autumn's door cracks

crossing the firestone lot after work 
i spot a mother trailed by two daughters 
marching single file up burnside, 
the mother relaying a torch of to go coffee
respectfully followed by her red headed daughters, 
each one bearing before them 
a pink box of donuts. i smile,
and notice how the sidewalk has 
recently been sprinkled with 
crispy brown hands, curled 
fingers stiffened in mid-clasp, 
fallen because they have caught 
all the light they could. 
dramatic sky alternates between 
shade & shine as i sit down 
on a bench beneath a tent of trees, 
two tank topped young men, 
pause before the grand elephant, 
one considering the climb 
while the other patiently observes, 
phone held to chest, his heart 
poised to capture his triumphant ascent 
as a cryptic old friend, hardly looking back, 
barely saying a word, rides by on his bike, 
as i watch the young man 
surrenders too easily to the smooth 
flank of this most magnificent elephant 
and walk away with his friend. burnside 
a glinting funnel of cars. in between 
the trees i can see the clouds 
thicken above me, deepening the shade. 
i close the book and continue toward home.

cafe dreams

hamstrung at the bus stop, the young woman across the street is letting time lengthen her beneath the donut clouds. the bar of light is off. pastel tank top girls sprawl incognito behind bug eyed sunglasses while an obligatory, beard driven chopper growls to a stop at the sign that is red. exhaust grill grid emits a sooty sigh. red city open it says. glass paned insect ambles in my dreamy eye. what does a bug see when it looks through our windows or does it only see the surface it clings to? dead leaf dangles from the lowest arm of the youngest tree. a dirty brown tear welling among the green. the trees know always know when death is near. found sounds unlid the morning sky, ominous tones fill the bright quiet room full of melancholic elk & deer, posed in blue on the wall. a threatful day sounds promising and then, uncommitted piano, too tentative to fully enter our listening, yet reluctant to conclude, ambles around like a bug on glass it perhaps can peer through, but never penetrate, lingers like a smoker's unwanted present. across the street, where i often spend five solemn minutes waiting for a ride, a hint of waving wild meadow. you don't necessarily know the people you wait with but dream about their unpacked possibilities, sleepily shelled. what was left out was refused by the forms we knew, as containers also contain their rules. across the street, behind the careful scrub, men in black plant large umbrellas, anticipating the bright. across the street, a shaggy young man in flannel marches wearily up the gentle hill, cradling energy drinks in his arms. across the street, sprout multi-hued street mall mushroom caps: avocado, peach, & powder blue. and i think, whatever sexual being we bring is concealed or flaunted by the clothes that wear us, announced as if you have to celebrate what you are today. even sexiness is unequally distributed here. across the street, brilliant fire engine red chairs are ceremoniously brought forth by the men in black like priests carrying flames to the altar, as if the day didn't promise enough. across the street, those men in black, apparently employed to unpack all of the morning's color, busy themselves at the gaping mouth of wealth & class. her eyes were too blue and her gaze too met. her icy synth stare conditioned my late august air. it is not warm enough yet to be this cool, and i shudder. but then a storm cloud plunks down beside me still wearing a dark backpack bulging with a day full of rain. tell me, where are your opportunities for play? have you found them all and should you? hints of smoke linger in the doorway like a dog eager for its owner to resume the walk. and below my wandering mind lies a languid black spaghetti strap, lazily floating up a thick tanned shoulder which belongs to a woman who is smiling between puffs at her salt & pepper haired friend. and i remember the woman whose gaze was too met, for whom everything person was a problem. hope that's not the was she is. 

"It is the work of feeling / to undo expectation."

