Showing all posts in Writing

— after Sappho

If I even believed in god you’d be like a goddess
to me so I tag along with you whenever I can
just to hear you talk on your cell phone and laugh.
     Your voice makes my heart

palpitate, especially when you let me put my arm
around your waist. I’m a freaking mess: I’m acting like
a moron and I get tongue-tied and my skin itches
     and breaks out; I zone out and 

can’t remember anything & sometimes I can’t
even hear anything but blood rushing in my ears.
I sweat too much and shake like a damn fool. Just
    look at me here all pale and

faded out like suburban lawns in August. When
I feel like this I know I seem completely nuts.
I feel like I could die any day now, any second,
    but somehow for you I keep going.

the wherewithal to hide a
sense of wonder

     retribution (tributary) this admixture:
     colic coriander chelae cubic

for a dollar held in hand you
well you wipe the whole wide wing away

     my city, caught under, which
     (no, never mind that)

see the cacti lie down like lambs against
the retaining wall, the will

     not the one you bought
     but willing the sky

its nine times nine making
the neighbors’ voices cut and fade

     we allow more words and cursor
     this part just added for effect

get a sign left in the street
a book left on a porch step

     the rain even more of now
     is not the right time

you step aboard, worry that
how your own will away

     they have their pockets into my
     affairs, sordid (file that under

reaching down or out
labels) some dissection of weft

     the part of the poem where the lines get long
    as abstract concepts arise (the odor of yeast strong)

children lolling on daybed with books
to how many digits of pi

     a modal calculus to gel process
     or reassure us systems are go

(don’t kill me for) the darkness, trajectory
this hand beside my face

    a cold sense
    a dim department store dreamed of

if I am lost then that’s the way it has to be
(scattershot of tiny words, a parabola, a look,

     a warning shot across the bought
     book falling to the floor page folded its

boat listing
catalogue full of useful items without prices)

     (us waiting for the storm to reach out
     lightning like distant flash pictures in the cloud cover

never
rote) wait

     use this as long as
     quarry can keep the pace

up please leave my hand alone
shaky in the morning on the pillow

     unable to scribe the finest detail
     here, here, natural, held, or a skill long to hold and to
behold

One day say, sky.  When light cleared cloud and dark light, fish rivered fruitland, and trees. Saddened time kept the chief birds within a sky and spring water past floating cedars.  Swallowing the sky was left for the girl who was born. The yellow of the sky came together.  Turned me back into the sky.

First a world was destroyed and created. Ocelots devoured me as the second sun rose.  Later a world was an earthquake and no more. You were a flood, I a moon.  Mostly moons were boys who played in the night. (Don’t leave them alone.) We should have met somewhere else before trying again. Something turned me inside out the fifth time. Say a volunteer stepped up and was devoured.  Take this hummingbird feather with you when you go.

She lit a bark torch and set out. The highway was busy early in the morning, car headlights still on. Her eyes stained the clouds red. The world named after her. A tunnel entrance at the place where she worked caring for trees and shrubs.  There were eclipses if her brother touched her while she slept.

Some days the girl and her brother fought over toys and she schemed revenge. She hid behind a door and sprung out on him with a marker pen in hand, scribbling black ink on his face. In fear of retaliation, she hid all day in the woods. When she woke up, she saw the moon through the branches and thought it was her brother looking for her and she screamed.

If it is dark the people walk into each other and fight.  Birds and small mammals teach value of the night. My parents lived as spiders a time so that they might feed me. When the sun came to our world, they became people again and raised me to be proud of my world even when it despised us.

The sun prevents me from living forever. I watch it set and my eyes water.  Hiking to the west does not help, because I can never move fast enough to catch the lost day.  Terrible things guard the edges of the day and keep us from returning to yesterday. I do not have the strength to defeat these beasts and so each day my hair grows a little longer and my eyesight a little dimmer.

Each day had its sun, each sun had its sin.  Ten mothers bathe their children and send them out into the yards with hair wet. They play ball together using the mulberry for home base.  The sun tangles in the tree branches and dries their hair. If the ten suns shone at once, we would all die. But the children’s’ fathers work as astronomers and sometimes come home early from work. Each of them touches the mulberry tree and teaches his children how to respect the others.

This is why the people are not destroyed by fire.