A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

There's never enough tea*, she said,
a single, cold finger tracing the lip
of an empty mug.

how sad to be misunderstood
to be evicted from life
to have the full tenure
of a torrid human existence
gesture horribly at you
in faultless reputation
like that of a rancid rage
over a lost trinket
or to be quarantined
while fingerless skin scolds
and noiseless voices are raised
in a donated generosity of savage ignorance
striving to make copious amends
in vain efforts to regrettable
slow acting poison that boils the mind
oh how sad to be misunderstood
such varicose viciousness
oh it’s sad quite sad to be misunderstood
to live through and inoculated hour glass
giving limitless time to a wildfire of idiocy
and when your breath speaks they laugh
black laughter that shatters wet umbilical truths
shudders
knowledge gestures to smoking nostrils
oh how sad, how sad it is to be misunderstood
to be drenched in the rain but not get wet
in which antiquity rests with its
mythologised stupendous ill effects
getting  vivid shadows massed all around
oh how sad it is to be misunderstood
until dactylic, hexameter, elegance
completes and slithering syllables
by their antiquity  focus a shuddering shriek
that sends an exploding heart through your chest

What’s the difference between unwanted and unneeded?
You’re unnecessary, verging on disappointment, disgrace
Breaking faith and bond, hoarding intent and hopes false
Unnecessary child

Give me pure existence
And watch me lose my mind
Without meaning
I’m fingerless and blind
Give me pure existence
And watch me lose my heart
Without love
I’m a stringless puppet

.
                                      F
                             i       i t       i
                           t         s l          t
                          s          i k           s
                         l            e              l
                         i         a     g           i
                         k        l       o          k
                          e        v     e          e
                          a         F   i           a
                            g          t            g
                              L        s         L
                                  o    ~     o
                                        V
                                        E

One step forward, three steps back.
The queue shuffles,
visible breath in the winter blue.
The vendor vends,
fingerless gloves clamp the steaming mug.
Grunts and groans alike,
the warmth fills the withered corpses pale.

A gaze is cast,
into the misty nothing that inhabits the park.
A twitter is heard amongst the frosty masts.

Eyes meet with a rufescent-chested bird.

These same eyes are then met with salt,
a sorrow, a pang of jealousy.
A sheer longing for that same freedom.

The car showroom warehouse unit has turned into a gym overnight.
Low lit lights
highlight the out-of-work-early
joggers and the two step, bought-a-new-ipod-for-this-run, sweaty runners.

Framed central in the glass,
they bounce on mountain passes
over Swiss clear rivers and
around back through
obscure European cities,
all whilst on the spot listening
to Radio 4 podcasts from the week before.

Low cut tops offer no support for the weary
and the lifting gloves of the man
at the back are fingerless and ripped,
unlike his overweight torso, though
his BMW makes him believe that
this warehouse unit on the outskirts of
Huddersfield is the Venice beach of the North.

Snort repticalc and mashed up altoid
Have fun with some friends in God’s portwine stained forehead wrinkle
Imaginary time and poison thumb I like
Natalie rips some Earth nuts from soil
Ripping out the toxins and crackin it open with your her teeth
Clapping laughing and crackin nuts and cookin crumbs in pressure cooker
Bad dreams in your frozen water bed
Damp in the ceiling drip and trickle onto papas
bald spots, plastic mickey mouse cup collecting
ceiling leakage
peanuts and marmite froze over lickin frost
***** wrist grunk trash youre rubbing frolicly on the placid table
I cant believe the glass aint clean
Looking not out a window
But a piece of glass reflecting the city behind me
And my band fall out of place
When the old man sneezes
I get pushed aside because the marching band needs me to move and
Im only so talented
dead Chihuahua smell coming from the basement
a parallel universe where there’s one extra atom
with lana del rey on repeat
and jesus was a comic book character too
knuckles breathing fight stance
contraposto counter position backwards and
upside down rubber band army march
a thin breathing kettle with 0 durability
and a plastic bent tight so it’s white, pink, spotted
palamino dress and champagne skin
the damp gets to me
again again again
fingerless gloves for fingerless tom

Guns are everywhere in sight
Muzzles, fire and fright.
Blood running through sewers
like flooded rivers in mid-May,
when it should be running through veins.
Slain bodies once filled with life
are now filled with undeserved death.
Pain seeps through the eyes
of brutalized victims as they weep.

A mother pleads to God
with hopes He will breath life
back into her daughter's lungs
as a child stands over the rotting
bodies of bystanders,
and waves at the flies
Unrest fills the air
while fire's are burning under water
Tragedy burns the face down to a tear,
Could Hell get any hotter?

