Our steps echo inside the mist—
A foggy midnight on some suburban road.
We plod into the pale
Light of vapors hanging on the sheet of night.
In two hours on this road, not a single car
Has passed.  We are tensed, hunching
In anticipation of some visit, the hiss
Of rolling wheels on the pavement.
Its cool and the night is wet
With a thick mesh of mist.  
“Where are we going?” she asks us.
A small shape skips by, maybe a fox, edging the road;
It kills a mouse.  The fog drapes itself across
The pines, the hooked iron barrier, the weak orange
Blur of streetlights, and our black figures.
I slide pine needles out of her hair
And, as the thing leaves its **** to rot,
Wipe traces of blood from her collar.
The glossed yellow lines curve, unseen
Into more mist and the silhouettes of trees:
Writhing shapes against the inky
Background of night.  The three of us walking,
Wreathed in misty veils, like death-hoods.

The mine shaft’s gaping mouth
yawns like the throat of an old, useless god.
Gnats hover by the scattered rocks.
This is real not a set, or a scene,
a spit of dirt shot through the sluice, all things like
a picture cut to kiss my America expectation.

In the surrounding bush, tamaracks curve towards the clouds.
The clouds where, above the furry tips of conifers, cataracts
plummet down mountainwalls, and ask:
“afraid?” And I am, I am.  I fear the sheer
slopes of tough granite slashing the giant sky
in two; the hard-edged mountain face.  The expansive air.

And this split is brooding old and unknowable
tunneling briskly into the unfamiliar, bruising
Montana a grisly purple-red
when the sun swings underground
and shades the hot **** by the mine with cool night as
behind it, the mine appears to growl.

Are only the tools of the trade
To swinging ***** and easy Janes
Like these now attempting to muffle their shouts
In the purple suburban evening where God knows
Only all the neighbors are striving to listen;
A couple of loveless friends *******
Each other out of breath and full of big plans—

And now I’m sure that we can,
Just listen to her moan!
A man once told me I’ve got to give it to her
To stick a son in there.
I might ask, but there’s no need now to beg
Because we deserve it too much.
Our dry spell is all wet tonight;
Are those the cries of a baby I hear,
Or our bedsprings squeaking?—

It only hurts a little when he gets this excited
But instances are excusable
*** folds in memory
And ****** success caresses forms into forms
I know she will be beautiful
Her beauty will come to her as easily as it passed me by
I am not sad, neither
And the sweat, his sweat drips from his naked chin onto mine—

I tell mom and dad that’s fine,
I want another brother.
They make noises in their room
Which are so loud they keep me awake.
So they decided to make them after dinner,
When I am trying to read.
Sometimes I listen to them very carefully, but
Then I have nightmares of
Them hurting each other.
They are making noises now;
Something not good is happening.

They were more in love now
Than they had ever been before.

Lying in a small, yellow raft,
The sun lit them for 20 hours of the day.

Small fragments of floes drifted past;
With his pen-knife he carved
Ice flowers of them for her.

At night, the sky flushed ultramarine to match the water.
She would make a pillow of his shoulder
And they slept warm enough, blanketless.

They didn’t do much on their raft
Because there wasn’t much to do—

Around them, the sea was chill-blue
And they loved each mother more.

Months before, when they brought the cruise tickets,
It had been the clean aesthetic of the arctic
And the words ‘Secret Norway’ that won them over.

No, they didn’t want to uncover Norway’s secret;
They wanted to become a part of it, a final
“Great escape” into their dying years.

The cruise ship went under, they thought,
As if by choice into black-water oblivion.

A casual dive through the glassed-over surface.
A few inflated yellow rafts.

Of course, it was difficult for them, to look
On as that stranger’s blue hand stretched for their raft.
‘This is our great escape,’ they both were thinking.

Was it envy they felt when he let go?
It doesn’t matter. They, too, planned
To slip into that same murk at some point.

But for now, they would be in love.
He paddled them through the iceberg drifts and

They fell asleep at night, curled one next to the other,
To the measured sounds of melting glacial drip.

The Gopher was born
Underground.  He spent so much
Of his life there.  His eyes never adjusted
To the lack of light, he simply
Tunneled in the dark, half-blind.
He never knew the color
Of his fur (it was brown, the same color
As the dirt he lived in (whose color
He never knew either)), but he assumed
It was black. While ambling through
The black (brown) soil, it so happened
That the plump and innocent Gopher
Unwittingly clawed his way to
The surface.  His dwarfish eyes scanned the fairway
Laid out beneath him.  It was in that brief moment
That he witnessed the difference
Between rough and fairway, saw white sand traps
Scoop out the sides of hills, and first watched
Red and yellow oak leaves
Drift to the ground.
And for this short while the Gopher was awestruck,
Riveted to the spot.  As the lawnmower’s blades
Swept closer, the Gopher could not move at all; and in
An instant, he returned to
The endless black he had come from.

I have enjoyed a full six weeks since I last saw her, some very fine weeks.  And two days: six weeks and two days since.  I’m checking into a nice New Jersey motel.

What a fine room I’ve been given!  See the bed wrapped in sheets, sitting stately like a throne.

Shapes of flowers are scattered geometrically across the surface of the sheets, patterned to please.

After I have spent a few good minutes petting the bed and pressing the flowers, I can breathe deep, free and independent in my grand indent of a room—

The air’s a bit stale.  Ah, but there the closet in the corner, tucked so slyly into the corner, into the wall!

A perfect closet, I have to say; a clean cube with a proud hanging rack, made of imitation…is it oak? (the plastic much more stable than wood, of course)

It’s a fine time to get settled, so I’ll arrange my closet-things: the jacket and pants on the left, a shirt and jeans on the right.

The shirt has a pale stain at the bottom, the stain must be wine, the stain must be from some dinner we… I really don’t know how to remember I don’t know it’s just another stain.

That stain is red, like lipstick.

Well!  The windows are nice and what curtains!  Tall, beige and dotted with beach scenes—very picturesque.  There, right there in front of me, on the curtain, sweet babes build a sandcastle, and build it so well!

Past the babes and through the window I see the parking lot—better not look there…it’s got scraggly weeds yawning through the pavement, and the road beyond leads to the city, like all roads.

What else there must be something else—there, the standing lamp in the corner.  I’ll turn it on now, as its getting dark.

I need help describing it, the lamp.  Only the words ‘straight,’ ‘thin,’ and ‘lost’ come to mind.  In my travel thesaurus I find:

‘Spindly,’ and

‘wistful,’ ‘withdrawn.’ It is, I guess, observant and alone, that should do for now.

