no one writes about goofy people

you've got thin wrists,
and a silly hat.
and a beard,
which is weird,
but ok I think.
why are love poems always so profound?

Driving Stick

Two burritos
but you’re driving
so I juggle both
belly-sized bricks.
I peel back an inch of foil
barbacoa beef
ready for the request
of your silent hand
outstretched.
After a bite you
hold it out again,
dripping rice,
I snatch it up
immediately,
abandoning my own
so you can turn the wheel,
eyes straight ahead.
The sunroof is open,
music is blaring.
Salsa burns my lips
as I watch yours.

First gear! you shout
and I don’t know where first gear is but
I grab the stick and shove it
up and over
we slide to a stop at the red light.
My god I say but you say second gear,
straight back and I do it and we go,
we’re gone,
your burrito just a sticky end
I cradle into your palm.
When you say chip
I dip one in guacamole
and place it between your fingers;
I will always be here for you.

Fall

The final day of August drooped over pastures, ditches, dry corn,

slats of old tree forts,

fields heavy with cicada song.

Noon still shimmered,

moonrise quaked,

stars telegraphed the dark.

The final day of August burned like lightning.

Two friends, drunk on mistakes,

made love in a narrow bed.

In the morning, September shuddered at the cold.

-

Purity of experience:

We’ll never get to the moon but

maybe

black coffee

straight gin

5 am

barefoot in the rain.

Plight of the Troubador's Friend

(for Billy Collins)

Your friend the troubadour
goes each evening to stand under some other woman’s window
You proofread his poems
and lay a sisterly hand on his head
when he returns each evening lovesick and disappointed.
He reads you his sonnets, asking
“Will they work?”
You do not tell him that they already have
and wonder what would happen
if he glanced up from his lute and into your eyes
or read through the poems that you pen late at night.
But you have long since decided
that you would rather hear him practice his songs on you
than never hear his voice at all.

Snuffy's

In the fall of 2003
I ate at the malt shop in St. Paul
Just a weekend in the city
Just passing through, was all

I didn’t know that down the street
You lived in a house where I would stay.
It would be a year before we’d meet,
But you were there, a few blocks away.

The arms that would someday hold me tight
Were dangling loose and still
We’d never had a laugh or fight
Or tumbled down a hill.

We tread pathways barely held apart
but they might never have ever crossed,
And you might never have held my heart
Never gained and never lost.

Without knowing we had a year to go,
So unaware, fall of 2003.
How strange I didn’t think to know
To miss you, when you had never heard of me.

Coffee

Clacking domino toes

seismograph feet

unfocused fluorescent eyes

fluttering sweaty lungs.

easy, this is easy—

fingertips swirl on a

styrofoam cup

click tap twitch,

rush of red blood cells

shout cacophonous

into pupils, knee joints,

chickadee neck.

easy, this is easy—

ah, caffeine.

Bright Knight

Orion swung in low on his eastern couch,
raised one fist against the deepening sky,
and dangled an invisible shield against his legs,
stretched in a stilled sprint.
“Come outside” he murmured, arriving earlier each night
as autumn bent itself into cold November.

Three bright points arranged around his gunslinger’s waist:
A clarion call for inexperienced lovers
looking to impress.
One holstered on each firm hip, the third, he admitted,
not exactly aiming for the navel,
but the darker universe within.

“Come outside” he urged, “or at least then let me in”
For him each night seemed the same age as the last,
withering leaves hidden by arrogant darkness,
winter passing in a single brassy stride.
How inviting to be so serenely young.

His casual fingers prodded at window panes,
brilliance probing past sunsets, curtains, eyelids. He beckoned.
A warrior waiting to advance against reluctance
–widening eyes, a gasp of escaping breath—
and blaze briefly in the shadows.

“For you I’ll give up Scorpio, and this bright view of midnight,” he called,
“If only you’ll let me in. For you I swallowed the moon,
I came to rest for you and brought the solstice.”

