes a mirror to shut us up, sometimes a wall;
other times the horizon is a carpet lapping at our doorstep,
smoothing out our footsteps. Sometimes we
sit on stones near the white trees to watch the water
unfold and unfold and unfold, then falls
the tides to crease the eyes once more with their churning.
Today the liquid glass, once turned, upends them all,
a crowded beach but none to see them curled along the spine
of this shelf of surf. Take it all away, wash the edges round:
stare at it till you see it everywhere you look, till you
see it on your eyelids. Maybe it all goes away, maybe it
never was -- hope and despair, a book of pages turned --
not by memory but by insistence alone the light's trace
is preserved. The summer cold off the west coast, Arctic air,

is winter somewhere else, but here it means days spent
with the rest of the driftwood, dank and smelling of salt,
writing memories in a notebook, grain of sand by
grain of sand, drawing inspiration from the same
single body of waves that has ever crashed.
What am I but my own twist on this and that,
spending the afternoons drifting in circles, mapping
my footprints, following where they land. The ocean
drowns us out with its insistence: rhythmic, in
a trance; I write this down before we forget.


2011

Flying Lessons

School speaks in tones of devotion, church talks of tests
and both of texts into which I dig, worship more than read,
stare at more than understand. On slow days I

sit by the window, in the corner, as far from the door
as I can to always see it shut and never be passed,
the first to arrive and last to leave. Outside
the other kids play wallball, run footraces in the grass.
Inside my name is called in class, stomach sinks
in-stan-ta-ne-ous-ly. If I could

climb the watertower, I'd see all the way to my home. Just
jump the fence, cross the gate, be a nobody turned superhero
carried on their shoulders. Instead, on the park swing I
teach myself to let go, to send my body through space
using only the restraints around me: I start slow and tuck
the chains against my shoulders, push down hard on the way back;

chest pitching forward, feet held together inches off the ground,
then a weightless moment as my legs come loose, falling open,
rushing forward: pull the chains hard on the way back up.
Zero to flight in no time, high like the big guys and
every once in a while not even too scared to jump free.

Angels desire life, are made to be jealous, as am I.


2011

The Fertile Crescent

We came to the foothills past the lowland, beyond
the river valley, returned to the same cave,
worked all night by lamps and fire, in the hearth,
inside the oven, oblivious to morning, crawled
through holes between the walls, past the secret knives
buried in the corners of our homes. With eyes of science

in the darkness, past the shadows you can see them
sleep, shining somehow, under the gummy layers of packed ash
painted red. Alone and apart, the same as us --
the round castle, below it the stacked
boxes of houses, and under that,
the children who carry heavy loads before they can walk, who
learn to walk before they can stand.

As strangers we came to this village on the plain
and the forked road there: the tell mounds
of their houses, naked inside
small rooms clustered
beneath sleeping volcanoes, the world's first people
built on the ruins of before. Painted ceilings
and a great bull's skull in the clay wall
stand guard over the dead hidden
in pits beneath the open floor, covered with red ochre,

their bodies folded knee-to-chest,
pushed aside each year for new souls with their
skulls removed. And one stranger understood:
inside that mud and plaster, here
is the end of wandering -- obsidian mirrors
in stone corners shine leopard spots as a
goddess gives birth, as beaks of
vultures reach out through her breasts.

Both god and man lay claim to this land,
and they wait.


2011

Old With Is Yet To Be

Baby birds in the yard hide in the bushes, peck
with mom in the dirt, feeder and fences
while dad stands guard.

Last night you fell asleep in my arms and I imagined
I could feel how you feel when I fall asleep
in yours.

It felt nice to be trusted like that,
the first time in weeks it seemed.

And yet I was sad I couldn't explain how I felt.
Then you got sad you didn't understand.

"Grow.. Along.. Me, The Best.."

You are the angel whispering inside my ear
sweet love and gentle suggestions, care and
ways to care for myself: remember to breathe

deeply and smell the earth, as though
you're not from the same place, and into
my ear alone out here in the garden maze,

making the same paths different
each time through.


2011

The Window Washer

We almost didn't get in at first (she said I sounded
like a delivery driver; I was going to yell up but
used the buzzer instead) then to her apartment where
she smokes and works and drinks coffee. Hasn't bonded
with her baby yet. Eggbeaters and happy crabs. His
big, long toes. And watches a kayak from far away.
Still owed a date by a cute boy at Hollywood Video
from a month ago that she's stalking who gave her
a hot chocolate to get her to go away she says.

