Why did I do that?

Ego.  Lust.  Mystery.  Opportunity.
The lure of something new and untapped;
a scent unregistered, voice un-memorized;
inside jokes yet to be born.

Such a heady dervish dancing,
spinning, surrounding all that tiny life
I perceived as quite the opposite;
set in motion not so much by

the haunted eyes of the widow lady—
weaving once again well-worn epics
of her-story for an adoring audience,
luridly exploiting tragedy
for various personal gains—

but maybe by the way she stroked
that beer bottle while she spoke?

Without doubt, there were
other factors, but you were
never one of them.

I plead stupid.
Vain.
Shallow.
Self-absorbed.
Short-sighted.
Ridiculous.
­Unforgiveable.
Twenty-one.

For many years
I claimed, “If I make my mistakes
big enough I just might learn something”.

When I learned
there are no mistakes, recognized
my arrogance, gave up
to the universe, threw up
my hands and succumbed to the ride,
embracing my own sky...
all those times I’d thought of you
turned into stars raining
like tears of brilliant joy onto a black canvas,
formed overlapping constellations, and shone
like a *******.

Stars to wish on, stars
to navigate by, stars
to name on a starry night,
stars to twist into animal shapes
like a clown with long balloons—
and all those stars,
and there are more
than I can count—
settled forever in my heart
and cannot be dislodged.

Here I Iay on my virtual back,
atop my personal Alaska
dream mountain, on a summer
night deep as sin;
imagining you
laying beside me,
pointing out the brightest ones,
recounting the stories I’ve forgotten;
all those connections to you
twinkling overhead—
and I savor the
blessing of your
big bang smile

a symphony orchestra.
there is a thunderstorm,
they are playing a Wagner overture
and the people leave their seats under the trees
and run inside to the pavilion
the women giggling, the men pretending calm,
wet cigarettes being thrown away,
Wagner plays on, and then they are all under the
pavilion. the birds even come in from the trees
and enter the pavilion and then it is the Hungarian
Rhapsody #2 by Lizst, and it still rains, but look,
one man sits alone in the rain
listening. the audience notices him. they turn
and look. the orchestra goes about its
business. the man sits in the night in the rain,
listening. there is something wrong with him,
isn't there?
he came to hear the
music.

that’s what I want to do

forget this minuet around  
     over     through
situations/words/
phantom
blink of tears

just 2 foot lengths
spreading wide
for a 12 pound maul/
random tangle trap of hair
for beads of honest sweat

excluding our palms,
our skins
are too tough.
The answer—
The balm?

Split wood:
ash, maple, pine, cedar,
elm, hickory, apple
    
heave   grunt   slam   crack   silence

Work with me/
                  with me/
aim for the perimeter
and the heart will break open
                   smooth      clean
            still full of life
and ready to burn

We are rain, we are tears;
we're the condensation
on your beer mug.

And we form,
and fall,
and feel forgotten
some times.

From heaven, to earth,
and back again,
we take trillions of tiny journeys—
assemble in sheets,
hover in mists/
trickle, splatter, pelt without mercy/
quietly collect and freeze/
loud as the sea, softer than the whisper
of death—easy to deflect and shatter,
with power to carve canyons.

From shoulders we
vault to elbows,
dance down arms,
scurry between legs,
squish between toes,
hurry down the drain
linger on linoleum
when you pad away
from the shower,
trailing steam down
a sweaty hallway—

to where he lays motionless,
breathing sunny
solstice dust
in a closet-sized room.

“Better”?

“Oh, much.  And thanks for the towel, too”.
 
                                                         ­                II.

Everything about you was flat.

I knew your hair was blonde
but also something else—
not dishwater
or *****
or even unclean—
“flat” was the only word that fit.

Flat as your face,
your chest,
the bottoms of your shoes,
and not a whole lot less scarred.

Flat as your eyes—
such eyes as I’d never seen;
not always awake—
hunting/wanting/sharp
like a scavenger’s
yet full of blind spots,
placed there by the drug
to impede self-perception—
and wantonly green.

I knew only your name.
You hung with Jim, haunting Mother’s—
just two junkies bumming change.
I was amazed you managed to survive.

