my room

I like to be in a place

Where evidence of me remains—

White walls covered with scribbled sketches,

Memories of summer evenings in the birch forest or clumsily 

beneath the oak table lying on the floor with my brothers—

My scratched watchface ticking quietly on the bed

beside me as I tuck my face into the pillow at night—

Books stacked in isolated piles randomly

like monuments to the wind in bryce canyon

Each one a series of sleepless nights and feelings of precipice

That then ended. Here where spring stubbornly

Refuses to open her sleepy petals,

I am dreaming of the moon in a sandy night sky,

I am wondering where I will be next season,

what evidence will remain behind.

I am breathing cold night air

amidst the sound of sirens.

I am pouring a dram of scotch

and wandering into the desert.

I am closing my eyes and seeing the maples davening

As the storm begins high in the mountains.

snow day in spring

On a morning

When the snow busily

Packs itself away outside my window

And my body starts up lean and straight

As an elm out of the disheveled dirt

And the world outside is bright

And full of something that has always

Been free, how could there be

Rules about what we should or should

Not do on such a day, when all the victorian’s

Raise their chins in pride

And the storm plays all around

Like some fantastically wild child

And the trees along spruce hug their own white shadows?

This is a day to kiss the one I love,

To open up my hands and let her wash them,

To pray and say the world puts some things together.

It is cold and the wind sings pleasantly

And we are here so wonderfully now.

place

In the few hours after work,

We create small rituals

To schematize loss—

I am waiting 12 hours for your plane to land.

What I will say,

I do not know.

 The dirty ice at the end of the block shrinks

And smoke pours into the night

Like a hot metal—

It all goes somewhere.

The cracked concrete underfoot and dead

vines tracing their history

Up our chimney. It took tears

Going down cold into a mess of hair

And me realizing I hadn’t worn a warm

Enough jacket to get me to leave manny’s house--

Big chin and unfed muscle, only small hours of quiet

Before the 4 am shift

In a house full of drunk brothers

Watching bootleg dvds.

I knew he was inside, hiding

and wondering if this would turn out ok.

Me too.  

I went to the church where some 20 jews sang

A wordless melody. They asked me

About work and I made a graceful exit

But not before pulling up my hood, wandering towards

The stained glass and mouthing words of praise,

Rocking my body with the mourners kaddish

The way I learned so long ago, in rhythmic sobs

Not even I understand. I think,

It isn’t quite time to ask

Where this will all go.

Sid is in me laughing, everybody poops

When they die.

It is suddenly march 10^th and the bartenders

Are just getting their paychecks.

My phone rings with numbers I do not know.

Acela

“Charlie bit me.”

                                    “Why is this happening?”

“And it really hurt.”

                                    “Is this going to be forever?”

“And it’s still hurting.”

The woods are grey and thinned

Against a rolling sky that goes on.

The suit across from me hides a skeleton

Under little hair and fat, a few credit cards,

Ill-conceived smile designed to continue

The burial process of nervous questioning life

That last saw light in college when high on mushrooms

And wide eyed he splashed

water into his armpits and laughed

In front of his friends as it dripped down

And soaked his briefs.

Now the train is quiet except for the two Cambodian women

Bickering beside us and one of them opening

A can of seltzer.

Gravel, graffiti, warehouses, piles of disused metal.

Stopped chemical trains. Wood chips and cell-phone towers.

What is there in this world?

This morning I almost could not wake,

The dreams pulled me so down as under waves.

I slip over a blue sweater and fry eggs barefoot,

The cold tiles speaking something of life

I cannot quite make out.

The house snores.

I have never wanted to sleep so much.

There is too much time,

I did not even notice before.

10/20

here in spring the sound is quiet,

sea lions purring in the sun,

paradise ducks winding through the

mist—the mountain asks

“what can you leave behind?”

one after another that took millennia

to grow fade in the dusk and clouds.

This unsettled land with landslides

And temporary waterfalls asks—

“how can you begin again?”

whenever the rockface is

suddenly clean in a blanket of

beech trees, I see myself slipping,

grabbing hold of the wall,

the letting go—

long drop into the water.

I do not know the answers.

I cannot say what makes the water

In me run soft when I think of you

Or how in the silence

Of water passing between

Cloud topped mountains I feel

As if god and you

Are the only words left.

spring nor'easter

By the wind and by candles,

By unexpected snow and branches

Cracking above our heads,

I find the bubble of quietness.

The day of waiting in thin-lit

Halls washes down the windows,

Memories of car tires swishing

Across the road and downed

Power-lines in the part of the city

Some people close their eyes through

Are a rich taste on my tongue

Quarter of a century poured out.

Still the still quiet after

Is very hard, not knowing

What to do with this big yearning

That reaches for the hand of the world,

Swirls my eyes green of the ocean

I feel so distant from. I am missing

Its comforting whisper in this storm.

We are just inside, creaking

Bones and floorboards struggling

To retain heat, looking out

at confused moonlight and wanting

very badly to lose this body

sometimes pleasant and sometimes

hurting wanting wanting

to dissolve like powder

in the great wind, find

my way back to a place

where the trees grow unrestricted

by concrete and water sings

its blessing into all the fruit

of the world—the houses,

the corner boys, the unused steel

and green things,

all my lovers,

and me.

Shining

Spring rises over skin first,

Achingly over fast ice, sun slicking

And lapping up what was thinly buried.

In the woods of Pennsylvania, the trees begin

To sweat with joy, in the places behind their faces,

They begin their slow communal humming

At the rejuvenation, the rebirth of all things.

Some part of me celebrates that all of this bursts

Awake, out of darkness and miraculous,

like a lover in the morning.

And some part of me can’t.

I am thumbing a heavy green stone hung

About my neck as a reminder and I wander

Through brambles and into thick thorns who’s hands

Clutch a Styrofoam cup and empty 40.

What was desperate becomes history.

How are we to know what we lose along the way?

The dead sing through jet fuel as well as

Streamed audio-- I hear them now

In the interminable muttering of the airport.

Last night, the moon was a cook

Slowly removing his clothes when he thinks

He is finally alone. It was so sweet and harsh I could

Not look away. The world is parched tonight,

Drinking rain and light alike, wanting to be filled up.

As the nights go on, I wonder whether

The seasons sing so they might catch us along,

Asking for harmony for us. Give yourself to sadness,

This warmth seems to say. Drink it up

As if it already makes up the vast part of your body.