Here I am, laying in bed, reaching to turn down the lamp, and I realize with admiration

How wonderfully exact a copy the room’s second bed is of my own bed—starched stiff and neatly tucked at the corners, this one with a pattern of swans swimming laid across its sheets.

Go to sleep my baby boy;
Momma’s only gonna be here
for a little while.

Nod your head my precious boy—
Can I kiss you
before I go?

I’ve waited ten dark years
to see your face,
and now I know—

Momma’s been a sinner
and she’s only gonna be here
for a little while.

Momma gripped the infant soul.
She clutched that child to her meager heart,
Hoping like a dying man in fever
To swallow salvation before his hour of going.
Then she heard the eerie angels singing—
The Man stepped out through the cloudy mantel.
She looked to Him and cried:

Oh Lord, please forgive me,
I’m an unwanted guest—
But I snuck in through a back door

And I’ve been to see my boy
before you send me on my way.
I’ve had a ten years’ wait

Since I’ve learned to love my baby,
Only let me stay,
Let me stay enough and be forgiven—

She descended, her back to the place
From which she had came
And the next of her days would be warmed
By the devil’s burly chortle,
By her midwife’s toil in the nursery of demons,
And the smoke from below,
Which rises through three worlds she’s seen
And scratches even the angels’ throats to coughing.

The stiff cold
In the air today, and
I was thinking what I might like
To become
Of me once I’m good
And dead.

There are really so many options, but right now,
I think I’d prefer
To be cremated,
Or something like that.

A starchy cotton jacket was
Such a bad idea,
Now I’m cold!
Sheer buildings leaning
Over me, on almost all sides.
Are crematoriums like that?
Must be, here,
I suppose...

But how warm I bet they are
And then you slip into death
At the end of it all and into
Those lovely, gorgeous urns.

Busriding to
the city limits,
I think of
Levertov’s Half-Way House,

lying just beyond
the city limits.
The bus ride is
uneventful—

I rest my head against
the window and count
the cross-hatched streets.
Lulled by the rhythmic

bump and shake
of the bus, I fall asleep.
In my dreamstate
self-consciousness overwhelms

me, and I am forced
to look in on my bus
from the street alongside,
and notice that I am alone
and will soon get off to walk.

As with any person that comes to the city
others will say of him that he came to be
where the action is, looking for his share of the spoils
but the truth is, he came to put on his suit and toil

more than most newcomers here
he knew already what skyscrapers were:
a daywatch to guard the sun from you
and leave you long shadows to walk through—

even on his shaded way to the ad firms
he slides on his sunglasses, he squirms
through the crowds relishing a moment
of thick silence in a packed elevator, as if sent

on a mission to happy anonymity—
but to die at this point would be a cliché
he thinks, and goes to the shiner to shine his shoes black
black, color of the pavement, the suit, the tie and the hat

black, the color of the plush bruise
in an apricot’s skin, the fruit he adores
taking his time to pick out the finest,
juiciest, softest, the freshest

but this man! you would never know it
seeing him walk in the street
seeing his sunglasses over his eyes—
it’s only apricots that separate his from yours or mine

barely two inches of sugary meat
and some skin to get stuck in the teeth
eventually spat onto the sidewalk—
rubbed by passing shoe soles into a grayish spot

A tattered bird had a made a tomb
in tepid water, it was a puddle
near the framework of a half-built room—
but the soul’s a swerving tunnel

and the dead are waiting at the end:
all sorts of animals huddled at the fringe
where littered pine needles stand
and creep inside the sandy construction site,

pale in the morning light,
the tractors dug aesthetic swirls in the sand—
a culvert keeps the brook alive,
it flows into the forest, which learns to mend

its scars with the festering of its things:
kingfishers’ **** on the berries and branches,
if the plants could undo their own stink
the heart wouldn’t die on its haunches—

the morning’s dew resolves to hoary ice,
its killing the greenery,
but the sandblasters lean, arranged by the outhouse, like
a dream, the first worker arrives early

he rests against a smooth-planed board—
flood the mind, but be sure to drain it out,
its his breakfast cup of tea that stores
his knowledge of beauty

past the place where the bushes are thin
there is an apple orchard, plucked to pieces at the end of fall—
trees arranged in ranks, held up with wires and strings:
a dementia arboreal—

the smells from the orchard meet
the smells from the machines and hover
above the building-zone, mixing with the bite
of cold humidity—a cruel kind of vapor

The trees have left leaves aplenty
for me to rake
they curl and tense and dry
I claw them all away

Little piles form of my work—
hills to dot the suburb-waste
the bent tips scratch and click
across the concrete face

Of a faded summer’s deck
and I think briefly of her hair
the brownish tint that would not rest
but flashed like an auburn glare

These ******* leaves weigh nearly nothing
my breath slinks out in rasps
then settles on my knuckles’ clenched skin
a sweaty bead slips through my grasp

It creeps to the bottom of the handle
drips—**** my luck—into the leafy mess
into the paper pile—
I cannot look, just rake what’s left

Forming more and more heaps
of crisp and crunchy detriment
which rest, unassuming, amid the scenes
of quiet days that I have spent

While sliding into sepia
in the slim space between house and fence
which could be her house, then she could see me
and I would dive among the leaves

Of my finished mess which stands
at last, a brownish jumble
tribute to my deadened fear
collected on my lawn, as if to humble

a cold fall regret
and I look, questioning, down
to picture pushing you into it
where stiff leaves’ stems may hurt like thorns

Fires are unbiased—
They burn what suits their mood.

I like to do my running
In the morning, before
The mosquitoes start their work.
During the dry season, you
Would think it unsafe—
Roads crowded by vulnerable
Yellow stalks of rice, long since
Harvested—but the trash
Is burning all the same.
By the time I’ve finished my run,
I am coughing, and the mosquitoes
Are dead before leaving the water.

At night, if you are lost
And alone, the fires—
Four feet high and stretching for
The lower tips of eucalyptus—
Will light the road for you.
Do not walk near them.

Near the school
Between dying trunks of banana
Trees, three men in jeans stoke a fire—
Reduced to shades
Of their former selves, the long, burned
Banana leaves lay withered
At the white center of the fire.
Much to their amusement,
A few students have fashioned
Swords of the live banana leaves
Not yet touched by the flame
And are fighting to the death.

Not often, but certain days, (particularly
The hot ones) I
Ask myself—
What am I doing here?

We drink whiskey from the bottle
On a night off and
Stand by the river.
In the overgrowth on the other side
Far-off fires twinkle—
A reminder—things burn
Over there, too.

