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.

5.28.2008

You Fell at Night,


and by the time I found you
the sun had dried up everything
but your soft petals
in a heap on the patio
with the broken glass

no one heard, no one looked
out the window to you
or else you would have been
swept up and thrown out
recollected and replaced
on display, and I would
never notice until someone came
home to tell me what I'd missed

but I found you, and came to you
and in the chill air the sun
felt good on my goosebumps
while I gathered you into my hand
to shake the glass from your stems

as I carried you in you cried
petals all over the carpet,
all the way to the sink
where I put you in
a tall glass of water

and when I carried you back
to your place on the patio
careful not to spill
and gathered up your petals
from the floor to the sink
I only had a little trouble
washing them down the garbage disposal

3.12.2008

Gobbledygook (Protest Poem)
for Professor Price


where I come from the plant is growing

I see it

at night
from my bedroom window
burning the sky's red glow

I inhale black smoke hot
like a cigarette and hack
caffeine arrogance
streetlight poetry

see

when I walk by they all flicker
like birthday candles: how I know
this is my neighborhood
my town
my polluted sky

see

my friends and me
we sip beers in basements
we cliff sit and smoke dope
we watch the clouds

see,

we drive 95 and 202

'this is romance,'
we think but don't say
over homecoming shakes
at the Charcoal Pit

see

in time
the creek will lead to the ocean

for now
I catch tadpoles in the slime

see

gobbledygook wins every time

see

where I come from
I am the power plant
this is my polluted sky

2.21.2007

Breaking Up


God through you is doing this,
must be,
because He's the only one
who will ever know what He did

we both knew i'd have to pay for it
over time

yeah, i knew
not by anything He told me but
by the look i saw on His face sometimes
in the evening, before bed
in the mirror while i washed up

God is doing this
because when God was in high school
He messed around and hurt some girl
real bad, so bad
that after she had that car accident
she had to wear that big neck brace
and she stopped talking to her friends
and she didn't go to Senior prom
and she never applied to college
and she wouldn't look Him in the eye
whenever He came back
and walked around the high school
like king shit, like everybody does
when they come home from someplace
unfamiliar, when they know something
everybody around wishes they knew too

He always knew

He's got a job to do,
and God knows i don't take it personally

i just wish He'd been a little more careful
in high school,
so you didn't have to hurt me now
without even knowing why

1.31.08

Winter (Safekeeping)


these days you leave your warmth at the door

the careless take it with them,
arrive stripped and breathless and blowing it
into their hands

you know it's worse
to have something stolen than to give it up willingly
which must be why last night
before you left you pressed it into my lips
full and quick
a parting gift

for all the moments we wanted to, but couldn't
outside in the cold when you invited me in
but i, in my skin stretched so tight
couldn't move for shaking and excused myself,
embarrassed, left you wondering
was it something you'd done wrong

for safekeeping
for when the time comes to brave the cold
and we'll lock the doors

1.16.08

Asphalt

"He will not shout or cry out,
or raise his voice in the streets.
A bruised reed he will not break,
and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. "
Isaiah 42.2


walking around
at night in the neighborhood when there're no cars
you may straining hear the television hymn
a ghastly tune sticky like pollen congeals
grabs holds preserves brain's cracks way back to asphalt
leaves you rushing to explain
how the sounds fit the pictures like they used to
like billboards by the highway
colorful and foreign
words you haven't learned yet
moonshines cloud over now streetlights light night streets
not what you remembered in the woods aged eleven
sunlight lingering branch-high
now no fireflies anymore or bicycles or running water
there are windows and buildings behind them
people who live and sleep unaware you exist
who refuse to listen when pavement talks
that's how your feet know stories of this neighborhood
chalk and water skin and rubber ice and metal
learning to whistle and stepping over cracks
dreaming of summer
the weekend
everything to do before the sun goes down


**note: this used to be a different poem called "Information," but i was going through old stuff and it stuck out to me because as far as i'm concerned it had a lot of promise it didn't really live up to. not like it's some kind of prom queen at this point, but i'm happy with the changes. stay tuned for totally new stuff.