Salt and scum of the earth

Automatic hum highways and passing landscape
inverted in the rearview mirror of memories
scribbled like crops the farmer collects.
Words like “death” hide in beeswax.
Lick your lips, taste the sweat
of infantile ideas. Damaged cuticle beds
hold nails but no hammers to hammer
thoughts into the plaster page of notebook.
Birds’ nest blues hark the hawks
of war, watch them go about their
bath and bed and battle times.

But tonight will be booze and breasts and,
oh, that’s so boring. The bar’s panacea,
a glass half-empty we’ll sip down
to buzzed bliss in our thirst for idealists.
Sirens outside, the squeals of squalor,
and cursive thoughts meet Columbus Circle,
try to navigate the subway’s cement.
Sift through crowds, flour through fingers, and
dear sirs or madams become Pound’s petals
you’ll always remember to remember.

Drop the paper, let the black and white
bloom like atom bombs in the tray.
You’ll find Detroit luminescent,
falsely beautiful; its caution tape lines
read backwards are paradigms of true
crime control in the police state of mind.
But forget this bag of bones and veins and
blood’s jail cells. It comes down to the
hair curls that float to the bathroom tiles
of everywhere, and the unheard razor’s song,
automatic hum.

writing prompt: making lists

beliefs and disbeliefs

I believe that the world is primary,
and that God is good
(or a good idea anyway),
and that everyone looks at the sun,
it's just so damn beautiful

I believe you should be honest and open,
because death is inevitable
(which is another thing I know,
but wish I didn't)
and everyone deserves a chance
for you to love them.

I believe in that Girl Scout credo
of leaving a place
better than you found it,
which is to say
that I also believe
there's no reason to eat meat

Maybe because I believe
we're all connected,
(not in some pseudo-Buddhist way)
so I think there has to be something
at least almost as good
as a "free market" sounds

But there are things I understand
yet can't comprehend,
like how the universe is
always e x p a n d i n g,
and how people often like reality TV
much better than reality

And I don't know how you could
marry someone you didn't love,
or abandon the someones you did--
I'd never kill a man
in Reno, or anywhere,
and I'd hate to watch him die.

See I believe in lots of things:
the sensibility of a closed fist
(during rock paper scissors)
smoking cigarettes in the winter
(to keep out the cold),
and avoiding cliches
(like the plague).

Maybe we're all believers.

From Katie's prompt: "Write a poem which includes the line 'ashtrays go astray.'"

ashtrays go astray
a gutted cell phone splays
cigarette butts and grey dust
over books whose pages
yellow like bruises
of atrophied memory

beer bottles crowd the table
like gravestones
commemorating cathexis
of long-dead nights
and the fan wheezes
weakly through nicotene
clouds of conversation

we swat away, lazily,
like the hum of flies
trailing from the open fridge
whose half-light casts shadows
where none were before.

when we remember
to check the VCR's clock
we'll groan at those ghostly
green digits-- 1:17
and collapse in alcoholic heaps

entwined on twin beds
rubbing thin beads
of sweat between our bodies
until finally the warm
darkness tugs us to sleep.

the rearview mirror
suspends my spectral
face over receding tree lines,
bifurcates metallic siding

headlights wink above grinning grills
and we freight forwards
for fear, for beauty
for maximum efficiency

the dash becomes my ottomon
and my shoed feet
obscure the flicks of white paint
passing with the seconds
piled like roadside rubble,
the rawest mountain of the landscape

its heaps of grey
unshared moments separate
us like the snake of a line
between one black dot,
me, to one black dot,
you, superimposed over
the sad pastels of
amateur cartography

bridge ices before road
and the speed is limited
to 55,
the sun licks my ankles
and the engine sings me to sleep

I will wake up in the
sepia dim of a tunnel
that slices through a countryside
I didn't miss,
and didn't miss me.

citric silence (a pantoum)

With our differences and a jug of orangeade between us
We could feel the world spin.
The engine hummed a Hindu mantra
And we just drank it in.

