boxes

1.

summer saved in the buttery voice of a sultry woman singing gently sad songs to us, deep in our mugs. attack the heart, my extremities are cracked. sir, there is no need for your glare, my eyes are vacant & unsold. how to process these requests for connection, to be in on the untold? evening steeps, already darker than my tea. the names i do not wish to amass, pile in my exiled brain. keep it short, lest the scroll unfurl too indifferently. it is much too slender inside his loudly. i do not have the heart to tell him, not every dot, nor every dash, just because it itches, doesn't mean you scratch. just sit for awhile with this passenger, i would say, and he will choose his own exit, i meant but did not share.


2.

gleeful, dog spilled sidewalk, creamy rivulets lick their way toward gutter.
the guilty puppy is relocated, its leash looped over a convenient branch. 
do women's hands betray them, i think, behind her back, and does that 
mean she is someone else until she reaches? her head is hatless,
and her hair is coffee dark, but without the cream, and tousled, 
as if her head had only just recently been released from dream. 
she is holding a cigarette in one pale hand too thin to ever suggest 
elegance, like the ghost of a spider, flexing in its murderous sleep.
the cigarette unfurls its banner beneath my window. her sit
is brief, it is too brisk out there to think. we have swapped 
moist cool for bone dry cold in some sort of climate exchange 
we have only just begun to understand. she takes deep drags 
as she thumbs the phone in her other hand, soon replaced 
with a turquoise box, and then a cherry red lighter, as if her 
hand could not be denied the shape it craved, its need to hold
something, anything when you're alone, floating in the cold 
shade of a too bright morning, and then she erupts to her feet 
and stabs the cigarette into the dirty black plastic claw, 
permanently frozen in mid-grasp, it smolders in her absence
on the silver sidewalk table, as if spitefully smoking back. 
an unquenched silence given no mouth to feed.

3.

on the side this light so obviously prefers on the corner 
across the street, shades of primary blue huddle their 
rectangular glow around a tall skinny blue bus stop sign, 
a little island saving sunlight's refugees, shade peeled 
from the curb at nearly the speed of neglect. there is 
another sign, almost as tall and skinny too, but not blue,
a silver sentinel that always stands one step to the side 
to perfect its estrangement. its face is white and its mouth 
cannot unsnarl itself from the grim shape of an empty, 
black & white bus, the silver sentinel guards the little 
island of blue, facing away from what is always offered 
freely, its one eye red & slashed, as its pupil collects itself 
into a letter that stares meekly into the easily defeated 
autumn sun. 

"On the Eastern Front" by Georg Trakl, translated by John Greening

Battle of Grunwald by Jan Matejko

On the Eastern Front

The winter storm's mad organ playing
is like the Volk's dark fury,
the black-red tidal wave of onslaught,
defoliated stars.

Her features smashed, her arms silver,
night calls to the dying men,
beneath shadows of November's ash,
ghost casualties heave.

A spiky no-man's-land encloses the town.
The moon hunts petrified women
from their blood-spattered doorsteps.
Grey wolves have forced the gates.

    

Im Osten

Den wilden Orgeln des Wintersturms
Gleicht des Volkes finstrer Zorn,
Die purpurne Woge der Schlacht,
Entlaubter Sterne.

Mit zerbrochnen Brauen, silbernen Armen
Winkt sterbenden Soldaten die Nacht.
Im Schatten der herbstlichen Esche
Seufzen die Geister der Erschlagenen.

Dornige Wildnis umgürtet die Stadt.
Von blutenden Stufen jagt der Mond
Die erschrockenen Frauen.
Wilde Wölfe brachen durchs Tor.

