Twenty-One Days Rising to Fall

The night is a long wooded trail,
a congregation of freshly severed stumps
losing their souls to the cold.

* * * * *

Come, River. Come swallow the ground.
Darken the stone and tilt the oaks
toward your lips. Lifeless tissue –
the blistering fingertips can be kissed
free of all pain in the cold.

* * * * *

There should be a single word for all
the lines of the hands. The originals
and those that the years force into skin.
Close your eyes. There’s no hope in sleep
coming tonight. There’s no end for the mind
but spare your sight the fog of the cold.

* * * * *

There’s an island in the shallow waters,
an inadequate scab on the wound. Brown
trapped by the blue. What is the distinction
between an island and an isle? This delicate breast
slipping from the blouse doesn’t seem worthy
of the heavy letters, or the whites of my eyes,
or the icy burden of my youth in the cold.

I have nothing to say about Paris

I’d forgotten the sounds of this. It’s easy to
forget sounds that drum on in soothing loops
and lull us to sleep. Easier than forgetting
the days that aren’t etched around the wrist

or how fast the train can cut down Broadway
sixty seconds shy of midnight. There is this
subtle feeling only found overlooking the city
drenched in smoke, moonlight, and altitude.

Morning doesn’t matter much to the heart
satisfied with chilled lungfuls of night.

Dawn in regression

In truth, none of it matters;
the long stretch of ice,

the spaces between buildings
and the parking lots

rising to take them down,
to lick the blood from the back

of the hand clinging to the concrete,
fingertips and fragments of stone.

The story goes:
we were drawn together

crudely with natural charcoal
pulled fresh from the fire

and juggled between the palms
until it cooled a bit — just a bit,

until the sting was bearable
and the yellow paper browned

against the heat
and grayed against the soot.

Your eyes were green then, too.
The sky was blue behind them,

the moon outshone by the stars;
there was no sense then, no reason

the weather vane might spin
on a small house over the river.

If only for the deep threading roots
or the ink-blot interrupting the composition,

we were made of soft notes
not destined to outlast the tongue.

The Perpetual Spaceman holds a press conference upon his return

I’ve been to Earth nearly a dozen times,
this is what I’ve learned: First,
I cannot hold an image anywhere as long
as I would like nor forget a scent as quickly
                                                          as I often need to.
Secondly, the air may enter and leave the lungs
countless times, but it forgets the tiny fragments
of itself in the darkened alleyways,
clogging the workings until the machine shuts down.
                                                          In this way it is like love.
Third, and most important, I learned nothing here
that couldn’t have been learned in space
but the gravity has a way of burying it
                                                          deep into the flesh;
the seasons have a way of aging us.

The heavy rain of pebbles

Disregard my last statement. It doesnt make any sense.
I’ve packed my days in plastic milk crates
stacked them in the closet under a dead man’s clothes.

I left them in the cellophane. I like the way it cries.
The snows finally came, afraid of spending February
in the clouds. January crawls on, leaking from his kidneys.

I dont believe in January, or any month for that matter.
All faith is reserved for treebark and soapstone –
The soft-solids; the things I can destroy before myself

destroyed in a cloud of rust. The scent of cold copper
first touching the flame. Hot coffee onto frozen Earth.

Had my father stayed, he would have said something
about the weight of love and the imprint on the mattress.

Had I ever learned to play guitar, I could have
done the same. We are nothing if not our shortcomings.

That old factory is still as empty as when we were there.

I wake most mornings

I woke this morning, dead
from my right shoulder to my right fingertips
and when I lifted the icy corpse with my left hand
I thought of my mother.

I thought of her mattress
worn down to the uncoiled springs of the cot,
and I thought of the mattress we all shared
as kids, four bodies pressed against her for warmth.
I thought of my brother.

I thought of his bed
across from mine, and how I flew the gap between,
flesh too hard to think about the emptiness I landed in.
I thought of my sister.

I thought of her sheets
and everything that wouldn’t come out in the wash,
outwitted thread count, seeped deep into polyester
to stain the bone-white dress of Smurfette.
I thought of my uncle.

I thought of the blanket
pulled high over his rain-wrinkled shoulders, the shivers
of his pale, frozen skin and my worth as a poet
in everything I didn’t say.

I never open it. I leave it in the fridge.

Hide yourself in the marmalade.

I have no idea what the hell it is.

I don’t explore the differences between preserved fruit.

Remain safely hidden in my change pocket.

Stay as you are: carved from fake jade.

I imagine you as a contrail. A scratch across the sky.

We are all poisonous exhaust.

There is only love if you never say the word.

The world always spins, you’ve just started noticing.

The birds aren’t flying, really. They’re falling slowly.

I want to fall in reverse. I want to climb a tree.

Do you suppose a tree ever wanted to be climbed?