Revision of very old poem

tracing


some and day
when skin meets skin,
and no small light between

and rattled off
reasons for blood,
heat, friction

or unraveled threads
of hair and quilted
together our awake life,

and ghostly wind,
chlorine on the tongue—
when do we lose ourselves?

Climb Out

I drank half a gallon of sweet tea. I looked out my blurry window at the concrete sky. I tried to sing but my throat merely shuddered. My harmonica took my breath away. I looked for a pen and found none. I got lost in my own hallway. I segregated my confidences from my uncertainties. No longer will they mingle. I read lamentations. I missed that soft and bruised little heart. Missed it so much I downed a pint of something Irish, then two sleeping pills. The night is a foggy extension of my own skin. I wish to be out levitating in the night so cool and wet and thickly dark. Some industrialized Walt Whitman caricature, hovering over this amphetamine city, clasping my hands together at the glory of all common pains—the shopping carts corralled under the overpass, chain-link fences peeled up from the ground, a payphone being stuffed with quarters by a bronze woman with split bottom lip. There are wedding parties out there, maids clad in neon, groomsmen like beaming marquees, all for the newlywed. They gather by the river. The Mexicans with poles and buckets full of worms, the kids with Detroit Tigers in their spokes, geese squabbling over Wonderbread, they gather by the river. I can see them from my window, if I stretch, just a bit.

Smother everything in the name of poetry

Grey Kitten


Smoke off
the blown out candle
—a grey kitten

at the edge of my desk,
floating quietly away
from the acrid smell of old flame,

past bottles,
burrowing into laundry,
hiding from hyperbole.

Creation

On the First Day,
She laid down and parted Her hair.

The Second She painted
rock and mud and rubbed it on her forehead.

The Third Day She pulled a green chord
from Her throat, filled the air with jasmine.

On the Fourth, She plucked out each
of Her burning eyes, flung them away in fury.

She formed you from beneath Her left thumbnail
on the Fifth Day, wet and soft.

The Sixth, She blew life into the ear
of the wind, and finally opened her fists.

Youth

Something I'm working on:

Youth of Michigan Summer


Tall blemished youth,
unshaken, but slouching
down the valleys of age,
casting shadows like clockwork
on the passing day—
beware of easy apathy,
stop looking down your nose at Pall Mall Blues,
throw out your opera and pick up a kazoo—
And hum three thousand miles
of shoreline, hum
like quiet Detrois
in overgrown wild-lace,
hum the language
of euchre, hum
for Motown-Soul-No-More.

Mouth open in Hoffmaster,
howl with the coyotes,
tall blemished youth, sound thrown
like a ribbon from your throat,
ignore Ionia St. bar crawl
like it were leprous—
but don't ignore the lepers,
pariah fringe slab sleepers.

Tall blemished youth,
c-lo grip knuckles,
burning away
the sweet incense of $uccess,
supping on Spinach Pie,
searching for the vinyl
heart of Sunday morning
—cherry-pick your way West,
open your heart to Rainer Maria
Rodents, throw Hemingway out the window
and read the sky—Clouds rolling
like laughing immigrants,
clouds sometimes blankets,
old family quilts,
clouds of rain for earthworms
and apple trees,
clouds rarely not at all.

Run your hands in the dirt,
form a world of reflection,
for the solstice passes,
the sun's gaze diminishes,
and with it, the world
you've run through becomes
something old again.

Sing

when you cannot sing


when you cannot sing loud, sing
laced with tender notes.
make soft your everything.

when you cannot cry out, cry
wholly from your bones.
make soft your everything.

and fill your oven with eggplant parmesan, lay
the afghans across the sofa, for peace will come
walking slow out of the morning veils,
toward your creaking voice, hungry and shivering.

when you cannot dream, sleep
heavily spread over the humming night.
flicker your eyes again.

when you cannot run, walk
honest with a face made for the day.
flicker your eyes again.

and sprinkle cloves in with the cookies—you
uncorked refugee—scribble a joy on your wrist
for the humdrum march of tomorrow, turn off the lights,
undress, learn the tune of your skin.

Ghosts

Two Glowing Ghosts (in a World So Tall)


Oh I glowed with you tonight,
rode a little hum song,
flickering pinprick song
of the rippled stratus sky,

song of joy from the daily mudly bravery
of rolling from bed and taking
root in the stark breath of morning.