what strange glowing

i pull a stool up to the shower. what should i do with the pieces that fall? rain pecked rendezvous for illicit hugs too sinful for anywhere but nondescript, downtown shadow district. how do i share what i supposedly possess? chocolate caught gaze. inscrutable, her lips. any mention of positivity makes me nervous. she arrives and locks the door on my dreamy evening. condensation tucks us in the soft lit tank. tarot cult in the corner, a tablespoon of tea, and a plethora of pours to taste the gradation of flavor. i have an eye for shine & all that glistens leads me on a leash of rain. in what year do you live and when did you press pause? unwillingly plucked from anonymity, groping for healing medicine's middle. are there any classic happenings happening again? so transparent, i'm not sure if there's anything left i should share. savoring delusion, chanting reflection's reflections. spiritless tones repeat. more formal friendliness for a footless diet. familiar voices from unfamiliar behind me faces. walls aglow with frilly golden girls. you keep showing up storyless and you aren't even the protagonist in any story you ever do tell. joyful bodies met. an atmospheric soundtrack instead of verse-chorus-verse. sometimes my solitude is a comfortably cranky marriage and sometimes i am shouting at my aloneness, cowering in the corner. i need a reminder to remember what to retrieve in order to recommend. a single crow alights upon the plaza sign's turned off hooks of light. a stray, furtive comma baits the literary overcast. sitting uneasily inside this well lit cube, my incognito choices breath lightly behind unturned knobs. these are the words given to pass. dirty amber signals, blinking within the ash, soaked & sulking desultory trees get down on their roots and pray beside our slick tireful street. this the sexiest revolution you never had. she moved with agility he reported from the front seat, on our way to fly awake. sledding flakes, skin snows upon an immaculately shoveled page. a sad eyed, tree tied dog patiently waits in the rain, still smelling her fresh departure. i've been neglecting my lacking again. i'm not making judgements against genre, i just can't clean my plate. she popped in to fetch her forgotten flowers, a tall bright yellow passenger who rides in the seat beside her, that bouquet zipped away. glass jars are petting zoos for lovely petals. the hooded milkman is nearly dwarfed by the empty blue stack of plastic crates wheeled down the dripping wet sidewalk, pasted with flattened, filthy gold tadpoles. across the street, a leafless tree serves as a rack for rain to hang its drops. below me and beneath the awning, her smoking gaze is roasted dark, her cheeks caramel creamy, her eyebrows bold, fat, and frothy as her big mouth puffs on her own handrolled cigarette, sunk so beautifully, deep inside her wool. i watch a slender mom hoist her pale blonde hatless angel boy across the parking lot, half full with cold sleeping cows, while her boy continues to glow, in spite of the distance, like a shadeless day white bulb. before me, a twig of a branch dangles delicately from the stronger arm of a young tree. less than a handful of heart-shaped leaves left, burnt orange, torn & rotting, trembling in the breeze. my dream catches robins lifting off & settling, bouncing from branch to branch before departing together again for the next tree, testing perhaps their solidarity before the season turns hard. 

and i ask, what joys should i share?

collaborative poem written with my rickbot

hanging out badly because you just had become
the casino he had been was sitting here to give
the middle-aged male performer I have been 
once a conversation has been folded & organized
i was doing and i am about to answer 
do not obey the city of it before it's destroyed
hanging out hands me their undying 
a woman at work thanks all states of behavior 
my egotism. 
former ground and the Brain, which aims to receive 
the middle of the Luminescence Conference 
if you suffer in the middle of this 
i am feeling vulnerable one saturday at the interrogation
 maybe perhaps we both gave her eyes and circled his freedom 
i don't feel like something needs to talk to remind us of the day
one of the cloud pictures
i feel a caramel coated mama pitbull looks up my yoga 
trying to play certain roles, 
trying to find a better way 
to take the temperature culprit
my fault for finding something more easily 
to have a collar, just make a point
the slightest brush could almost 
that i have warm wet food 
and struggled to form attachments to work 
wishing i could be hanging out at home
in a row pushed away from others.

