Thursday, December 31, 2009

Defensive Wounds

Some days, I’m uncertain.
Oh, not of whether the sun will rise,
or the moon find a convenient cave
in the hind-quarters of
another blistered sunset —
no, not that, but rather if
my pants are on, my tie
set vertical and my words
understood. Words are,
after all, the only window between,
the only communication
my bottle body — floating
a southern sea,
asking to be saved — can find.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Games For a Tuesday Conversation


In a sentence,

wrapped shawl-like around our actions,
we’ve divided this bit of Tuesday

into segments of time,
constructing life,

a paragraph mimed in fast motion.


This Lego truth owes its existence

to the same architect who wrote
the song you love,

that vase of winter flowers,
a crinkled photograph

in a wallet without money.


Between the eye and the word,

asphalt is a snake,
and our cognitive center

plays bumper-truth,
always trying

for the highest score.


Thursday, December 03, 2009

Two Nodes on Lines Which Will Not Meet

insertions/coat draped leisurely across
the arm of a minute/texture
to sun stroking sere leaves
clicking steel-mesh fence/and
word ocean/word soup/word
soul/word spin and weave
and dance and song/word waves
broken on twined fingers/twisted
stories/broken backs/spines
twisted on the point of ecstasy

when our dog ran down the street
and you pursued through back yards
and front flower beds yelling his name
with a siren cadence as though it was
again World War Two and the dumb bombs
were on their way to kill people too smart
to be the victims of anyone’s destiny
but their own I remembered a line
from that book you’ve been reading
the one you keep trying to read
portions of to me as if you’re again teaching
and I’m a first grader as comfortable with
mathematics as I would be climbing
on your knee/you know the part
about what love costs even if
it’s given away for free
and I recognized the dance
for what it is/two swans in sunlight
who are really motes on an atom
playing tag where the real intent
in not to meet but rather to dream

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Security


entry allowed, denied, debated, defined

and partitions, isolations, closures,

representative catalogues

(we can compact them with rules

without variance) and road maps

to compliment the Grand Personal Self


but the artery carrying emotions

remains an uncharted veldt

where shadow creatures

fall from the perihelion of love


the world gravitates

in this direction -- towards dusk,

towards alone, towards

the twinkling point of black

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Notes on a Possible Poem

The truths of any one nation are

the lies of another, yet
we continue to seek
truths in the same way sand
hounds ocean, clouds disintegrate
out of storms, cards are placed
on a table greasy with
a thousand meals
and as many parables about
children, hangnails, that dark
thread which chases us
from sunburst to sunburst moment --
a halo vibrating to
the rhythm of a timepiece
we will some day abandon,
along with all the answers
we were unable to believe.