~for R~*

She dances. In soft light. The sun is slatted
Always slatted. With her words. She has them all.
She is playing. Plastering. Words like ceiling.
All over the walls, words like tomorrow. She has words
on her arms. Handfuls of words. Spilling out of fists.
Words like flutter. Her dress has one string
dangling with her dancing. Dangling with words like billow.
Billow was hanging. She puts words on her face. Milk is one. Ce-les-ti-al is another.
Stepping on words. They stick to her feet. Shadows of them
drizzle about. Wafting down. A word like kite. She is lost.
In them. Does not hear. Footsteps. The door yawns.
Less footsteps. The only sound is the crack of skin against skin. Words fall
from everything. They curl up. Like worms. After rain.
The room shakes. The words claw. Again. Again. The words fall.
Again- again- again. Some of the words die. Some hang on.
Words like tomorrow. Words like milk.

~for my father~*

I.

My neighbor Dave
had a hose in his hand,
standard garden, green,
almost like a movie.

His driveway was bright black
the white rocks of our backyard
meant something, standing so close.

Always moving so fast toward another
direction. The memory of the flowers
at sunset, when I learned what the word
“bloom” meant. It wasn’t real.

We used the hose to freeze water
over the rocks in the winter.
This was our sliding,
our skitting into older.

That Christmas
all I wanted was a bicycle.
The house gave up no secrets.
Closer and closer to Christmas,
I found so many presents.
I never found the bicycle.

This was how to measure love

I went to bed so angry that year,
lost in thoughts of running
to a world of backyard ice and bicycles.

In the morning when I saw it,
they confessed Dave’s involvement
He had hidden the bicycle.
Dave’s smile became
something else after that.

I learned to ride slowly,
tumbled down a hill
in blood and tears.
My father carried me home
and our bikes. I’ve never known
how he did it.


II.

Years later and later still.
I don’t know what happened
to that bicycle. It was black
fading easily.

Even though I likely lost it
in the first eviction,
or maybe the second,
the third. I don’t think I left it
after the fire. Maybe I still dream of it.

Later still. I stopped speaking
to my father. It was both our faults.
We both blamed someone
else for three years.

When I saw him again
he was fatherly. Unusual.
He wanted to make sure I was okay.
He wanted to make sure I had everything
I needed. I told him I needed
food and a bicycle. We went out
to get these together. He smiled.

In the dreams,
People come with whips
in pickup trucks. They carry
My childhood away
like a so-frightened horse.
In the dreams,

this time, the bicycle was red.
I don’t think of him when I ride it.
I hardly think of him.

This is how you measure love.

Those were the dreams where we ride off
childhood friends and I.
We ride off to where it is red, blooming red.

“Who has set my bed elsewhere? Hard would it be for one, though never so skilled, unless a god himself should come and easily by his will set it in another place. But of men there is no mortal that lives, be he never so young and strong, who could easily pry it from its place, for a great token is wrought in the fashioned bed, and it was I that built it and none other.”

                  The Odyssey, Homer, Translation by Robert Fagels (XXIII.182-190)*

You and I built a bed-frame, for me to sleep alone.
a frame to represent what we could do,
to humble us, to put us back together.
a bed to lift me off the ground.

I collected tools, arranged parts. Convinced myself
not to touch you. You read Swedish directions.
We tried to talk over the whirring of electric
screwdrivers, over the clacking of plastic panels.

Standing in the hollow bed-frame with you.
I feel like we should sail off together. Forget
the Christmas musical, refuse telephone bills.
Later, the night falls on me, sinking into nowhere.

Three people sit in a small bedroom gathered around an electric space heater. It is blizzarding outside and the house they are in is old and drafty. The first person is named Matthew. Much of his life has been spent following wishes of others. Right now is when he is starting to make up his mind about his own beliefs. He loves defending them; he loves discovering he has been wrong all along. The second person is Ryan. He is extremely intelligent, but reluctant to accept his own conclusions. He has come to a sure outcome, but it depresses him and he is hoping someone will come along and prove him wrong. The third person is me. I want to prove that God exists right there in that room. I get excited, because it feels like I have proven it, but in reality I only prove it to myself. The discussion dissolves in laughter. Matt is left uncertain, Ryan is left with science, and I am left with God.

House. Blizzard.
Three three three
friends.
Three friends.
That’s what’s in the house.
Electric
heater. An electric heater.
That’s what they huddle around.
A person. Matt.
A person. Still Matt.
A person Ryan.
Two persons.
Three friends.
Me. I’m there.
Me. God, free-will.
They’re there.
Hard determinism?
God. That is what’s said.
Blizzarded on. Nothing tomorrow.
Talk on three friends. Logical.
We cement ourselves in.
There is more than us in the room.
That’s the conclusion. Logical conclusion.

I steal the blanket on warm or cold nights with no regrets.
I’m a good kisser, but probably much worse in bed than
I believe. I wish you would believe in God. Stranger,
the air pressure is lower next to skyscrapers. When you leap
off, the building ***** you back and slams your body
against it. Again and again. My grandfather’s safe stands hidden,
built into an end-table at my brothers house. I have always wanted
to open it. A friend I once loved wants to swim naked with me
in three of the five great lakes. I want to take her down the west coast
on a motorcycle. If I could afford it, I would only wear underwear
made from bamboo plants. Both soft and eco-friendly. Green ones.
In 2004, I stopped talking to a girl I kissed. Second kiss. The
last time I saw her was during a fire-drill on Halloween.
She was wearing a cat-costume. Black. Please come find me.
We danced when younger. My legs swung wildly
beneath my knees. The scuffs on my shoes always remind me.
There is a photograph in my mother’s house of me flying
through the air on a skateboard. My mother was so scared
and proud in those moments. We still don’t get along.
I am not strong enough to tie my feet to science and jump.
In the moments of falling, I need God. I know I would fall
too fast to cross myself. The truth is, at the end of the night,
I am always afraid. I hold the pillow at different angles to feel better.
I make different shapes. Some nights I don’t sleep at all.

In our world
information expands exponentially
like a dazzle of zebras
galloping at you.

In theirs the information
is manageable, laughable.
They only know enough
to work, pray, eat,
and avoid the bodies.

They can balance a water jug
on almost every part of the body.
They do not get anxious as children
Totter footfall over footfall
on the dirt roads. They are explorers.

We will never know the smell
of hot gunfire, or feel,
among the sweat,
the silence punctuated
by dopplering bombs.

But it’s in our lives too,
neatly tucked away
in a textbook somewhere,
or touching a poem
that you once loved.