Sunday, June 30, 2013

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

Sunday, June 23, 2013

the happiness of new books first read

the happiness of new books first read

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

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

Sunday, June 16, 2013

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

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

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

Sunday, June 9, 2013

in light of everything (snow blind)

in light of everything (snow blind)


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


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

Thursday, June 6, 2013

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

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

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


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