"It is the work of feeling / to undo expectation." 

from the poem "Sheep" by Jane Hirshfield

how does a private person talk about being a private person? quote by jane hirshfield

"Poetry began for me as a field of solitude. It gave me a way, from childhood, to query & provision a self, to find out for myself who i was, what I felt, what I thought. But once a piece of writing is put forward for others to read, the field expands: where once there were trees, making windbreak & shelter, now there are bleachers. The privacy-crafted self is seen. While writing, a poet is predator: you hunt word, world, feeling, music, responsiveness, attitude, resilience; hunt grief, joy, your deep question and that question's momentarily-sufficient answer. With publication, though, a poet is suddenly prey, subject to judgement—which, whatever the judgement, is an entirely changed relationship to the poem & the world. The leap into public life as a writer was for me awkward, both painful & strange. And yet, I also knew that we are ultimately communal beings, whose life does not end at the skin. Art is never a matter of just the single self, made as it is with the shared materials of language & craft-history, a set of cups to hold the intoxicating spirits."

excerpted from the book "Passwords Primeval" by Tony Leuzzi
https://www.boaeditions.org/bookstore/catalog/product/view/id/936/

sunday's swirl

do i know what the rest 
of the situation's light shed
rain nicked along

weeding laptop's photographs 
insistent clack of in-progress 
espresso alarms the dream

embarrassed by my rageful response to last night's too late biblical inquiry
i should have explained that i lost joseph long ago when i forgot jesus.

i wanna stop half-assing my life and finally give it my entire ass.

deep into the pubic curl of late summer lush
what hair i have foretold the imminent rain

christmas lights wire, 
coiled black & sinuous 
planted into tree-shape in 
the front junk yard of 
the hippie house 
jars me into seeing 
the tree as the cross of life, 
an earth cross, arms spread, 
splayed for the sun's assault, 
tree is the son of sun, 
begging father for 
light, life

fading, dying. some shine ago.

arms spread, palms licked, cloud slicked & sliced with veins, 
arms spread, root deep asleep in the bark dark, a toe lifted 
cracks the moist black cake. the dirt roots are buried in. 
where is your root dirt? 

i could cry with her and we don't have much time.

i turned on the tv for weather and found a weeping husband searching for his songwife's near murderer.

there are crows we don't 
know who we think we 
know and they, they 
know we don't, we don't
know...

her craved company, her vicinity, her planet, her body, my heart, deprived until it was depraved, moaning in its creaking ribs, unstroked and peeling, fleck scarred, chipped, my lips, leashed, leapt anyway

i could not keep the warmth of her with me 
for the rest of the day i tried but half-way 
i found it starved dead in a dark quiet pocket 
and not in my arms her warmth was a stone 
in a yard i visit to remind me of love?

"when you can't forget the gifts you didn't get"

"he don't pay this no attention."

"the ambition that was punished has now been pardoned."

failed overzealous deficit afternoon

failed overzealous deficit afternoon
outslept the hard sitting on

the non-descript remains of your

words triangle the earth's

arduous commas, passing

pictures without screens,

the hunter retreats, 
side-stepping over 
serious punctuation &

the dust works of the late
criminal morning, children
wipe the template, 
you were due 
that breezeless day,
unsketched by dream,
humbled by squares

and so brightly shut.

charles dickens quote on the inhumanity of imprisonment

I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers. . . . I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.

-quote by charles dickens, after he saw the Eastern State Penitentiary, in Philadelphia while visiting America in 1842.

hopelessly warm

mid-afternoon, saturday at the bookstore, busy. sunny & warm. a man approaches the counter. he is alone. does that sound or seem ominous? men who are alone, what does that mean? what does that suggest? and does it have to? he is clean cut, meaning cut clean, as if the razor took more than hair, as if a knife could cut the dirt away from you, could cut you clean, couldn't it? the man has a book, exactly one, that he would like to purchase and places it on the counter neatly, his eyes sharp, meeting mine. i often have difficulty reeling people into the transaction, groping into a fog with simple questions trying to pull them out of where they aren't and into what's happening here. so it's notable when people make 
eye contact and his wasn't really friendly but wasn't really rude. i noticed the book had something to do with sex & men, though i tried not to look too closely. i sensed that he just wanted to get the transaction over with, so i didn't try to chat him up. unfortunately, i tried so hard to be cool & casual that i started to feel self-conscious about it, which made me feel nervous, and unfortunately, i often smile when i'm nervous, and when i sensed the smile i rushed to complete the transaction while simultaneously suppressing the weed poking through the cracks in my face, concerned that it would be misinterpreted as finding the subject matter of the book humorous, which i really don't care about at all, which also is untrue. afterwards, i turned to the young woman cashiering beside me and told her that i just had a transaction with someone who bought a book of sexual nature and that i tried to be cool but then i felt self-conscious about trying so hard to be cool. but then i noticed that she looked a little uncomfortable as i hurried to explain this in between transaction and i thought, oh no...