House rule was
never trust a ******,
but home alone,
in too much pain to care,
I let you take a shower,
borrow my towel.

We compared spinal surgeries;
vinyl siding on childhood homes;
monsters and movies;
fruits we didn’t like;

a nod to new music/
put on your red shoes and dance the blues

then places we’d go
when our ship came in;
the greasiness of the sun outside;
the final indignity of death—
anything but our lives just then.

From summer cotton to suddenly nothing—
no memory of how or why.
You spurned my offer
of a cigarette after
with a gesture so shy

and self-conscious
I felt myself growing
suspicious—then alarmed, confused,
and finally, amused
at my own lack of observation.

You weren’t hiding anything.
You just didn’t want
me to see you
as begging.

Grim sonnets fraught with fraud and trauma stuff
her notebooks—steamy, bitter memories
of finished romance, rarely with enough
sweet lip syrup—ripe with frivolities,
important drama, broad license.  She needs
an audience like green things need daylight.
I’m the sun to her bright lily.  She reads
with fierce emotion—I squeeze my arms tight
around me, choke a chuckle—she pretends
I’m just amused at her soul-piercing style.
So much to ask, this ritual she tends
like a garden?  I feign attention while

she rails at love and fate, lips pursed or drawn—
sarcastic, crushed, dismayed her youth is gone.

that’s what I want to do

forget this minuet around  
     over     through
situations/words/
phantom
blink of tears

just 2 foot lengths
spreading wide
for a 12 pound maul/
random tangle trap of hair
for beads of honest sweat

excluding our palms,
our skins
are too tough.
The answer—
The balm?

Split wood:
ash, maple, pine, cedar,
elm, hickory, apple
    
heave   grunt   slam   crack   silence

Work with me/
                  with me/
aim for the perimeter
and the heart will break open
                   smooth      clean
            still full of life
and ready to burn

“Those who do not want to imitate anything,
produce nothing”.  Salvador Dali -- Dali on Dali

Dreamrise.

The sliced steep slopes of those cliffs could be anywhere--say, Yosemite--buttered by
the same sun, not battered by these calm seas, or bothered
by melting timepieces draped about the landscape.

Why does the artist’s head melt, deconstruct, feather into foreground loam— teeth, tongue,
lips fading nearly without notice, nose pillowed on his own ear?

Is there a reason a single housefly struggles against sky-blue stickiness--imperiled heroine
awaiting the locomotive crush of the sweeping minute hand--or why the bottom
of her golden prison melts in the sepia heat, its silver sisters hung limp
from a branch long dead, or laid carefully
as a blanket over the sleeping
focal face?

What of the copper watch, alone in original form, though a cluster of ants spews from its center
in lieu of hands?

The artist provides no answer, perhaps presuming the question sufficient.

That dead tree—
the only thing vertical, unless you stand beneath the cliffs;
the only thing anchored, unless you allow the cliffs;
the only thing obviously dead, unless those buttered cliffs are someone’s skin—
that tree is Watcher and Scribe, the Presence of the World, and at its base
a face is embedded, of some Bosch-spawned horror, gaze trained beyond
borders, back to the Middle Ages, or maybe on its own shadow.

Straight lines are few enough to count.  The horizon is one, or four, depending on how you tally.
Plain plank painted every hue of blue on the canvas numbers ten—again, depending—could be seven.
And the platform: four, or six?  Are these tricks of the eye or the mind—or math?  By the magic
of perfect draughtsmanship it works out to just the right number.

Note the placement of pebbles—gold right, gray left—for each side of the brain, he dreams; for balance,
for focus, for scale and distortion, placed with precision to escape first notice, the better to manipulate
mind and eye to see what isn’t there:
                                                          ­          the dark,
                                                           ­                          the void,
                                                           ­                                          this universe collapsing,
                                             ­                                                                 ­                                     howling open emptiness,
no stars, no cliffs, no clocks
wormhole of sleep which draws all from there to here,
bloated, belligerent Babylon of black consumes the bottom corner, far removed from ants,
beckoning the dreamer homeward--or Hellward?

In every direction lies fear or fulfillment,
each boundary spreads wide to possibility,
from this static domain where no breeze exists
to mar the surface of an ocean
so vast.