Evening of the Storm

Do you remember the evening of the storm,

when we waited beneath

a natural roof and

forgot how to

speak clearly?

I do,

the cloistering of rain droplets

on our hair-matted foreheads as

you looked to the ground,

then, perhaps,

to the perimeter of the rainclouds

just beyond the woods.

Russia in Summer

Failed to let go this morning,

clenching your committed expression

to the classics with my

fingertips, mocking the

postmodern alike.

Yes, Claude is as you say, what I say

from a distance, an artist amongst composers.

I would have suggested Tchaikovsky

given the chance.

Akhmatova lived with Punin for 10 years

after her husband passed, and she was

happiest during the war.

We have a similar enemy.

Russia 1910

3 years before it began to freeze,

Akhamtova and Gumilev are wed

by the same state

that would ruin them.

Russia 1912

Akhamtova discusses the evening.

Russia,

where art is bombarded in the foxholes

regardless of meter.

I once decided not to fly there,

and it has haunted me in

a different sense.

Flash back to the present,

a magic cold steel Cold War bullet

strikes me between the 3rd and 4th ribs,

striking me off balance like a

barn door opening one way eternally,

opening my damn quintessence for you

and I without consequence of your

indecisive spurning,

conflicting envy and selflessness within me.

Knyazev shot himself on the stairway of

Sudeikina’s,

so I assume Blok won her affections.

Knyazev was always the romantic type.

We met in a valley

in the dead of summer.

It has been days since.

It will always be days since.

Friends

Now it’s 1:17 a.m.

I’ve lamented over

The Final Cut

over and over.

I wish we could have listened to it

together, anywhere where

two eyes,

two hearts,

could run dry.

Looking into the glassed eyes of

my reflection, I

cannot relinquish and reserve myself

for a friendship as trivial

as all the rest and

cannot cry again over

Neruda’s Poema Veinte, 

cannot hold back my missing partner

holding our confidences

in front of me, of us, of them all, 

in a question I

pray does not return

flat.

Tonight I have no energy

for you, beloved, my brief infatuate;

tomorrow will be like the first,

and after that,

we will be friends

but less.

Mercury in Retrograde

Letting someone into your home on a magical night
is a great risk with
Mercury in retrograde,
holding them to your integrity
in spite of your misled
selflessness.

I could stare a hole into the holy
storm clouds, young as a week,
as I taper the rain with
my ebullient prancing.

Message to an Aggressor

I dislodge a fragment of granite from the asphalt-sanded soles of my favorite black-and-white shoes, a fragment originating perhaps from a driveway in Fort Oglethorpe or my job's recent renovations, with its pinewood-sectioned-off routes. As I do this, I read a comment of a man who tapers my liberty, my list of mistakes and confessions and infatuations and nonsense. Yet still I hang my art in public view, in vintage typeset for those friends and cowards to prove I'm a lunatic.

If I mentioned her olive skin, or provided a sketch of some new lover, would that be enough to provide an unconfusing message? If I became an ebullient homunculus hung from my front door, would that be enough to sell my house and story?

Poetry can bring me to peace; I wish it was not misinterpreted. I wish that I could simply look out of my second-story window onto the upturned leaves preceding a storm and not think about who may be searching, waiting for me, on a twilit street, next to a desecrated church.

One Last Time

Before the movie's over,
I'd like to say
that I love you
one last time
without saying it.

The Last Night Of the Earth

I wouldn't misinterpret

any trivial responses laid to dust

in our last moments.

I wouldn't make you dinner

with its empty calories.

I wouldn't learn the saxophone

to impress you.

I would simply ask for your time

and if it was reserved,

I would write your elegy

here in my bed

as the shade overtakes us.

My Eyes Wander

into your ordinary home,
into your bright clover eyes,
and I apologize for
scanning the crowds for you at each
opportunity, but
I'm yours.
I'm yours because you are not mine.

Hell is your wrist in mine in
red lines defined by the pain of
paint drying on a shaded surface,
of taking another order,
of wanting to complain without filing
your nails to graze me, cleanly.

My eyes wander into your oblique chagrin,
uneasy with my baring;
look! Look when I do,
for God's sake!
The same insane instant of inter-chained
visages is as long as a,
Hello, not so much as a
Hi, not nearly as long as a,
What the hell do you want from me?

Sweetheart, you're as viscous as honey, as
immortal a muse in an instant as
the books on my painted-black particle shelves.

The secrecy-
the secrecy makes me stumble.
Nothing personal, nothing public,
hidden amidst our friends,
a slick entendre.
May we always be nothing but
never be not anything,

may we float on and breathe saltily;
let me carry you in
my freckled arms in your
unresistant carapace shining
for me,
white light bypassing
a prison prism of,
Where were you last night?

I was here-
that is certainly redundant.

We fell asleep to two silent church bells
ringing in our separate
ordinary homes, miscommunicating
the words in-between
sugar and goodnight and
I managed to miss you more when
my eyes adjusted to the singularity
in my ordinary double bed.

What keeps me awake at night?

The inactivity in the physical realm

when I do not exercise

or am awake long or

sleeping short enough,

the back-and-forth messages

I receive from the most beautiful woman

with blue jeans on with my

hand on my member,

gunshots a few blocks away

and a car on fire

in the church lot next door,

and sometimes,

a job interview the next day.

