Dump: A Commissioned Poem

Someone commissioned me to write a poem about the word, dump.  Not a pretty word, but a workingman's word, full of possibilities and mystifications.  Gratefully accepted.

so many, endlessly endless.
bringing paper, cans, compacted
words,
all in need of special disposal,
special handling,
individuation of caring.

I split myself into multiple personas.
blue, green and some other color,
divine myself into receptacles for the sounds
you write, that must be read aloud, slowly,
in order to properly, allocate,
to dispose,
of.

sustainability.
not the planet,
something smaller,
more
man-ageable,
man-agreeable.

your verse!
you in verse is multidimensional,
yet unified,
one theme,
single answer to a questioned couched
a thousand different ways,
a thousand different poem titles!

how can I sustain myself?

sustain
— verb (used with object)
to support, hold, or bear up from below; bear the weight of, as a structure.
to bear (a burden, charge, etc.).
to undergo, experience, or suffer (injury, loss, etc.); endure without giving way or yielding.
to keep (a person, the mind, the spirits, etc.) from giving way, as under trial or affliction.
to keep up or keep going, as an action or process: to sustain a conversation.
to supply with food, drink, and other necessities of life.
to provide for by furnishing means or funds.
to support (a cause or the like) by aid or approval.
to uphold as valid, just, or correct, as a claim or the person making it

you are in the dictionary,
did you know that?

now I will answer in a free man's verse,
written without hesitation but with plenty of
tears and tissues
and rememberings of his own
wasted days, major successes,
bathtub ships,
righted
and passengers saved.

Words written in a single breath,
no exhalation just simple purity,
best wishes that any man can have,
if daring, he reaches inside and,
rips himself open,
saying it's ok, and meaning it,.

so here I am
standing looking you in the eye,
sitting with both arms draped
over your body,
saying
dump,
dump it all on me.

Cause I got a billion words that rhyme with
comfort.
Bring me the past and the future uncertain.

I already told you
never read a poem I did not like.

got slots for cans paper and compost,
got slots for fear, heartache and a big ole wide one for
pain.

got a heart shaped dump
that never closes.

The city council complains,
your name ain't Moses,
you are a city boy,
why you hanging in the wilderness for forty more,
didn't you do your time?
ex wife that brutalized your soul.
two sons who barely speak to you.
let someone else take over,
and I smile saying exactly,
I got experience,
I got Kleenex,
don't know nobody else better
Boy Scout
Be Prepared.

See,
even you can dump on me
effortlessly.

So.
ask not what you will bring.
cause I got an opening for anything you can
dump,
and land fill of me that has so much space,
billions of acres and neurons that will lay fallow,
until your poems, plaints, sailings and wailings
fill them.

so that is my poem,
dump,
even,
I like it.

May even dump some of mine on someone
like you.
after all
who in this world cannot use some
sustaining.

It was on a Tuesday—
empty-handed tree branches cringing beneath the
heaviness of a premature spring wind, and trying (failing) to
sprout fistfuls of leaf-paper poetry—proof to the world (and to themselves)
of something to say.

It was the season of in-between
and she was a letter scrawled by rememberings (and regrets),
unread and tucked into the envelope of an apathetic world. A girl
(a woman) left to linger and to steep in tea cups full of the steaming winter
and of loneliness.

And she walked through leftover
currents of wilted autumn leaves, now crumpled and disposed
onto the floor of a wintery Tuesday like (insufficient) pages, never to
be read. They lifted in the breeze to watch her and without really wanting to,
she understood.

For she was cringing, too,
beneath the (too-bright) light of a February sun that demanded
competence. She searched for it with frantic hands and found only
fistfuls of afraid and pockets full of words collected on heart-floors like
wilted autumn leaves.

Line them up like candle sticks
There, in every empty frame
Quiet, aligned, they greet me home
No two ones the same.

I came in from the bitterness
They fought their way on through
Blades and pines, the wilderness
More lines, yes, they speak too.

Are they notes of senselessness
That speak of wintry boyish grief?
Clearly, when the tears are long
The lead is ever brief.

I came to cry the voiceless song
Of terrors vague, but bleak
To beat my breast in poems plain
Intended hugeness, meek.

Dusted ‘long the desk far edge
The shavings are as ****** things
The grey won’t bulk, only defend
Both placate my rememberings.

Get these bards out from my head
The depth into, foolishly repenned
Confirmed in life as substanceless
--One to the window again.

Failed pillars of the balm I sought
Look there! The thoughts I had to lame
Cut from sweet youth, dumb and aloud
Deaths all lying silent, in vain.

Those faint shades of negate-gone
Drop down from the general tear
Left to cradle th’abundant soul
In silent tongues, songs left to bear.

Her fingertips tease the seams of the tattered trunk,
Like a recovered remnant of the Titanic,
Rotting velvet lid cap,
Torn paper liner,
Tilting, listless shelves.
The scent of two centuries of existing
Slowly seeping into her sympathetic senses,
The smell sparking a myriad of imaginings;
Like a menagerie of nostalgic rememberings
A kaleidoscope of irreconcilable memories,
The trunk tells many bold and treacherous tales;
She lets the stories play out in her mind
As she runs her hands across the cracked leather,
Visualizing the hand driven rivets of the trim,
Fingers stopping ever so slightly to pause on the cool steel,
The circular clasps and the rusty, broken locks.
She suddenly smells the salty sea air of the helm of a steam ship,
She sees a silk handkerchief with a lipstick print,
Seductively scented with her own blend of oil of lilac and rose water,
Quietly clutched with subconscious desperation
In the front pants pocket of his threadbare blue jeans.
A bouquet of flower wilts in a vase,
It adds a semblance of mourning
To amplify the loneliness of the scene,
The candles and the curtains drawn low in her cold, dreary cabin
She leans, shuddering, crying over the side of the trunk,
Red rouge making red rivers of silent tears
That run rampant down trembling, rose coloured cheeks,
She lifts the tin of his aftershave,
Breathes him in one more time before going to bed.
The gentle rocking of the ships stern lulls her to sleep.
And with a sigh,
The girl is sleeping too,
A gentle smile playing on her lips,
Her limp wrist still reaching for another story from the magic steam trunk that lies open
In the barest corner of her room.

Oh those dixie paper cup
Forgotten childhood love
Dead dead heart
Dead dead soul above
Wake up deary, now
Story book picture bow
A great job done
Illegal fun
Before word gets out

Someone said wake up
Someone said get out
Mirror dreams and fever parts
Damp rememberings
Softly summer breeze
With lilac smell
Feeding bees

He lies atop her in the darkness
Passion leaves them beautiful, breathless
A bead of sweat falls from his brow
Following the curve of her arm
Reflecting the light from down the hall
The sparkling droplet catches her eye, she sighs
Bodies entwined, a Lord & his Lady,
Rememberings of a shakespearean dream
Timeless sonnets spun from a golden spire
Their love is a requiem to other worlds
A lost age, all but forgotten
The blood roils in her veins, curling her toes
She meets his gaze and feels her pulse begin to rise
A smile playing on her lips, hand caressing his cheek,
Enflamed by the magic of their desire
They fly on waxen wings
Ever closer toward the heat
Unfettered by proximity
Two hearts make one
Bright and burning like the Sun