Mirages mirror terror,
Silence in broken mirrors.
It may seem that voices don't exist
in places like this,
And that a difference lies off
in the distance;
out of reach, unattainable.
But they do.
A blind man's eyes become
his hands and his ears
when he needs to see,
While the mute lack a voice,
they still find a way to say,
"Hope is never all lost."

They need to know they are not alone.
Battles are being fought all over this world.
War, famine, sexism, racism.
A fight between mother and father.
Grief for the loss a lover.
We can all relate,
in one way or another.
Ignore ignorance, become informed.
Silence does not defeat violence,
nor is strength needed to beat it.
Courage and a heart
are needed to defeat it,
along with the will to believe
it can be defeated.

Throwing punches with fingerless fists
and broken spirits can seem useless,
but more has been done
with less.

Remember, a voice with something to say
is harder to forget
than a voice
that is
silent.

Nanoseconds streak naked like
rebellious starlight in spacetime
responding to no sentient's censure
striking hot the wired constellations
strung about my fingerless grip
they slip
retreating
eternal
into
The Void.

I figured something out today.
The majority of the people I serve are completely braindead.
It makes me so angry.
Some of them tap their glasses, in such a way to make me hear in my mind,
"Oh yeah more water over here, would you?"
And I sit there and realize
I am a machine to them. A cashier. I make change.

I hate half of my coworkers. I hate to sound like a total ****, but its true.
One of the guys in the kitchen is just an *******. He barks orders, doesnt say please or thank you,
You know, all that standard crap that I have come to expect
Considering I have been raised to be the NICEST PERSON outwardly...

[It was around 13 when my inwardly was born and raised.
That age when all I did when listened to Sisters of Mercy and Korn
And wore leather gloves all over the place (fingerless, of course)
And cited goth poetry and Edgar Allen Poe in English class...

Hey... got the best speech/writing grades...

Women finally realized I existed.
I no longer cared for women.
Friends flocked.
I no longer needed friends.
People stopped trying to stab me.
I no longer cared.

The horrendous, hilarious, horrifying truth to what I felt those times
Was that I finally had acceptance when I no longer wanted it.
Oh, the irony (Coincidence, probably... Not by definition, just by realism... it was a coincidence that happened to be RIDICULOUSLY ironic)]

The other guy back there is a complete and utter clique-artist.
In every. Sense. His backwards *** hat, the jewelry sparkling,
His "homie" attitude...all that ****.
Now I don't care where he was raised, it's just that this guy
Gets all these beautiful, nice, seemingly very sweet women swooning on him.
And I sit here, polite, making light jokes and flirtation, and I guess maybe I am no longer attractive to women, because I get nothing. Even when I all out ask for a date. Excuses, excuses.

This may sound like me whining, but I am just trying to be honest about how I feel about these people.

Nowadays I find myself with my mouth shut constantly.
Making jokes no one gets... Am I high brow or low?
I don't get it, girls want this guy in the kitchen, they swoon and blush over the *******,
It's all rude comments and no manners, a lot of angry people, shouting, shooshing,

I just feel like this could be done a better way.
Look, call me crazy, and to all my readers,
I'm sorry, this is a very different kind of writing that I get into sometimes, but...

I think I may be one of the very few intelligent people of the world.
I think poets and musicians are many of the few. And I mean real musicians, not bands like
(and I will name them all just for fun, let them sue me if this eventually gets published)
Hinder, Shinedown, Nickelback, Creed, Nikci Minaj, Seether, Limp Bizkit, oh I would go on, but the list...
It extends beyond ME.

So.... We are all of a very select and important group.

And I think we all need to realize that we can team up to make the world a better place...for at least the next generation to come.
Somehow...
Even if we don't fix what is happening all around us constantly...
Let's bring the greatest art to the greatest and most deserved generation.

I love my life, and I love you people...
I just wish I didn't feel so down...

But hopefully I will fall in love, too. We'll see.

