I pulled out a fistful of pines
and gargled some green air,
finding ways to pass the time
as nothing changed around me.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Dear Reader

We are a rare kind of soap opera
that airs only at night, every night

we are the bells ripped by the wind.
You are the root of my brambles.

A sprinkler for the thirsty wanderer.
Reader, my mobile, patiently spinning.

I live on bacon, coffee and cigarettes
but don't breathe goodbye

because I live mostly for myself,
my self and all its bounties belong to you.

If I catch you reading other poems
let's not be awkward or imaginary.

I could look the other way;
find another page to itch and animate.

I am a carpenter without miracles.
I am sure that sometimes
we stare at the same star unknowingly.

Get Up, You're Going To Disneyland

So there I was,
rearranging the pillows,
when suddenly the door
swung open and let in a light.
I closed my eyes, said "Get out,
I've had enough of this peer pressure.
I'm not going to Disneyland. Neither
force nor fauna will move me: I am fixed."
But the earth was whirling beneath me
as I opened my eyes to discover
that I was twirling in a cup of tea,
buoyant with sugar and strawberries,
and when the light snuck back
to whence it came, the fireworks
were seminal, smile inevitable.

Time Isn't Mine



Well, I think there's a time
made for mid-morning birds
when the raspberry bushes
grow fresh maroon words,
and a golden coin sits
on the crisp skyward line,
but that time fears the fire,
that time isn't mine.

And I think there's a time
to abandon sweet dreams,
so swelled with imposters
they're not what they seem,
and instead sit forgotten
in the milky moonshine,
but that time's gotten tired,
that time isn't mine.

How I wish for a time
to hold my own hand
when the birds sail along
and the shells fade to sand,
so I'll wait for the lilies
to bloom me a sign,
but that time's long expired,
that time isn't mine.

I believe there's a time
when the curtains are drawn
to beat back and turn from
your statues of dawn,
and the naked grass with
their proud tears combine,
but that time's in the mire,
that time isn't mine.

Yes, I hope there's a time
when this wasteland of leaves
gets swept to the sky
and returned to the trees,
then maybe, for a while,
our faces could align,
but that time's gone on higher,
that time isn't mine.

Graveyard Shift

I dug a trough with your bottom lip
and made a dirty cradle out of it.
Spread a minty balm over your white
thighs, and there I spent the night.

Tucked and tangled in the willow,
I taunted rest and rest did not follow.
The orchid sky and grenadier grapes
were too bright and loud for any escape.

Though if someone handed me a sphere of sleep,
swirling with ebony and death-white sheep,
I would spread it like ashes to the yawning sea.
The dark is too big, and stillness is misery.

This Too Was Once A Valentine

A girl once touched me
and I touched her back,
pressing my palm
where the tangle gets ugly.
It was Valentine's Day,
so I bought her
a salt lick
and now she's
licking her way
to an early fame.

Where The World Quickly Ends

Where the world quickly ends there's a dock that groans.
Either from the weight of my body or from the water
Which is everywhere, like the wolves also everywhere.
Ducks make noises, too, like distant mortar shells
That shower the cattails. A horse trots into the fog
Curling gray and soft. Darkness hangs in the wings.

I'm only here now that I've stolen the wings
Of a vulture, what did you bring? The ground groans
And bulges, please! Speak quickly, before the fog
Bites its tongue and starts to bleed water.
Already the wetness has thinned the egg shells
Of the platypus. The rain retreats from nowhere.

What did you bring? Is it ivory? Up there
The skies are peeling from the madness of wings,
False as wallpaper plastered with ceramic shells.
The bison are frightened. Groundhogs just groan.
They chase their long shadows into the water,
Untraceable against the wall of fog,

Which is the same smooth wall of fog
That's been roaming through the folds of nowhere.
Only the whales know nothing. They break the water
Noiseless as the shuffle of an owl's wings.
The bored, orbiting satellite groans.
I snatched the scales off an armadillo's shell,

What did you bring? If you lick a sea-shell,
You can taste salt and mercury. Lick the fog
And taste death. The jaguar let out a groan
When I stripped its spots, I could be anywhere.
The dusk sails over with silent, tremulous wings,
And the clouds, finally emptied of water,

Have disappeared. In the cold mirror of the water
I see the moon encased in a starry shell.
The wolves went wild, hungry for the meat of wings,
And looking for a meal they surrounded the fog.
My scales and spots were no help, they were everywhere,
They found my vulture's wings. And now the dock groans

No more. No more, the gray Earth groaned,
And a sudden silence took everywhere.
The globe fit in the palm of the fog.

