balloon (too light for this world)

balloon (too light for this world)

it was the most vivid dream Tarame had ever experienced

and even more so each time it came back to him in thought

there was a girl or young woman

maybe both simultaneously

he wanted to call her Yen To Dollar

but knew that was no name

it was her hand that was most clear to him

like a slow-motion close up in a film

her hand like a smooth granite carving

so beautiful he could not breath

her fingernails were painted dark blue

so dark they were nearly black

she held briefly in her hand a balloon

so dark blue it too seemed black

then the balloon slipped free of her fingers

its white ribbon-tail waving good-bye

looking away from her hand to the balloon

he could breath again but this drifting

away forever and forever left him weightless

in a way that he could not put into words

until on the third day of remembering the balloon dream

he recognized two things that stabbed his heart

the balloon was Tarame and she had let go on purpose

•

sitting alone looking across the beach

darkness closing over the ocean

Tarame wondered to himself

what was a balloon and ribbon without a hand?

what was a balloon and ribbon without her hand?

so he tried to hold on to the dream like an anchor

knowing in the end that he was too light for this world

the happiness of new books first read

the happiness of new books first read

I remembered that, and, remembering that, I remembered everything.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman

it was a sad and beautiful day

just two days into summer

cresting the longest daylight

it was sad and beautiful

in the way an orange segment

tastes and feels in your mouth

separately and now quite separate

we waited on and finally received

the same book like a gift from god

when i realized my deep true selfishness

wishing i could have made you as happy

as the happiness of new books first read

the problem with the New World

the problem with the New World

in the United States

we suffer an abundance

a certain mechanical erotic

a manufactured and mostly plastic sexy

but nothing enduring that says

this was crafted by humans

this has survived countless floods and wars

and still it forces anyone who sees it to think beautiful

•

how can New World lovers know any better

hope to survive the relentless call of being new

without the fermented smoky texture on the tongue

drunk on the mountainous everything that has remained?

•

he was fortunate for the rarity

that he was unable to discern

between gazing upon her face

or Passo dello Stelvio in May

and when he confessed this to her

she took him silently in her arms

others passing by at that moment

imagined them in relief there forever

lavender silk monkeys

lavender silk monkeys

on a planet where everything was finally connected

by the Internet and the glorious promise of Commerce

it came as quite a shock when they were discovered

somewhere remote and wild: lavender silk monkeys

at first the story was a novelty until the children loved them

and someone realized you can monetize lavender silk monkeys

it began with stuffed animals and Saturday morning cartoons

and then cereal children’s clothing board games video games

lavender silk monkeys were everywhere now after eons hidden

but of course they weren’t called lavender silk monkeys at first

that came after someone who had missed the first profit wave

discovered the allure of lavender fur that came to be called “silk”

and reports that in that nearly ignored forest where they lived

the lavender creatures seemed to be damned near everywhere

there were always those adults who wanted exotic things made

from lavender silk monkeys now bred and slaughtered for hide

until the novelty wore off and the machine ground to a halt

and no one bothered to breed them anymore even for sport

you see new things can stay new only so long in the end

so they consumed the lavender silk monkeys every one

on a planet where everything was finally connected

by the Internet and the glorious promise of Commerce

here (belong)

here (belong)

I'm having trouble inside my skin
I tried to keep my skeletons in

“Slipped,” The National

Those barricades can only hold for so long
“Belong,” R.E.M.

Definitiva como un mármol

entristecerá tu ausencia otra tardes.

“Despedida,” Jorge Luis Borges

i’m not here

you think you see me

you think you hear me

but i am not here

she is sitting at her desk at work

legs crossed and wearing platform shoes

open-toed bone-colored straps winding around and above the ankles

a simple bone-colored skirt

and a short-sleeved turquoise top

with lavender stripes so thin almost no one notices them

and there on the floor beside her foot

you can find me ever-poised and heartfelt

committed fully to kissing that ankle solid and sad as marble

she closes her eyes just briefly

at the touch of my lips against her cool skin

and imagines slipping to the floor and never again walking away

i’m not here

you think you see me

you think you hear me

but i am not here

although i understand the allure of the corporeal

i am in the only place i can be

i am in the only place i belong

in light of everything (snow blind)

in light of everything (snow blind)

“We read to know we are not alone.” C.S. Lewis

I, who had always thought of Paradise
In form and image as a library.

“Poem of the Gifts,” Jorge Luis Borges

in light of everything

(and who knew everything was luminescent?)

could you reconsider me?

would you reconsider me?

would you reconsider us?

bathed anew in the all more powerful than a sun

the absence of pigment is white

all pigments combined are black

the absence of light is black

all spectrums of light are white

in the light of everything

the bright white light of everything

shouldn’t we marvel at the indistinguishable all

or do you wish to filter out each moment with a prism?

the colors of our passion and anger and despair

red orange yellow green blue violet

in light of everything

i remain blue and bound to the promise of white light

•

in the dream i am snow blind

i believe i am alone and it is sleeting

the wind is bitter and howling

until i am nearly deaf against the roar

i imagine frostbite spreading from my finger tips

and fear that ice crystals are forming in my lungs

i wonder for a moment about the choice

to acquiesce to the blind stasis of winter

the inevitability of a permanent winter

against which i am not equipped to survive

contemplation is a dead man’s game i decide

diving into a black dwarf as if a martyr or savior

as i move my fingers readying myself to stand

i know that you are there warm as butter on the tongue

“do you pray?” i hear your voice in my mind

although i am uncertain how to answer these thoughts

i know i must move again until my sight returns

and we lie quiet backtoback reading Franny and Zooey

like jesus then i dream of myself walking over snow and ice

deaf and blind in butter-tongued determination to rise again

“yes, yes,” i answer without speaking a word aloud

“i pray with every breath, every heartbeat, this everything”

•

i tripped and fell into a well

mistaken for hell but i could tell

by the endless stacks of books

and the stern and silent looks

tales of labyrinthine fantasies

illuminated our sacred eternity

so i decide to stay a while and smile

reading from this pile of books

imagining you will join me

hurrah, hurrah

wine song

wine song

did you bleed in my wine

the way i never asked

but always wanted

these spirits that warm me

wine liquor and beer

cannot move me as you have

elixirs that numb and dull

disembodied from you

and left dry on my palate

do you cry in your wine

the way no one sees

but i watch in my dreams

this distillation of my heart from you

leaves me alone sober and parched

somebody’s somebody who matters (the art of wanting)

somebody’s somebody who matters (the art of wanting)

by the time she returned to him

it may have already been too late she feared

before she looked him in the eyes again

she noticed his iPod was filled with only two songs

Sinead O’Connor and Dido singing over and over

“Nothing Compares 2 U” “White Flag”

•

of all the humans on the planet

Yen To Dollar had perfected the art of wanting

but held her gift (or curse) at bay

nearly every moment of her life until him

when she discovered in him the wanting

like her to be somebody’s somebody who matters

•

“abyss” was a word she heard in a movie

and then read in a novel just minutes later

these synchronicities and intersections

that weaved a cat’s cradle of want in her hands

a dream catcher for the echoes of the universe

these wantings of somebody seeking somebody

•

she had dreamed of him before ever meeting him

and in that dream he was an astronaut cut free

like a scene from 2001 surrounded by roaring silence

drifting away from her mind’s eye like a plastic doll

could he be bringing me back to him with his wanting?

she asked herself sensing him in the room where she stood