We whispered this little hum song
to the laughing river, we peeled back
lichens and found faded scars—
the names of love.

And when we heard the drawling night train,
we laid on our soft bellies, smeared
in blue twilight, parted the leaves of grass,
ears to the sod—

two glowing ghosts
with clattering heartbeat
moving down the line.

Poem

Fidgeting Spirits


We holding halos to the sun
to see if they cast shadows.
Unsure but not alone, we gnats
of the soulfood kitchen.
We bicycles chattering in the wind,
noses combing date-filled pastries,
same noses like rudders in neon musk.
Potlucking afternoons, we sons and daughters,
up to our eyes in watermelon rinds.
We 3 cups 4 cups 5 cups coffee,
lighting May rollies in bed.
Windows flung wide, bussing the day,
open-eyed, love-handled, calling
like birds to the immortal sky.
We saplings lifting our shaky fists,
petitioning rain's amen.
Slivering the light while we can,
stepping out into dusk, listening
for the reverb of dreams.
We soft hallelujahs at the riverside,
tangled in our old tadpole skin.
Itching to ride our thumbs, stare down
that dozing pink flame—

We pillars of salt at the city line.

So today I had a nice nap

I usually don't post about what I do with my days here, but I think this is relevant. I took a nap today. I don't take many naps. I had a dream today during this nap, and when I woke up, I decided I wanted to write it down. So I formed a little story based on what I dreamt. Some of it is embellished/fabricated, but for the most part, the gist of the dream's there.

dream: There was a blonde little boy who had fits and bad dreams. At night he would be haunted by the last image that he saw before sleep, so he got into the habit of focusing on a picture of his favorite friendly duck.

But tonight, when the duck angel came to guide his dream, it spoke to him and said “You must escape your dreams on your own.” He adjusted his monocle, opened up a book sitting on the nightstand and climbed in, never to be heard from again. The boy's face flushed with fear. His dream turned empty and black and felt himself fall. His vision started to curl and blur into something new and next he was standing in the street of a giant city.

It was nighttime, so everything glowed like copper with the color of the streetlight. Just then a towering mustachioed man in overalls, bigger than anything else in the city, formed a ball of fire in his mouth. His eyes were small, straight black circles. His hair, black as his eyes, curled out from a tight red cap. All the boy could do was run as fireballs pummeled down skyscrapers. Before the boy knew it, there was another mustachioed giant, and a looming voice in the sky reciting some phrase in an unknown language over and over as each building tumbled.

Eventually the boy made it out of town, but not without the two giants following him. He ran with all his might through a sage-green field, fireballs lighting things up not too far from him. His chest heaved and his lungs burned. His little scrambling legs carried him to a cliff, where the ground just cut off into nothingness below. The giant brothers came closer and closer, mouths full of fire. The little boy had no choice but to jump. Fright filled his little bones. He closed his eyes, balled his fists, and leapt from the cliffside.

Falling, he kept his eyes closed, he whimpered a bit. Earlier that day the boy's father had told his grandma over the phone that the boy had been diagnosed with epilepsy. Epilepsy. Epilepsy. The word rang out over and over, was spelled in the sky above him in magically glowing script. He had no idea what it meant.

A small speck in the blackness beneath grew and grew and he realized he was falling straight for a meadow, his velocity ever-increasing. He tried to scream, but all of the air was shoved back into his throat, so he started to flail, as much he could. A blur of white suddenly swept in front of him and he hit it, or rather, it caught him. This blur of white was what looked to be an albino flying moose, with eyes pink, but strong.

The little boy held on strongly to moose's long hair as he galloped across the sky. Opening it's mouth, the moose began to sing a long continuous note that turned into another note, than another. A slow, continuous song that parted all of the fog from the boy's dream. The peered over the moose's shoulder and down below him he could see men and women with wondrous faces, wearing peculiar clothes, and playing even more peculiar instruments, joining into the moose's song, making it their own.

Little Song

Oh I shine with you tonight
in these woods, breaths riding
everlasting song, flickering
song of celestial expanse,
satellites sailing across the sky,
song of rest from daily mudly bravery.

"Show a little faith there's magic in the night."

