l'shanah tovah

There are no endings Only new beginnings. Carry me with you this night. Hold it all
for as long as you can, as close as you can to your heart.

coco nara

Coals breathe with glowing ferocity

That comes from somewhere I am not.

The wind blows, pages turning,

The tree limbs are lit from beneath

With false light, painted summer for the last few

Days.  I sit out on the roof every night

Trying not to drink. If the day goes by,

an intake, without rain,

then my knees will bend and hurt

As they spin over desolated streets

Beneath skyscrapers. If the night goes by, an

Out, fan churning the creaking scraping rumbling

Of my sleepless foundations grinding down

Into the earth, then we will

get to the next one. What

fills these days of awe? Where

has it poured out?

The schuykill river splashes up

Onto my shoulders and smells of gasoline.

A child is going out on the water for the first time.

His aunt looks silly in a too large yellow life vest,

but she will not take him back to shore.

The coal trains go over the old bridge above our head

And we look at each other, both wondering why suddenly

We are in the flurry crows and the air carries the linden trees

To us, and it is cloudy out. I do not know.

I do not know.

I roll up my sleeves at work,

Cordone off different parts

And smile a sleepy smile

At everyone who wants a sleepy smile.

Women write their numbers on checks

Though I wear my ring on my left hand.

When the old folks come before

Their lecture, all I can think,

Is how miserable they are, only speaking of death

And complaining about the chairs, with so much money

And life left, it isn’t fair. Even now a mystery is whispered

Inside me, I know jake heard it through his blood even

As it went flat; even sid as he called out for help,

a sound I’d never heard , knew it like a bird call,

knew it like a song. “Never let me be that.”

I roll up my sleeves.

My hair is on end with anger at this.

Where has it poured out?

Where have they gone?

The city is built on living ground,

Snagged amongst plants everywhere growing

Everywhere surging up between the lattice of concrete.

Where do you think the roots go to drink?

I am so very thirsty.

thanks for the birthday present

you have given me myself
heavy stone of life
looking out and in looking
fragile, hard and self-encompassing
you beautiful song,
you angel of the present. how
do you know the child
inside me but love the man?
how has you heart clocked
the moments of both our lives
with its unsteady beats?

the house is abuzz
and you are a thousand miles away
this birthday your knowledge feels
a thousand ages old, like the hum of wings
or a spark of light. i have held myself
open a long time to the elements--
for growth, i say, for love,
for unknowing, but a bark has grown,
a course skin covers even the me
below the organizer, the poet,
the lover, but you
have surprised me.
a touch not gentle, not harsh,
but knowing, you knew i would open
even deeper.
i am a terrible storm at 26, blindfolded
in a field of swords, i am looking
out at mountains, i am bringing my hands
from behind my back.

the night calls to me
as i step out in a thin shirt.
my body sparkles with muscle
like concrete over tree roots.

this thing that is me is awake.
i hold a heavy crystal out to the moon.
my life has run beneath the earth
and has known this sky and the lake waters--
it is an offering.
your eyes are closed in the heat,
sweat on your lip--
you have been cruel, but
out of life. you have been scared,
but out of love.  you swallow me
bit by bit like the ocean.
but what you give--
oh what you give.

long day's journey

We roll the lamp shade up

And the city is bigger than

The city is, all blinking lights

And river to water.

We are rocking out there in the waves.

“No sleep, not safe.”

Outside—the humidity mugs

Visitors one by one, turning them

To patients, borrowing moisture

From their eyes.

The lines have been blurred

Since I hopped in the car 3 days ago—booze sleep tears

I hit 120 masturbating to the sunrise--

That night was dark.

My grandfather had a stroke.

Shortest night of the year but couldn't quite

Get through it.

He taught me how to roll a room

With laughter, chew it like

Salt water toffee.

He produced sons who produced songs,

Anti-military, but growing right with

Money, he might have spat them out

His socialist mouth if he still had the energy,

But now it looks like it takes all that's left of his pectorals,

traps, and abs to alternate his

Heart beating and chest blooming.

