minneapolis / punks / fiftieth street / away, out to the prairies / want / he honored life / f. scott / autumn, autumn / iowa / weather torn / snow / over night / winter warmth / you / that teenage feeling / lynlake / huddle / windchill / naked / chicago / ragged company / the new year / january / dawn / pulse / on the mall / compassion, simplicity, and patience / lilac / saturday / pocket knife / like thread / harriet houses / to your thawing ribcage / bubbling spring / just a thought / portraits of cats in mansions / i ain't even kissed you yet / 407 cedar ave. s. / biking over the bridge / boy eats world / june / altocumulus undulatus / duluth / north country cabin / listening to a solo version of "pancho villa" while driving out of spring hope, nc / little / suburb evening / ballad with clouds / king of summertime
City of cold ribcages,
city of shredded clouds strewn about,
I remember your frozen bullet wounds,
city of buttoned coats,
I remember your weeping lakes and laughing creeks,
city of pitching waves, rippling avenues,
I remember your leaves like ash, lakes like filled potholes,
I remember your refugees,
I remember your parkways,
city I need to leave to love,
I remember your real name,
city of shacks,
wood-burning stoves, holes in the ice,
empty beer cans,
I remember the red and gold, the dead petals,
I remember the covered gardens braced,
city like a mandolin pluck,
I remember being licked clean in March,
city of thronging cemeteries filled with loves,
city of flung flashes, I remember my
city, city,
oh city, I chant ecstatic.
The jangle of
chains
and clips dangling
from back pockets
and belt loops—
this, this
brings me home.
The fog curls;
It grasps treebranches and
headlights,
and the long road
I’m driving
is flooded with the
damp smell of yellow
September.
The girl sitting
next
to me in the dark car
sings
a popular song,
but
to me it sounds like French,
so soft and foreign,
like a voice coming
from a
turned-down radio
that gets louder in silences.
She does this
unconsciously.
And this is how I know I love her.
Remember at the
end of a book
the four pages that have no words?
Remember the ivy that used to climb the house, tangled
up with past owners?
Remember the light brigade?
Remember what the streetlights used to mean?
Remember the laughing water and her
noble prince?
Remember the vibrating overtones after
the last piano shudder, ringing with
panoramic epiphany?
Remember the half-second hiss of the radio
after it’s turned off?
Remember the rock and roll ghost?
Remember her face on a retreating bicycle?
Remember when your fingers cried?
I want to feel
something
I want to feel anything
I want the wind to sting my skin
I want the snow
to bite my back,
ruddy my skin, pull at my ears,
freeze my wet hair each morning
I want the wind
to blow
the leaves off the street, the smoke
out of my chimney, my fire out,
the scarf off my neck
I want the grass
to untie my shoes
stain my knees, soften my fall,
fill my nose with its smell
I want the dirt
to rub into my fingers and elbows
ruin my sweater
I want the sun
to laugh at my cheeks
red and numb
I want trees to become lumber
I want the pine
needles as a bed in the cold
I want the moon to sleep with me next to clovers
I want the leaves to cut my feet
through the soles of my shoes
that way I’d know they cared—
I want the rain
in July, I want the August heat
I want the September sun to lie and tell me it’s warm
I want the October snow to laugh when I trip.
Drunk bursting
bottle rocket, first down sunset,
flooded carburetor, burning-hot embers
of a long-ago campfire, rickety freight train,
marathon buddha in the Massachusetts autumn
to stand above him and look down
to touch the granite
and the dirt
the scraps of paper and the bottle-tops—
to look down and listen—
I’m filled with the love
that killed him
in the end.
The girl with
the Fitzgerald hair, the curls curled with smoke,
maple syrupy and dark, the girl with the Fitzgerald hair.
You noticed, and how could you not.
The girl with
the green Fitzgerald eyes that hum at 75 rpm,
a pair of singing saws for eyes, the girl with the green Fitzgerald eyes.
You noticed, and how could you not.
