7.1.2008

Cork


so this is pilgrimage. a can of coke.
some crisps. cigarette butts. the smell of fried
chicken. the sun behind a cloud. the light
turns red. I cross. a girl my age touches
her face and looks away. an older man
kisses his girlfriend while she's on the phone.
the brick is black. alone. guitar. the sun
blinks down. it's afternoon. a father has
no patience. for a moment there's a man
with coffee contemplating sitting down.
he looks at me. a smile. he walks on.
a language I don't speak. the sun again.
unless I raise my head I won't be seen.
a woman leaves the city council library.
Tourettes. she shakes her head. again. she takes
the corner. ducks into a run. the wind
blows trash and leaves. a car horn blows. I look.

6.28.2008

Valleysong; or, The Ascent


the late Mrs. Fitzgibbon would have turned
sixty-eight this year, if I heard right.
your way of life changes, Fitz says, not lightly
but with life, as someone who has heard
the still, sad music of humanity
and greets the day with hale voice – and they
would have been wed forty-four years today.
that song grows soft in age, the melody
is stretched to fill the lonely twilight hours.
the choice presents itself: to brave or cower
from that music, which is itself the choice
to live or not, and Fitz raises his voice
over the howl of mountain wind, back bent,
and breathes deep, ready for the long ascent.

6.26.2008

Whitby, UK, Low Tide


Fell Asleep Hard
by 215 Woke Up
Harder by 730
Hot Brick Heavy
in the Head I
Pulled It Together
in a Cold Shower
Hit Whitby Sour
and a Bit
Cramped North
Sea Air Sucker
Punched Back
Almost Knocked
Out and I
Descended into
the Village Like
a Fog for Coffee
and Fried Fish as
a Gull I Circled
but I'd Seen It
Already Bored I
Waited For the
Others and
Together We
Ascended to the
Abbey Past
Cheese Stands
and Street
Guitarists Up the
Steps Halfway
Until We Turned
Around and
Whitby Fell
Apart Soft Like
an Onion

6.23.2008

For Sara, To Spite Mary


I laugh
now that
I ever
loved sheep

6.19.2008

The Orphan, pt. II


Earth fills her lap with pleasure and yearning;
I'm above them both, staring into world's end.
there is no smell here, no sound, the taste
only of teeth, two-day-old coffee burn.

the crown of stone bears up –
each step reveals another half-mile –
fighting the clouds, glorious and terrible,
borne on the wind, which enfold and blur;
rough turning hands tilting toward the descent,
hissing, whispering welcome
to my temporary heaven.

Mist lingers behind the gale
to hold me in her long arms.
she chills, settles in drops on the backs of my hands –
evaporating, now in my capillaries,
tracing her way back to the source.

I won't say I love her, but she stays in my heart,
which is how love works anyway
the way I learned it.

it's not in the tongue, the tips of my fingers,
but the occasional heartbeat –
once every couple hundred, I guess –
that takes the taste from my tongue
twice as well as any cup of coffee.

6.16.2008

The Orphan, pt. I


the Orphan, ascending – abandoned for
hundreds of years, left to his own devices –
the devices left to him, packaged

and mailed across the ocean – the Orphan
today was reunited with the makers,
lifted up, replaced atop the crown

that still adorns his fair ancestry (not really,
not even his people's, but human –
so his) to find not some reflection to

reveal truer self in waters foreign –
anyway, the orphan feels too old
to reinvent – but anonymity

instead, and strange comfort therein; knowledge
that great men walked these giant stones and stumbled
not, but shook them into place, to fashion this

expanse by noble molds their own; and hope,
that he'll be one to shake these stones – or stones
back home – to recreate the world for
himself, if not for anybody else.