passenger seat / a thought unformed / trans-siberian the circus you never joined / baseball / springtime #1 / springtime #2 / sky-blue hearts / march sunday / plums / he honored life / warrenton, nc / acadian seawall / outer banks, nc / scraped clean
Bag of groceries,
oranges, laptop,
Yeats’ collected poems,
two mittens.
The little satsumas
speak to the sushi in their native tongue -
not Japanese as you might expect,
but Californian, dudes, bros, and surf
lingo traded.
But the satsumas know their pedigree,
and in old prosodic tongues they
haiku on the joy of soy sauce.
The eggs come to terms
with their inevitable death
by frypan.
Yeats talks Cuchulain in code
with my old research papers, tells sidhe stories
to the wee salsas and goldfish. Milk sends an email.
Music comes on, a quick French thing
with accordion and a nice beat
and they all get micro-jiggy with it,
as inanimate objects tend to do when our glances
turn away.
Only the gloves are still -
frozen in glee as they peek
out the snow-smooched cold glass
and get ready for a lovely season ahead.
What is the speed of dark?
The speed of light in reverse?
Or something slower,
a soft creeping thing?
Nature abhors a vacuum,
yes, that we know.
But by god, it sure does love a paradox!
Next time I run into a photon,
I’ll be sure to ask him all about it.
It begins with a saint covered in mud
stinking of Finnish salt.
Moves chugging and shaking like a copper kettle
filled with tea, waiting for honey
steaming, melting track slush away
from the narrowest path across
the biggest continent.
Haunted by the ghost of Tsarevich Nicholas,
who lives in the nighttime lights,
the red switch signals,
the lonesome whistle.
Black smoke on spires and striped minarets
chugging and shaking
porcelain cups ringing an endless mass
shortbreads dunked dribble on chin
stand up and look down the car,
dark heads bob and turn together
like the ryefields outside
soon there is nothing but the goat-feast
of steppe and tundra, thawing and freezing,
thawing and freezing, and soon there is
nothing
at all.
We ride along edges, tiptoeing between
the deepest lake and the freezing desert,
between life and, well.
Silent. Dark heads bob and turn together.
Breath of vodka.
The air is so cold outside, but fresh,
fresh. Cleanest in the world. I can’t even imagine
the grime of the world from out here.
Parallel lines are infinitely parallel. Strapped
to the earth for thousands of miles (and longer),
permafrost impaled by iron.
After the emptiness we enter the boreal forests
with their phantom tigers; they watch closely as
we steam past.
Omsk, Ob, Novosibirsk. Yenisei, Taishet
Baikal Amur, Ulan Ude, Irkutsk Trans-Mongolia.
Birobidzhan, Amur, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok.
So far east, it’s become west.
The disembodied disembark
and mist quietly out to Sakhalin,
a dark and green place,
a cold and lonely place,
where souls go when their work is done.
The strongmen smoke pipes beneath the empty red canvas tent.
Tobacco, old and moldy, mingles with dung, straw, liquor,
the bad breath of the sword swallowers, the spent fumes of the fire breathers,
the sweat and spit of the crowd.
The strongmen laugh, they speak German but they do not speak.
Their eyes are filled with Wagnerian longing;
deep in their hearts they are not sideshow freaks, they are Norse gods,
they are Loki the trickster.
They twirl dumbbells above their heads like Thor's hammer
and toss anvils like ducks,
as if they will fly away mid-toss.
They laugh with such strength!
their laughs could easily lift two hundred pounds each,
or do pushups with other laughs sitting on top of them.
A top hat wanders around on the head of the ringmaster.
He twists the ends of his waxy moustache and cackles
as he counts his take from the till;
he's only too happy as the story's villain.
The lion rethinks his choice to become a vegetarian
every time that guy in the huge hat sticks his head in his mouth.
But he reminds himself not to give in to temptation.
The dog trainer would really rather look at this tent than the stars.
This tent is a universe within her control.
She can see all the corners of it.
This tent, soaking with gasps and screams, mustard and beer,
polka and accordion waltzes, bear fur and horse hair, proclamations proclaimed and proven.
She can touch the weave that absorbs all of this.
She’ll never breathe in space; she’ll never touch a star.
The human cannonball’s wife is turned on by the smell of gunpowder.
The tightrope walkers always walk one foot in front of the other,
even down the street.
You’re nine.
You’re standing on the roof of your house,
your bedroom window open behind you,
your curtains whipping in and out.
Your Spider-Man bedsheet is an appropriate cape.
You’re eyeing the oak tree;
its branches come to within a few feet of you and your platform.
You study the bark for handholds.
You pull your goggles down.
If you were older, you’d know to be nervous right now.
But you’re nine, and you’ve not yet experienced fear.
You bend at the knees.
Somehow, you know to throw your arms back,
ready to spring them forward for maximum force.
How do you know that?
Did your body know that before you did?
You dig your heels in, you wiggle your hips, and
You smile.
These are your people.
The acrobats.
Like you, the acrobats have never known fear.
You can always pick acrobats out of a crowd;
they are the only people without purplish rings under their eyes.
They sleep long and well every night, for they have no worries keeping them up.
They know that even if they fall, there will always be a net below.
They’re high enough up to feel the smoky stain-studded ceiling of the tent with their calloused hands.
The dog trainer is jealous.