Leaves blow into
the lobby,
leaves strike the ankles of the Fitzgerald princess
the happiest tragedy ever to walk Fifth Avenue.
you’ll be
the leaf piles
you’ll be the wake-up calls
you’ll be the lights on my Friday-night game
you’ll be the creaks in my old accordion,
the sighs in the compression
you’ll be the memories of fog
you’ll be the equinoxes
you’ll be the cold nights
and the breath-steam
you’ll be the dawns, the dusks,
the twilights and steamy middays
you’ll be the pumpkin pies
you’ll be the slide notes on the pedal steel
you’ll be the Dylan songs I hum
you’ll be
the leaf piles
you’ll be—
you’ll be the leaps in the air
you’ll be—
you’ll be the leaf piles
you’ll be,
you’ll be
We watch quietly,
with a reverence
usually reserved
for prayer.
The fireflies
come cometing by
as we slip through the indigo Iowa twilight;
we watch them dance over soybeans and corn.
Maybe this is
prayer.
Maybe this is God;
right here,
glowing,
floating with
complete serenity
as we speed by.
for LP
the smell of sweaters
and mystery novels,
bread pudding, pipe smoke, medicine,
of old men walking quietly past the doorway,
and finally the slow, painful passing from one place to another.
with the moon
down,
with the stars up
the road has lost
all meaning
all meaning blurring below
with the sky
o the purple sky
the purple sky
with the trees
the trees flash by,
staccato fast,
stitches unraveling,
shattered heart,
I think
one strum for
each finger position
focus on that, the rhyme of another summer;
waltz into the night,
like monsters at the evening of the feast,
like if you were not there
all meaning blurring below
my smiles are secrets understood between me and you
onto the snow
covered street,
I look, standing at the window
face / pressed / glass
each light glowing, reflected twice in the double paned glass
there aren’t
any cars driving by tonight
it’s all quiet and quite silent
but listen close,
a tiny chorus,
singing soft latin words,
riding ancient verses over snowfall syllables
I pull the curtains behind my head, raise my
hands up high, all meaning blurring below,
fingers outstretched
above the snowy street,
fingers outstretched above the snowy street, ascending.
now I hover over
the lake with one foot latched
onto an iron railing,
wiping the icicles off my cheeks
the hours grow
late
the lighthouse brightens
the gulls in a fading angelic chorus
defeated and weather torn
flying bitterly
focus, focus, time to focus
wave, I wave, but the lake won’t wave back
so I’m forced to float off into the clouds,
singing softly
Clouds settle
in around the skyscrapers
and snow will finally hit the dry winter.
Minneapolis falls asleep.
The buildings loose shape,
steel and glass evaporate away into the night.
In the many hours
before dawn the clouds
will drop snow across the city,
steel and glass condensing,
over each person, car,
house, and street,
and back into the frames of the skyscrapers,
which will be reformed with the morning.
The highway arcs
away from downtown,
high over the Mississippi,
frozen around the edges.
Burlington Northern
and Soo Line trains cross down below,
headed for the riverside mills, or
Chicago and the East, or the Dakotas and
everything West.
The bridges are silent.
The skies looming,
stained by the towers of light, are silent.
The homes below are silent.
Everything is in anticipation
quiet, quiet, quiet anticipation
of an unknown
force to come with this,
the season’s first snowfall.
It’s beginning to snow.
Thin little flakes
falling down
like down feathers
onto the hair and shoulders
and hats and mittens
of quiet passersby.
Through the streetlamps
I see
each flake flare
as it falls to the earth.
It started with
the frost
that killed all the flowers.
You took me upstairs
with a warm hand.
The stairway
with the smell of sugar cookies,
with the boot-puddles.
Fooling around
in a room with flecked gold wallpaper
on a bed with no sheets—
there’s
your chest of drawers,
filled with wool sweaters and longjohns,
soft old pairs of underwear.
Your windows catching
snow in the
corners, quickly piling up in diagonal ways.
I’m not
really sleeping, head on your chest.
head on your heart. How could I sleep?
Your radiator’s
on, its so hot.
How could I sleep?
Move closer, girl,
curl up, watch us
become snowed in.
The snow makes
me choke
with every feeling i’ve ever had.