gestures

Picture by Joe Schneid, Louisville, Kentucky

sitting in the darkened front of the bus, on my way to the cheap theater to see a classic movie about a man who could buy everything he wanted but the love. alone in my day and distracted by the chunky couple across from me, so convincingly boyish in their tats & baseball caps, i was never entirely certain either way, as one of them stroked the meaty forearm that lay across her leg, just a finger, tracing a line down in a slow swipe, meticulously deliberate, delicate, the eyes meeting like crystal kissing across a candlelit table, wordlessly checking in: are you okay with this? i am so okay with this. i haven't been touched today. i look away, out the window, still adjusting to the too soon arrival of late night darkness. the bus suddenly stops and the driver starts waving his hands at the glowing red window as he opens the door. an old lady with mcdonald's red hair boards the bus, squeaking to the driver who apologizes: i know, i know, i didn't see you. i won't leave you, i promise! and the old lady squeaks some more, her voice impossibly high and wordless. she sits down at the very front of the bus and the one who was doing the stroking starts signing to the squeaking old lady: do you sign? how are you? a flurry of hands flap near their faces like desperate hummingbirds hovering over a feeder after sunset. still no words but the squeaking sounds happier, and then the signing subsides, and the one who was doing the stroking returns to the love they were signing in skin. 

those doomed balloons

grief turned 
his home up-
side-down as they, 
his dolls, floated 
toward the inevitable,
those doomed balloons 
filled with just enough 
joy to rise, but 
never enough to 
elude his grasp.

drawing by matthew dennison

http://www.matthewdennison.com/matthewd/Paintings.html

unrequited pie

i cannot see her from where i sit but i hear her voice rise above the din, reaching over the counter, trying to touch him one last time, if at all, one last attempt to connect before they are severed, if they are not already severed. they are severed. severed. i can hear it in her voice, in that desperate announcement: "will i see you later? have a good time. i love you." and the love you falls to the dirty floor where it will lie scuffed among the unblinking. i am sitting there trying to write the most beautiful email ever. yes, i know. and i even told her that when i came in and ordered my tea and a slice of marionberry pie and would it like that warm? yes, of course i would like that warm. and would you like some whipped cream too? why yes, i would very much like some whipped cream! i remembered him when i came in, he was sulking at the end of the counter. i wasn't sure it was him because i haven't seen him in a long while but somehow intuited who it was and dialed down my usual flirting. something about the way that i love you just hung there, so obvious and unanswered. he paused at the door and looked back at her, said nothing, said everything. i've seen more love in the eyes of a feeding shark. i know what it's like to be left hanging, your need exposed, your wanting unrequited. i stopped by the counter to say goodbye. i told her i saw citizen kane last night, and though i loved it, i thought it was really sad. she said she saw it too and agreed that it was both really good & very sad. she asked me how my email went and i told that it was long, meandering, mundane, and utterly artless. i told her that i had failed beauty this evening and that if she wanted to know how to locate beauty that she should ask someone else as i clearly do not know where beauty lives today. and with that i bid her farewell.

rough road ahead

orange construction sign stationed just before the whisk on the corner of tenth & the side that burns blinks "ROUGH ROAD AHEAD, USE CAUTION" and i think, if only we had known, had been warned earlier, perhaps we would have adjusted our approach, more ginger, less garlic. isn't there something else that could be used instead? some other faculty that could pull you through or over the rough road. isn't caution just another way of saying BE AFRAID. and just how full of fear must we be? and would it really matter if we knew how rough that road was going to be? would we choose a different route? the sign announces that the nature of this ride, that we had grown accustomed to, will not be continued, that it will in fact change. if only we had known before we stabbed deeper into the side that burns. but what were you using before you used caution? what were you using before someone told you that you should be afraid? and when will we be advised to use frivolity, use levitation, use creativity, use intuition, use reason, use kindness, or dare i say it, love? when will we be advised to use love? 

ROUGH ROAD AHEAD, USE LOVE!

circular tea

day boys frolic in the rhododendron ring.
welcome to my scriptlessness i could not 
speak. could we not complete 
the symmetry of our garden experience 
and maybe meet for an undressed rehearsal 
i could not say to that sexy, 
acne-scarred college student
despite how slow her eyelids. 
they chased touch 
in the circular maze. if i shoot her,
have i stolen her dreaming 
in while gazing out 
likeness? adrift 
in a room of anonymity, the trying 
sun slides along our glass as the lazy commas 
couple above the moist black, as that 
banana yellow boy out there, gleefully
sprints upon the still sleepy queen.
all those dad chased circles 
among the stoically stern and heartily half 
unleafed, arms 
forever raised in surrender, 
those are too sweet for tea.