Wooden Secret

I was in the wooden secret

high and stage right service tunnel.

You beneath in white.

Welcome to the Big Apple Dinner Theater. 

Previously, there with family,

A halting procession of forced inflection.

You two should try out

she said again.

Ignoring the signs as mothers do,

thinking instead of what is best.

It was then that I saw you.

Later, the tryouts.

Anxious harried persons erect like ranseurs,

Hustled by the personnel in fours and fives.

Yes and next and are you ready? No?

Instead I begged to come and simply watch again.

And so the next night set up in the curtain booth.

There were cues which I surely missed.

Left rope right rope follow the script,

surrounded in graffiti and counting lines till you appeared.

She elbowed you and pointed to my perch together giggling.

There was a vast contestation of parts

the following Sunday afternoon. But

no svelte arms no almond eyeballs -

maybe it's a sign. 

I never went back who knows what happened. 

Living Social

It will Hopefully darken the space
between me and the steady stream of community

It is the one nod to base people

The Crucible

reading his poetry
you wouldn't guess what happened to his relationship

grief and longing seem obvious
But there is something more.

I see compassionate fidelity
which was the crucible of this story

Slip

I want to slip in beside you
- in bed in step in photographs -
fixated on each arm freckle again.
Sweater shrug,
cover and reveal and cover and reveal.

I hunger for involuntary spasm,
your body and I trading in whisper.
The rush of air propelling laughter,
the rush of blood blush quaking hips,
your own hand cupping back a cry to herald warm contortion.

“How much?”
And how can I explain how
your face forbids such thinking?
You coax out an early thing that cannot speak
- that needn’t speak -
and afterward the still warm chamber.

Part your hair with my breath,
the starts beside me, a body in dreams,
with a peck against the surface tension
like a fish, cooing recognition,
realigning against my torpor.

Slipping through some crowded wood - a party now -
should let you lead in such things you know better.
Waking in your bed, the gray,
holding hands while we slept
wound like coiled rope.

It’s better this way.
With you as one of many.
With me as one of many.
What other choice do we have we’re running out of time.
I press my face against your chest and draw you in.
It should be enough it is it is enough.

Posted reminders, diligent notary,
A transparent frame which surrounds the vision
on which to print
reminders in lipstick and marker.
Doubt in several fonts and sizes, “this is a person like you imagine,”
“it is you,” that will be easier
- it isn’t wisdom -
a tepid screed, another barrier,
my heart is in the right place. Write that last bit large.

Moments of anger that hint at something private and real.
A force that comes of distance not velocity -
when you slip up and slap temper -
I’m just going through the motions,
I’m just standing out back staring into the retaining basin.

You were right
I am a thing of the sea.
You always knew and I was scared to say.
A man part which you love but something further -
it’s adaptive and for survival you of all people
should understand that august finality,
the need to dive down deeply; the need to come back slow.

Exposed to certain imaginings
in youth, these were seared into my vision.
They do not merely influence they are
fellow participants
and too numerous, too congested in grime and file,
cluttering our vision and confounding explanation.
It’s simply difficult,
I understand that. I should have been patient
and wasn’t.

You already bear such weight.
There’s a steel framework comprised of train trestles,
a certain stance with feet set and the arms wide to receive.
The awful thing is they expect it.
Leaning in and on and suppose suffuse you suffer buffeting
waves and broken yolk misplaced faith placed faithfully.
When it’s you afloat they’re gone
and you slip under.

I don’t want to love you, I want just to see
lights that peek out underneath
like tiny silver eggs.
Frail on some park bench or, better, fretting brunch,
and to then remember so sincerely something so sincere.
I nodded and I knew and now I’m saying:
you wonder what’s before,
I wonder after.

Foxes

Cavities of your body,

the charm of any cave.

The hollow of your chest

a den of foxes.

Leaves and sticks and clumps of hair -

the by-products of wanting.

Youth

If I could, by cunning,
touch my fingers to your lips,

Then later on
I'd touch my own

Pretend that we had kissed.

In all the world
what boy could dream

A finer dream than this?

Toothbrush

It’s okay that you’re disappointing
me with the things that you say.
I like watching your lips move
at least as much as
I like watching TV and stuff.

So I’ve been dating again and
I think I should buy a new toothbrush
the next time I’m out,
these things wear out
it’s no big deal.

Mailbox

I want to mail you something
to test the distance;
count the seconds till impact.
Not a letter – the word proved too defiant.
A greater liaison to better serve
the wary temperance of solitude. And so
I reach through the hole at the end of the driveway
and far away an arm snatches dumbly at the air.

I want to mail you a bouquet of delicacy
to sidestep the noise of speaking,
common symbol of budding branch and nature’s readiness.
Root and bulb beneath the soil
mutely inch toward some future;
living repositories of vegetable gnosis.
I’ll include an unknown specimen
and never learn its name.

I want to mail you a basket of sensation,
after all, you and I are hardly commonplace.
Rich confection and storied jams
with handmade labels lovingly arranged beneath clear plastic.
Objects that encourage touch and generate a private warmth
surrounded in wet and steam like a proper shower,
buckle your knees and contort your face with accomplishment
to see you glisten in my fondness.