You are a holiday
party,
a light that flickers but stays
on; you are a green clothbound
book, slim, with two dog-eared
pages: you are a sleek horse
in a field near Rochester; you
are a wild swan at Coole.
And you are that
field itself,
a book-length poem, someone’s
favorite purple symphony, a taped-
up box to carry all my clothes
home for the winter. You are
a grey photocopied picture traveling
by wallet in a back jean pocket,
a dust jacket gone missing.
I wish to listen
to you again
and again, and after each time
explode, melting all the Minneapolitan
snow in one red star-flung flash.
I used to sneak
back in late at
night shivering violently from the cold;
I would sit in the basement stairwell,
near the bright
and burning furnace,
and I would think again about the girl I
just left, how her thighs felt,
how she looked while asleep.
I would sit there
with the gloves
still on my hands,
ears burning and rosy,
and after
I was done thinking I would
just listen...
listen to the
sounds of the vents
shifting, of the waterpipes freezing,
of the wooden
frame of the house
groaning as it contracts, expands, contracts.
The neighborhood is quiet tonight
between Uptown,
Downtown, Midtown,
the barrio, where all the spraypaint in the alleyways
and all the signs in the shop windows
suddenly change to Spanish.
The students,
the mill workers
and the factory workers, the artists, the drug dealers,
the neighborhood is quiet tonight,
people somber
and excited and waiting for their time,
the neighborhood is quiet tonight.
Cars with frosty
windshields
sleep on the street.
we huddle together
for warmth,
warmth, we huddle together for warmth
we sleep together
for warmth,
warmth, we sleep together for warmth
we touch for warmth,
warmth, we touch for warmth
we huddle together
for warmth,
warmth, we huddle together for warmth
we love winter
for the warmth it allows us
we love to make ourselves warm
we love winter
for the warmth it allows us,
we love to make ourselves warm
It’s amazing
that we can forget
the existence of
our own skin,
since it is
with us always,
as a simple medium
for pain and pleasure,
a place for nerves
to end
and sensation
to begin.
But it takes a
cold night,
when vapors become
visible and the stars seem
razor sharp, when the bank
sign flashes a double digit
negative,
to really feel your skin,
to understand
that it can feel its
own pain and pleasure like any
heart or brain,
to remember how
it guards you,
and that even the strongest,
most resolved defense
can only keep up
for so long.
Sometimes it’s
all
we can do to stay warm and stay alive
we dance ourselves
out
of the snowsuits our
moms put us in,
out of the pinned-on mittens,
out of the overalls
and
out of the onesies
out of the skirts
and
out of the leg-warmers
out of the Edina
hats and
out of the hockey-taped jeans
out of the studded
belts and bracelets and
out of the mohawks
we roll off our
scarves and
toss them to catch on the ceiling fan
and there they spin the whole night
we dance ourselves
naked
and then we dance ourselves warm,
we dance ourselves alive, alive.
You are bayonets
beneath fog gleaming
with a distant ache,
to pierce through into Heaven
Your expressways
teem with impressions of life,
the hum and click of fast traffic on asphalt
sailing headlight taillight wisps
As we lean closer
to you, Chicago
you glow with city-orange snowsky
and your ache becomes new, near
I can see that you breathe and whistle and groan
and shiver like us
Chicago you’re
flannelled and fleeced
you’re late buying presents
You’re scarves
and mittens
you’re whipping tassels and poms
you’re wool hats removed and steaming hair
Your lungs exhale
sweet mist through the gutters
to the streets
it cycles through us and reemerges even sweeter
on our windblown breaths,
and then up to the clouds…
Your ache is us; your ache is ours.
We are glass and steel and swinging lightstrings;
The snow sparks when it passes beneath our streetlamps.
We’re a
lakeshore near and far, boardwalks and promenades,
we’re slipping ice-skaters our towers and antennae have bent
down to watch
we’re comicbook alleyways dark and cluttered;
Chicago how many old cities are buried below us?
We’re in
the lobby, listening to the lonely symphony
we’re like ghosts, Chicago, bright homesick ghosts
fogged searchlights of ghosts,
taking shape under the nation’s breath
Chicago you’re just as Sandburg said you’d be.
