Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Tarame (mere mortal)

Tarame (mere mortal)


Tarame was by all acounts a mere mortal
no faerie or shapeshifter or vampire or god

no urge to throw on a cape and cowl
and toss himself around like Batman

instead he carved beneath a magnifying glass
tiny sculptures of frail people from matchsticks

and set them afoot in gardens he tended himself
along the window sills of the house where he lived

so between him and the world (and possible Naraka)
grew garden parties where his creation watched the sea

and counted the days by sunrise sunset and the tide
because mere mortals need make believe to believe

Monday, August 8, 2011

the constant narration of things unsaid

the constant narration of things unsaid


(a)

her voice puts me out of my misery
not like a bullet
but like a kiss

slow and warm and offered
with hands on backs
to pull each other closer

(b)

i have stared at this poem title for days
having fallen in love with the words
and what it might be and then realized

that is us there in the loving and hoping
what it might be sprouting from what is
and then i am writing the poem that should be

the constant narration of things unsaid
is the title of my brain or the way it runs
incessantly and always always back to you

(c)

it is not the always talking
to myself in my own mind

but the always listening waiting
for that voice that is only you

i have polished bricks into stones
worn my heart like a silver amulet

teaching myself not to fear the bird
singing silently endlessly sweetly

so i can walk to the rhythm of the story
that moves me and makes me whole

(d)

most men live lives on legends
bacchanalian adventures of gods
imagined and rendered to weave truth
out of tales dancing on the head of a pen

but not me

i have my memories of you and us
things said and done and bound
to my mind like angel’s footprints
across the permanent beach of my heart

Thursday, August 4, 2011

reading Foucault while making spaghetti

reading Foucault while making spaghetti


i stand beside the stove
reading from The Foucault Reader
and glance into the pot boiling

the spaghetti dancing tendrils
like some sea creature against the current
and i think of you

although that isn’t true
every time i say it
any time i say it

i think of how you have come to be
a mirror for me to see the me
who failed you like a historical marker

and i pull up recollections
recreations of me kissing you:
that’s true but with a revision

recreations of you kissing me
this story of my past unhinged
and clapping against the wall

Foucault’s bespectacled cover photograph
is not Foucault anymore than his words
as you in my memory are no longer you

and i am not the lines and stanzas here
or the person who failed in loving you
and is left only with the history of us

i am he trapped here in the octopus arms
of wishing you’d return to me in these ashes
blossoming like pinot noir grapes for wine

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

trap door (diamonds, fire, and honey)

trap door (diamonds, fire, and honey)


INEZ: Ah, that’s the way it works, is it? Torture by separation.
No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre


we found the trap door alluring
like rose-cut diamonds
the red glow of a stove’s eye
honey drizzled across your stomach

until we discovered no exit exists
from this world to sanctuary
there is no other side or escape
no woman sawed in half or disappeared

but i am resolute in my wish to conjure
something from the space
where you no longer stand
the silence in the place of your voice

so let’s slip out of these clothes
and run into the sunshine
no longer fools for doors
but punch drunk and aroused

by diamonds, fire, and honey

tethered (this inertia of love)

tethered (this inertia of love)

Centripetal force is the force by which bodies are drawn from all sides,
are impelled, or in any way tend, toward some point as to a center.
—Isaac Newton

I like the way your sparkling earrings lay,
Against your skin, it's so brown.
And I wanna sleep with you in the desert tonight
With a billion stars all around.
“Peaceful Easy Feeling,” Eagles, Eagles



when he fell in love
the last time
the only time

he wrote his novel
about lovers
meant for each other

a life of joy and peace
facetoface
handinhand

and nobody cared
no one read
or turned past page one

demanding pain and tragedy
lovers parted
torn apart by fate


and of course she left
him alone
with a boring novel

him tethered always
to the angle
of her ankle and foot

that came to him
in weighted dreams
spinning him nightly

like a moon full
his centripetal fate
an orbit decaying

from the pull of gravity
against centrifugal forces
this inertia of love


artists and scientists
bend against
the pull of love

like children lost
in rhyme
strings in their fingers

wishing to catch
and cradle
the one other

who lies beneath
starlit nights
only for this lover

novels and theories
pale against
skin drawn to skin