So This Is The Night

In my dull-headed
attempt to exempt myself
from the depths of consciousness,
I have— for a monotonous
month of straddling
the marathon carousel,
grasping at banana green buds
that could only be seen
through a plastic microscope,
and wading throat-deep through
the garbled sounds of gardening—
clearly forgotten that
this is the night,
where my only saving grace
is that my silhouette
cannot be traced.

Chandelier Skies

Floodlights fill up the street,
the rain now visible as a gash

is visible on a clear complexion.
Little freckles descend into pools.

A worm burrows deeper into
its sheets of dirt, unaffected.

Likewise I light a cigarette
and stand on the cleared-out

patio, making muddied notes.
A droplet clings to the end of

my hair, a pendant hanging
off a furious bushel of hay.

I tried suspending it, making
it last, tethering me to the

downpour, but the magic of it
left, failing to catch it as it falls.

Journalist Mike

Mike Disman is a crafted journalist. He carries a notepad well and moves through crowds with muffled footsteps. He often interviews the prettiest girl nearby, and she is often smart.

Mike Disman doesn’t light his own cigarettes, he doesn’t light any cigarettes at all. He holds a Flip camera with only one hand. Who knows what he’s doing with the other. Could be fingering girls. Could be texting.

Mike Disman reports about good things, like Occupy Boston and the horrors of seal clubbings. He went to a Quaker school; does his work on time. Long ago, he would sit in silence for an hour, standing up only when he had something to say.

Mike Disman stands on the hill overlooking the meeting held in Boston Common for Occupy Boston the night after the eviction. Behind him, there are skaters cutting circles in the ice to the velvet thunder of Christmas music.

Mike Disman is constantly putting new numbers into his phone. He has a sprawling network canvassing wherever he walks.

Mike Disman puts his phone in his pocket, and starts toward the bench at the foot of the hill, the Christmas thunder fading as quickly behind him as day does to night, enveloping him the way only darkness can. He lights a cigarette, and does some simple math. It all keeps adding up to 99%.

He doesn’t know where to go. He walks home. He records a couple of notes in his yellow notebook and charges his phone. Then he sleeps, dreaming of the same thing you and I dream of, but in different colors.

Mike Disman is a journalist you could consider revolutionary.

bad poem

you've left me
scrawled and
scribbled
like a bad poem:
the long, awful
kind
that you skip over
large chunks of
trying
to get to
the end,
where again
you feel
nothing,
but that
was because
you didn't read
the whole thing.

Calm Keeping Lights At Middlebrook

See my breath is a paw-print etched into the glass
A watermark on the postcard of the 35W bridge
Spanning its untwisted metal bravely over the dark
Blue so far from where I stand scattering my calm
As the wind wraps about my arms nicking my cheeks
I feel nothing short of the lights that surround me

My awe for the swift keeping green and my shame
For the rage keeping red are rocks in a river next
To my joy for the infinite blue spilling over the edges
Of the bridge wanting myself to fizzle over the rim
At this moment the wires could snap the map unfolds
For the sound of tongue icing over cracked lips

Do be careful of that bridge lovely as it is it has a
History tonight I wait for a shining bullet of a star
To splinter my infrastructure staring out from
The window of Middlebrook weaving the river
Like a ribbon between my fingers and watching the
Bridge O blue bridge I wait for you to bend at the knees

The Dark Fell With Amnesty

"Quit playing Call of Duty, quit wasting your stupid life! I’m hitting up the streets with Jeff, about to print my ticket and other plane-related shit, and upon returning I shall tell you about the worst emotional mugging of my lifetime."