We could feel the world spin
Perched in the middle of a parking lot
And we just drank it in,
In the citric silence of nighttime

Perched in the middle of a parking lot,
You murmured something meaningful
In the citric silence of nighttime,
But only the moon could hear.

You murmured something meaningful
And the engine and I purred back.
But only the moon could hear
That the silence was most honest.

tag

I punched your shoulder—
tag, you’re it,
so it was your turn
to be a playful predator
and my turn to pant like it’s life-or-death
when it’s really run-or-rest,
like trick-or-treat,
you-or-me

and never both
because they conflict
and contradict,
playing their own game of tag, you’re it

where “base” is your bed,
the ampersand between our pronouns
and you always chase me there,
but the game’s over on arrival.

so I cover my eyes
and count aloud so you can hide.
And I can wish between the numbers:
“One…I…
two…wish…
three…it didn’t have to be like this,”

and at twenty I’m already hunting again,
and you are being hunted.

at least the rules are clear,
and our roles are clear,
when everything else is muddied like my knees
that prompt parental probing:
“What have you been up to?”

And boy, have I been up to something.

whichever comes first

some criminals

The scene could have been written into a short story
or sketched out in a quirky movie,
or misinterpreted in a modernist painting.

It could have been so many things
if we’d let it out of the room,
where it wouldn’t be tethered down by
“that was a funny memory” carpet stains
or, “that’s from the antique market, remember?” side tables

It did so well without us, too.
The lunar dent the couch’s feet made
in the sugar-cookie-with-sprinkles rug
had a winning dialogue with the oft forgotten window pane
embracing no particularly special view.

In fact, it’s more of a one-way window,
inviting passersby to see
the domestic poetry thrumming and stagnating
like the sound of the cat’s purrs
on the nostalgia-soaked floors.
We became pieces of furniture there too,
and our roles made us forget our words
for there were too many others
dangling before us,
like “painted china,”
or, “this is what late evenings in small towns look like”

in case you ever need to identify one
in a mug shot line-up
when a police officer asks you who or what it was
that made you who or what you are,
and nevermind the answer to that question—
Be patient, we’ll get there, some criminals just slip away.

untitled, in march

Tipped over the watering can
while her voice
through the window screen
tipped over my heart,
spilled its contents
through fire escape floor slats.

And if you were wondering,
the love in a heart
falls like a slinky—
sometimes clumsy,
sometimes pretty,
and always a little lazy
down a staircase
I’m convinced is limitless.

They say the sky is too,
that its interminable blue
goes on forever
in that honest hue,
granting its
auspice to a precious few—
an iris or two
like your orbs that leaked
those tears of you.

And if you were wondering,
the tears in your eyes
fall like melting snowflakes—
sometimes poignant,
sometimes powerful,
and always a little somber

because they don’t want to fade,
and tears would hate
if you forgot why they were made.

So I tipped over the writer’s block
in front of my notebook’s awning.
Now a new day is dawning,
and while I am yawning,
I am ready for its grace:

It begins here in the garden
with the neglected can of tin.

the pen and i

My pen’s a tool of imprecision
complicating blankness with word incisions
that may miss their mark
though that may be the art
of writing down those things
you’re afraid to

Perched on a bench like a bookshelf,
passers-by read my spine
looking for something worth their time,
so even thoughts become capital,
a penny apiece,
and my body camouflages its self
with skin whose opacity
is a delight to touch
but won’t let you in
without that pen,
(as I was saying)
its incisions.

They reveal the real
machinery of humanity
but lack appeal when you learn
exploring might get you bloody,
covered in red ink, black ink,
an indecipherable history
scratching lines in the sand,
or serifs on the page
in the hopes that someone
might understand
the reasons you wish
you were inside-out:
you’d either be lonely, or never without.

the mean

Almost indistinguishable,
like the difference between
snow and sleet,
or the me from yesterday
and the me from today.
Is stagnancy so boring
to revel in the mirror-solid
surface of an undisturbed pond?