It's 11:11 make a wish
Look out the spotty window
See all the frowns
And boring towns
See how powerful the words we use are
They can cut deep
Deeper than the most violent assault
Buildings and obelisks of befuddlement
Pressed for time
Lemon scented tiles
Scrubbed
No mold
Personal preference
Common courtesy
And common sense    
Scarce but invaluable
A face only a mother could love
And a father can lie to
Coulda
Woulda
Shoulda
Didn't
Searching for carrion
Give way
To the wayside
ECNALUBMA
In the rear view
The worms eat us
The early birds catch the worms
The cat nabs the worm
After being resurrected by satisfaction
And the night owl writes the tell-all
Put the ear to glass
Put the glass to the door
And listen closely
To sound of knuckles cracking
And the chattering of coffee shop patrons
Indian givers going back on their word
Fingerless gloves
Prim and proper
Promptly pummeling
Tunneling to tomorrow
Well done
Slim to none
Fat chance
The local native's tongue
Sold fresh and farm raised
On any given day
You can find demi-gods
Playing a a pick up game
Matchbook
Matchbox
Mismatch socks
Pick up sticks and stretchmarks
Just stay the night
So we can wish this all away together
It's 11:12 open your eyes

a partial lobotomy of grey matters only to broken mothers of lost soldiers,
pentimento fading a revelation of humanized
modernized sentiment beyond the reaches of fingerless hands;
jagged bangs cut across the face of Burn-Victim Barbie if she were
seven feet tall,
imperfect,
9-dimensional shattered knees.
vote or die downward spiral protecing six-fingered man of mystery:
my name is the youth of America,
you killed my voice,
prepare to suffer in the solitary expression of the empty room.
peanuts for peanuts in a gold star self emporium with
thinking as a feeling sport contested by numerology in all matters moral.
Our very own
Satan as Hamlet,
set in a post-9/11 forgotten Washington,
drowning Ophelia in an ocean of plastic bottles non-recyclable.
meditation of the Om on a springboard of economic dis-stimulus:
up with the people!
in the midnight Vendetta,
too young to learn or sin originally,
masterful drunkenness shrouded in opera scenes from a hat.
fast track to a treble cliff diver
if you ever were my home.

Raspberries and ginger ale
Never can I tell
If they end well

Last prairie unsettled
Not claimed yet
From greed

Mechanical rattle comes from kitchen
A power tool dancing
Upbeat digital alarm

Click, juernk, juniper
All noises unsaleable
Fingerless to put on

Fearless finicky me
I'm angsty and funny
And stupid and satiated

Satiated with alertness
Created by newspaper
Hated by voices

Henry was walking
with his wife
along the sidewalk
in the city

looking for some cafe
she knew
and wanted to go
when he saw this young dame

in a wheelchair
with long hair
and fine features
pushing the wheels

with her hands
and she had these
leather fingerless gloves
and he thought

who puts her in
and out of the chair?
who holds her close
to them and smells

the shampoo
in her hair
feels her small *******
against them as they hold?

who gets her in
and out of the tub
or in and out of bed
who washes her back

or wipes her ***?
She had wheeled herself by
but not before
he’d taken in all

that he could
the jeans she wore
the white tee-shirt
the black shoes

the pretty lips
the way she gripped
and pushed the wheels
his wife was yakking

about some dress
she’d seen
in some store
and wanted to go

and look and maybe buy
but the passing dame
had caught his eye
and he wondered how

she got to be in the chair
accident or from birth
disease or some beat up
that went wrong?

He couldn’t ask that’d
be too rude and besides
she was well on
her way now

and his wife was striding
on with determined gaze
but he couldn’t get
the dame out of his head

her sitting there
with her long flowing hair
and those eyes
and the constant questions

of who did what for her
and how did she
do this and that
and who lifted her up

and out? was it some
strong guy some
dedicated hunk?
Or maybe her mother

and father did the job
of getting her in shape
and bathed
he thought

and did she *****
like other dames
have some fond lover
who played the game?  

All the questions
and no answers
made him wonder more
even later in the cafe

sipping the his latte
while his wife yakked away
and even later that night
in bed besides his wife

who snored
he pictured the dame
beside him
a paraplegic model

or an art piece
that he adored.

i feel as though i've not done something

but surely i would not forget

something of such an importance

that could cover my body in sweat

the fingerless grip, the threadless noose

clasping tightly as though to remind me
of something

it seems ive forgotten to do

-

what i have not forgotten

is to worry of things

that my earlier sanity tended to

at the end of the day

lying limp in my bed,


what it seems i forgot, was my head.

There are roses in the road
tear soaked tissues
torn up pictures
with letters on fire.

They are the breakup play-list
for hang overs
and scratches on the hood
from relationship status updates.

The secret poems
in songs of heartache
and paintings thrown in the trash.

A fingerless engagement ring
unworn wedding dress
and a honeymoon for one.

The divorcees still wondering
and the mothers and fathers
who didn't quite make it

There is never knowing
and always wishing
but never seeing it.

Not to mentioned the ex
you can't forget
and the unfortunate person
who can't afford to leave.

all the widowed wives
who are forgotten after death.
and solders with no one
to return home to.

