"airframe" poems
On my sixteenth birthday,
my uncle gave me a balsa wood airplane,
or rather, the wood
that comes together to make one.
While I started out strong,
assembling most of the fuselage,
it would go unfinished
and stay a skeleton.
Most of its life
collected cobwebs.
My uncle drinks whiskey
in the pool at night.
I think of the airframe
still waiting to be put together,
waiting to fly
to the other side of this.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 10:04 PM UTC
I think of you
at the oddest times,
and the strangest places,
as if I were an air show pilot
with the stick pulled back
and the rudders set in place,
and within that ****** roar, and airframe shake
I notice that in my chest there beats a heart that aches.
Feb 3, 2011
Feb 3, 2011 at 8:41 PM UTC
Some miles were so long, it took whole years before we realized they were behind us.
I examined the maps you painted inside my airframe.
You were trying to tell me you were lost
and you didn’t want to be another midair collision.
Jennifer repaired me shortly
after I crash-landed in the starflowers.
Crashed it again in the snow,
outside Murfreesboro,
and she wasn’t there that time.
If I had told the people who made this thing I was going to be reckless
with it, they probably would have bought a snow leopard, or a horsehead just to keep the conversation going.
But when they went ahead and made this life happen,
they rushed thinking he was going to be a
college boy, a frat boy, an intelligent mass of cells,
who flew over the mountains instead of into them.
But what my parents got was a little ************
who stirred up anthills, and stood up nice girls
and poured gasoline on the make believers
to prove the flames were real.
This letter was taken out of one world
and hurled into the next, with you, theoretically.
I know that sunflowers make wonderful goodbyes and some airplanes crash
and typewriters hurt when they write back.
His airframe was created in 1991.
You should have known when you messed with the inside
it wouldn’t work the right way again.
I have had some things going on in my engine
that are not entirely fixable.
That is what makes us human. Our parts get better.
The problem is we turn gospels into information manuals.
And that is why I still end up at gasoline stations at 2 a.m.
searching for a bearing that says
“Follow me. I will take you where you will be happy.”
But we don’t get that, dear.
We get a paintbrush and a typewriter.
You told me I was wrong.
I told you
not to talk so loud.
Aug 30, 2015
Aug 30, 2015 at 2:32 AM UTC