I can see the muscles breathing heavy.

His eyes do two things: close.

Search for her,

flashing within artificial retinas over

objects without recognition –

undocked and motor running.

Unrecognizable his voice as it cracks

Like something of a shell, but she is there

Leaning close and the words come,

Each its own careful argument:

“Hey. Babe.”

This is the last time I see him.

When he thinks he is alone

He rasps into the phone

“I will beat this.”

And there is nothing to do but go,

because I will not pour my despair

into him. When I wrap my arms around

my grandmother, I can feel her flight,

like a caged bird,

like a woman watching the love of her life

fade. Then she stops and something erodes

for a moment, she releases and crumbles

like a clod of earth breaking loose

and disappearing into the sea—

then she hears it, the first sight of home,

a whisper of land:

hey. babe.

november 7, 2014

“First Words”

~After “after earth as seen from Earth”

~or “back in space once again”

Everything dies ungracefully

The raccoon on the side of the road, hands covering its head which lay between its legs

On the way home from work—

Deer with all four legs together, tongue out, blood splattered yards away—

Cousin suzie sending her daughter out for groceries, then hanging herself in the study—

*******************************

Evening came and it grew dark quickly.

*********************************

I said “I’m afraid of tomorrow. And the next day.”

Sara said, “look at the light.”

The scarred blinds stirred from a wind though there was none.

**********************************

These days I am learning minute by minute

Hour by hour, day by day

How I can feel like I do not need her.

***********************************

Mother tripped while carrying the dog after surgery.

The dark black ooze of the stitches dripped

After ripping across the brick steps.

Mother cried for hours.

We thought codie would die then--

Her huddled skeleton shaved bare and

Every ligament and bone testifying against her life

***********************************

My best whiskey glass covers a bed bug on the floor.

***********************************

In a dream sara asked me to come back over half empty white wine glasses, her whole croation family holding their breath on the couch. And I almost said yes. Until I saw the whole damn script lying in front of me, read my lines there on the page. Then I drunkenly railed. And thank god I did.

And left.

*************************************

I don't want another scratched disk.

*************************************

the ground is diseased with shadow

in moments, appearing to almost slough off

and in others, sitting up,

ragged, but alive,

reminded of sunlight, as if

just awaking from a dream

************************************

Sudden disconnect.

In the middle of a story of

The first time I saw a gun directed at me--

Suddenly realizing there was no one on the other end of the phone.

******************************************

Little sparrow burying its head in a water drop

From the stone cat by the $1000 fish,

Place where gardeners dirtied their hands on my heart,

Place where those who wish to go come to stay.

Like vines growing over a green clay pot

The days fall over and out of the sun.

But survive.

*****************************************

“are you a pusher or are you a puller?”

standing in front of a bright, clear window

looking over early snow-

bed bugs crawling up the walls

and drawn on several bathroom stalls

a small boy crying, squatting

“just go, just go, go”

when it’s late and it closes in

--it comes out both ends.

****************************************

the fall is as good a time as any to begin

putting pieces away.

Wash them out with whiskey.

Hide them beneath bushes on late night walks through dangerous neighborhoods.

It grows cold.

The dead leaves become puzzled pieces of a Pollock pattern

Describing the confusion of sudden emptiness.

A gesture at limbs they just were.

**************************************

The speech of the one whose bowels are eaten by the eagle,

Is of the proximity of his predicament to time.

Though he can do nothing,,it is always so close to over.

And yet his memory is washed out by the sun.

Mornings are difficult.

The state of things burning in

With morning light.

Very cold, shivering,

Then too warm.

And trapped amidst the sheets—

The idea that there is no way to change this process.

That I will wake up like this forever.

******************************************

The morphlings release tethers to shore

And drift.

They then release water,

Then air.

Then the borders of their very selves.

They may someday return,

Even touch the things they once knew,

But nothing stays. This

The morphlings have always known.

