I spent time in prison For crimes I did commit And learned to value Duration, sitting still, Brisket, anything roasted, Rusk bread baked Not once but twice, Love wrapped in foils Of forgiveness imbedded In the coals of resentment, Things incubated, Simmered, not boiled, Water, poison, sweated out, Dross drained, Life refined, Life, I came to value A second chance at life.
Say more with less. Don’t tell me everything. Be like a stone. Talk with your fingers. Bring me pamphlets with no words in them. I don’t want to speak. I don’t want to think. I look for the exit, not the entrance. Don’t despair. I just want to be alone. Just say no and I will say the same. I need silence. I don’t seek conversation. Sit like the stones in ancient towns. I don’t want to return to my birthplace. I don’t miss it. I lost the connection. I am sure it’s still beautiful under the stars and perpendicular rain.
Reason maintains many things, though not
the rings left on the dark wood table,
the torn label from bottles of India brew.
I got fat. She was sad
to be falling out of love with me.
Walking through Chicago winter, you can
only see your breath if you stop moving.
A taxi slowed to see if I was fare.
And that’s pretty much the whole story.
Thief
cosmic fist fulls of hair you tear from me, my white lantern stars fall from my eyes; I’ve never known what you’ve ever wanted, but all you’ve done is steal moments from me, pulling away the fine wine of my life here, pouring it down your gullet from my favorite chalice which you consequently shattered in a rage, I’m sick of remaining in the shadows like a dusty relic -- you can take your things and leave, nothing is worth this petty anguish you’ve sung upon me; I must rather be washed away by the sad tears of a cold silver rain.
Resurrected
broken dreams litter the lawn in moon silver, they used to cling to me with teeth tighter than the coils of zephyr through hair; I mourn their loss in rain, white river stones mark their sacred burial grounds -- I want to breathe life back into them, resurrect them like Jesus rose from the dead.
Hands embrace each other, slide through on another Like raw, wet fish still shivering with death. In unison they flop, up down, clinging mannerly apathetic, Then separate, parted by the tide of time.
A deer lies crushed under a fallen trunk in the empty forest, Visible only as a bleeding hoof, Blackened from the flames that consumed his home. No one lives here now. He must have been injured not to run with the rest, Or penned in by the flames after sleeping too late. I think he must have blessed the tree that fell and Ended him quickly before he burned, For I know I would have. I place the daisy chain I made on the way across his tomb, A splash of yellow and white on relentless black. He was the only one in the forest when the tree fell. I wonder if it made a sound.
She said put your hand in the flame. She said your shadow will protect you. I can’t recall her name now. But in the morning, when the sun is a broken blister, I can hear her soft susurration. And I think of the way she held me, like a prisoner, like the man she could burn and/or love.
the silence broken by a cry, cut short in mid-breath, as if afraid of being heard, soft and tender, a kitten purr, asleep and dreaming, I will not wake her.
And the morning
gives way, as a thought
to a feeling. The middle
of the day is an acoustical ceiling with cathedral rafters, pine scent clinging
to the blistered studs,
a plum line marks nail gun, sundial in a
pinch; quarter of three, quarter
past already last chance for cobwebs to dance with sun motes, saw dust in a belfry;
that disco
jew's harp jump and jive
intro, bottle neck slide, Roundtree the morning's already a powdered
chalk scar on the floor
of someone who died a lifetime
before: You say
drywall, I'm more
sheet rock, the red rubber song ball, it's five o' clock.
Hotel Negresco
Both sea and sky dream eye-white blue, and I feel empty as these eggshells on my break- fast plate. On TV news, twelve people die-- a high-def fire, a bomb-blast pixel-fleck from dire Afghanistan. . . . I turn to see two runners on the Promenade whose race might be my higher self and I, set free as dogs unleashed that dream a master’s face but never see it clearly, trusting scent or intuition, knowing faintly, bent on ecstasy, but fawning and afraid. So many times I roll my pant-legs, wade in shallows. I must find the pier and dive in deep, be swallowed whole, then rise, alive.
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