Let's go, the sky is getting dark. Let's go
like streaks of lightning through fields
of Meadow Foxtail. Let's wrap our freckled
arms around Cassiopeia, let's greet her with a kiss.

Let's run to the Dancing Lawn, uncurl our fists
to the sky, yell until our throats crest, shrill,
push against the clouds. Let's tear the old skin from our backs.
Come on darling, let's cut out and meet Bruce

on Thunder Road, don't bother with your shoes.
Or let's clutch the 12:15 freight to Detroit
—the old Paris of America—
where any golden green's shriveled away by now.

Come on, I want to strike a match on my bare,
calloused heel and light you up and down
each block. Let's go—with no care where or how
or why—the sky is getting dark.

Charred Hamburger

Steven


Is this the naked best of you?
The craned arch in the foot, continually
denying gravity―the ghostly webs that stretch
from body to body, only seen in a fountaining
silhouette, rippling from your arms
like the rings of a tree. The only prejudice
is the truth you have written in your senses―
the tugging gut, last night's melody whimpered low―
the way back to clattering your teeth
in dandelion greens, to your hand-claps for the naked
best moon, the way of the unkempt, frilled intimacy―
these veins stretch out like the countless roots
of wild fig trees, clutching firmly in the rutty ground.
But here in the raisin-sun mornings like this one
where you sling your song to the streetlamp and leave it,
and swagger your derelict tongue to the road―
you are merely black hair and smoke.

Thou Shalt Not Mix Fibers

Indian Summer Prayer, 2008


Dear Lord, you are weightless
in the morning fog, you dropped
your shadow and called it good.

Thank you for your shifting moods,
reaching behind yourself, coaxing

Forgive me—I want to feel your
hand smearing the lamb on my forehead—
for all of the masturbation, intellectual or otherwise;

Please don't confuse my nerves
with vibrato as I fumble through the dresser
drawers where Mom and Dad used to tuck me
in for the night, asleep on a mattress
of polyester and wool.

I am sorry

Young Woman with Epilepsy, I Am Sorry


You are out in the ether. Your head thumps
the hospital pillow, your arms across the hospital tray.
Dust rises like snow in reverse. Dust:
all the pieces that have flaked away.

In the past the doctors would have consulted spirits
would have smeared goat's blood over your forehead.
Now they've brought you here to the fluorescent,
sterile room, laid you in this pneumatic bed,

pinned diodes to your temples—to observe you sweat
and shiver and moan, to watch you set fire to your spirit,
and eventually climb out.
But as they monitor you, you are out searching

in your tremor, full of the same vigor that makes thunder
open its throat, you are out there, passing through pools
of white light and white heat.
If only you could know how electric you are.

A Menthol Winter Passover/Hem and Haw

Two poems tonight. The first is an edit on an old piece of writing I stumbled upon and the next is something I just finished.

A Menthol Winter Passover [The typeset/formatting is different on this poem on the page, and Blogger doesn't like it, so it's all aligned wrong.]


My accordion body
shivers from bed to bathtub,
slipping into the water's ebbing topography,
reciting good graces to cold enamel, and under
the steaming water I am
grateful for every sleepy nerve
coaxed and flickering
to life
like a struck match.


Hem and Haw


From fog comes land, shape and shadow.
The croaking night births each morning ray,
some mother's little lambs full of romp,

the stratus pearling across the sky.
From rot so cross and scattered rise
dandelion clocks, small winged seeds of dream.

And the egret's plumage hides on the crook of her neck
waiting for its time to curl into a snowy bouquet.
All these ounces of joy are to be stuffed in the cracks

of the windowless schoolyard wall and left to sprout,
in between the slats of the soup kitchen floor to pillow and bloom.
There is no doubt one of us must sow them there.

And as for the moon, and its scoffing mouths all filled
with pull, rest your head head on my shoulder, darling,
watch as dawn crosses the windowsill.

AWP Intro Award

Sooooo, guess what? My poem "Archipelago" just won an AWP Intro Award. And they misspelled my name.

http://www.awpwriter.org/contests/intro01.htm

Sacrifices

Sacrifices


It was at the fishing hole a worm
squeezed my knuckle. It was September,
I was 6 and toeheaded. The leaves in the trees

turned red and shook at the concrete sky.
Fully aware of the life wriggling
around my finger—if I am honest, I will tell you I sobbed

lightly when I pinched it in half,
threaded the hook through its wormy body.
And as if in an act of bitter defiance,

I flung the line with vigor.
My bobber rippled the water's surface,
a fluorescent twig in the mucky pondwater.

