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.

I love...

The smell of roasting pumpkin seeds
watching the little kids walk home from school
full moon nights, the sky scrubbed with clouds
the shine of wet leaves on a brick sidewalk
California sleeping in the far off distance
unlocking doors
my lover's breath between my shoulderblades, cold hands between my thighs
bells in the morning
pealing pistachios
honeycrisp apples dusted with cinnamon
accordions
naked trees rippled upside down in puddles
a cigarette and coffee in the cold outside morning waiting for the train
tucking him in before I leave for work
crysanthamum petals edged in frost
warming cold coffee cups with hot water now that it is November.

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