Notebooks

I know I’m nowhere but
that nowhere would be even less

knowable if there weren’t
stacks of you keeping track

the passing thoughts in pen
instead of doodles I have a record

what was in my head almost
never what a professor professed

and every year since a calendar
to mark the holes in my memory

whatever I failed to write or forgot
or flippantly left out of your mouth

Breakfast

we wake gripping hides
shaking the sleep from our eyes
digging nails reach for
pleasures inside
kicking and screaming the silent
waves that emanate
two prone surfaces stretch for days
every inch struggles to make its way
under the fingertips
under the crushing weight of heightened state
under the sheets that wrap us tight and aware
and when we finish we stare,
fall back
and dream

Eschatology

A fortnight
is but the lull between paychecks,
the family vacation’s patiently
collected days, maybe
to some the loss of
forty three names for lichens or
another’s recipes
for tree root alchemy.

Over that span somewhere
instinctual knowledge of the river’s
fluid mechanics, a herd’s migration
unwritten, goes missing
afar, isolated
or conquered
as the lost knot language.

One more phrase has dropped
golden and wrinkled, withered;
the gods who brought rain
no longer called upon,
their names cease to be relevant
now, those limbs bare
come spring.

Worn stone inscriptions,
pass the lips of the last
remaining elder
whose world was shaped by this
dying grammar, these breathing
vaults filled with knowing turned
to bide time as artifacts

by the young, who learn
like Dacians, Mahicans, Huns
the tongue of another;
the tongue that promises
work, new life, new phrases
to define a world, a universe
a missing afterlife

while whole galaxies collapse
in the failed hunt, the bad harvest
in that final breath
of the ultimate speaker
the echo,
the silence,
the vacuum on the 15th day


(updated 10/28/08)

Sleeping In A Crime Scene

Insomnia rides these sheets
minds never cease
without white noise,
incantations,
lullabies of distraction
so that I may have some peace.

She's always lurking right behind me.
Any time is better;
rest my eyes and
let it go
but night will never
leave me satisfied
to know

If I had maybe gone and killed this.
Someday, someplace
we both get over it.
I'll say
your name again
the way I always meant it.

Six Hours

Go ahead, lay yourself down
upon the ochre sheets
spread for you, the sated king
undead, unshrouded, waking-
dreams on procession
towards the head, its tractable
project screens.

A sparrow alights
in the near maple, watching
hidden
from the oncoming torrents
only to disappear.

He, she? knew
where you were now
friend, serpent, naga; guardian
knowing, unbound
by stumbling infant
limbs; whispering secrets
in virgin ears newly exposed
to wind.

Hush, hush
and rustled branches, the sparrow
has come and gone and surely
will return
at its enviable
whim; hush settled
in this blue room
seedlings glown
with calm, green
as your new ears, new
eyes, new fingertips
however calloused feel
as you did before
taking repose
on those ochre sheets.

Yet know to walk
in the sulfurous liquid
depths life shielded
for eons no good no evil
just the currents and the
Vulcan urges burst through
feeding, enrapt—
unwrapped
by the chaos where
for a moment
is still.


(updated 10/18/08)

Sea Shanty; Barely, Simply

picked her up gently
tuned and de-tuned and retuned
plucked a harmonic

peal of a string bell
rings, it rings in her voice that
one note that she hits

is the ambient hum
of the planet she hangs just
above, out of reach

of my finger tips
of the violet stretched tongue of
the tallest giraffe

so this round i’ll sing
and i’ll sing in my deep voice
how many octaves

lie between mine and
hers between eyelids unwedged
by the last dream this

morning when that hum
lays down stone for subconscious
libretto writ meme

into meme enfolds
chords into phrase calling back
in a round to that

note she first sang; her
hum, her wave on that string in
that spot it just is

it just hangs
it just hangs
it hangs then it fades


(updated 8/24/08)

Excerpts From A Conversation With A Houseplant*

Coleus, your green-rimmed, purple leaves are not an optical illusion

You're not even convinced and your argument
is not convincing. I know painters
who took color class in college

That's not a shade of blue, it's really
rather violet. Even I know violet.

Yes, the blueberry girl
from Willy Wonka.

No, that Amazon tribe doesn't recognize
a distinction between blue and
green.

Well, I'm not a shaman, so
I'm not quite sure how...

Yes, the roots talk to them and let
them know the proper combination, but...

I can hear you just fine.

It's late
I'm going back to sleep.

(*Inspired by a weekend with the family)

A Few Changes

I've been taking the time to edit some of these poems in preparation for journal/review submission, so they may change (hopefully for the better) from time to time until I submit them. In the meantime I'd love to get (serious) feedback from anyone who stops by here and takes the time to read anything. If you like something, let me know. If you hate something and have a good critique, send it my way. Consider this "peer review" and you're all my peers.

Thanks for stopping by.

Everything Unmade Into One

"And will never be any more perfection than there is
now."
-Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"

It was suggested
That all those tiny imprints,
In wafers metallic and thin,
By concentrated light
Would lead us through

The ether holding hands
The world round, in remote
Corners to dawn a new age
Of improved mankind, unhindered
By the laws of flesh and disease

And DNA. A prophet
In some waking dream
A simple equation foresees
The real second coming of man,
Of new form beyond the crippling

Fear. Encased in stacks, row
Upon row, fans buzz
The sound of work, the machines
Work so we can move
Beyond bodies into programs. But when

Was the last time I was entranced
By that glimpse of a forever
Without collapse, just to find
All the things we made
Were seen already to have breath, to live

Outside that single point
So fervently wished forth
Of those unwilling to accept
Of imperfection or the mystery
Found in flaw. The flesh so weak

And apt to tear and stretch
Sending nerves into frenzy, perhaps
But also ecstasy. I need no tomb
Of museum exhibit life if that, indeed,
Is what is sought inside a conscious box.

A Beneficial Marriage

A reasonably romantic mind would wonder how
it is that, while we on the ground bathe
in the soaring words of our generals,
the world caves around, unsaved
by unreason, unloved in rations, digesting
only those bits watered
with feelings and logic. Since when
do unoiled machines work? And how

does that neglector of thought feed
himself? A universe in the hands of
technocrats grinds itself to grey mud while
the pastoral artist's eden starves
in love. A little change could do
you both some good; though I'd hate to
see the split of such a rigid embrace,
that dance of death
where you both look the other way.

(updated 8/24/08)