I want to mail you a catalog of memory,
after all, the physical is but a moment.
Mementoes serve as signposts leading back to where you once were.
The card I took from Barbuzzo, tickets to Natalie Portman,
these are topographical maps of a hidden kingdom.
The napkins I spun absently while searching for a better example
- indeed, entire transcripted conversations -
the real reason no one can replace you.

I want to mail you an envelope of petals,
after all, objects never swell with our investment.
A treasure removed for safe keeping
from trees that bore witness to our secrets.
An acceptance of the larger cycle, but something more.
Something I would myself wish to receive,
to recognize as I wish to be recognized
as both form and void together.

These things are not enough,
these tokens crumble as I name them.
The postal service cannot box this maelstrom, and matter
fails to connect our fingertips our faces. Eye to eye,
rather brainstem to brainstem, safe from abstraction.
The solution is from earlier in evolution,
close your eyes
I am beside you.

I started Early

Emily Dickinson never saw the sea.

I made a joke at her expense yesterday and I feel badly about it. I feel badly about certain other things, as well.




Young love is such a fragile thing,
It is itself uncertain how best to thrive -
When the thrust of mandate finds the time is fit
That you depart and in your place these words survive.

“April is the cruelest month,” he said,
Eliot and I at the okay party room.
Expectations sliced as hoods and served in bowls,
I know better now than to eat of it.

Well before I stood and watched,
Put your drinks up, Sumo, I never would have guessed it.
I guess the change in my pocket wasn’t enough and I’m like
I can’t even write this.

Well before we lay together on a couch,
Lacing fingers gently pressing lips against your hairline.
It’s darker than I would have expected and I kiss again -
I am still on that couch and where are you the rest is nothing.

“I started Early – Took my Dog –“
I did, too, and it was so much harder than I wanted.
Now is not the time for this she’s not the one
How did you get in here you’re hogging the blankets.

Strangers on a Train

Is that okay with you?

We were standing on the platform so long

We were on the train

We were

We

I’m skipping ahead

She said

Emerging onto a platform at last

Emerging somewhere sunken

I like walking arm in arm, you’ll find that out about me

Finding that out

Then the part with the people

Weird that Derick just assumed that we were husband and wife

Husband how do you feel about that

He asked

So I want to ask you a very direct question is that okay

Just think of all the things I’ll have to tell you

For being amazing tonight

Mostly cause you were there

From the Egg

Along a sandy shoulder,
a field trip gathering stones.
We dozen children, collared shirts.
I found one unlike the others, felt its real heft.
Battleship gray with crevices worn smooth,
some unimaginable thing might be birthed and slither forth.
Hurried forward, drew it from my bag
“It’s slag,” he said, “it’s a piece of slag.”

Africa, to start with,
are you still the dark continent?
Riotous living, too much living
The cradle, as they say,
featuring sound and color I will never know.
A man from this company went upriver and stayed there.
Chart your boundaries and unspool wire
Vile and virus and gunfire.

No room will ever
compare to the first room.
Membranous curtain, united pulses
Before the tipping point, before abstraction ruins everything.
First exploration as a spasm,
beak or feather against the porcelain barrier.
Nourishing some inner seed
The urgency of real need.

Waiting in the hallway,
squinting into photographs
Skull expansion, subsequent migrations
Muddled thinking, struggling to remember the sequence.
It’s best to record each detail,
the tips of your fingers along a pantleg.
All of this is familiar to you
It is written on your body.

A Genre

I would like to suggest a new specialization of verse. I am speaking of the love letter, a traditionally staid and rather uninteresting form for which I believe I have developed an unusual facility.

Looking through old documents, it's astounding how many of these I've written. Reams. They run the gamut from youthful and embarrassing to poignant and textured. Mostly embarrassing. More than anything else I've written, though, these seem to clearly delineate the evolution of my voice.

There's also a fascination to be had looking at the wreckage of your past. Like poking your tongue into a sore tooth, or rather breaching the stale sanctity of some lost tomb and knowing that it was you who were buried here.

When I bring one of these up from the seafloor I will change the name to Elizabeth and edit out identifying features.

Here goes:

The car stands fixed as Route 322, punctuated by both rain and the Commodore Barry Bridge, solidifies from an arching, gray planetarium. A foreign and tender softness. A gray of plumped moth bodies and the underside of garage doors heavy with age and lousy with unhatched eggsacks. A firmament of gray which undoubtedly marks entrance to the Guf and a return to unspoken places of our most sacred and solemn common memory. This sky is heavy. This sky is pregnant with water and with nostalgia.

I am here and in this car I am racing. I am a body and a mind which is individual. It's an important assertion and one I should make often.

I am cataloging the immediate history of my heart and thereby that of mankind generally. There are decisions to be made. It's been the same decisions each time. The choices made seem brave and deeply felt, but everyone ends up at home disappointed and hungry.

The cycle is starting anew and I am flush with potential. The springtime pantheon - championed by Hope herself - again enthroned on high. My limbs heal; pace quickens; thoughts become whole and deliciously melodious.