Then she called herself a milk machine: the nurses
grabbed her breast and stuck it in the baby's face,
she said. Like they were trying to kill him with it.
She was on a crucifix, by god, raised up five feet
off the ground inside a harness, numb from the legs
down like they were getting sawed off, from the neck
down and throwing up down her face, screaming Oh God
Oh God for drugs, and with the other girl in the next bed.

After she related the birthing trauma and showed all
her tiny pictures we walked down, found a taco stand
on 7th -- you, her, The Third, myself; They were still
washing the cutlery -- then took the bag of books to
Russell's, looked for a coffee, ended up in Chinatown
and drank it by the dock watching a kayak row away.


2011

Nostalgia

Mornings you walk around in flip-flops to
remember the days of climbing that hill alone:
the old bare bones is already there, the courting stag
who grabbed your shoulders as you took mine and got
dirt on your blue sweater that time at the lake.

Then you start typing and cleaning surfaces:
talk in tongues to the skink about his sickness,
keep quiet in the car. (And now I'm sure I must have
cancer of the heart as well!) So yes let's see what would
bubble to the surface. I'll keep feeding it sweaters and hats,
remembering the days of climbing up the hill after you
past the big red barn and the swarming hens.

I will sit and pine I will, yes I will pine and you will
see me at it and with a dream in tow this time as well.
Then all will be better and go away, diamonds in a ring,
each note on all six strings, a bedside bookshelf and
my big black hooves dancing like a rooster.


2011

Stupid Dumb

Nothing is worth the effort save genius and decency.
Our mayor was decent, burning a list of numbers

that still keep coming; and married with genius
the king's speeches will endlessly dance.
Some days I'm the first and finest poet in all of mankind:
and then it becomes no thing

beneath a sign flashing Vacancy, nothing, Vacancy, nothing
staggering at the sink; frozen on the sofa
as smoke swirls from a dragon's nostrils
which (in principle) is safe from the judge's arbiter:
but then what remains, mayoral confinement
a little bit -- at all times -- the jungle in tow.

Give me none but what the day brings forth
else I'm unloading a warehouse and breaking down the boxes.


2011

Biking in the Dark

greeting the familiar trail's unexpected lifts
out of nowhere, into nothing, then home
these nights when I watch my shadow grow longer
as it's lost again in the next street lamp
stretched too thin, standing on my shoulders
climbing up the handlebars and gone

these streets sprinkled with evening lawn's spray
in neighborhoods the same sound in and out
this house and that like someone approaching
from behind my back, tires suddenly seeming
other than my own though none other than mine
those too passed and on, awake now and gasping

has this town vanished, its inhabitants refusing that
same instinct which brings me out, drawing away instead
behind shades shuttered batlike, just flickering screens
flashing through the cracks of their chosen lives
silent silenced silence that side of the curb, but then
again the next bend next, tight around the curve

you could ask me not to say it and I'd surely oblige
but that would not mean I forget to feel what I am
the freedoms and fear of cracking branches and
crunched gravel under spokes that sing as they spin
my mind reeling as well under dark heaven
moon bright enough to ride these nights when I fly


2011

Perfect Silent Shapes

yellow green red again
and I sit underneath this canvas
count the leaves on its branches
where every which way is shade
and wet grasses sew shut the earth
under the legs of this certain shape

twenty million pages end to end
from twice ten years spent in halls
book reports, ruled paper. rules broke
renegade collegiate nonsense and yet
twenty thousand folded corners still to go
which brings us up to now where I must
write a letter of some significance
dream up scenes that cannot die

come close to me you murderers
let this beast be its own unmaking
worth handsome words but not much more
let foreign bodies wait in hiding
my perfect partner breathe but longer
and bring us from this place, this cave
burn bridges not given to rebuild
follow me where I then must turn
inside the town of corners edged
under the covers again, unsleeping
twenty hundred dreams to go I hope

this tree, this fruit, these birds and their
worms tell me: better to start pulling
than the alternative, drawn down to a
bed of green growth wrapping veins around
the legs of a sunken bench in the shadows
where winds blow the mornings no more
and genius is seen in pages alone


2011