Look into the Innenhof
not out upon the rain-slick street
it’s easier
that way.

Decadent hail at the window
brings the history of rain
running, dripping
down your languid gaze.

Dream important things
are taking place inside the Innenhof—
while the water rises
they choke under its weight.

More water, green and choppy
the Innenhof is undone
sloshing, wet and pure, immobile—
birds are drowning.

Out of the frothy wash
your place bobs to the surface
freed of its moorings
in boring things.

You are lucky and precarious
floating on your hollow buoyancy
waiting for the rain to quit
watching the slow clouds break.

This is the third evening I have lived in a hush.
A thousand others like me know the feel of warm hush.

The student in the library, snug in her work;
She’s caught up in her work and the scribbling hush.

A sporting man, dressed in white, at the courts of Central Park—
Tennis courts, one next to the other, he knocks echoes into the hush.

The woman singing jazz at some bar, swaying, drunk.
Her audience of three blinks like a dumb hush.

A man at a deli sits, hunched behind the counter;
Morning light slips through his cigarette smoke: white hush.

At 4 am, two train lights appear down the track—
Tungsten lights add a brightening hush.

And I sit by the wall in the hospital’s small waiting room.
There is no one in the hall, no one in the chairs, only me and the hush.

A softening of the skin, like putting up the wall.
In the late afternoon, he had her against the wall.

This is not the first time someone has lost their mind here—
Ten men or more have faded into thought, found staring at the wall.

We have loved each other longer than this forest used to grow—
What will happen?  You will change when we are forced to cross the wall.

I cannot see, but I can smell the hyacinths on the other side.
Cord-like vines snake through the cracks in the wall.

You wear all the semblances of love in your black bathrobe;
Go ahead, put on your best perfume, like some flowery wall.

At the edge of the woods, chimneys lurk behind tall leaves.
Somewhere ahead, wrapped around the bases of trees, waits a wall.

Heat slips up our shirts, sweaty beads of ***.
We twist our clothes, grabbing at flesh, groping for ***.

The hard squeeze and pressure is scooping out the soul—
Please, push it out, we want to be left bare and have ***.

Our skin is strung together, our bodies hollowed, dry;
Blind to the heat and the mess, we’re swept up by a blissful, empty ***.

The sheets, salted with sweat, are heaved off the bed,
Pillows gone, clothing gone, here there is nothing but ***.

Gasping and shouting, we purge ourselves, we are nothing—
I am pure and vacant, I’ve rushed my blood to my groin for ***.

And moments like these are strained and stretched.
Then, release, the moment falls from us as wet as ***.

Like sheets, pillows, clothes, the rest of me returns:
Too tired to move, I listen to our breathing, short huffs in the air after ***.

‘D’you see that?
Right over there?
Tough to see in the young grass.’

‘No, what do you see?’

‘I see
one muscular snake,
nosing cowpies by the post.
cold little *******.’

‘Well, should I shoot him?’

‘Might as well, I suppose…
Don’t shoot the po-’
Bang—.

Amid the white notebooks dotting my desk
hides a half-drawn sketch
laying down some image of an ideal poem.

It sits incomplete, but the plans I made
surface to my vision—
a sturdy poem of stubborn build,

words, pliant, sad, and simple
deft-attached, vine-like wrapped
around bamboo scaffolds astride black steel framing.

Dangling from two pinched fingers,
the sketch has yet to display
its mid-sized trees (for scale)

and the few more floors envisioned.
It could house with ease
a teeming, drunken mass

of patients with a fear of heights
and post-traumatic stress.
The burn of my popped lighter

curves over the paper plane where the grassy lot’s drawn,
where my hired architect would stand
and plan the façade, no windows.

His blueprints would radiate the math
of symmetric perfection
found symbolic of its New-Age form.

Designers would be flown in
from around the world,
contractors would be called.

And the sheer simplicity of it all
would test their expertise
challenged at last by the spire and final stanza

which, if drawn, would only now
be caught up by the flame
casually ribboned across the page.

uttering that tenor growl
that only we salamanders know,
I will stir from my salamander bed,
slide from its clinging preservative oil
into the eerie orange of tonight’s hellish glow.

Then we will meet at the shore
of the black stagnant puddle our home,
like a monstrous bootprint
stamped in the mud of our forest.

We’ll slink towards the woods,
slowly gyrating our limbs over leaves twigs sticks
roots and stones five times our size;
a struggle to heave ourselves before
the looming, glowing trees.

At last the heat of the ash trees,
the entire forest swirls in flames,
crackling at our feet,
engorged by the unbothered blaze.
We’ll wait a pensive moment, then take
our first few steps into the burn.

What is it that we do
When we first want to love each other?

Our early love is a place
Where the senses get bent and blend
Blemishes into so many minute perfections.

Mornings I touch you in bed;
Sometimes, your hand sifts through my hair.
I sense you’ve noticed
That dryness on my scalp—
You look at me, unmoved,
As your hands find the scars on my shoulder.
This is my secret skin,
You have found me.
My own hands wander—
I am searching your figure
Expecting, at any moment,
To find the hidden flaw.
I find nothing
And I give up happily.
Then I fall asleep,
Admiring the *****
Of your coffee-skinned back
And your changing shape—
Larger as you breathe in, then
You shrink somewhat.

At the store, $39.95 is a fair canary price.
Make sure to buy a cage of taut, safe wire
with space enough for flying.

At the home, your canary requires natural light cycles—
if you must, place over its nighttime cage a mantel:
solid black, opaque to block your lights’ glow.

Provide it food and water, everything it needs to survive
in a cage: a toy or two (bells are best)
should be enough to entertain your new canary.

But you must always remember
that should you stare, hoping for empathy, at
your pet canary, its black eye may fall

on the wall behind you, which is more interesting to look at.
Many times you may want to pet it or
remind it of your care with a caring scratch or tickle—

refrain, think of its crisp, clean feathers,
butter-yellow and what
would become of them for your ruffle.

And when your idiot friend shakes it in its cage
jabbing a rude finger inside
remind yourself that it is disgusting to laugh with him.

Oh, Joseph, we love this fine and ritzy party
No, through the poppy fields we rode a cart, see?
I agree, but at that time the lake was dry
There were castles and spires and dragons this high!
Joseph, what a very, very good party.

--At times, I find there are never parties
But it has been so long since this trip I’ve started
So long from home, with the pain of thought-wandering
Wander, wonder if the dead sit so pondering
In their solitude.

What time find men to thought-wander when dead?
Where seconds breathe lifetimes, bleed red
And when will thought-wandering cave in my head?
The stammered squabbles of parties bled
Out into my hearing.