in manus tuas

Awake mine eyes, see Phoebus bright arising,
and lesser lights to shades obscure descending:
Glad Philomela sits tunes of joy devising,
whilst in sweet notes, from warbling throats,
the sylvan choir with like desire
to her are echoes sending.

Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets, 1611 William Byrd

we arrive inside, standing pew only
invisible voices begin to blow 
vowels over our backs to them 
renaissance vibrations spider from 
one skull side to the other. 
mea culpa, mea culpa, 
mea maxima culpa, this is my fault, 
my most grievous fault
noctem quietam, dominus omnipotens
my not so quiet night has not yet met its perfect end
the devil who is your enemy, not the devil who is your friend, 
the devil then who is your fiend 
and not your friend, 
beato, beato, vitam aeternam, 
blessed, blessed, everlasting life
that i do understand
in manus tuas, into thy hands, 
sub umbra alarum tuarum protege nos,
protect us beneath the shadow of thy wings, 
toes tangled in tingling, in throes, i cannot feel 
my frozen roots from way up high here in the tone 
clouds, we sway with the latinate phrase, skeleton 
arranged for the most efficient hang 
of muscle from bone, my chest is a sail, 
my spirit blown, door open wide, gulping cedar scents, 
this gift that must be calculated in the middle of a most ancient hour, 
as sunlight, defeated, slides down the ornate glass, as a million 
suns swallow its fractured colors, 
and with it you remember 
enduring a child's unendurable ceremony, 
this way, for this long 
you become an effigy of feeling, rehearsing the saint, 
again pounding the nails into your own customized cross, 
as a child once did, as a child was taught to always obey, 
to suppress the question
until you can hold it firmly in your hands 
until you can safely tie it around your weeping rose, 
tightened until the blood sings like a brilliant old recusant 
spared by a beneficent queen, while the oarsmen row, 
dressed in suit & tie, dipping a netted oar 
into the pew to catch whatever fell from our wallets 
in mid-song, in mid-psalm, 
nailed to the floor of a beached ashore ship, 
are you a tourist, visiting what you were? 
tossing to the waveful music of a man who lived 
long enough to be forgotten while his sail still caught 
wind, breathing, once upon a time ago, a dry quill 
retired beside a noteful page. 

so here we are, 
standing inside the forbidding place, together & apart, as precise as feet, 
always on your way to something, but never someone 
surrounded by roses, stoned toward sky, 
heart scooped out and filled with ah, 
the flesh here is fresh, the muse muscled, the eyes 
closed to seal the sound which circulates on a loop 
from heart to head, 
from head to heart, 
never touching the earth, 
the sky choir sings in secreto, 
in manus tuas, into thy hands, 
in manus tuas, their lips deliver the song, 
et cum spiritu tuo, 
and with thy spirit, 
we are tied together.

mating theater

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewish/7764499/

on a mission for unconditional chocolate 
icecream marches me across the wednesday 
evening street as the dark o'clock people 
have been released from the pavement's 
prison, retained, like the day's heat, within 

an island of concrete. 

the plaid pantry on the corner, with its wide 
florescent tongue, swipes stars from the night, 
it chums the black ocean above with its bright 
neon blood. it is a mecca summons the down 
& thirsty to kneel before its stupendous

box of glow. 