But all the while
a broken chord
amid the misfortune
and sorrow of the world
could not escape the
thresholds of inevitable ends

Dark shadows circled my nest
on the ridgeline that
spooky winter night.
All I could see
was the moonglow
sifting through my misty breath,
glinting off my suppressor.
Icy winds whipped
up through the valley
to kiss my bearded face
& freeze my teardrops.
I thanked God for my pakol
and woolen fingerless gloves.
The fibers kept me warm
under the blanket of stars.
Not a cloud,
nor a single wisp
could I see against the pitch.
I had the itch to pop off a round
on a falling pebble.
But to do so,
might have meant certain death.
The area was crawling with bad guys,
insurgents looking for heads.

You were never meant for this
Grocery cart, bags of bones, pillow case
Dunking your head in the paper bags of letdown
Side street, gray walk, go’s and stops
Ticks and tocks
You were never meant for this
Fingerless gloves, holes in jeans, newspaper blankets
With words of people far more successful
Building money with their hands
Like a distorted counterfeit where it’s the priority
Above all that is breathing
You stare at their smudged pictures,
Their smiles full of cash, the green leaking between their teeth
Their suits all straight with hands out shaking
They stand around
The numbers increase
The excitement booms
That was supposed to be you
Who you once were
On Wall Street, drinking the coffee of accomplishment
Out of silver mugs with silver spoons
But you lost it all didn’t you?
The greed overtook you like a drug
Messing with your brain and judgment
Now look at you,
Vagabond, penny cup, ghost air
You were never meant for this,
You were supposed to be like those men in the paper
Those men on the streets
With their Bluetooth and briefcases
Stepping on cracks
You were never meant for this,
But you crashed
Got caught up in the money, the games, the race
Now look at you
Grocery cart, bag of bones, pillow case
Just jumping in defeat between the space
You were never meant for this.
Now look at you.

I want to smoke a cigarette.

I want--
to lean against a doorway, my converse shoelaces brushing against the brick.
to stare up at an overcast sky and know that gray doesn't always need a slow, mournful soundtrack. to feel the paper between my fingers and on my lips and take a deep,
deep
drag.


I want
to empty my lungs of everything they have and watch it all curl, wispy and insubstantial--
watch it disappear into the bustle of moving cars as the coffee shop door tinkles while people in pretty scarves and
pea coats and
black-rimmed glasses
with fingerless gloves
and nose piercings
and black tights covering skinny legs
hold hands and exchange knowing smiles and
enter behind me,
and cold, February ocean wind lifts the tips of my hair.

I want to taste it--those few minutes of isolated reflection. It'd be like meditation beneath an awning on a city street.

It's hobo time,
finding my fingerless gloves,
picking up his one black sock instead,
wondering what's going to happen.
I wish you didn't want her dead-
I know you care much more than you tell me.
Stupid, stereotypical hobo heart-have no place to go.

A car passes by.
Time to think about my past,
reminisce on the good and the bad,
the sickening tragedy.
I don't want to look behind me,
I can already envision her there,
you looking at her constantly,
wanting to be beside her.
While I'm out here with my hobo heart,
& I can't ask the question.
My fingers are cold.

Will my eyes deceive me if I take a glance,
Will I see the spark I saw between you two in the past?
Tell me, sock, why let the spark happen?
But sock doesn't listen: you can't control human nature, might as well find a different occupation.

Truth be told, I don't want to look.
I don't trust you.
I know when your heart is lying.
(You still want her, this is how it happens.)

My country is in chaos.
Seats of power are exchanged,
Unelected come-down
And steep fog of uncertainty.
The poor are painting their signs,
Others lock their doors.
Tear gas spills in streets
Far from suburbia,
On the shoulder of Europe.

I struggle to sleep.
Not for tragedy
But missed calls
And lack of shelter.
For you and your
Darkened corner,
Bleak winters-
The last time
I saw you in the sun.

Petroleum fills
The lung of the sea.
Swarms gather in luscious greed,
Footfalls over concrete:
The peace sign
White poppies
And paper cranes,
Stubborn **** in the rock,
The busker with fingerless gloves;
The nightclub spilling over
Into violence.

I strain my eyes,
Not in tears
But in chemicals
And lack of vitality.
For you and your
Elusive path through life,
Over-complicated strides.
Simple, temporary medicine

That is the comfort
And not the cure.

The stars blot out,
One by one.
Each neon skylight
Fractures the night
In pink clouds.
Flowers die over the railings
Where they could not
Save his life.

I contain my breath,
Not in calm
But poisoned blood
And lack of air.
I can barely breathe
Without you here.