--Oh, I simply cannot believe the things he says
My dear, did he philosophize about his pauper days?
Lord, how she would twist and turn the conversation
She’d laugh and cheer and nod, all to appease him
Do you hear them now?

--In no earthy place could one ever find such a cracked imagination
Go, and thought-wander the depths of my empty nation;
You’ll find a few dismantled towns, a statue, gold;
A statue of me, built by me, where parties were held
Even there you won’t find it.

Perhaps, if one could find, some lonely corner
With shadows and planks in the heart of the world
Where the dead would sit and the dead would ponder
The fuss and precision of their last friend, the coroner
There you may find it.

Joseph sits on skinny chairs, reads the funnies
she would be tall, pretty hair, she don’t see
see he won’t be reading one bit, he looks dumb
just staring, looking fat, broken, glum
she cleans up all the plates

—Put those dishes down, now is a time for love-making
I’ll take you now, and wonder if I’ve taken
steps enough to excuse my idleness; in time
you’ll leave, and supine, I’ll take a coat of lyme
and let the lines loose

We will communicate through touch and kiss
and enjoy the full of it, pull in the harvest;
light and movies romance the **** out of me
at last, we are at the end of all things irony
Christ that **** impersonal.

—This music don’t be coming from them
that is right, that is absolutely the end of them
they just end, I don’t care, I let it be
how come you so foolish, Joseph? I don’t see
why are you so foolish?

—You play the guitar by ear and plucking
at this moment they are dinosaur hunting
time is absurd and disgusting
I don’t understand it, I’m simply saying
you played some songs I knew at the time

But how different are your songs from mine
attach your seatbelts to your right hand buckles, fine
away with it, away with them all, please
I am telling, telling, understand, please
different in a few ways, love

—Joseph, you play the drums too loud
you are a big, dumb, idiot head
they end, it certainly has to be
it’s apocalyptic, something like this, said she
such a dummy you Joseph

the movie drums its so vicious loud
the end a dumb idiot head
that’s a thing she might have said at the time
and you are given a full witness to the violence of our time
Joseph plays bad harmonica.

Joseph only nine sat at the dinner table, conversation passing around, a muffled, undulating vibration of utters.  “Don’t stare like that, it makes me uneasy, Joseph,” chided Joseph’s mother.  The hum resumed.  An hour later the table was emptied of its contents, except for Joseph, alone with his uneaten plate of food.  The TV, flickering its wantonly swirling amalgam of colors onto his mother’s face.  “Joseph, please, eat your food.  I’m worried about your eating habits,” her distant voice languidly taking its time to reach him from the couch.  His sister, all of seventeen, sat down across from him.  “Hey, kiddo,” in her reassuring singsong.  They talked and he ate.
Joseph hadn’t liked school since the kids began to make fun of him.  They poked and prodded him with words sharpened by blissful ignorance.  “Crybaby” the boys would jab, their penetrating and mockingly wide smiles, like jaws.  Each clinging to their inclusion, girls, in their giggling gaggles pass by him, atypically hushed.  “Yeah, he’s the one, the one that cried alone in the bathroom like a big baby” amongst themselves, but barely audible from the outside.
Joseph in his room, crowded by the darkness, lost in his imaginings.   The doorbell cries out for attention.  “Hey, kiddo” his sister affectionately, leaving the lights off.  She takes her jacket and leaves. “I’ll see you later Joey.” Hers and her friends’ voices waft, beckoning, upwards through the floor into Joseph’s room.  “What took you?” “Had to get my jacket from my brother’s room.” “Oh, he’s strange.  Sometimes it scares me how weird your brother is.” And Joseph, listening intently, as if balancing his entire weight on one single twig in fearful anticipation.  And his sister, her words forming slowly, then with gathering willingness, “Yeah, he can be pretty weird sometimes.” “Yeah, let’s get going.”  Joseph’s heart dropped, like a stone falling into a lake—less like a lake than an indentation filled with jet-black ink for water, and the stone, falling to the bottom, curling up on itself in the darkness.
Joseph, turning to his mother, her silhouette eclipsing a chunk of hallway light.  “You broke the mirror in my room today Joseph, you ought to clean it up now,” voice straight as an edge, though she layered it with a loud blanket of sweetness.
“No!” screamed Joseph.  “I won’t!  I wish dad was here, he would never make me do what you make me do!”
Her rage bursting suddenly through her self-control, flooded the entire room.  “Don’t talk to me like that!” her sobs even louder than his screams. “Its not easy for me!   Its not easy to do this alone, can’t you please try to understand…”  Joseph was having trouble hearing her, her voice and all else fading, as if the world’s voice were being smothered by a pillowcase, and he became distracted in the silence that enveloped him.
Joseph looked up and to the right, saw the stars, friendly and welcoming, with bright, honest smiles.  He decided he would rather be with them.  Joseph left his room, floating upwards, upwards, still higher, and to the right.
Joseph stretching his eyesight, saw something approach as he drifted further and faster into space.  As if from a horizon that couldn’t be seen and didn’t exist, there approached a colorful object.  Jupiter flashed by, looking very much like his mother’s TV.  It’s random assortment of colors whirled violently around in that confined space.  He said out loud, Jupiter is the most beautiful planet, I’d like to go there.  The planet whisked by.
Joseph, not disappointed in the least, kept floating.  He left the solar system, the galaxy, and came to a black hole.  It called him in, like a Siren, and Joseph smiled an angular, disjointed smile, and fell inward into the black hole’s embrace.

Orange peel Thursdays and the Velcro shoes
Of children hordes
Who spider up Alice on toadstools in Central Park
Dusted psilocybin shoots my eyes through
With the clarity of ice and sliced mushroom
Steeping in stomach acid before finding blood
The kids are tripping like madmen or halloween candy
Like its time to release and give up to the nonsense
And let your young self congeal to a saccharine sludge

I don’t stroll in the park to keep my mind sharp
I’m here because it’s a riot
My head can throb to the jittery birds
And the blasts of carsong
It’s the right kind of rhythm to walk to

* *

Ketamine days and the lolling slums
To make sure the insane stay insane
And the hobos are washed with spit from the clouds
And the subway exhaust always hangs in our hair
And the old Coney Island burns again and twice more

We don’t pretend to understand what we see
In subway grates thirty feet wide
Like the earth punching out of work for a bit
Opening to you her *** belly
So you can check out the strips of metal inside
Before she slurps you down and with an esophageal squeeze
Shoots you through the turnstiles

The train squeals and grinds down our eyes
With thoughts as slow as ketamine
Makes room for schizophrenia in a conversation
We’re listening to ‘til sundown

* *

Years full of Brooklyn and the assorted pills
Makes offal fit for punks in name brand shoes
Squared off with police in the park
Being beaten for the fun of being beaten
Peacoat locals pass the days in supermarkets
And you grow up to the loony mumble
Of the woman who knows the boat
Moored at the end of the street
Mansion of the stray cat colony
You help her with her daily chore to feed them
Tabbies popping the pills of the homeless
And puking in tandem all over their house
Living off generous dying folk

I have grown used to
or at least numb to this way of living.
The rain drips through the ivy above,
hitting against the grey planks.
No water lands on my skin;
I am sprawled across the parallel lines of planks in the wooden floor.

