Photo by Fudo Jahic on Unsplash
...Again
Is it at the wake of dawn,
On the front porch of a chipped Victorian,
Naïve eyes wandering above the oaks’ thinning
Hairline in the East; is it in the shadow
Of a lamp, reflecting on stars’ sacred tease,
Window shades offering the seasons?
Is it in the disheveled bedroom of a teenager,
Swimming through a fickle becoming;
Or of an aged, arm-chaired professor,
Synthesizing and writing, writing and synthesizing?
On the other-filled subway, simultaneously
Scanning for similarly scarred souls;
Or in the crumbly hut in the crumbly White Mountains,
The sole trekker into the descending mist?
Is it combing through the unknown
Rubble of Raqqa, or, that in Aleppo once,
Even Ephialtes, again, stood, ambiguous, paralyzed?
Is it when spoken—
Spoken with a fist in the air
Or mic to the chin? Spoken in the
Glorious name of Truth by collared dogs
Demanded and urged to speak!
Or is it enacted? Spontaneously
Like a sweaty, game-worn jersey;
Or with flipped pages of calendars,
Again and again, set and set, again and again?
The beer I spilled last Friday,
And wore on the January walk home,
Rose, obfuscated, unreachable, from my coat.
A happy refill, another dance, his recycled joke,
The all-gracious embrace, another flat foam
And flat conversation to search—
What was it again?
That built up the tired,
That return leg of the restless heart?
Again, what were you trying to get at?
Be Excited, But Stay Grounded, 9/13
I want to express how excited I am,
How much I think I might like you (and how much that scares me)
How I want to put my fingers between my ribs
And tear open the experiences I am,
To share, to disclose who I am,
Who I think I am,
How my imaginings of your perceptions
Make me out to be.
Be excited, but stay grounded.
I see your goodness, I see your values,
And in them I see mine.
I see how you oppose me
And I recognize my time to see how I like it.
I see the pasts and presents of
You I can only speculate about,
And in them, my own distended speculations.
Be excited, but stay grounded.
I can hear in your footsteps the depths you’ve walked
And the drips of oceans you’ve swam,
Gracefully exploding on the concrete sidewalk,
Sliding off your legs and
Leaving infinite craters to but
Dangle my legs in.
And the road that has become the moon
Away from it all
Swings to my orbit
And the world I am still exploring.
Is it the same for you?
Poster, 12/11
Hungover from New York to New Haven,
Browned as the leaves
Covering passing parking lots
Who, some time ago now,
Yielded themselves
To some great cradle
They shall
Surely now
Possibly remember, never
Witness.
Sadly, the comely woman in Norwegian wool
Was not there last night—
Amidst the sharp ringing of bottles
And consequential patting of damp sweaters,
The new space beside your right hip
That no longer yields an introduction—
But here, in your train chair,
Her brown, oak hair and paper gaze
Is always willing to meet your
World of latency
To nowhere
Real.