You May Think

That I have stopped posting altogether. Not true! Fear not, loyal reader. I'm just doing something else at the moment. I get domestic around the holidays.
Would you like to see what I'm up to? You probably would.

Ok. Just for you then:

"So Then I Says to Mabel, I Says..."

No.

This piece of your heartflesh
left in an ashtray.

White porcelien ashtray
on a blue bed-side table
with scuffs on its surface.

Surgical and bloodless,
the edges; far less than a pound.
Such a slender segment.

You call this an offering?

Incised tumor
removed with intention;
discarded,
unburnt,

I am not impressed.

In a Garden of Monsters

Not born,
but for each other made.

The jagged edges cut away
to shape the space
where you now fit.

Our oddly aranged
twisted limbs
interlocking
each with each.

Frankenstein-stiched,
you and I.
Simbiotic, at times
a horror; but too,
there is this:

Two trees,
red and purple plum
grafted together.
Roots and leaves,
stock and scion,
the whip and the tongue.

Bound,
and bearing rich fruit.

The Winchester Whaling Company (Part 1)

This is a story about monsters.

Every morning, I climb into the Whale’s mouth.
The air is always a little too warm, a little too wet. The women all have limp dresses and frizzy hair. The men have red, prickly rashes where our collars rub. The smell is raw and salty and oily; it will stick to us for the rest of our lives.
The Whale is lit with florescent lights, and there are no windows. The long tubes flicker and buzz like they are filled with trapped fireflies. No matter what hue you wear on the outside, no matter how rich or vivid or bright, those lights leech the pigment from everything.
There are only four colors inside the whale: a murky bog-black; a dish-water white; a hollow brown that sounds slow, like a bed-ridden death; and a gray that slides over then away from the eyes. In the stuttering light, people move in slow jerks, like old-fashioned films. Sometimes, I try in the eye of my mind to warm up the colors, overlay quaint, Olden Days clothes, and play the monkey-grinder music, so their movements aren’t so sad. But in the heavy air, the image never lasts.
The Whale does not like sounds unassociated with itself. It will take the music right out of your head, if it catches you listening.
The machines in the Whale’s belly do not whir or click or whump with any sort of satisfying rhythm. They grind and groan and sputter like a monster with a tummy-ache; which is, after all, what the Whale is, exactly.

I work in the Whale’s head, four floors up. The elevator carries me there, moaning and shuddering under the weight of the workers. I am one of forty workers inside the head who begin the day at 7:30. The second shift begins at 4:00, and the third at 11:00, with a 2 hour overlap for each shift to smooth the transitions.
In the head of the Whale, we collect information. There are two divisions, the Concrete and the Theoretical. The Concrete Division has five departments: Auditory, Visual, Olfactory, Gustatory, and Tactile. Each department gathers the Whale’s sensory perception of its surroundings, keeping strict notation of changes. The Theoretical Division is considered more complex, as it deals with the Whale’s thoughts and ideas. The departments in the Theoretical division are currently: Communication, Emotion, Identity, Reflection, and Numbers.
I work in the Numbers department. The main function of the Numbers department is to track and process what the Whale counts. I work in a specialty division of the department that is responsible for what the Whale should count, but doesn’t; things like breaths, heartbeats, fish consumed, bowl movements, emissions, and days.
All of the information from the departments and divisions is collected, codified, analyzed for patterns and relevance, processed and commented upon in a lengthy report of annotated spreadsheets. The reports are then passed on to the Brain for synergized analysis; which is to say combined and reflected against all the other reports from all the other divisions. Synergized analysis is performed quarterly, whereupon the findings are presented to the Brain’s Internal Review Board. From this presentation, decisions are made for the Good of the Whale.
The Good of the Whale is the ultimate objective of all work done in the Whale, and the reason for our continued existence. We are the Company. The Company serves the Whale.

I'm All for Words But Sometimes...

Don't listen.

The words are hooks and barbs.
Mind torn like a fishmouth,
heart rent
like the knee of your jeans
on the chainlink.

Don't listen.

The scourge pestilent words.
Gnawing teeth;
a rat-tide,
Dermestidae,
death-beetle rash.
These words will eat you down to nothing;
skeleton and fragments.

Don't listen.