I call this the ‘sun grotto’
because of the sundial,
now dark with rainwater,
standing in the circular clearing in the hedges
in front of the entrance to my gazebo.

Today might be a day in October.  And,
since the first drop fell,
I’ve been waiting under the grotto
for what feels like hours—
I haven’t been into the maze at all today;
the darkness on the hedges mirrors
the shadows that line the clouds.

I see no point in moving
from the grotto today, and while I wait for the rain
to pass, I remember
my first day here, a few summers ago—

The humidity at noon under
a liquid sun,
a girl in a rose-colored dress,
our August trip to the hedge maze in the neighboring county,
the laugh she gave as she trotted away:
“let’s get lost in the maze—
come and get me!”
the last I heard of her,
and a glimpse of red cloth rounding the edge
of a wall in the maze,
the last I saw.

We had felt so much excitement
and fear
pressing further through the winding paths
decorated here and there with
fountains, gardens,
idyllic cherub statues,
and the grottoes
which I now use as sleeping places
and—like today—
as cover from the rain
which pours here so often.

The downpour recedes
allowing me at least the chance to walk
through the maze to one of
the tulip gardens.

Not today of course,
but there are days when I hear
the soft laughter of children, friends, and lovers
echo somewhere in the maze—only
a few lanes of manicured green separating me
from them.  Days like those
are difficult to bear.

One day, not too many weeks ago,
I heard those sounds and I smiled;
but it came as a shock to hear
the patter of a pair of running feet, so clearly just around
the clean-cut corner of the hedge I was using for shade.
It was the first—the only—time I had heard a sound in the maze
this close, close enough to see and touch—
through the pinhole gaps in the foliage-wall
I saw a burst of color, like clothing.
I shot around the corner, I glimpsed the flicker
of pale red cloth flagging
behind the form that had slid
into another path through the maze.

The chase had failed
well before I had taken my first wild steps,
hitting the well-tread path hard
with desperate feet.  I yelled like a drunkard.
Later, I noticed the cuts on my fingers and neck,
sliced into the skin as I flung myself through
one wall of green and skid against the next.

Today’s shower is completely over.
I walk myself through the maze, and
avoid the shallow lakes that have formed
in the dips
in the paths, beaten firm by thousands of trampling feet.
Under the sparse autumn light
I collect flowers from one of the many small squares of garden
which I have come to know so well.
With a clump of black
and white tulips in my hands,
I look for a place to ****.
Life here is difficult in the winters.

From the backbroken fliers over oceans
From between the spiny frills along palm fronds
From Mr. Happy, the chain smoking chaperone of good times
From Mr. Happy’s half-burnt ****, coiled in the ashtray
From the disciples of Theravada and the skinny Buddha’s pupilless eyes scanning jocose scansions of jungle
From the tanned holy heads of students lounging in graveled football fields
From my bowl of rice at breakfast in the shade while considering western cities, you are not here
‘You are not here,’ I’ve written in my letters
‘You are not here,’ I’ve typed into e-mails immense
You are not here, my coke head pals locked in the veins of seedy nightmares
You are not here, my penniless friends who mix music in ascetic dark rooms out in Bushwick
You are not here in no eastern Central Park running naked in the night from horseback cops after hours of merciless balling in the bushes
You are not here you fair-skinned beauties in crowded alpine funiculars bearing your aquiline noses holding your hats over the mountains
You are not here my lonely mother waiting by the phone for a call at midnight
You are not here, you are not in my poems, you are not in the distorted notes harpsichorded across my crass imagination
You are not here, you will not be here, will you read my letters home?

I’d have left off loving you long back
If not for the glory of our local greasy spoon.
Your long fingertips
Curled over the red plastic borders
Framing the menu’s backside, showing me lunch specials, the Hungryman plate.
In this scene we are the couple caught up in a picture-book love
And so shy of speaking it that affection
Becomes a game of concealment versus concession.
We are good at the game, and our strategies evolved
Complex techniques of deceptive chitter chatter.
We made greasy spoon small talk, talk like artificial sweetener;
Because talk of substance would be to take account of the closing in of reality and my
Impending departure to tropical countries, names unpronounceable.
How much simpler to order soggy hash browns.
How much simpler to butter white bread toast
With white butter wrapped in gold packets.
Map spread on the linoleum tabletop,
I pointed out places with names full of P’s and K’s,
Overstuffed with consonants and gathering
Crumbs from our buttery palms.
Our fingers touched so often,
These hands might as well have been holding;
But then, days before my flight into the hot tropics,
These hands won’t touch, they’ll let their fingerprints drown in finger food grease.
Those days it was summer, when the weather was a mystery—
Ceaseless weeks overcast, when grey skies hanging above
Pondered pouring rain on us; it was a very indecisive summer.
We walked from the diner, both tucked under one umbrella,
Felt the unpleasant humidity and
Our own hesitance before saying goodbye.

The sun fires down, oppressive
and I decide to have a break
from my slow trek towards the West and
take a table for a drink—

the conditions being so extreme,
I prepare to indulge myself,
order pizza and green tea
and toast, alone, my youth and health—

there along the subway wall
surrounded by the heights of old cuisines,
the best of ancient cultures crawl
to beg and sell from on their knees

to me, the *** of modern times
who orders pizza and green tea,
who stands to pack his books and lines
then, rising, slow and sluggish leaves—

yet, as I resume my heat-wave march
the décor reveals itself bit by bit:
a spattering of bullet holes—stark
shards from old slabs of wall been ripped

The sun lights through the window
And a scattering of rainbows slants
Across your eager eyes.

Nothing comes from nothing,
That’s the way it’s always going to stay.

A poet scribbles down a line or two
To keep himself quiet—
You set fire to his pages and
The words all smoke into the air.

Stitch a needle full of fumes and sow yourself a coat;
You’re as good as making nothing.

