Four Poems (February 20, 2009. Issue 14.)
Zero Rainfall
Take me to cathedral heights
where gods have gone to summer.
Lay me down in garden grasses,
break blades with me-
get stained.
Run me through the nights' wet streets.
Umbrella me when freak torrents fall.
Grandly smile to my rain kissed face.
Clinch it.
Then drain the world
into sepia plateaus.
Release the tumbleweeds
to bob upon deserted body
in unrelenting wind with
sand filling up my nose,
climbing my hands,
so no sight of me is remembered.
I Could Steal Your Lines
for Andrea Gibson
I could try to copy your metaphor formulas,
study your every gesture all night.
I could imitate your soulful intonation
and heavy breaths,
take away your bible and see what you're left with.
But I would be kidding myself,
I know I would.
It's ok, it really is,
and I'm not just saying that...
There's at least one revolutionary out there,
one artist I can watch on youtube
while my daughter's asleep
and I am alone with my notebook and pencil
left on the night table,
unopened,
sharpened.
Is it enough?
You make me feel like my poetry is shit.
You make me mourn the stanzas I think I'll never write.
You make me love and hate
the world at the exact same time,
steal your lines...
I want to splash with you in pools
of tears you cry for your brothers and sisters.
Your words are ribbons that swirl around me
from out of the computer screen,
wrap me up like a mummy,
then have their way with me.
It could be enough
to have you speak for me,
to lay every inch of your large and small intestines
at your feet for me,
and stomp on them with every perfect simile,
pick them up all bloody and liquidy
in your long hands, swinging them over your head
like a cattle driver galloping on your fine steed of words
herding consciences of this great country,
then skinning them alive of their prejudices,
gunning them in the foreheads to truly open minds.
It could be enough.
But I'd be
blaspheming you,
and the gods of poetry,
of you AND me,
And you,
with your leprechaun's bible
clutched in your long, timeless hands,
would call me a pussy.
Metamorphosis
Numb as television,
my form moves through
rises and sets
as if it were all snowed in,
white again.
If anyone ever comes round
though,
the snow
may sift
and they'll fall in.
So, you won't see me out at the bars
with my heart on my smile
and my time in your drink.
You won't see me on the street
buying my oranges
from the berry lady. No.
I'm gonna hole up,
fetal in,
cocoon out;
emerge a flutterby
we hardly recognize.
Maybe Tomorrow
Pink morning through
a Dylan song.
Old rain wakes me to you
on the papasan,
rolling your breakfast
with silent apologies apocalyptic
in their tangibility,
standing thickly in front of you,
blocking my view.
I yawn and stretch you a kiss
with a prayer attached- always,
me,
your doe-eyed dancer
to your questioning stare.
Of course
I'd follow you...
like the crystal dawn
follows last night's storm.
I'll give you that scent
to sail away on,
if you give me your
sheltering maybe
again tomorrow. |