These are your people.
That is what you want!
You stumble, startled, and stand upright again.
You turn around.
Young man, you get down from there this instant!
She grabs Spider-Man by his spandexed feet, and you’re dragged in after him.
It’s at this moment you begin to grow up.
You’ll become an anthropologist, or an accountant,
or some other profession avoiding roofs.
You’ll never see that net below you.
You’ll never touch the top of the canvas tent.
And slowly but surely,
despite your best efforts,
despite your gravest objections,
the skin beneath your eyes will darken.
Four-finger fast
on its way home
spin stitch-catch breeze
half-second
ash-thwacked and
heart-walloped
in a parabolic function, going,
a playful sunlit arc -
gone.
The smell of oil, grass,
the broken-hearted pinstripes,
the pant
of breath;
the crowd cheers.
This is the first night of the year
I can drive with the windows down
a dark grape twilight, sweet and cool,
a near-black purple dusk, damp and juicy
warmth rises up from the ground
air tickles and yanks my hair,
gives toddler-tugs to my hair in the dark grape twilight
air smells like mold, diesel, and compost
air charcoaled, burnt, barbequed,
lumberjacked in the dark grape twilight
basketballs hit hoop rims
police lights blaze cherry and blueberry in the dark grape twilight
the bus stop girls giggle, first night out in skirts
Zen Center lights in the dark grape twilight
chairs dragged to porches and pipesmoke in the dark grape twilight
slow-rolling hip-hop cars pass by in the dark grape twilight,
leaving just the sound of my hair tugged by wind
and the hollow hum of tires on the road
this is the first night of the year
I can drive with the windows down,
sweet, sweet, sweet in the dark grape twilight.
The world has thawed
and we always think this feeling will last forever -
the wind blows strong and
carries seeds
from backyard to backyard
Springtime,
I read the rosy-cheeked
words of drunk Chinese poets
Mom's gardening shirt
hangs on the banister,
she and Dad on the deck,
he with cigar and crossword, she
in sandals with wine
as I drive down to meet
friends, windows down,
I see kids clamoring
up treetrunks,
small legs kicking against
pine bark
Springtime,
the long way around Lake Calhoun
the guys with their pimped-out
cars clean and waxed
driving slowly, the beats from their stereos
in a silly waltz with the banjo blues from mine
I write poetry again -
my words are thawed
and loose like the Earth
my soil memory is granting
life again
Springtime,
and the world is a big
blissful cliche of love
and nothing makes me happier.
Sky-blue hearts
Port-smoke barge-smoke,
the ships and shops our chimneys,
Commencement Bay our home,
singing a sweet old
shanty.
Vashon Island off across the water,
the prehistoric Buddha,
silent, immovable.
And us bobbing through the world,
sky-blue hearts tough as denim sails,
munching sliced apples and peanut butter,
bits of pear, smiling and silently ducking
and dipping through the Sound,
rocking up past the point and out to the open water.
Then the professor, our captain,
barks out physics lessons, his arms and body calm -
his shaking hands, wrecked by Parkinsons,
now steady when put to the tiller;
the closest thing to a miracle I've ever seen.
Heralded with bird-chirp and
goose-honk,
the wet dawn mist-beaming
and soil-roasting,
golden and
blackshadowed,
the earth full of
struggling things.
This is the gift
given us, our feast,
this is our new world.
Our drowsy souls in slippers,
toweled hair and creaking knees.
Eyes in bleary squint,
we ought to rub them soon.
A blooming plume to carry long,
a pallet of plums and peeled pears
born by sunlight,
picked by peasants
in the pale morning.
Leafy dew on their necks,
backs, arms stained purple.
Will I find peace in vines?
In plums and peeled pears?
Will Pacificism, a girl scented
with the sugar of cold
Japanese wine,
yield icy plums for
sucking deep with our
hungry fangs?
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.
Leftover cotton from the harvest sticks to the grass
and blows into the open windows;
the world and the sky are pitch black and wild
the moon's down now, and the stars crowd the sky
in the city you really forget how many there are
as we listen to this song you can smell joy and hearbreak in the air
in the city you really forget how much there is.
the moon's down now, and the stars crowd the sky.
I
napped
on the Acadian Seawall
my head on a pillow of
Hemingway
my
toes were dirty
and my shirt smelled
like a campfire
so - I smiled.
This has got to be the laziest song I ever heard
reverb curling into the seasalty air
you can taste it on your nose
and the backs of your cheeks
and the whiskers on your chin
the seasalty air, humming like a puddle in the hurricane's eye
swaggering around like a mouthful of moonshined breath,
sweet, lingering, hip-flask warm
trickling down the dunes
washing the houses into old age
buoying up the young girls on their bikes
when the air gets hot enough
you begin to see it, a ghost
that keeps you warm,
a great-grandfather, a love lost at sea.
We were wet but we dried quick and warm,
and the waves made us sore.
there's just silence;
but as we drive onto the mainland,
the sound of grasshoppers replaces
the silence. grasshoppers and the lazy
steel guitar.
for MB
The continental divide wanders lonely about the mountains
The Himalayas grow taller by centimeters every year
I run my hands over contour lines and dotted borders
I practice drawing state boundaries in the air
I crease the brim of my hat
I scrape clean the soles of my hiking boots
I dream and dream again about that dream I once had.