Under the rural darkness, they formed into a circle.
‘Keep your secrets,’ they whispered, smiling—
Even from the distant hills
The shrieks of the dogs made more noise at night.

If you’re afraid, be afraid,
This is nothing you can understand.

A little longer,
And time will be stronger,

Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me
—Philip Larkin


There I sat
Alone with my pie
With its perfect golden crust
And its sugary dust.

The metal fork I
Used rang clear
When it clicked against the plate
Cutting smallish bites.

It’s then that I
Think of my mother—
She taught me how to cook
This pie from a second-rate book.

I was six
When we had to move;
It was best, I was told, to leave what I knew behind
And I didn’t mind.

Everything was new
We had a very small house
Then I started again at school
Oh, the kids were cruel!

And there was nothing
Like our loneliness
I thought to my mother
Too quiet to tell her I loved her.

I hid in my chair
She found the book
“We’ll make a sour cherry pie”
And pulled a glass for whiskey.

We cooked for hours
Cutting cherries and folding crust
Neither of us was concerned
When we saw the pie had burned.

We didn’t care
About the charred
Black welts and the rock-like crust
With its burnt carbon dust—

My mother and I
Were happy, we knew
the fruit and syrup survived
hot and sour, baked inside.

It was a weird hour when the sun towered
To be slick with moonshine
Cozied shirtless in a rope hammock

Belly-down like my six drunk buddies
Living loose and talking sweet
To bottles now empty of *****

So what is there to do?
Nothing, and that’s a cold fact for high noon
In summer, season of mumbly toasting

But when the humble glug-glug-glugging
Is done with, I’ll tell you, you
Have not licked liquor, not done your part

It’s us who got the moonshine start
Today, you turned your back on white whiskey, yes
We did the work and if it should hurt

I apologize we didn’t want to offend
If it’s the alcohol or if it’s the heat I can’t tell
But who knows why blood boils?

I can see that good-natured drinking
Is the drunk man’s toil
But we’re workers at heart, aren’t we?

And not many are better than us
Except for maybe the rice
Slumped over its stalks, fat on moonshine

Cure-all for the sick mind
Friend to all comers on a humid day
The clear sticky juice that burns all the way down

The solitary molar of a *****
who had died without a name
wore a gold filling.
The other teeth, as if by silent agreement,
had already left.
The mortician smacked the filling loose,
removed it, and left to go dancing.
‘Only earth,’ he said,
‘should return to earth.’

The mouth of a girl, whose corpse lay long in the rushes,
looked so gnawed away.
As the breast was broken open, there was the gullet, full of holes.
Finally, in a recess below the diaphragm,
a nest of young rats was found.
One little sister lay dead.
The others lived off of liver and kidney,
drank the cold blood and
lived a lovely childhood here.
And sweet and swift they met their death:
They were all tossed into the water;
Oh, how the little snouts squealed!

A drowned beer-hauler was hoisted on the table.
Someone had taken a dark-bright-purple aster
and clamped it in his teeth.
As I cut outward from his breast
under the skin
with a long blade
and removed the tongue and palate,
I must have touched the flower—
she slid into the brain which lay nearby.
I packed her in the cavity in his chest
amid the straw stuffings
as he was sewn up.
Drink yourself full in your vase!
Rest softly,
little aster!

Then, bedded atop cushions of dark blood,
the blonde neck of a white woman.
The sun ravaged her hair
and licked the length of her pale thighs
and kneeled around her browner *******,
yet to be deformed by vice or birth.
Next to her lay the *****: horses’ hooves
had stamped his eyes and brow to a pulp.  He dug
two of the toes on his ***** left foot
deep into her small white ear.
She, though, lay and slept like a bride:
at the brink of happiness, of first love
as before the outbreak of a wave of Ascensions
of warm, youthful blood.
                   That is, until the blade
sank into her white throat
         and spilt an apron of dead purple blood about her waist.

Mr Dodd paid a visit
to the man in the tree;
he asked the man to tell
of the sights he could see.

The squat little man—
who spent his life behind leaves—
shook a bough by Mr Dodd and said
“You would never believe.”

“But why would you live alone in that tree?”
asked old Dodd, and he began to climb a branch.
But the man in the tree lazily
warned Dodd to stand

Where he stood—
from a high-up limb, the man’s voice
wandered down to Dodd’s ears.
“There is a road that slices

Through miles of fields,
herds of cows and small houses,
and leads to a hulking metal city
where lines of gloomy people trickle out.”

Back in his cottage, Mr Dodd dreamt
of the road and the fields and the cows;
but the city unsettled his sleep,
and he woke at last knowing how

Little he knew.
Then Dodd made breakfast for the millionth time:
a buttery bun and some cornflower tea—
he couldn’t smile at the noise of the kids in the town.

He went through the day in his usual way:
he tapped on his xylophone,
he painted his thousandth self-portrait,
he read from his book in a slow monotone.

After lunch he liked to sit in his garden
and smoke from his chestnut pipe
with the eight-inch hickory handle
and the green green herbs inside.

The sunlight pressed the smoky stink
into the weave of Dodd’s vest
When Gilbert—Dodd’s groundskeep—appeared,
seeming so distressed.

“Your sunflowers’ stems have all broke!” breathed Gil;
“I hit them with the mower—”
Mr Dodd saw the sunless stems
and nervous Gilbert cowered.

But Dodd looked Gil straight in the eye
and asked him a question instead:
“Have you ever seen the city, old Gil?”
“I only heard tell,” the relieved Gil said,

“But what I’ve heard is that they that go
can’t come back alive.”
Dodd sent Gil home, who leaving said:
“I also mowed over a gopher; I think he might have died.”

The next day, Dodd went back
to the man in the tree.
“Hello again, Dodd” drawled the voice from the leaves.
“I’m leaving today for the city,”

Spoke Dodd towards the voice.
“But how much nicer it might be to stay
with me in my tree; you could see everything—
all here for you on display.”

No, Mr Dodd thought better of it—
he threw his pack over his shoulder,
nervous of what's new and unknown
and the thought that his life here was over.

It should be there, the sea
It was clear by how the sky bloomed up ahead
It was standing up for us
Down the road, shoulder blades spread
It’s face turned and looking out over the water
Not ignoring us, but we could understand
There were things to be seen

We drove up the road
Dune trees thinned ahead under
Blots of royal blue
Staining the horizon
A painting to distract us from each other
I looked and you said nothing
And you looked, saw nothing

We were driving to the water
The sky’s blue skin stretched and paled
Overhead and threats teased our breath
Lingering on brine air
Waiting for us past the coastal brush
Past the pale browns and green
We would be there soon

When, torpid, the sun begins to grey
In the outlines of clouds on the move
But in no hurry, autumn reaches for its full potential.
What leaves there could have been
Were shot away, we’d have paid them no mind, anyway.
There is a roughness tangled in your hair,
It’s best, I think, to let it be
And, instead, to view the wide expanse of beach,
Which marches into the frigid sea,
Debating with itself and at last achieving a landscape
Pure enough to match the temperature: 40 degrees F.