When they say
you can not be made for me,
they weigh you against
their own expectations.
Weapontrap questions
to sever you from me.
Waist-catching, bone cracking
jaw-snare terms.
Bearsnap sentences
laid to bait
and break you.

Don't listen.

They may sweeten
their tone with reason,
and say, "If you love,"
and say, "For the best..."
Drown you in the goldsong
of judgmental compassion.

Don't listen.

Stop your ears with beeswax.
The singing is unsafe.
Rather flood your ears with Hemlock;
sleep off this honey poison.

Don't...

Love, listen.

The only word that must matter is mine.
The taste of your heart in my mouth.

Your name
when I say it,
Burgundy Black,
bitter and rich;
chocolatesmoke rising.

Hear it,

from my mouth to yours.
Your name,
sugared yes.
Passed
in a kiss so
you don't
have to listen.

The Swimmer

You can't swim in the river at all anymore.
A couple of years back, you remember, that summer with the strange weather. It had been dry for weeks. The kind of dry where the ground turns hard, and the dirt, beyond thirsty, can't soak up the rain fast enough when it comes. And it came, quick and fast, the way it does in August, with thunder and mudslides and flash flooding in the canyons.
Well, it was hot, that goes without saying. And people should know that the river's not safe, the way it snakes through rock and clay. Sometimes there is ground beneath you and then it will just give way. "We knew things like that about a river, when I was younger," that's what my mama would say.

Well, it was hot, and you can't blame folks for wanting to get their feet wet. After all, they were just kids. You know what it's like, when you're still a kid. Hovering between summer and high-school. Wavering between what you tell yourself and what you dare yourself. Just up to the knee, no further. It shouldn't matter that we couldn't swim, we're not going in very far. But you start splashing around and you inch farther out. The mud kicks up and it's hard to see where the rocks leave off, where the water gets deep.
And then the rain came, and it was like a sigh, turning sun-burnt cheeks to the sky we didn't think about consequences or geology, only that the heat was leaving our bodies. The sharp metal smell of rain on the hot rocks, the steam rising up to obscure the banks.
Everything seemed to happen so fast. With the first peel of thunder, they should have got out. I can't remember through the mist if the current picked up or the bank dropped off, or if they just got too close to the edge of the rock, but out of the splashing came a sharper shout, and Willy was the first to start to drown.
And one by one they went like lemmings, carried by the current or trying to save him I am not sure. I never was.
The shouting on the banks began as a deep panic set in and the rain obscuring everything. There was one, of all the people there, a younger man who'd been picnicking along the bank with his father. He was the only one who could swim.
His shirt was already plastered to him from the rain. He didn't stop to take it off. He kicked of his shoes, set into a run, dove into the river and out to where the kids were drowning. It was very hard to see anything from the bank, between the rain and the splashing. People began wading in, courting more disaster.

He reached them very quickly. He was a strong swimmer, they were not very far out, after all. Someone shouted, "How many!?" and others answered, "Three! Three!" but still more were shouting, "Oh My God!" and "Where are they? Can you see?" and so I don't know if he heard, or if he could hear anything above the rain raking across the river in thick, gray sheets. But he stayed out there, hunting around, down then up, until he found them all, and slung them around his body like luggage, and kept their gasping heads up, and started pulling them to the shore. He was fighting against the current, and going out was so much easier than coming in with such a struggling burden.
They were still conscious, you see. Conscious and sputtering and panicking. They didn't just let him hold them and carry them. They fought and gasped and beat the water. It happened so fast, but it took forever.
It took too long; the swimmer got tired. They felt him sinking and fought even harder. They thrashed the water and pushed at eachother. They drug him down to force their heads higher.
20 feet from the shore, all 4 of them went under. He was their savior, and they drown him.
You can't swim in the river at all anymore.

The Way You Sleep I Don't Know Whether to Kiss You or Kick You

1.

I woke up thinking about you.
You hovered in the air
around me,
there and not there,
netted like sleep.

The sheets smelled like you do
but the room was too cold.
I pulled your sweater on to warm me
but it is so full of holes.

Remind me to teach you to sew.

2.

When I woke up again
you had crawled into bed.
There but not there,
you lay netted in sleep.
Cocooned with your limbs wrapped
in my stolen sheets.

You smiled
your children's smile;
too sweet
for such a thief.

Naked and cold,
I pulled on my clothes and
your holy sweater,
stumbled to turn off
the air conditioner.

