Monday, October 17, 2011

Obliterated Spaces

Once there was a space a goddess made,
from scratch, for you,
lined with tenderness and lust and forgiving lapses.
But vacuums want filling,
our physics teachers said.
You came by to fill
with words with eyes with restlessness.
You liked that space before it got crowded
with my dreams.
The space did not expand - got used up I guess.
It got smaller, denser all the time.
How curious, to have been caught up there,
like a tiny voiceless tiger.
A jarred hunter.
And who tightened the lid? and who let it loose?
Don't answer that, I wasn't asking.
Get that genie back in. It's time to let the worms have a go.



Thursday, October 13, 2011

Agricultural Love

fertilizing, cultivating indifference;
feast and famine interlace,
an exercise in exorcising harmful breaches of nature,
futile for some, fruitful for others.
we learn to swim up stream
in the river between us and our desire.
we must study each detail in the vast meadow that lies
between want and need
where the love of yesterday and indifference of today coexist
without inducing notions of ugliness or failure
thoughts just swish there in gentle winds
sweeping across fields
like wheat heavy with grain
in the heat of summer they bow their heads
while everything around dries, evaporates.

The Making of Fossils

For a thousand days or more I burned.
A small mound of ashes remains,
gray matter blowing in winds made 
of thoughts and words
(I like words, don't get me wrong)
gathering here and there
then elsewhere on my face,
salted dunes of sand, yet
somewhat sweet and bitter.
Wrinkles form where none have been before,
of familiar tracks and words smoothed over.
One day another wind will unearth a truth (if there was any)
then will shift a little east or west or north or south
and I will look upon the body of words at the bottom of this
and marvel.  (Is that all there was?)
Impregnated by distance, by time, it will grow
a sense of something calcified,
a skeleton of burnt bodies.
Under the shadow of giant insects in an ancient world
we are made as insignificant as we have ever been.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Dregs of June 30th.

Dregs of cold coffee make me think
of a thumb stirring in my mouth,
of fingers on breasts,
of forbidden correspondence.
I look at those thoughts
from a distance.
I think I felt them once while driving.
They were hot then as this coffee was
in the morning.

The broken Shell

I loved that broken shell.

Into the beautiful cracks
I poured patience and glue.
This kind of work takes a
lot to keep it together.
Keep your fingers clear
or you'll never get them unstuck.
It all looks good as new when
pasted tight underneath
with blue pieces of tape.
Only I see where the pieces don't fit.

I put it back on display.

Shipwrecks

Each one of us crashes on someone's shore.
for some there could be a temporary rescue.
warm hands might pump hot air into stopped hearts,
even a resuscitating breath upon our lips will do.

sometime you even bring us up to shore.
you like us stranded on a rock,
a tragic-romantic sight.
we watch when others follow suit
and you carefully resuscitate another crasher.
a crowd could gather on that rock,

like forlorn penguins looking out to sea.
you promise visitations when you have some time,
you check our vigilance.
we take your shifts,we watch out for you
each time you come you are the one,
each one of us believes we are your one.

if we despair of you, as often happens
the sea is always there to welcome us again
through rocky waves we try to swim away
only to surrender powerless against the pull,
to crash again in currents stronger than our will
and when the waves are calm, too soft to kill
we rock there like a seaweed back and forth
back and forth
and we watch you as you stand there, still,
on a rock we have finally vacated,
your gaze scans the horizons,
you wait for other wrecked souls to reappear.
You know they will.