My country is in chaos.
Earth spins in a slow disease.
Still all I can think of is you-
Whether you are thinking of me.

rainbow hand dance fingerless; you child of
erudite bearing archaic
on slippery shoulder
cry's the saffron
star, as the day makes a frail swipe at nights skirt
envelops the granite teeth sifting
cosmic ash drifiting
in from a chronic
melodically surfing the gossamer
plait of that
milkiest

                                  
                                  
                        
                              
                                                            alone's

I want to know your mother's maiden name and
The feel of my palms on your skin
And the taste of you
And know what your breaths against the back of my neck are.
I want your hand in my hand and to know the length that you prefer your fingernails at
I want
I want
I want.
I want to know what your eyelids feel like against your eyeballs and
How the blood in your heart works, feel it through your skin
I want to know every person you have ever touched
And their faces,
And the way your skin feels on their skin,
That friend of a friend that you shook hands with ten years ago in a Tuesday morning in September an it was cold out, so you were wearing fingerless gloves, and they'd forgotten their gloves on a bus three days ago and so their hands were bare and your fingertips just brushed their wrist -
I want that.
I want you in the morning, at the kitchen table, sleep-missed an bleary-eyed
And I want to know what you eat for breakfast and if you love bacon
Or if you're not that bothered
And I want to know
Who you were with last New Years
And the New Years before that
And every present you've ever received for Christmas
And every person you've kissed.
I want you to know my thoughts
And I want to know yours
And I want you.

I’m ready for fall.
I’m ready for
My leather jacket,
which I wear like a second skin;
My fingerless gloves,
somehow both practical and not;
My trusty boots, clomping fearlessly through any weather;
Flannel every day, a timeless pattern;
A bitter breeze balanced by a lemon sun to make the perfect temperature.
I’m ready to watch the leaves turn to flames and dance through the neighborhoods,
I’m ready to smell the cider and pumpkin in every store.
I’m ready to start planning a disguise, to hide from the Hallow’s spirits.

I’m ready for fall,
the best season of all.

We buzzed the periphery on plastic,
moved in and out of the shadows
spending nickels on the corner jesters,
who stroked their banjos with fingerless gloves.

Their cracked fingertips were stained yellow,
mouths displayed racks of missing teeth,
snake eyes winked under reptilian lids
while blessings spewed forth.

I looked at the leader
who sang like Lennon
and wondered,
man what are you doing here
reincarnated.

You cut my fingers off
One by one, by one, by one
Till my hands were left
with nothing to hold
The moment you left
A dull embrace
Searching for relief at arms length
Trying to grasp clarity fingerless

I.
White’s imprisoned gray.
A black sole subdues
one red glove with a crunch.
There it will pause, fingerless
until the first thaw.

II.
The sun's amber frown of diminished light
slides down black branches
a blundered slight,
but when it hits the ground, it rides
wonders of uninterrupted white.

III.
Steamy columns of warmth
slip through the crack,
pawed open by blue purrs from his white cat—
a tonic wash, to welcome.
slush-slicked, black boots back

IV.
Nuzzled, from the muzzling of a drowsy-
days-long muslin wrap, brown earth bursts
through what white patchwork's left, to cure
her forbidden tramplers with a slurpy
and black-mouthed, aubade kiss.

V.
Winter’s white makes shallow breaths,
and exhausted she coughs black
complaints about the crushed
green of popped-down bottles,
a cellophane orange cat with a close hold
on his shorted stock of shock-
yellow crumbs, and the assorted other
man-made matter mocking
her color, but never her,
wherever they stay.

Tongueless
Breathless
Restless
In this
Lightless
Nightless day

There's numbness.
Fingerless,
Stifling coughing
Ageless, noiseless crying

Witless, Senseless
.Lost.
But not for
Lack of trying.

Listless.
Falling.
Deeply Sightless
Devoutly faithless
Evenly devoid
And purely dying.
For wet whimpers
Through thickest walls.

There is something fresh and poetic,
With a blind man eating his walking stick.

Standing at a bus stop on a thirty degree day,
Wrinkled face, open mouth, hair of gray.

Dark sunglasses, fingerless gloves,
worn-out shoes, and that coat he loves,

Just eating his walking stick,
And I drive by, just that quick.

New Pompeii clasps the old
in a fingerless glove of
tourist gold. A grubby
British penny is grinning from
the rabblement of dust. In the
West it's all the same. A
compendium of histories fill the
Seine, the Thames back home's
a rotted filed-away old thing.
And I am bound upon the cascade
of the Atlantic waves - no matter.
What's here is here - and here I am.