pack of clean-cut polo-shirted twenty-
somethings huddle in the parking lot, 
plotting their next misadventure. those
suburbanites have infested the neighborhood, 
barking from cars, peeing on our walls, 

they snapped 

the trance of craving this sleeper agent has been 
activated to fulfill, when i notice them 
pointing at an enormous bug, ambling 
on the asphalt past the spray-tanned 
girls, all shrill & pink, as  their backward 

capped boys flex 

for them, gesticulating at the oblivious 
insect, beaverton apparently bereft, as i 
wonder what it looks like from the bug's 
perspective, what it must be like to crawl 
across a parking lot, furrowed & cracked, 

pimpled with menacing 

dunes, as if picking its way across 
the acne scarred face of midnight itself-  
sixteen steps and just seconds must be 
an epic journey for an insect who may 
very well exert the equivalent of 

a year of its life 

just to navigate the vast span of 
a parking lot, not that it wanted to, but 
simply because it had the lousy luck of 
meandering into a desert, without food 
or map, seduced by the promise of 

exotic light, hoping 

something to eat presents itself 
along the way, and maybe meet other 
bugs, and perhaps get laid, not unlike 
those kids from beaverton, partying 
in the city on a weekday evening, 

"fuckin' cockroach!" 

one yells, theatrically stomping on 
the bug winces me as i walk by and tug 
on the dull metallic bar i should push, 
pulling myself into the dismal 
disco of 

titillated light.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sea-turtle/325125263/

washing as if wanting

washing as if wanting 

to be uncovered, un-

lidded your eyes already met 

smile's beginning scissored 

across its tousled 

bangs you 

turned from but 

did not turn from 

light

lit 

you 

but did not stop arriving on 

your cat waiting shadow porch 

hands full with washed what's 

gets open the blue, lets 

let the water  

lilies bloom

as if blossoming could cherry

bloodless pulls 
this budding me 
up from wanting 
to fall from cloud 
or sleeveless tree
extends an arm 
over the lunar 
surface studded 
along its length with
diminutive 
lime claws unclasp
its being 
whole, suspended 
in the offer
waiting for what 
licks the bright 
blooms catching 
the question spikes 
green roses roused, 
concealing stolen 
breath would be 
quiet is cawful-

trees burst pink 
as if blossoming could 
cherry

cockblocked at the cash register?

today during a break in cashiering i told the other cashier that i had a line from the billy joel song, "pressure" stuck in my head. the line goes, "all your life is channel thirteen, what does it mean, what does it mean." actually, i didn't remember the sesame street part in between thirteen & what does it mean. it's been a long time. the cashier, whose name rhymes with sigh, looked me straight in the eye and stated flatly, "it means you need a girlfriend." i was taken aback. i waited for him to smile. i waited for the joke. i turned and walked back to my cash register. i told the young woman cashiering next to me about the song in my head. she told me about her friend skipping  past an 80's station and how she insisted on keeping it there for the song, "take me home tonite" which she considered a not-so-bad 80's song, and then sang the chorus to me. then suddenly, the man whose name rhymes with sigh jumped in and informed us the bret michaels has a tv show about restoring RVs and that the guy who did ice, ice baby has a show about fixing up homes. then the young woman & the man whose name rhymes with sigh began snapping their fingers in unison while chanting ice, ice baby and the woman who was checking out at my register started rolling her shoulders and then the young woman cashier pointed at the guy whose name rhymes with sigh and demanded he rap and he began to rap the song and do a little dance move. i am remembering this at home, in my bathroom, after dropping a whole roll of toilet paper in the bowl. do i need a girlfriend? i look outside the little window, noticing how the fog & mist are beginning to shroud the morrison bridge. it's been awhile since the street was wet like this, and i think to myself, need is an awfully strong word. need? how about, it would be nice or strategically advantageous? but need? and then it hits me - have i been walking around all this time looking like a guy who needs a girlfriend, NEEDS A GIRLFRIEND! and both, not knowing i need a girlfriend and simultaneously unaware that everyone else is looking at me as THE GUY WHO NEEDS A GIRLFRIEND!

All your life is Channel 13Sesame StreetWhat does it mean?PressureDon't ask for helpYou're all alonePressureYou'll have to answerTo your ownPressure