Thank you, Chicago,
your wind hurts my cheeks.
Thank you for this frostbitten reminder.
Before I go,
I’d like to tell you all the secrets
I thought would die with me.
Listen:
This was a long time ago.
These sweet and
stinging little
sparks of history, little rebellions
begun in smoky basements
and cold streetcorners
and trashy apartments.
These years
of parties and punk shows,
pool games,
nights standing
on the France Ave concrete,
the streetlights hanging halos around our heads,
late-night dinners at Perkins.
Cigarette smoke
rolling around in the air
like incense at church.
Empty bottles
of red wine and Grain Belt,
and miniskirted milky thighs
beneath oak tables.
We turn to stare
at the girl with
the long blue hair clinging to her sweaty neck.
At winter concerts,
after everything ends,
we walk outside still in short sleeves, our hair
freezes and sweat chills our skin.
I watch people as they exit, laughing, talking, bruised,
watch steam rise off their arms and shoulders.
We stab these nights in the heart.
I remember Petey’s
place, the parties there,
the cold-ass winter nights, the Decembers devoid,
the quiet Januaries, we all danced inside,
and all you could hear from the streets were the
muffled shouts, the thudding, the stomping.
A small space
heater rests on the stovetop
sending warmth and the stink of electric heat
out to the hallways.
These halfway
grown-up punks, these
bad sons and daughters.
Pete kisses Lottie
on the eye.
Pete has his hands down Lottie’s pants.
He calls her Ramona, but he’s no Dylan.
Neal and Walt
with sawdust beards,
Neal and Walt with Elmer’s-glue mohawks,
Maddy laughs,
Matt exhales,
black t-shirts with Iron Maiden artwork,
stinking like tobacco and hair gel and pot,
blue hair, pink hair, spikestabbed skin,
thumb-holes in hooded sweatshirts,
crooked teeth,
thriftstore shirts
and Elvis Costello glasses,
bottles break in the kitchen—
punk balladeers
and jukebox fuckups
singing, shouting songs we all know by heart.
Shitty two-chord sutras, sermons in feedback.
The Op Ivy plays:
Sound system
gonna bring me back yeah
one thing that I can depend on
Sweet Valentine,
the gal of my dreams,
asleep against the wall.
The cute pink-haired
punk girls dance,
shambling feet on hardwood.
In the pauses
between songs
I can hear everyone breathing—
the tense intakes,
the pants between kisses,
the calm stoned sighs, the passed-out snores,
condensation, evaporation;
breathing each other in and out.
What is this thing we’re clinging to?
———
I hear someone singing the Rolling Stones.
When you’re
sitting there in your silk upholstered chair
talking with those rich folks that you know…
I hope you don’t see me in my ragged company
’cause you know I could never stand to be alone.
———
It’s funny,
you wonder through the years how you
could’ve ever been dragged away from this. This is you.
After being gone
awhile and coming back, you’re
invited to the parties once again, and you’re struck
with the sickening feeling that maybe you had just
passed out for awhile, only to wake up right here,
in this same apartment, in this wool blanket you
wrapped around yourself as you fell asleep.
As you walk into
the hallway the scene is just the same,
but you’ve forgotten all the words to all the songs you loved,
once.
Walt and Pete hum a song you almost, almost, almost remember.
The tagged-up
busted-up Soo Line
freightcars roll down the river to the
broke-down grain-silo stations.
The Minnehaha
Creek has stopped flooding in the summer.
New towers stab the sky. Old neighbors move away.
Friends are married, children born.
I remember when Zooey used to make cricket noises
during the quiet times in physics class. She killed himself last December.
And yet, and yet—you
have to smile.
Look at them.
They’re all still in love.
They’re all still in love
with each other so, so much.
Because it’s
January, because the radiator’s busted,
because you’re bruised and sad,
because who else is there for you now—
you grab a beer, and you try to remember the old songs.
The space heater’s
gentle rumble,
that’s one you know.
Chuck Taylors shuffle across the floor,
and that’s another. It’s a start.