I can feel your hand stiffen and I
Too sense the tension in the afternoon,
A resistance to our huddled, timid presence; we’re nearly frozen in the process.
Drawing closer, hoods, tightening our jackets
Won’t do much to prevent the
Days from shortening and the hours’ agonizing stretching-
Out.  It’s not time enough
To take in the red and white display
Which umbrella shades act out tiredly before us.
Then the waves, mischievous as ever,
Creep up the sand to ****** at our shoes
Before they swagger back to the sea.  Love
Is lounging in the break, sopping wet
And fully-clothed—boots and all.
In the brief moments when our thoughts and talk collide, hours fit for memory
Flit us by.  Hairy swathes of weedy dunegrass
Wilt with hindsight.

Please, slow.  A rushed gaze and a blink are futility
At the shore; looking, here,
Is tenderer than you’d imagine.
Finalized versions of the day are worth one short glance,
But no more than that; you see
Too many things are
Strewn about these days; it is unclear who is
At fault for these mysteries, only that today,
At the boardwalk there are many brooding melancholies.
Silently, a hard wind licks the sand.

There are too many nights in a lifetime—
hours spent sleeping through the story
between birth and death.

The images are simple:
an empty highway, blue under midnight;
the huddled peaks of spruce that line the background.

Now and then, headlights ghost past.
I have time to reflect
in the interim silence in the car with my family.

Nearly all of them
are fast asleep.  There are too many nights in a lifetime—
so many moments of calm that I forget.

Years of life full with nights roll by, headlights shining;
there’s peace in
the steady beam of headlights, streaming through the dark.

Sparse snowflakes fall through the path of light
which leads a car
around a curve in the road before us.

The wind and silence on the road and in the car
dissolve into my body like a liquor—
I am calm.

The car ahead rounded its turn,
bearing down the highway,
its headlights fell across our windshield—

I forgot the events of my lifetime, and
felt no urge to think.
I flinched with a twitch before the impact.

Driving down the dry road to the port
Five o’clock and soon the ferry leaves
We listen to your homemade folk
Music, much too slow
Much too slow to be on time
And still, we drive lazy all the while.

Roll past mothers’ clean-cut sleeping places
Feeling ‘round for cigarettes
In your empty glove compartment
Though you no longer smoke
Shut my eyes, smoke it easy
Taking slow and separate breaths.

I am looking through my sunstained window
A place where older trees had all burnt down
Its not far to reach the docks
But I skip the soulful song
About finding love and folding boxes
Threadbare weeds and scrub have grown there now.

Pull up to the boat for my departure
Just five minutes late it starts to rain
Find my bag and coat, grasp my ticket
As the ferry throbs to life
Run to board the rusted giant
Wave to you a hard-to-see goodbye.

And are you also frightened
Of the monsters with nighttime white faces
Of places lined ****** with traces
Of tiger-striped neighbors complacent
Are you all so frightened?

And are you also frightened
Of the German death-expert, that phantom
Of your mother turned raucously pantomime
Of a world-wide prisoners’ anthem
Are you all so frightened?

And are you also frightened
Of the nuclear holocaust schemers
Of the cannibals’ preying on dreamers
Of the new World
Are you all so frightened?

And are you also frightened
Of poetry written in free verse
Of burning alive you foolish young convert
Of the chorus of underground screams in the desert
Are you all so frightened?

1
The blurred light of our life, a match strike, burns wild bright
friends laugh, sing, and blare swing: fast alive; rise then die
cheap bright wine, a red flying glass splash from your hand
the beat rocks the boombox; pop and lock, fitful hop
it twirls down and smacks ground to shrill sounds, red spills out
in doorframes, with cold drinks necks are craned, loudness shrinks
we peal back the silence with dance moves gone violent,
all join in and dance crazed: tables, chairs, sofas, stairs
we fling ourselves everywhere, and shout bliss and smoke air
I seize, spin you around—music rolls, celebrate.

2
In black quiet foot taps and twigs snap to this stride
and white foxes march past, watch the dance, trot on by
the still night’s our dance hall, the cracked bark its sparse wall
but sway, speckled love pair! Do the twist, jump and jive
on sharp leaves, on damp moss that’s soaked green, on mild ives
our waltz splashes stream’s glass; showers spray gleaming rain
you smile while you pluck limbs from pines’ sides to wave high
a leaf-dressed baton wand—forest song, dance along!

3
A sharp glare through broad panes; the sun’s rays hit Gate Nine
whose slant windows’ black frames light up our silhouettes
we glide boldly, steps rapping sole glee in pepped time
on lined chairs all stiff-backed; golden pairs stare perplexed
a young boy’s worn headset and pre-packaged stale bread
and smooth-gliding walkways, duty-free shopping spree
the rust-orange light scores them:  shocked faces glow, see
our haphazard mad dance past absurd potted plants
your dress flies, behind lies a dazed crowd, we glide down
the beiged boarding ramp, stamp joyous notes, thrash the floor
‘til shafts flood the torn corridor, splashing tan light
Across grey; the crowd cheers, disappears, sings our names.

4
We grasp hands and stride out towards young couples, real haut
all decked out in fine braid, a myriad masquerade
of lined pairs in tight squares and there’s music: waltz airs
which spark movement like truth bends the light, rend the night
with drum rolls and solos whose crass brass part echoes
the slow dips of grasped hips—roll and sway, pick up pace
the sweet rhythms wind lines across lines of blind hymns
champagne clatters, cries clap: shatter that! Rattatat!
I, drunk happy, toast strangers’ masked faces, change places
with laced ladies, sweep three eight-step Balboa sets
while chairs flip, the drapes rip, cymbals crash, windows smash
the dance burns the house down with loud sound, I look round
you’re not far, but right then—a sudden roar, masks, thrown, soar
above, cloud-like hang, hover—we meet and now dance
amid vivid waves of bright stares raining down, masks surround
our close dance, the mass sweeps along past the main doors
and outside, the cool rain pours in sheets, perfect sheets

We’ve got sweat-slicked brows, tuffs of loose, knotted hair
Our limbs dumbly droop and we stand on the roof

