Self-Portrait with Bruise
Some damages announce, others conceal.
How else may we continue
despite our best
inattentions? And which treasure
do we truly hold
closer, the blood orange
or the blade
that parts its segments? At
thirty I would have chosen
one. At forty, the other. Now,
options spread like branches among the cedars.
Ruptured vessels reveal our lapses.
***
This was published in Shadowtrain in August 2015, and appeared here in March 2016.
December Moon (1999)
If loneliness breathes,
then rain is its heart,
always falling to its lowest point
before receding. Water graces us
daily in all its forms – the slowest
drop, the line of ice on the wall,
your breath, so soft and even
in the cool night. But no one,
no thing, can fill the void of
departure. You exhale and turn
away, and the air, with its empty
arms, embraces the space
you’ve left. I feel this daily,
whenever we part. At forty-one
I’ve known you half my life
but have loved you even longer,
through the millennium’s demise
and all that preceded or follows.
The brightest moon for a century to come
is but a shadow in your light.
It’s hard to believe that I wrote “December Moon” over eighteen years ago. Busy with books, work and life, I didn’t write much in the nineties. But this, the last poem of that decade, surfaced a few years ago. The sentiments are as true today as they were then. I am a lucky man.
Music: “Nightdreams” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
My poem, “Forced to Eat Soft Food, I Consider Options” has been published at Little Rose Magazine.
Parkland Haibun
What toll, dripping from his fingers? How does he sleep? Which truth
honored? The senator takes millions and offers prayers in lieu of action,
betraying the children, appeasing his benefactor. Seventeen chairs emptied
on this day, alone. He says nothing can be done, that laws are ineffective,
the shooting was “inexplicable.” What do his thoughts weigh? What griefs
will they bear? Can they reverse a bullet’s track or bring laughter back
to a family’s shattered life? Would any god answer this man’s prayers?
even the skunk balks
at Rubio’s empty words
ah, hypocrisy
Patterns
For one who moves in uncertainty, this
flower, the petals of which
gently fade, as if reason
is found in the decline of beauty
and its comforts.
But all you touch remains
touched. If silence reveals the body
of music, what can be said of darkness? Words
appear motionless until they blossom, a
pattern seldom seen yet carried to us in
all manner of conveyance. Listen,
for there is no purer voice.
Let the earth speak.
“Patterns” first appeared here in March, 2015, and again in June 2016. I wrote it 30-some years ago, placed it in a folder and promptly forgot it.
Forgetting Charm
Even your bones remember what you’ve long discarded.
This field of stone grows beyond sight.
In our house the tang of burnt sugars.
You say I love you in four languages I do not speak,
but never in the one I claim.
We light fires with stolen paper.
Douse them with stored rain.
Fragmented memories fill our cupboards.
Did I once know you?
Take these words from me.
Bury them in daylight.
* * *
“Forgetting Charm” was published in The Icarus Anthology in August 2017.
Nine Ways of Shaping the Moon
for Lissa
1
Tilt your head and laugh
until the night bends
and I see only you.
2
Weave the wind into a song.
Rub its fabric over your skin.
For whom does it speak?
3
Remove all stars and streetlights.
Remove thought, remove voice.
Remove me. But do not remove yourself.
4
Tear the clouds into threads
and place them in layered circles.
Then breathe slowly into my ear.
5
Drink deeply. Raise your eyes to the brightness
above the cedars. Observe their motion
through the empty glass. Repeat.
6
Talk music to me. Talk conspiracies
and food and dogs and rain. Do this
under the wild night sky.
7
Harvest red pollen from the trees.
Cast it about the room
and look through the haze.
8
From the bed, gaze into the mirror.
The reflection you see is the darkness
absorbing your glow.
9
Fold the light around us, and listen.
You are the moon in whose waters
I would gladly drown.
* * *
First posted in October 2014, and again on Valentine’s Day in 2016 and 2017, “Nine Ways of Shaping the Moon” also appears in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform.
Missing Loved Ones
You marvel that a simple garment retains so much of a person’s
being. I watch the worm swinging on its long thread
from one side of the door’s frame to the other,
wondering how to avoid it should I go out, but a sparrow
solves that problem. In 365 BC, Gan De detected what was likely
Ganymede, but history records no other sightings until Galileo
in January, 1610. Thus an entity with twice the mass of our
moon went missing for 1,900 years, which helps explain
the parameters of oblivion. But nothing equals the heft
and gravitational pull of those we miss – the dead, the gone,
the lost, the never-coming-back – a friend’s laughter
still echoing twenty years later, a lover’s taste and smell
rekindled with each autumn’s first fire, or the dog’s warmth.
Small wonder that we ever exit the house, leaving these
companions behind. I watch the sparrow snatch another
snack, and consider the mechanics of loss. Ubiquitous, but
generated anew. Unique yet common, unfelt and devastating.
Late at night, you say, I draw comfort from cloth, stroke
the once inhabited trousers or the flannel sheets resting
in the drawer. This scarf, her love. That shirt, my heart.
“Missing Loved Ones” was drafted during the August 2016 Tupelo Press 30-30 challenge, and was subsequently published in Eclectica in summer 2017. Many thanks to editor Jen Finstrom for accepting the poem, and to Emily Bailey, good friend of many years and former office mate, for sponsoring the poem and suggesting the title.
Poem Swallowing Itself
Reading aloud—
people turn their heads
and step back, never
imagining what lies behind,
expecting neither snakes
nor bear traps nor other ambush.
Beginning where one ends, or
continuing a conversation
over decades, the truth
rises then subsides,
like soaring vultures or
cubes in scotch whiskey.
Measuring volume by
glance, the poem shivers,
opens its mouth wide.
“Poem Swallowing Itself” first appeared here in April 2016.
Never Drink Anything Blue
But always keep your options unzipped and
available to whatever slips in; the snake
lives in the attic for the rodents,
but occasionally takes a fledgling peewee
from a nest near its exit, while the scorpion
generally avoids light except for those nights
when moths seem too delectable to pass up.
Our governor whistles Beethoven but switches to
the hymnal when campaigning, and I’ve announced
a need for organic zucchini when craving a craft
beer. Confession is good for the soul, except
when it’s bad for the body. “Think with words,
not with ideas,” Sontag wrote, and Williams said
“no idea but in things.” Of course he was just writing
a poem. Baking is chemistry – measure carefully –
but cook with abandon! Whoever said “keep your
friends close but your enemies closer,” slept
alone most nights, or not at all. Born in Louisiana,
I am the product of an illegal union, but which
half should be interred where? Both sun and
moon rise and set. Is anything incorruptible?
Drink everything blue. Everything.
“Never Drink Anything Blue” was drafted during the August 2015 Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, and appeared here in March 2016. Many thanks to Stop Dragging the Panda, who sponsored and provided the title.
O at the Edges 