I had not yet learned of twelve-bar blues,
gasoline, an empty tummy. I only knew two things:
my bike and my fishing pole.

But I only knew with training wheels.
I only knew to yank and reel
when the bobber plopped down beneath the water.

And when I cranked up that shimmering silver fish
out of the pond it sent tiny quakes
into my pale wobbly thin arms. I could only look at it,

the red flesh under its gills, shock
filling its gaping body. I lowered it to the dirt,
watching it flail and pad against the earth.

My teeth clenched tight. If I am honest,
I will tell you I knew it was dying
in all this air. I waited for it to settle down,

afraid of its stark fight for life, and as it began to rest,
I looked down on the fish, its mouth moving
like it searched for words that could never

be spoken. I imagined the frequencies humming
around in my blonde head. And then there was quiet.
I whipped my fishing pole and freed the lure

from the cheek. The lure flew above and behind me,
got caught in the hair of our willow tree. I struggled with it,
but the willow was persistent, so I laid the pole at her feet,

picked up the still, oily fish and flung
it into the water, watching silently
from the grass for it to come alive.

Today

I drank half a gallon of sweet tea. I looked out my blurry window at the concrete sky. I tried to sing but my throat merely shuddered. My harmonica took my breath away. I looked for a pen and found none. I got lost in my own hallway. I segregated my confidences from my uncertainties. No longer will they mingle. I read lamentations. I missed that soft and bruised little heart.

More to come, later.

http://myspace.com/theroostercrow
That's some music of mine.

I'm leaving the house now to see the beautiful Michelle and leave my filthy dreams behind in my bedsheets.

Doe Bones

Doe bones,
how you budge in your sleep,

your anxious ghosts
stirring in your mind,

your tendons constrict and release,
sudden, small flinching.

And you sigh, a pinkish moan,
as if a horsehair drawn

across your throat.
In tender dark, streaks

of halogen laying
across the blankets,

I will pull you tighter,
twin stars orbiting,

and creak a tale in your ear.
Let the words cascade and blur

into whatever machine
makes sleep—may your quick breath

soften and as I whisper
through these clouds

of your jasmine hair,
may the casual

movements of our bodies become
the melody of your dreams.

Sonnet 2

Sonnet 2


I wish to fill this white earth day with song,--
rising from bed with a mouth full of alphabet soup,
placing letters in the air with my tongue;
I will watch every plan turn to soot
when my toes press the winter-bitten carpet
& my throat will crack on regardless
of how the tracks on the ground below fade like jet
contrails; & I slip back into dreaminess----
But around around around goes the prickly sugar
outside my blindless window; spit & wound
in its dance, so unaware of time & nerves
only existing as a descending heavenly neighbor
caught up in its own weight & sound--
I pray I learn to curl my voice to its curves.

Sonnet 1

Sonnet 1


Origami cranes fed to the sunset
folded with arthritic knuckles tired
with gunpowder eyes staring out
over to the window prying the blinds out
past the rotting fence the red barn
all the fool's meadows lined with sunset
It would be useless to run now
setting down your paper wings
bushmills and k-hole in-tow
a blown out throat singing
of a sky as grey as God's own dream
that echoes in your lowdown rumble
you dance with all your loose seams
dance waiting for the room to shrivel

New Poem

Something new I've been working on:

Human of Senseless Fire


Is this the naked best of you?
The craned arch in the foot, continually
denying gravity--the ghostly webs that stretch
from body to body, only seen in a fountaining
silhouette, rippling from your arms
like the rings of a tree. The only prejudice
is the truth you have written in your senses--
the tugging gut, last night's melody whimpered low--
the way back to clattering your teeth
in dandelion greens, to your hand-claps for the naked
best moon, the way of the unkempt, frilled intimacy--
these veins stretch out like the countless roots
of wild fig trees, clutching firmly in the rutty ground.

But here in the raisin-sun mornings like this one
where you sling your song to the streetlamp and leave it,
and swagger your derelict tongue to the road--
you are merely cloth and smoke.