There's so much I want to tell you. How your grace and your smile were a beacon - an unfurled spinneret leading out of the labyrinth. How the rhythm of our laughter these past weeks coaxed blood back to a drowned heart and twisted fingers. For a solid moment my vision was unblurred and your walls unmanned and I stood within your kingdom. I knew you.

The lives we lead are stunted and hunchback. The pleasures still found desperate and drunken. Surrounded daily with examples of the worst of love, sick and dysfunctional. Chambered hearts like furious angels sobbing and clawing in ritual lust and ritual abandonment.

The place where we work is a thing of poisons. Its walls may as well be wreathed in gnashing teeth. Its corners choked with fiercest, jagged vines and fragmented bone. It is a temple built to disappointment and futility. We are obedient to the pulse of this hive. In the absence of any other guiding force we are shunted through its piping and waterways to rest when the flow rests and move when it moves. To bump into one another. To mumble the daily litanies and continue hollow, beaten, and unfulfilled.

You are wondering, of course, why I'm telling you these things. This earnest but monstrous tirade which I find in turns sincere and frightening. I've seen you glide about in the periphery of my vision for a very long time with little concern. Graceful movement, haunted expressions, a laughter rare but intoxicating. With your hair up immaculate as a chesspiece and wearing furrows in the floor to follow the same path day in and day out. A white queen on the field. This queen and I, when alone and moved by liquors, are now grand friends. There are tea parties and tinkling laughter; strolls arm in arm on the promenade. Enveloped in night's secrecy and separated from the mad pulse we put our heads together and whisper secrets.

Sorrow clings about your person like a gown. I could smell this from the moment we met. Sense the furrows and rivulets traced in eyes sunken - totally at odds with smiles and speech and gesturing hands. Eyes clouded by broken promises. The eyes of a soul alone. It is this which struck me so deeply, just as it is this which gives me reason to analyze your cruelties.

I sensed at [location] a way out, a hook in the sky. If it turned out true or if it turned out idle fancy I could follow the light and be saved again. I knew that this hook would support my weight even if it was itself supported by nothing. A bit of smoke, a bit of music, and an ardent wishing - all that beauty is ever really birthed from.

Ah, if only you could have known me in years past. I was a thing of fire. My face a tempest of intensity in vision and passionate combat. I did all the wrong things, but dear god how I meant them! In tiny stages of complacency and compromise do great things end. What you know and see of me is a husk. The abandoned summer carapace clinging to an oak branch. An armless statue. A wet letter.

The culminating note I am approaching here is one of thanks. I wish to thank you. You are a reader, and so I must assume that behind closed doors you take words into yourself and you feel them. The day's defenses are relaxed and a more primitive and vulnerable hand turns pages and makes adjustment. In this way, then, do I visit you. Dust and offal has lain upon the belts and driveshafts. Animals took refuge in the rafters and October winds blew dead leaves in lazy spirals about the interior.

No longer. I can hear the purr and whistle as birds take flight rotors test their integrity.

The heart is sometimes shut in a large box, locked, and buried in the earth. Such things are imagined to be for safety, but are in truth merely acts of demented sacrifice to that very earth.

A lazy heart surrounded by a flock of cats; a desperation of cats. To stay in rooms with some kind of shepherd. Crook driven through the reverse and emerging somewhere near the navel. Not an ear to receive a tenth of your thoughts and dreams if you'd even share them.

Make no mistake, this is not something I am asking of you. It is something you have already done. I am reminded of what it is to have your chest tighten at the sight of a face. Why men build and birds sing. Perhaps in this way we will always communicate. Trading stout notes from miles distant, subtle jokes and suggested movies and necessary pep talks. The things that define humility and worth.

Elizabeth, we grow older. Nothing is predictable. Life is a succession of moments and it is in these moments that we shape ourselves. I hand you these papers with pride, with the knowledge that I may look back from the perch of forever and know that I met love with thankfulness and honesty. Should these words resonate within you and seal an alliance forever more, then such an act is to be admired. But if, instead, it causes irreparable collapse...then maybe such an act is to be revered.

The car is still now. From a little closed patio I can see it peek above the fencing like a snail shell. Smell the ocean, face tightened by the sun.

Non-Verbal Response

I have always hated discussing poetry.

There is something wrong-sighted and vulgar about that practice. I used to deliberately not explore the specifics of my reaction. It was enough to conclude that this was something pedants do.

I enjoy the exchange of information. True, my experiences were often confined to the classroom, with all the democratic frustrations that involves. Regardless, I do enjoy serious exchange with serious people. I've gained from it. It has value.

It is also not the case that I resent explanation. Real work has weight and grit enough to support its own structure regardless of what meaning we may attribute to it. Often, I have found my conclusions to be wrong and been pleased to stand corrected.

No, the real issue here is with medium. Poetry is the most sophisticated form of verbal expression. Responding to it by simple talk is possibly the most inelegant act imaginable. It would be like browsing through galleries of the Old Masters and then reacting through fingerpaints. One could respond to poetry with poetry, but that simply postpones the issue.

It is for this reason that I feel secretly compelled to respond non-verbally. I want to scream or punch someone or to beat my head against a wall. I want to acknowledge a triumph of language without defilement.