Blackred blood creeps through my veins
Drawn by the blackred rose it crawls down my hand
                                                                                             my back
hardened with work
no longer feels the weight
nor the path which slithers down my spine

ivories that are made of letters
grey skin, blackred hair, word babies
gigantic mirror, blackly glowing
psychedelic nature like 1968

apartment in the projects
hallways full of dust and spiders
uncle is smoking the daylight away
his walls covered with bulletholes

red and tired eyes, no smiling
uncle's wife killed in a car crash
dead goons are torturing him now
the memory of her dead body, stuck

past encounters like smoke in the air
red frost covers uncle's body, glaciers
a button to turn back time, fantasies
melting hours for god's sacrifices

if kisses are green and bodies verdantly exact in sameness
   let my hands be two birds glorifying the waters in the slopes
of fingers,  
  
if song is but undeath and the rise and fall the unalphabeted siren
      of the morning,

       such loose wind swaying over her silently as loincloths
   over blackred roses,  easily it breaks like a finger of a shadow
     whirling gently through opened windows in candid moonlight

but  if surely does your going signal the dawn but no birds
   wreathing the trees and no gardens inherit garlands,

  what shall then be two birds over waters but a single stride
      of sorrow and whose temporal flights disdain centrifugal faces
of waiting; measured, coveted, photographed, love everywhere fading
    where silence maims sound and music topples over the moon
       the stars  the sleepless nights and  the stellified dust of the world
             that must be opened again

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a ***** heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a ***** heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

swaying over her
(silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

&the whole garden will bow)







Edward Estlin CUMMINGS

I feel so helpless in the backseat
Speed-complacent
car crash risk
Apparently, obviously,
worth taking.

Orange warm highway street lamps
Somniferous strobelights
melodic-hypnotic
through the blackred veil of my
Stubborn eyelids.

Highway streelights Like when I was twelve
and
Every Tuesday/Thursday
Mom picked me up from school
And drove me straight to
ACTS Acting Academy
In Northwest OKC.

How simple it was back then,
The only problem or
So it seemed
was
the 49 minute drive to and
Especially from.

...

Yet strangely so peaceful.


I had actual friends in acting class,
I waited all week to see them.

I practiced my monologue fifteen minutes everyday
Just to prove to dad
That I cared enough to justify the time and the money (mostly the money)
That mom had to spend
To drive me  tothe city twice a week
To see my friends
To see my friends from acting class.

How was I supposed to know
That those highway drives homes
9:15pm
Would be the most peaceful memory
I would ever remember to forget?
The last refuge of contentment
I would ever
to feel?

How was I supposed to know
How much worse it'd get?

Yet even then, age twelve,
Even then
all we thought of it was a burden.
Driving there and back
There and back
There and back

...

And of course mom felt that way, too.
Tired from long days of home health.
Most of that job was just driving somewhere
And somewhere else.
Yet eventually
Tacitly
Under the subtle strobeof orange warn highway street lights
She found herself more at home in that car
Than anywhere else in her limited bounds.

Slowly she found herself
speaking candidly
for once
To finally someone who would listen
Even if sadly it had to be
Her twelve year old son
Driving to the city.

Equal parts proud and deeply disturbed
At the realization that I was her best friend
She became mine, too.

Sometimes she spent that whole drive there
Having the same time ten minute conversation
Five times over
To Meema in the nursing home
(How sad vascular dementia must be)

And then there was driving home.

I was tired.
I fell asleep with
my iPod headphones
Blaring awful screamo melodrama.

Driving home she had only her thoughts.
How strange I now imagine she must have felt.
Orange warm streetlamp hypnosis
Freedom.

How many decades had she gone without those thoughts?
How many years had she gone to the grocery store after work?
How long had that credit card debt been compounding?
How long had she been asleep? -- Ambien sleep--years without a dream?

How many loops to that class
That pre-teen California pilot season prep class
Did she have to make
Until she
Finally
Had a thought
of her own?

I feel so helpless in the backseat.
All those lessons I learned
And forgot
And remembered
And tried so hard to forget again
In that Oklahoma City acting class
At twelve years old
Before it all got worse
Before it eventually got comparatively better again

Helpless even more now that I realize
That I've spent the last decade plus
Trying so hard to forget
How peacefully pretragic
Those Tuesday, Thursday twelve year old nights
Actually were.

Orange warm highway street lights
tracing by
Driving home tired.

I was twelve
learning how to be kind of happy

She was 45
Also learning
How to be kind of happy

As the highway street lights traced by
And we were both so desperate to be home
Yet also happy not
To be home yet.