10/27/2009

Him and Her, Light and Dark

His eyes are bobbing quietly like two buoys
On gentle waters
In the neck of the land where she lives.

He stayed up late to watch the moon
Chase its tail like a dog spirit
At the end of his day the color of wheat in the sun.

He stayed up late to illuminate his memory
Like a nighttime field running silver by her light,
Remember: I am your sleeping soul.

His eyes are swimming, or sinking,
I guess it makes no difference to
A tired man who finds happiness
In the vast moments before sleep.

10/27/2009

Him and Her, Light and Dark

His eyes are bobbing quietly like two buoys
On gentle waters
In the neck of the land where she lives.

He stayed up late to watch the moon
Chase its tail like a puppy spirit
At the end of his day the color of wheat in the sun.

He stayed up late to illuminate his memory
Like a nighttime field running silver by her light,
Remember: I am your sleeping soul.

His eyes are swimming, or sinking,
I guess it makes no difference to
A tired man who finds happiness
In the vast moments before sleep.

10/16/2009

I’m not a great bonfire,
Saluting the stars
Out in the clean open,
In the eager company
Of crickets.

I’m a cigarette,
Pinched between two fingers
Sucked down,
Aching orange.

When the day is done with me
It flicks me away
And I have my last
Little firework.

I’m not a new car
With the radio on.
I’m not the kind of car
You’d Sunday drive in.

I’m that old pickup truck,
Engine keeps on turning.
Breath smells like rust,
Windows won’t roll down.

I’m a leaky aluminum boat,
A plastic goldfish bag with holes,
I can still hold a day full of wild embraces
But every day rushes through me like water

10/14/2009

Getting Older

Oh all my love
I’m getting older,
Looking for time; looking for time.

People around here
Don’t know me the way you do,
I throw them off my trail.

What’s my real age? They wonder
While all I can think about
Is the old man sorting fruit in the grocery,

Bent over apples and pears
Like a crumpled brown paper bag.

I am astonished to find this, my year -
Like a lost baby shoe in the subway,
Like a ripped shirt,
Like a dumb, dull button
Strapped to thick fabric

Getting older, getting much older,
Looking for time; looking for time.

10/09/2009

Kathryn Mary Likes Peace Signs

After we drape our coats on stools,
And the beer slumps in the shining glass,
And the saxophone’s tones warm our ears,
And the laughter rises and showers our faces clean -

After the lights mellow in our eyes,
And the traffic in the streets subsides to a hush,
And our voices remain only in flashes of memory,

Everything does find its own place,
And I find myself thinking of you -

Far away and sleeping,
Your breath calls the familiar song,
And tonight finds its nightly, loyal path home
As I find myself thinking of you.

10/08/2009

Violence

“Violence of the tongue is very real – sharper than any knife.”
Mother Teresa

What about violence of the ear, unlistening?

The unheard, too, are cut to the soul,

Quickly becoming unspoken.

All my words were born from my ear -

Without their mother’s blessing they then

Twist and chop at any cost

Springtime blooms of other voices,

Just as sometimes children forget

(But always are)

Just

How their mothers knew them.

Such edges to that ear, turned knife,

Ears never meant to be so straight,

But graciously round as the swim

Of clouds or the curves of shells,

Soothed by murmurs of the sea.

Lobes never meant to be so sharp,

But long and ripe like fat cheek fruits,

That wisely don’t need any pulling

From any bowing tree.

10/02/2009

“Violence of the tongue is very real – sharper than any knife.”

-Mother Teresa

10/01/2009

Listen to air that cradles my words;
Pauses that govern my sounds.
Listen to spaces, not only to forms;
Graces, and not just designs.

09/29/2009

Less Is All I Want

First,
More
Was
More

Then
Less
Was
More

Less
Was
The
New
More

Now
Less
Isn’t
More
Any
More

Now
Less
Is
Less
More
Than
Be
Fore

Now,

Less
Is
Most
Of
All

What
I
Want

09/25/2009

Friendship in September

In the tighter spaces of friendship,
Wedged against the merciless brick and
Granite press of spite,
Harsh words and falling-out,
You catch sight, and then catch hold,
Of a significant fact:

Even a stone,
A dense, cramped heart,
Is porous;
The smallest spaces are still open,
Leading in their own ways to the wider.
How? or Why? You don’t really know -
Like creeks squeezed into the ocean.

If you look -
Like a rock pockmarked
In the shallows,
Inhabited by all sorts of
Scuttling, suckling life,
Your heart is a home,
And home, you find, is deep.
In friendship, looking for open spaces,
Even as you falter, others pull through.