Her silver watch glints at me
So smugly, and cherry red bracelets
Shake from the proximity to
Those hands. Hands that move
Like jack rabbits on hot
Asphalt, like bubbles popping
In grease: she's snapping those
Sticks up and down, in and out.
Wrists and fingers are all the
Rhythm and rhyme I need.
She keeps time effortlessly.
The snap, the tap, the beat
Deep-seated in her soul, the music
Buzzing in her unhearing ears
Swallows me whole. I'm just
A shell caught in the tide
Of her swells and the trough
Bottoms out when she
Stops, slamming her hand to make the
Steel rim POP. Like a witch-
Doctor she casts a spell and
Though now she is gone,
I am bound still.

We were June's children:
Lazing in our cottages
Of restful diversions,
Sleeping through sticky days.
We were the youth of July:
Strong-backed and surly,
Unafraid and eager.
We pined for a challenge.
Stiff-lipped and sunburnt,
Now we are August's boys:
Wet-mouthed and grass dewed,
We dance naked in the wheatfields.
We slide amongst the chaff.
Our strong backs brace
Against heavy furnace skies,
And we look to September
With summer in our eyes.

Tonight is not a writing night.
I know this because I am not
Straining, stressing, or
Leaping for words. No,
I am sleeping in words,
So many, I could kick through them
Like leaves.
This is not a writing night.
The words are there but my soul
Cannot be restrained, filtered or
Constrained by meter or rhythm
Or rhyme.
My heart refuses to pour itself
Onto the page, refuses to tell me
Something I already know, and
Something I dearly want to know again.
No, no.
I can only whine and
Stamp my foot. I am a child,
A twisted Oliver Twist.
While I hold my empty cup,
I beg myself for one more sweet
Drop, one sip, one swallow,
Or perhaps
A selfish ocean to drown in.

I heard a woman today
Through her subtitles.
She was on a documentary
About the dangers of
Holy conflict.

She said to the world,
Eyes storming with warning paleness,
"If they" the selfish, unholy Palestines,
"Had taken my son,
I would have destroyed the world."
She was as old as my
(Frailer, softer)
grandmother.
(Who has never heard a gunshot
Or seen a temple burning
Or beheld a crushed glass message
On a cold German night.)

On an old porch she sat,
Wrapped in moth-worn
Fabric thinner than my shirt
Without a shiver of fear
Or doubt,
And stated this cold fact.
She would have destroyed the world.

Later in the thinly white day
Her son visits her, bringing cigarettes.
"For later," he insists, but
She makes use of one immediately,
Gripping with the firmness of
A woman who needs nothing more
Than a son and a cigarette.

His face and the tip light at the same time.
The fire (in his eyes) burns discordantly.
"You know I don't like the
Smell of your cigarettes."
He snatches it from her
And sends it to a dusty grave with his heel.

Ungrateful *******!
I was standing now,
Shouting him down through my
Emotionless flat-screen television.
A thousand miles away
And every heartbeat breaking with
That worn and aged face
That betrayed nothing.

What pain must contempt be
From one who is in her eyes
More precious than the world?
The stupid, unthinking, unwitting
Cruelty of it strangles me.

But then she smiles with knowing eyes,
And waits a few more heartbeats than I can bear,
To say,
"Just one more?"
The worthless (world-worthy?) son,
Prideful and ashamed,
Scratches his temple and
Shakes his head.
"No," he says,

And hands her another.

One of these summer-drenched days
I'm gonna think up a new world,
Pack up my thoughts,
And take up residence in a dream.

I'll choose a place where
Words are like water,
Women are like daggers,
And men cling tighter than spanish moss.

There I'll settle, beneath cobblestones,
Forever tinkering away in my mind:
Greasing the gears to make the dream
Smooth, like a river stone.

"But he loves you!"
She counters with this.
"Remember when he drove
So far in that ***** car,
With no a/c to see you on
Father's Day?"

I did not send him far away;
He sent himself.
If he has to drive the distance
From his hermitage to my home
It is no service to me.

And I remember - in more
Recent times - I could not
Buy dinner, and he bragged
About his new volvo.
Mother's had no "a/c" for
Three years and he bought you,

His tidy little family, one of those
Sturdy residences in Tennessee.
Meanwhile, my patience is
Cracking and peeling, not

Unlike the century-old walls
Of Mother's Alabama house.
I sleep under worry and eat
Only the taste of my mouth,

While you are safe and loved
In his good graces. Do not try
To teach me the value of
His company. I sought it once,

And snapped back in pain.
I see the trap, I will not fall again.
Let him have his fun with you,
And leave me in peace. Come back

When he has bitten your soft hands
And left you naked in the October wind.

The language of poems is foreign:
Alien and elegant to my ears.
I cannot speak it, (not fluently)
But rather spit out phrases,
Turns, and words accumulated
Through the years. Those simple things
That please a dear friend
And come without calling.