Sweet Oriental Angels

with your cloth-thread harps

play your song on dizi flute and

mandolin echo soft

in the foreground

to the cruel industrial drum

of a new world.

This palace orchestra scrawled on scriptures

now a specter of labors

and dawns coated in smog.

Love,

this rapture

we sing

with lips delicately

bound.

Cardinal mornings

make the bathroom towels reek

less of Hospital cots

and rubber gloves,

the feeling of transparency

is less alone

and tangible.

Sweet elation

with hands gingerly

caught.

Ferocious is

this beating heart

in Passion’s hold,

the cell with comforting pads

clear of hell,

Love is

a cruelly tortoise reclamation,

and I assume it’s willing patient.

Cut, *******.

Scar, Australia form

on lower thigh.

Dent, puncture

in thumb.

Bruise

on

leg.

Where did you come from?

My body remembers

more than my mind.

Rejoice!
Joyce!
The girl killed in a tragic car accident
in 1973.
Picked up from the earth.
You were lifted tenderly
to a place
coveted by
forlorn corpses
that walk New York City
in their dry-cleaned business suits,
attending the ritualistic Sundays
in cross buildings.
While it soaks in,
while death is now the life
you live
there’s a
ship coming crewed
by all your favorite people you never knew.
Every missed connection,
lost crush,
pets passed away
they echo in song
to the Nursery shores
your bare feet freshly plant
on.
Joyce Wells,
Farewell!
You’re on to another road, now.
This revenant path
with more sudden turns than Lombard street
on clammy mornings.
However the incessant
afterlife treats you
it was nice to know you, Joyce Wells.
We’ll all miss you dearly.
You’re currently in a Morgue
at some cinder block hospital.
You’re currently on a viking ship
set for a frosty-tipped valley across the sea with
Molly, a stray cat your family adopted when you were three,
and Micheal Donahue, your first love.
While the world keeps spinning,
while your casket is buried.
While in 1974 it rains,
there’s an ease in knowing
that Joyce Wells would be
delighted to hear
that she was
freed.

I woke up at 4 that morning,

more specifically 3:46 but I like to round up,

makes me feel more awake that way.

I grabbed a book from my bedside,

read words of love

of death

of trying again

of mystery

of the mysteries of love

and trying again at love.

But also death, and dying.

Eventually I heard the light click on downstairs

and the creaking of shuffled sleepy steps

so I went hushed down the carpet staircase and didn’t say a word

as I lifted the kettle and felt it almost dry

and scarcely heated from two hours earlier. I preferred tea

because coffee was too strong in the mornings.

After that I left

to come back later

when the water was hot

and not getting any

hotter.

I looked down at my mug

and saw it stained with

a past warmth

which was now

a hollow

fireball sunk at the bottom

of the cup.

Upstairs I went back

to reading those

big mysterious

words of love

death

and dying.

We were still figuring it all out.

From the corner of my eye then

I noticed the sun creeping out on one corner of the world

and disappearing from another.

The traffic is busy in New York.
Relationships are beginning and ending.
It’s raining outside in December.
Somebody is contemplating suicide.
A child is born.
Old hotels are torn down to make room for new hotels.
The baby is a girl, she has green eyes.
An animal has killed another animal.
Its not cold enough to snow.
Another year is upon us.
I’m dying and you’re dying and we’re all dying.
The sun will set.
and come up again.
Flick up your blinds,
Good mourning!

We’re given love with the fear of heartbreak,

We’re given opportunity with the possibility of failure.

We’re given creativity and passion with the shadow of inadequacy,

We have summer with the promise of winter.

But that doesn’t mean we should stop altogether,

because the reality is our lives will be both tender and terrifying.

Balance is crucial to maintaining all good things.