But I wear self-induced ripples,
blooming outward like
an atom bomb after it hits.
They leave a mushroom
cloud of dark reminders:
“This is what I did,
and this is what you get.”

And you skip stones across my back,
leave no scars,
just ripples, ripples
--Where you hit, the epicenter:
“This is what I did,
and this is what you get.”

I hear the flat stones in your pockets
jostle against each other
like the thoughts arguing
for more room in my brain.
And I know you’re planning something,
and you know I’m thinking something,
but you’ll never hear what.

--Believe me;
it’s somewhere between
snow and sleet,
me and Me,
a pebble and a bomb.

And I might as well be
the hyphen between
the year of your birth
and the year of your death.

the exile diner

The Vermeer-veneer of sunlight
has long left,
and the lit cigarette butt
burns like tawdry halogens.

I am behind its flame,
almost three inches back,
so passers-by don’t know
if I’m coming or going—
and neither do I.

Why haunt a place so devoid of people,
built by them for them,
then abandoned?
Only I remain
with the wilted wrappers and broken glass
that pass for wind chimes
when there’s nothing else,
and there isn’t.

It’s a twisted ghost town
populated by shades
who blend with the night,
defy the day,
and never look you
in the eye.

Half-mast heads float
over purposeless feet
that pretend through locomotion
that there’s someplace to be.

(Mine took me here—honest or broken,
you decide.)

But if we’re in exile,
let’s at least call it that.
The run-down diner’s
got a spare neon sign
meant for purgatories like this,
where people convene
between A and B,
without ever knowing what either mean.

the day i never asked for but got

Red blood spatter berries
next to morning spatter dew
on the spindly arms of trees I see
every day, but really only saw today,

Today when I look
at the automata of academia,
I don’t just notice
that the heads-down,
one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-walk
is the same as any other day,
but I think of the disparities
of thoughts in those heads too,
and in mine.

I think about why I follow
these curvilinear paths
rather than the shortest distance
between two points theory
of lawn-traversing.
I think about what I’m thinking about:
what it would be like
if it rained backwards,
how many crumpled cigarette butts
were once mine,
and how many more will be.

I think about measurements of time
and increment
and what are the conversion units
of admiration to adoration?
and if love is even about quality over quantity.

And I write this poem as I walk,
knowing my walk is prose
but the way I walk is poetry.

I think of how I let everyone down
(including myself)
as I walk back to my room,
wrecked from a night of bad decisions.
And I think that as potent as these thoughts are now,
they will dilute with alcohol and time,
So why not say I’m fine? I’m fine.

souvenirs for sale

I tried to find a loophole for loving you
by forwarding your letters
and rewording mine
that I composed only in mind,
oh, and maybe heart,
but no pens were allowed.

With memories the language of emotions
and love the wormhole of the present
I skip dashes on the timeline
like heart-hurdles:
the year we met, the month we kissed,
the week I realized that
a string of pleasant days
wasn’t enough
to steady the splints on our souls
sold to each other with increasing interest rates
our deepening disinterest couldn’t repay

So I look for tauter splints
in the fine print of our covetous covenant—
we said we’d always love
without promises that we’d always
be in love,

And I’m finding it hard to occupy
a place that seems to only exist in rhymes
between images of scintillating suns
and proud crimson tulips
like our two lips
that can’t be parted,
even just to say:
“let’s keep this as a memory.”

sleepy sibilance

I slipped my hand
over the curves of your body,
listening to the sibilant hiss
my hand’s loving you resounded

and I thought it sounded the way it must
to slip a handwritten secret
under the bedroom door
of the man you love
but are afraid to (and that’s the secret)

or the way rain sounds
when it competes
with speeding tires
tracing the shadowy signature
of highways that slither through landscapes
in a kind of forgery we all fall for,
because it only seems fitting
for raindrops to make exit ramps
to new starts that much more slippery.