So goes the dial-tone
          echoing like a foghorn


two bowls out of luck
                   while taxis idle cross-eyed
I steal another cigarette
                            from Jeff, who is sprawled
over his sheets
                                my paperwork is ready
I only wanted to
hear you I knew
you'd be sour
I got what I asked for
                trapped inside an
hourglass

         cracked and sand
                 now spilling

out this ear,

                                                                                                                             into these hands                
           trembling                          wired           I can’t feel
the cold cradling
            my baby breath



light, let my memory not lead me away
grant me the winds to aid my tired oars
and the grace to lose what is already lost
for I’ve never felt so displaced as I do now
give me the luck to pass the crowded way
and to open up what's always been closed

so goes the prayer
of the failure

Palette

Possibly you're untouchable,
possibly you're a ball of light
untouchable in the fog.

I don't know how it works.

Through the mystic wrappings
of nature's balmy breath
everything is a delicious mystery.

The long stare of the street-light
bathing leaves in white,
the cold cough of pigeons
rifling through the silence.

Possibly you're cooing, somewhere.

Men sleeping beneath elms
of autumn open up like clams,

and these harbor-kissed envelopes,
nestled like eggs in a metal nest,
are all headed west for you.
Expect lots of ochre, mandarin,
possibly a splash of wheat.
For myself I keep only the golden.

Sublime

It sat square and sour
on a patient red napkin,
lolled on its misshapen side,

and with pudgy fingerprints
pressed to form impressions,
it looked a rather lame lime.

Yet the faces surrounding
the thing seemed impressed.

They noted the way it spoke
with acidic hisses, how soft
its bruises, and though lifeless,
they forgave it for being boring

and swiftly bore it open, hungry
to grasp their tap tapping fingers
around its sweet, emerald core.

Flame

Time spent between kisses
At lips' touch quickens,
The hot brush of fingers
Melting winter into minutes.

Bleed Loudly, Be Heard

Even as the plane lurches forward, closing my eyes to get one last glimpse of how I imagine things would be if the air was a little warmer, I waste no time and begin composing. Even as the de-icing fluid runs straight off the wings, leaving tangerine streaks of orange stained on the silver, I think of rain and lilypad hymns. I am being vigilant. Heeding the warning of the TSA to an extent they didn't have in mind, if I see something, I say something. Even as we break over clouds, and I feel relief at being so high above any final destination, I think of home, which confuses me— could it be Boston, where I have my own bed, and breathe the air of strangers— or is it among theaters and lakes, with the crystals raking my lungs, where I hear my name in the silence? I feel joy only from the newest sensation; the small things forgotten, I cherish as they light up in my mind. It seemed right to endure the cold on my return to Minnesota— but wouldn’t you know it, after three days I took several hot showers a day just to feel good again. So stranded in no certain sky, being shuttled from one half-home to the next, forcing myself to ignore the dull bleating in my chest, it is no wonder that I feel apprehensive thinking of you, whoever you are reading this now.

I want to close an open secret: This all goes away. The spice of new, the salt of old. Even you go away. You fade and twist into one more knot that ties me to port and that’s about it. I can’t go any longer pretending otherwise. We don’t have to be bitter— I’ve saved us from this ugly reveal— but the clouds are pale blue and wispy beneath the sun, I wish you could see it. That standalone sun, hovering like a liquid jewel before the morning, indifferent as ever. Right now we're just two lonely dudes in the sky, and if this string stretched far enough, maybe we’d talk about our celestial bodies and all the angels we’ve seen on our shoulders. But the string never goes that far. Not for those who stand at the end of the dock reaching out their arms, not for those whose coffee burns their hand during turbulence, not for you sitting elsewhere, and certainly not for me.