Seems counterproductive

on my body’s part.

Usually, though

I sleep well

despite these annoyances

or get by on a solid

5 hours in my

2 month-old sheets.

House For Sale

The signs saying For-Sale

stood silently as obedient

orphans as I

paid utilities on my home of

the past two years

for the last time.

I grip my pen to write,

creativity being the only hunger

I possess.

Fantasies about

blaming neighborhood kids for

the signs’ disappearance come to mind while

I sit on my plantation porch

out of sight

of the Greater Downtown Realty malice.

Under the pale aquamarine

summer sky, a hawk searches

for a kill to bring to its nest.

Three ordinary black children

get in an ordinary Altima as

a too-cool-for-comfort breeze

guffaws with indifference.

A robin lands on the railing

3 feet in front of me;

he understands

in his eye contact, or maybe

is simply afraid.

I walked away from my home

finally, or perhaps,

it did from me.

Most importantly, I must remember that

the sunshine still perforates the tree-line

most places along the circumference.

Door-to-Door Proselyte

A white

white-haired man

knocked on my door

earlier.

I knew he was troublesome

when he smiled

like he knew me.

Hello! Are you the

head of household?

No

Yeah, I could tell

then went on to

try to sell me

a copy of a book,

“Blacks in the Bible.”

Obama’s on the first page,

he said.

I didn’t have time for this

blithering adjunct proselyte

so I told him this

and tried to close the door

but his hand

stopped me at first.

You’re going to Hell!

he said.

I said,

If you’re going to be in Heaven,

I’ll pass on it.

Looking Through a Fence Through Car Windows (Unfinished?)

From the wrought-steel barbed wiring,

I stare through silver, gray and black

windows at the sun setting above

the Northwestern mountains

I swore crested your

dynamonious bleached

table salt smile,

reminding me how I

don’t need

to be alone

to be alone,

all with myself

with myself,

resting before the next sun-dripped rejection

for a thudding narrowly-missed boulder embracing the

tall-enough large-enough to shit-the-scare-out-of-me

ground.

Bike Chain

Her bicycle chain drags kinetically against the

asphalt. Her friends do not wait.

I am an observer on my front terrace.

My poetic studies are constantly in interruption

and inspiration by the shirtless black alpha-male yelling

What the-

What the-

What hell do I care that you were throwing rocks

at your racist neighbor’s house and he

called the cops?

The young girl fixed her chain and

rides over the bridge

over the ditch

with her friends.

I go inside at the 8:36 dusk

and hear children running across my

wooden porch,

but I let them because

it means more than them

than I.

Heroine

I didn’t mean to fall for you, just like

Jim Morrison didn’t mean to kill himself, just like

I could read about both subjects in my nostalgia

you and I, children on their bicycles

ushering in impotence.

The worst isn’t over, I hope, drowning,

please excuse my madness.

You blink before me and miss

the flashing light of my soul

drying the nature of observation.

My soul,

it’s been in front of us like the past, and I

must wait until this staccatoed interaction

eludes me.

The heart has always been

a metaphor.

Climbing Poem Three

The best day of climbing is often preceded by a day of rest; the best days of writing are often the same, which leaves a day devoted to horrendous reality in which we now find ourselves, and what I’ve found so far is equally ugly and equally invigorating.

I could spend my time passively watching ants cross my threshold or other facets of nature invading my home, but climbing is where I function, dancing with a motionless partner, bleeding noisily through my waxen fingertips.

Shedding my Suck Creek-soaked skin onto a mossen ledge, I stand unadorned at a skin-lashening V5 slab onsighted by Daniel. I try three times until my skin-tight what’s-left-of-me becomes not-so-skin-tight. Daniel named the problem Racecar Undies.

Twice more I fell into the creek after this, soaking my backpack’s interior when I smashed a reused glass bottle. Nick stranded himself on a rock in the middle of Middle Creek. We took pictures. Hunter was there, too. Nice guy.

Another day, we reached Middle Earth, abandoned a mile and a half uphill through neck-high edamame-like grasses. A hike through deadly iced snowfall in March, across the mountain, across the bridge to Terabithia, into Mt. Doom to ascend roofs with Gollum. Poisonberries exploded on my lacerated legs, beneath my glasses, when my forefoot sank to the upper thigh. Hauling in a man sized crash pad on my back, I am too exhausted to pull myself past the second or third move. Hunter climbs without shoes while Daniel evens the landscape for a landing zone another day.

Current Hitting the Chicago Shore

Skies mirror the

empty ground, and you could be

far away and closer.

Lake Michigan, the North American

sea system briny with

industrial blockade walkways.

Where no cars go,

we are on the backside

of the planet.

A resident arises:

a duck and her

four shadowy ducklings.

I envy how they embrace the current.

Drowning can be exciting,

fighting for another

minute of life,

but that is not the

death for me,

my dear.

For today, let us

remember the future

that is not there.

Colorado is south

but west

1271 miles.

Under this sky, light is no longer free.

By the Wayside

There must be some way to

narrate the pull of lips

slowly reddening as I

notice the forest of your irises,

turning to our respective exits

from the night, the

prior ten minutes still in

comfortable silence.

I look to

the passenger seat

empty of books,

then start the engine.