My hand took the right turns;
those cars took the wrong ones—
but I suppose we all ended up
under a different set of comforters,
only I didn’t have to visit
a home improvement store
to be afforded this luxury
of loving someone from under them,

thinking about whispered secrets
that were so obvious
from the place I uttered them
while the rest of you think about stapled receipts
from the malls that sputtered them.

And I can wake up and do it again,
whether or not it’s raining.

[sic]

orbits perpetually move in ellipses
so for eternity planets will try
to finish the universe’s sentence

for every season there’s a [sic]
as for every question
a problem with hermeneutics

and the Earth has contained
the same amount of energy
from the Big Bang until now

so things can change and trade hands
swap potential for kinetic energy
like scalpers trade cash and tickets
outside the venue
hosting our love’s Big Bang,
and nothing will change.

it makes sense, then.
how I pour my love into you
like it’s sand filling an hourglass

and even when
you’ve sifted all of it
through your delicate fingertips

there’s always someone
to stand you on your other side—
Earth’s unfinished sentence
like your unfinished “I love you."

schism

I can feel the night
through the crack my window makes,
a schism between where I am
and where I could be
like a cool, black horizon—
just as intangible,
yet a little more reachable
like the cracks the sidewalk makes
over which I leap and tiptoe,
careful not to break my mother’s back,
or my own neck.

I could feel the night
when you breathed on my neck,
words that surrounded me
like motes of dust, or lust
tinged with the moon’s syrup coating
and a smell of dampening grass.

We laid your pages out on the floor, next to mine,
like a dealer displays his goods, or words—
thinking carefully about which clauses
we wanted to hurt us
(just a little) not enough.

And we could feel the night
rob us of day’s lucidity
as you injected my elegy,
shoulders slackened,
and I blew this powdery poem
through that opening, blackened—
a schism between where I was
and where I could be.

right amounts

The rain sounds like someone
impatiently drumming their fingers
on a countertop,
and I feel like that someone.

I have this book of poetry
that screams it’s made
for nights like these,
but I also have enough money
for the right amount of whiskey.

So I’ll be that someone at a bar
and the rain will be everywhere else.
You’ll be the empty seat next to me,
and I’ll think, “Yeah, home is nowhere else.”

quickly, quietly

The rain came
quickly, quietly, unexpected.
and I had misgivings,
but none so suspect
to think a sky I’d trusted
to be a prototype of blue
would suddenly darken, and break,
letting the world’s tears
out through cloud-sieves
that had hovered like hopeful harbingers
before they threw their harpoons—
those torrents of acid-rain-pain
back at me, like,
“We don’t want your sorrow—see what’s contained in us!”

So I hide
under man’s embarrassing attempts
to defy nature:
a stone awning
with carved portraits of importants
that will crumble
long before the rain
ever stops falling.

Staccato droplets
sprinkle the concrete,
and when I look
I see their flight, frenetic
like neurotransmitters
across the synaptic cleft of sky,
the cerebellum of heaven
halfway between
reflex and rationality.

These r’s are at odds
under the r-rain’s ticklish beating,
and so are rest and relaxation,
but no,
not remorse.

It colors my discourse,
my attempts to fire
across a different damning cleft,
between me / and everyone else
since the minute you left.

And I know I told you to;
I know I told me to…

But, like rain,
it can nurture or squander,
and this pain
forces me to ponder:
if it’s the right thing, why does it hurt?

painting with ash

The painter painted the sky
with a pallid palette
letting the sentient serve their sentence
of living life in color

A darkness hangs in the air
where a glare from the sun
is what usually makes one squint

and trees like silent sentinels
fill with birds who can’t discern
the gravitas of a gravestone sky

Umbrellas lie mangled in trash bins,
gnarled like worried hands
or boughs bowing somberly
in the breath of wind

he exhaled, tobacco-tinged,
taking a break from unpainting
the world’s brightness

Puddles pool with his cigarette butts
bookending the uncreative process
of reinterpreting our beginnings

And the liquid ashtray overflows
with his nicotine neurotics,
but the rain ensures he’ll have more
to fill with ash concerns
beneath his ashen sky.