Of a three story flat up in Prenzlauerberg
Near five a.m. when the night’s at its end

When we shuffle our shoes and sometimes tip the *****
From the bottles that we’ve all left scattered around

Then the beer trickles down and it spreads on the ground
And turns the rooftop tar a shimmering black

I feel through my shirt the thick summer heat
The hairs on my arm, the trees in the street

Are bathing alike in a warm morning dew
And the cigarette smoke we let slip from our throats

Catches the first red rays as the sun shows its face
Through the chemical haze out in east Lichtenberg

We face the source of the light as it floods through Berlin
Not the city we know in this tangerine glow

In this rich warming shine that is washing our eyes
Black industrial pipes start to wiggle and writhe

And their steam hits the scaffolds, whose
Metal fingers grow limber as they stretch through the street

To shake the red trees from their lumbering sleep
Then the leaves that they drop start to flee and get caught

In the stares of facades in the communist bloc
With the refusal of death on their hot, heaving breath

The parks are all built out of paper and gold
With fountains that spew streams of molten stone

Our apartment stands firm in the boiling sea
Of the scars of old days which swell, throbbing like waves

It’s the city lain out, moving, alive, and just like that
A light, filmy rain sprays a sheet on the town

We try to claw it away, but the curtain stays down
Then we stir, soaked in the sun and the rain

It’s the start of the day
And we can go home to sleep and dream of sunlit Berlin

Press it to your lips, breathe in deep,
let the smoke fill the car with guitar riffs
while you tear down the street.

‘This stuff will give you a lift,’
says John from the driver’s seat.
I pass him the joint and turn the volume up.

Good hard rock pumps our blood with a wild beat
and the heat of summer night keeps us on top
of the world, the six of us, crowded

in a rusted, five-seat pickup,
pushing eighty, with the music loud, and
the backseat flirting getting rough.

We’ll pinch and tease the girls ‘til they
sink, slyly, into our arms
and enrage us with eyes begging for mischief.

So we give them mischief, and pull the car
up to a gas station.  John turns to me to ask if
I’m up to try this place.

‘It’s just right.’
We step to the asphalt in pace
with the radio’s thump, the white

glare of the floodlights hard
against the damp black night
and the shadows of trees.  I start

to review the plan, but I know it alright;
the door jingles lightly as we step inside
to rows of multicolored bags of chips.

Inside it’s cold and quiet.  John coolly strides
to the back for the drinks, and I pick
out a pack of cigs from in front of the counter.

The man is reaching, John is ready, then lightning quick,
we bolt from the store; round the
corner, find the truck; ‘Hey you *******!’

But he’s too late, we’re racing away
and flipping him off.  Our laughter
is loud, the girls are blinking in the spray

of beer popped open.  That’s just after
coming back all smiles, the victors;
flying into the truck, I sat

a girl, Joanne, next to me.  We soaked her,
freed her, ourselves, with foamy suds,
the alcohol, and young nights on the road.

There, signs and shadows rushing past,
we sing to the radio: “I hope I die before I get old!”
and drum on the dash.

Throw the bottles out the window,
who cares what happens!
Spread the glass shards, let the whole world know!

Press it to your lips, drink to the intoxicating purr of the engine.
You laugh, listening to the tinkling
as bottles shatter, one by one, on the pavement.

Before a flock of no more than twenty,
Reverand Betham gives his second-to-last sermon.
There were no signs of it in him then.
Forgiveness, he talks about
Forgiving; the backs of heads nod
Between pews in the dust and the August heat.

Is anyone still surprised
That this is happening?
Where is Reverend Betham
Now?

People murmur because Betham
Is no longer allowed to teach
Sunday school.  I still see him
In his office, late nights, reading—
His lamp is always on.  It seems
So obvious to me now, when I think of
How he would fold the small
White robes and run his hands
Over them to smooth their creases.

Sunday, and the Reverend is granted
One farewell sermon, provided
He makes his apology.  Today it is even
Warmer; white paper fans swat
The air between the pews.  A crowd
Has come, only to curse the Reverend
As he enters the church.  I would later ask myself
What caused this?  What violent undertow
Has dragged the Reverend to the pulpit?
I, like any other, am also at the pulpit for my trial.
From the back of the church, I can hear
The click-click of the reporters’ cameras.

I saw him at work;
When he would visit the mangal
With a ***** over his shoulder.

He rolled up his pant legs and walked
Through the tidal wash.  Once he had picked a tree,
He hacked for three days to cut

The mud and the mangrove
Free from the surrounding forest.
He piloted his self-made island into the lagoon.

Shortly, he became mangrove crazy,
A disease he called Rhizophoria
In the notebook he had taken along.

With mud lobsters and tree for his only company,
Of course he had mangrove on the brain.
His life became an ellipsis—

The two centers were the tree and himself.
From tubular mangrove branches, propagules fattened,
And seeds nested inside them;

He would scribble notes with delirium as they fell
Plumply into the lagoon
And were pulled away by the warm current.

Each time the tree condensed its salt
Into a sacrificial leaf,
He would sadly add a tick

To the tally of the dead he kept in his book.
He once wrote:
‘The salt is burning my eyes.’

Late afternoons, with beer in our hands,
We would watch him from the beach,
Five hundred yards away.

Eventually, his mangrove island drifted ashore—
He lay by the suberic roots
With a crust of salt along his cheek.

I took a rose out of our neighbor’s garden;
A pretty thing to take your thoughts on past
The pain.  You shift in bed, reveal your scars:
Red sickles in your skin.  I’d hoped you’d laugh.

Outside, our own rose bush lays bare, the new
Rose petals torn and stamped into the dirt—
The thorns, stained red with drying blood, jut through
The tangled, shattered stems and upturned roots.

But I’m confused; you start to talk about
Your mother.  “My own birth,” you cried, “was such
A mess! And now I have this child…” Get out,
Go to the garden, where snapped branches crunch—
I think of when we smashed the rose bush, thrilled;
How I emerged unscathed as your cuts spilled.

I.
White flakes touch the street—
Their millions melt, dying
The way they were born.

II.
She blinked, shaking the
Snowflakes from her eyelashes,
And blushed like summer.

III.
A two-step blizzard
Waltzes in the windy air—
Winter masquerades.

IV.
In the darkness, steps
Crunch and echo in the snow,
Miles away from me.

V.
The buildings weather
The snow, but everything else
Crumbles under white.

VI.
After the snow, trees
Like middle-aged heads of hair
Became old and grey.

VII.
The hot chocolate
Stains my teeth, which once were
White like today’s snow.