The man sitting in 35E— the seat beside me, while I can't help but stare out this window— told me that, no matter where I go in life, no matter how sweet my victories, or even sweeter my failures, I would only go to Heaven by accepting God— and the rest of the pitch I've had memorized since I was a boy— and when he asked me if I disagreed with him, I should have said yes— honesty is, after all, more virtuous than faith. If I had told him that sex is the closest we get to God, would we have smiled in some semblance of agreement— his six children might find it plausible— or would that have been it right there, the end of what little we had between us? I would have liked that. Why can’t we all be as honest as a man like that— coming right out with it, pamphlets and all— tell me what you’re trying to sell—

Because the only thing I’ve been trying to sell is care, packaged into neat sentences that you can carry with you. Care with honesty and candor. It’s a delicate commodity to be dealing with. It has no supply or demand, but is still worthy of my full attention, as it’s the only thing that makes this— this one-sided, back-without-forth conversation between us— something worth doing the rest of my life. Maybe you know it, too— maybe you care more than I do, maybe you’ll never let me know how much you care— but regardless only one of us will be here, in the end. You go away. I feel that’s worth mentioning twice.

I don’t mean to be so cold—there’s no ice on the wings, I’m light and blanketed in an ocean of cloud, everything really is incredible when you manage to stay awake and see. I want to breathe in this moment forever, far away from you as I am, unable to cast even a single sound into the stratosphere. I have nothing to waste. I pour my Coke into a cup avalanched in ice, wondering when our end will come. Until then, I care for you. Live confidently. No one knows you. See often, and say with sweeping certainty all that you see. Meet everyone. Praise the brazen, seek no judgment, give without an asking price. Go into the most night-like depths of yourself to find morning, which comes for you only. Wheels are emerging from their hiding places. Take this city and make it a home. No one will do it for you. Please be seated. You won’t die today or for a while. Be careful when opening the overhead bins. Someday, I’ll go this way and you'll go another, clanging tambourines and singing the noise of our thoughts. Today, we’re just figuring out more and more ways to say goodbye.

Big Wishes

I would like a wild mountain pony.
I would like a cobbled little street to ride it on.
These are not my only wishes.
Popcorn would appear for every movie
in the theater premiering my memories
both forgotten and not, so I could live
it all again, but this time with popcorn.
A cloud-stuffed bed for the summertime.
Perpetual, fraught-with-friends summertime.
I would marvel at all the architecture
and sample the inns drunk as night.
Every dog would be met with my bark.
Woof! Woof! How does it feel, fuckers?
I'd send for you to visit me by the pond.
There would always be bread
with which to feed the ducks.
And if these are my wishes, you'd always wear skirts.
I would lock myself away on the weekdays.
The fake things I sew would sprout up real.
This discovery could land me in government.
I guess I've always wanted to win for a living.
Along with the pony I would get four ferrets
and name them Earth, Wind, Water and Dragon.
Dragon is my favorite of the ferret crew.
Through the center of my porch flows a waterfall.
In the back of my yard there's a well
that leads to an underground river of money.
Inside there are pictures of everyone I know,
though the windows are open should they ever go.
I would massage angel's feet, lick off their nail polish,
not give a damn what's on the TV.
I'd eat salted pretzels sans the pretzels
and write poetry inspired by my ferrets
Earth, Wind, Water and Dragon.
One of my poems would be about
the way they sleep so close together,
as if attempting to share a dream.
And soon, I'd be awarded a Fulbright.
Then I'd shoot myself outright.

too late

why did I ever trust Tomorrow
to carry the message that only
my hands spider iced with veins
could deliver hot as your lips
which spark coals of yellows
and ruby reds when touched
by my fingertips which were
just begging to release the
valuable information that I
trusted you would need while
I was away but no I put faith
in Tomorrow which ultimately
never came but in a mahogany
casket engraved with the truly
touching epitaph “here lies
a messenger whose fate was
writ out of thin air” which
was my own fault for never
giving it solid enough ground
to walk on my mistake for
never laying the bricks early
enough in the morning instead
waiting until all the birds had
finished their songs and all the
leaves of the trees had gone
through their too-human changes
before taking the message out
of the pocket of Tomorrow and
taking up arms to tell you myself
that you are it you are my one
that the sentence ends with you