The white wine,
warm on the table
from last night,
I drank that.
And smoked.

Ghosts and alcohol
picked at my loose threads;
attempting to unravel me.

I watched the light change
as the sun rose.
In the orange and pinks,
I thought about trains.

I weighed their speed against
the gravity of your name.
Certainly,
with the right trajectory
I could escape.

Oh, but where would I go
with this sunrise?
The money in my pocket;
this time on my hands?

My gypsy feet have lost
all sense of direction
now that the heart they carry
has found a home.

My Siren

I saw you there.
In the early morning lamplight,
the whole world sleeps.

Your white feet bare on the rain-
splashed street, your dark hair
combed in a fingering wind.

The red of your skirt spread
to reflect you
in windows and puddles, the
morning-still fountain.

You spin a slow way down the still-dreaming street;
(the whole world dreams)
the whole world sleeps.

With your first low note
a pink edge creeps along the damp
cramped outlines of each crumbling building,
each night-soaked cobble stone.

Building your song, you gather the sunrise.
Clouds pale and blush.
The world waking up.

Orange roses bloom in puddles.
Your naked feet splash
and scatter the petals.
The world turns over
and stretches
and sighs.

The light grows; you sing.
The world opens her eyes
bringing the morning,
now gold halos everything.

The light grows; you sing.
The church bells are ringing.
Your song wakes the water,
the fountain bubbles over.

The light grows, you sing;
dimming the lamps.
So sweetly summoned the Sun
now comes forth.

The world wakes up.

Without you,
how could there be dawn?

Noelle, I wrote you a Poem.

This morning,
the sky dropped a feather on me:
one pearly gray blade from
the wing of a mourning dove.

It cut across the red sleave of
my sweater, and i thought of you
a sound;
you singing in
a distant room.

I know now, the spell
Rapunzel sang
unwittingly to snare
the prince.

Your morning voice
bright
the tangle of
your penny colored hair.

I know why men will always want
to give sharp women wings
and turn them into angels.

I know the height you sirens
drop your bladed feathers from.

Sad and Lovely, Your Trail of Feathers

I found
a dead red bird, smashed
face first into the dirt,
hurtled from the sky at
high velocity
like he'd been in a hurry
to crash.

The size of a fist,
the size of a heart,
small like Icarus
after the sun.

That was the day I found out
you were leaving us
trailing your promises like
feathers
pulled from fighting,
some broken, some just dropped.

"Oh,"
I said, not sinking, crashing.
A small red fist.
My Heart. That bird.

This Immovable Block

I need to write.

My head's so full of things unsaid my skull keeps threatening to split, and days pile in layers under my skin cuz I can't find the words to say to dispel them.
My emotions leak into the cooking and the evening meal is drowning in too much spice: an angry curry, bitter salad, noodles salty and wet with weeping. My family swallows the excess and we all have stomach aches.

Where are my words? I swear I used to hold them in my hands like bright treasure, the facets winking with myriad meaning. I strung them on silk threads and silver chain and spider webs and on display they would wink in the sun. Now the threads are all knotted and the gems vanished into leaves and dirt like so much fairy money. I cannot hear the music that makes the words flow. My head buzzes like a detuned radio. None of these metaphors are right!

And everybody says that its ok and everybody says not to worry and to wait, do not panic or be afraid, it's only neurons in your brain misfiring.

And what these heathens do not understand, is "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

That is the weight of what I have lost.

On Your Birthday I Dreamed...

It has to be 3 in the morning;
I hear the clock first.
Only the outside light came in.
City Light. Storm Light. 4th floor high.
Open windows in the summertime.

I follow your sound
by the wind pushed down the stretching hall,
ghosts of violets and cigarettes
drift from the papered walls
and the metal of the coming rain
leaking in the windows.

The piano is closed.
Cloth lays over the strings.
You play with your head pressed to the lid
like Beethoven,
an Austrian scowl.
Your hair spreads out, curling down
to the keys, tumbling
over the orange-lit ivory.

Muted, I watch you,
holding to the bluest of shadows.
I want to kiss your frowning lips
drink the music that pours like gin
from your dripping fingertips,
but the light you lie in
bubbles around you.
Still in the storm wind, nothing
can touch you,
outside or in.

