Living Together

 
Did we really live in that apartment,
so cold in winter,
we walked around with blankets
draped around our shoulders
like cloaks.

And the furniture...
what wasn't bought at thrift sales
was a carton or a crate.

We didn't even have a shower,
washed our hair in the sink
those days when the hot was working.

A lumpy mattress,
tiny black and white TV,
meals that dog food would have shamed.

But all that worried you
was unplanned pregnancy.

Unplanned adversity
was bright and bubbly
as a child to us.

Listening To Monk

The room feels smoky
The lights are dim
Nothing but the piano
and the player

Coltrane and Miles
Rollins and Powell
Listening
Watching
Learning

The piano sounding
slightly out of tune
as the chords
so precise
follow each other
one by one

The melodies so deep
so thought out
yet almost random
sounding off the top
of his head

I can see him
Thelonious
alone in San Francisco

Gathering Moss


A guy sharing his table
in the Costco food court
tells me he’s working two jobs 
so he’ll have a comfortable retirement, 
and I say he’s trading his youth for money
while I’m spending my old age remembering
when I danced the samba in Carnaval rain 
and hopped a freight train to New Orleans,
so while he can, he should be a rolling stone 
gathering not moss but memories.

Gone


The midwinter-ache of absence
Makes it easier to live amongst the vanishing
Gives you something to focus on
While time denies you closure

To be the one left behind
A vagueness worn like a tattooed Rorschach test
Never able to attain the distance needed
To resolve into the clarity of grief

All those faces on the posters
Bloat like dying stars beneath the rain 
Their light turning to papier-mache husks
Singularities of rot
Exerting their hollow gravity

Merely Words


They are light switches, illuminating the dark of things,
or the withered tips and handles of things.
Between the fermenting dough of desire and the dry bread of facts,
they are an array of flames slanted in the furnace,
carving peaks, passes, and fissures on the dough’s surface.

Some words lie docile like the fur of beasts under stroking hands
trembling variegated stillness, others arrive unannounced,
as fragments of an exploded whole,
unable to reassemble the original cause or glaring force.

Not even Pygmalion’s or Midas’ fingers
could soften or harden them.
They bring the mysterious breath of all existence,
a life we’ve never lived,
even the people there cannot escape death.

For example, when I arrange these words,
the osmanthus tree outside the window grows taller, for example,
a student’s leave request note from a long-ended semester
somehow kept in my drawer, stating:
“The organization has important matters.”

And as a drained structure, it always reveals
on the damp bed of a ditch a snail’s slow confidence.

Today

-

I can see my own uncanny face reflected in the
computer screen as I write.    Who is that guy, looming in the background
behind these words?    I’m learning to tell the truth,
like Balaam’s ass, learning to face the truth.
But really the truth is such a small thing.    It’s no big deal.
Once I stole this Bible from a motel in Idaho, in place of it I left a
note in the drawer that said “poopy pants” and in another drawer I left
another note that said “still poopy pants.”    The poor cleaning person.
But I’m sure there have been worse things left in motel rooms.
This poem is starting to be about motels though I meant to
write about today, and truth, but today’s yesterday, and
tomorrow, and truth is a white bird    in the blue cage of the moon.

 

 

Poker Face

 
Now with lines
& day-old stubble
how your face
has learned
your heart’s language
better than your tongue

The quiet of your face
quells lips that shape
words into lies & shouts

Voice a relic
that tripped you
on the sidewalk
years ago & kicked
every time you spoke

A Message from the Poetry Tourism Bureau

 
Let poetry be public
And written in the streets:
Throughout this vast Republic
And wherever poets meet.

In synagogues or churches…
In mosques and Buddhist stupas.
During late night food fight urges
Over Mexican chalupas.

In city parks and country farms
May poetry be written.
To light the dark or raise alarms:
And heal the great grief-stricken.

The time for prose has ended.
The time for verse is near.
We defend the undefended:
Give out poems as souvenirs.




Unsent Love Letter

 
Your eyes flash brighter than any coin—
And your smile makes me feel
Like I’m part of an underground economy.

This hamburger heart has softened into tenderloin
And though there is still much to conceal
The poems I want for you defy all modesty.

But I dare not write everything down:
The curves in your dancing lips
And the white flash of your bare teeth.

I want to be the verb to your adorable noun
And no disapproving frowning can eclipse
This final myth we may never complete.

Yes, for now, all of this is mere mythology.
No river, my dear, has yet been crossed
And no fearful vow has yet been spoken.

I am a vehicle with no more velocity—
A meaningful shiver where there is no frost
And a damn door that cannot be opened.

Unless you care to knock with your considerable charm
And behold, it unlocks as you enter on your own accord
And find me there willingly disarmed:
With no more shield and no more sword.

Swallowed Up In Room 18
Second floor
just left of the wooden 
warped and rotted staircase
creaked even when it was bone-still
always knew when someone was coming
paranoia settled in behind the blinds 
of 18
The one chair
with a flattened
lime green cushion
round Formica table
overflowing ashtray
all the paraphernalia necessary 
to keep us in
while the sun sprayed such vivid
hues through the cracked blinds
On cold nights
the furious wind howled 
under the bloated moon
that ancient 
splintered staircase
squeaked and groaned
as you sat in the chair
and I perched on the edge of the bed
high to the point of tormented 
and sickly
we gulped water from the bathroom faucet
When the drugs were finished
we crept down the steps to meet the dealer
and rush back
to hole up in 18
for another week of wreckage