****************************************

seven swans beg forgiveness for the harsh reality they confront us with

that sharp god, that precipice

******************************************

Some say time is a circle.

And it is. But it comes back around on itself

Not once.

Once something is lost

It is lost, and even finding it,

It is a thing found that was lost.

And what it was before being lost, will always be lost.

And that is the circle.

*******************************************

The small things come back.

First writing. Then working out.

Sleeping. Meditating.

Little inoculations. Replacements.
How do you learn to replace a part of yourself with yourself once again?

Two years.

The warm feeling of hands on your back,

Rubbing along your pelvis,

Cradling your heart as it struggles.

*****************************************

Love can convince you you do not exist without it.

And though this may end, we never do.

. project.

. vehicle.

. state.

. contract.

. terrible pain.

. shell.

. addiction.

.escape.

. present.

. purpose.

. support.

. blind.

. assurance.

. challenge.

. scream.

.exception.

. rule.

. tomb.

. source.

Love is a home we are leaving.

And like every time leaving home,

It means we forget to remember where we are

and are destined to remember somewhere else,

Completely changed

yet somehow with ourselves once again.

*******************************************

night bloom shadow portrait shadow

dizzy rain shadow bloom

grey grey long shadow bloom

shadow blocks houses blocks shadows

bloom in the night over silence

blooming out of the dead space bloom

shadow bloom shadow bloom bloom rebel

shadow of a poem bloom under my windows bloom

time to do something other than drink shadow of the days when she was here bloom

shadows bloom something will bloom if I can just

water them, not kill them, behind the houses bloom yards, light blooms displaced

by bodies blooming houses blooming homes

love is a home bloom shadows behind bloom

but it is night now

all will bloom

*********************************************

There is something about who we can close our eyes with

*********************************************

At night the city misses the woods the most.

The concrete misses the gargle and spit of the stream.

The gutters --the duff

The struggling streetlights—the branch interrupted stars.

***********************************************

thwarted pastoral

Wawa hoagie I tried to steal--

You've got me trying to feel free in

New ways. didn't know my love

Would incage you like the bird

That builds its nest around itself.

Your roommate drinks

Excessively, but holds open a doorway to feeling

You have sternly shut. Your plants grow in resilience to this fact.

The bare white of your house’s walls are a testament.

What would our city say about us?

What symbols live from our love?

I’ve thrown my hat in for a free business dinner.

But otherwise I’m ready to bide my time.

Don't take your thumb off the flame, just yet.

If the pain is too much, I want to gain at least.

Here I am for the blasted winds to salt my face.

Here is a fertile ground, and thorned brambles

Scrabbling for purchase competing with me,

And I am sorry, but I will win.

That is what we share.

rather than not

When I saw the blue veins of your life

Like blue fish below your translucent skin

Like thin and ancient tributaries supporting

Some city—I could not know it for what it was.

If my flaw is any, it is many--

1. Holding candles against a darkness

I could let my eyes grow used to.

      2. choosing now to stand upon the made sacred

      ground of the I, of the need, when for years

      it has been a mudpit of wrestled giving.

               3. scarfing down the burnt moments of gladness

               to keep them glowing inside, instead of letting oxygen

               and time fan them into a more full body

                             4. for some reason not wanting to give in to you.

This sadness has many names,

Like god.

I am imagining you spiraling out,

Like some growing crystal--

I am imagining you missing me and choosing.

But this is also the ugly sounds frogs make at dusk,

The ones you heard when we walked

Towards the tower in the dark,

It is the loosened railings of my grandfather’s boat still molecularly moving

from your touch,

it is silent drives to unmarked destinations where

love is the only light we made.

it is cutting the power on the bridge and in silence 

letting what come

come.

it is all of my mistakes and my adolescent anger

and the misgivings of a man too smart to learn lessons for too long.

So much is irreconcilable.

I am drinking in an empty house with the memory

Of my hand on your chest about to imitate a star.

You and I should be.