I listen
to your heaving breath,
the covered strings
the creak of your body bent over the keys.
Held, a ripe fruit
in your mouth for a moment,
translucent and red as a pomagrante seed,
so much bursting tension
the strings thrum, and the sky
turns yellow-green.
The rain begins, and you bite into me.

The burden of thunder,
sharp change in pressure.
Blood on my tongue and your body slumps.
Bent back, dry fingers.
Your sleeping breath,
and eyes still closed.

I know Love,
the weight of a piano.

It must be the springtime coming in.

After frantic months of juggling, and all the false starts and disruptions, scrambling from thing to thing and falling,

After dark months stuck in a sickness trap,
Blood and mania, sleep and static.

The dark days of the year
Sun stuck, frozen underneath gray water.
Naked trees all blacked boughs,
My snowy mind, so full of white.
Scarlet stains on everything.

I thought red was my only color.
Screaming red tinging dark dreams.
Bleeding red soaking the sheets.

I woke up today to the doors all open.
buds disturb the earth unfreezing
robins sing in the garden.
A quiet green I had forgotten
tiptoed in to kiss my face.
Cotton blue whispering me awake.
Robins with orange to remind me of flying.
I head south soon.
Take wing again,
and I think, when I come home,
it'll be all in rainbows.

A Small Offering

Writing used to be easy, and now it is ridiculously hard. I'm trying to get better. Baby steps into the elevator:

Photograph From the Mountains

Lilies flame in the elbow of the river.

You sprawl on the rocks

jeans splashed to the knees.

At 2:52

your watch stops in the water.

The sun hangs

suspended on the ridge.

Another January

Grass isn't growing under my feet; it is winter.

My days are easy, nothing changes. The sleepy office. The light pours through the glass walls all morning. Feed the fish. Answer phones. Sort the mail. Make the coffee. Clean the coffee pot at the end of each day.

Hours slouch by in lazy increments, measured in rounds of PopCap computer games. At 4 o'clock I walk 2 blocks home, aggressive evening filling my footprints.

He is at home; the apartment is warm because of him. And because our landlord pays for the oil. lift some weights. Hot running water. Cuddle on the couch, then wash dishes, then make dinner. When she comes home we eat together. Then shopping, then laundry. Doctor Appointments and Stopping By Mom's.The daily details of Our Life Together. TV shows and videos and video games, until we can't sleep, or else bedtime and nightmares, and ghosts from the past. old pain like brown stains in the hardwood. Under the rugs, you know they're still there.

It is those old marks on the heart still pulling on me. My feet itch. My thoughts buzz like a broken radio that keeps flipping stations.

Gypsy blood. The kind that ignites if kept still for too long.

The road as I am walking home pulls me; true north to a needle. I wish the frozen ponds were roaming oceans. The train whistle is a fish-hook in my heart. Names that I love are too thick across my tongue. They want homes and houses and feel safe inside the word “Stay.”

“Stay” is a noose getting tight around my neck. A Better Life is the hangman. The outlaw in me wants Dillinger days. A few more before I start swinging.

The sky outside threatens weather. A Winter Storm.

I want to walk home tonight in the snow. To look up at the white swirling down.

I want to turn my face to the black behind the white and fall up into it, away from the earth and everything.

Things Too Heavy

Memory collection fails me; I'm terrible at taking pictures.

Souvenirs inspire me to fiction. It pours like water over the inky facts of the moment and smudges them into impressioned sentiment. Sea glass has me thinking of the day we found Atlantis, not a sunrise spent walking and worrying the future. The smell of blooming lotus; I dream waterlily seas, and sailing to the moon. Drinking by the lake with you is blurred in the reflection.

I am the Monet of remembrance.

So I cannot remember what I said that day, that inspired you to stay with me through so much that came after. I can't recall the secret you said you'd never told before and would never say again, or even the scientific discussion that kept us talking for over 10 hours.

When I think of you I only see the sleepy autumn in your hair, and the weight in your smile

when you realized you loved me.

Zugunruhe

I mixed cinnamon and honey

in my coffee this morning.

I wanted to hold

the desert in my mouth again.

I miss the hot wind

and the promise

of the lonely unexpected.

I miss a sky the color of

all the voices of God.

My cigarette does not taste enough

of the fires of California.

The Nor'Easter outside does not

contain the spices of

the Santa Anas.

I have been too long from the road.