And yet he waved his club above his head,
lying through gleaming Grecian teeth.
Come spring he’d still be lying,
immortal beneath the horizon, vanished from sight.

So I did not
unlock
my window.

haiku 1

I misquote Shakespeare
Three words, but you understand
and hold me closer.

St. Paul

I am pulling out of this city on a bus,

it is just after dawn,

the clear light cuts in angles the tan sides of buildings.

Somewhere in the jumble you are softly asleep,

your hair lying curled on the pillow

kept dark by still window-shades.

I think of you lying gently curled in a nest of warm blankets,

eyes shut, unaware.

As the bus lumbers around a corner and groans out of the morning city

you turn a little bit, and sigh.

"guard down, socks out"

You sleep
as unselfconscious as you pretend to be when you’re awake,
one knee bent,
one grubby-socked foot sticking out from the small soft blanket
draped over you.
Your hand twitches,
it is long and tan and knobbly-knuckled.

You sleep
more loudly than I write this poem,
the metronome of your breathing steady.
You are unaware, and
undemanding.
Light settles over the angled planes of your face,
soft curls follow suit, tussled on your forehead.

Pines

Two pines side by side

Standing in a hedge of snow.

Thin afternoon sunlight

on the straight sides that have spent every moment

mirroring one another,

measure for measure since sapling days,

a matched set with pavement at their feet.

Unmovable as we fly past,

companions on the grey-spoked winter highway,

two travelers with our knees bent

through curves of ghostly birch and incurious evergreen.

My heart catches for a moment on the symmetry of that

simple pair

so still by the roadside.

As we pass I turn to the seat beside me

And see your eyes on their distant stance

a smile on your lips

as you watch those two pines

in the rearview mirror.

this is just to ask

Did you see the town lying still on the solstice?

The moon was swallowed by silence and

Orion balanced by his belt buckle on the steeple of the church.

Love Song (for Sherlock)

Lightning quick,

you peel back the layers of a mystery.

Your

keen grey eyes–

Your

long clever fingers–

Let me lie here while you smoke your pipe.

Poem for John

Where are you going?

The sidewalks of Saint Paul miss your tread,
worn and torn in grocery stores,
slackjawed in awe,
you will never know a silence of thought.
Caffeine keeps you frantically awake,
howling elbows,
civil-war ribcage and
San Francisco smile.

Where are you going?
Screaming turbulent you can’t decide,
Unsettled quivering legs
Deny definition, then
shrill loneliness comes creeping home
to play the lute below your eyes.

How will you know when you get there?
The ages call you home,
Unkempt in cardboard,
Sticky post-scripts:
You are nothing but your words,
And we are nothing but the songs you sing.

Why I shouldn't study psychology late at night

I know how you sleep
and I recognize you as I read chapter five of this stupid textbook.
As I turn the pages I remember how you shift and settle
before that quick drop-off into unconsciousness.
Stage one used to be a surprise, now I barely startle
at the twitches of your relaxing muscles,
the sudden mumbles as incoherent as this vocabulary.
Stage two is when your steady breathing fills the room,
when you're spun along on spindles, held fast by delta waves.
I've studied you better than my notes, I see you in the words.
Stages three and four--I hadn't known the name of that heavy,
immovable time of night, now you are my mnemonic device.
It is not so safe on the inside as it seems on the outside,
an I wonder what happens in the confines of your brain
as you lie so still.
There is nothing in this text about the things you see while
I am awake and watching you.

Strange that the rhythms of your sleep cycle are as familiar as my own-
frantically I turn to the glossary,
flip through the index,
but there is nothing in this book that explains how I love you,
much less why.

12:30 am, December 11

The one o’clock train is early,

hustling through a midnight town

already covered in salted hoarfrost.

Its expectant whistle drapes over the crunch of steady footsteps on frozen beds of woodchips, grass subtle as statues.

It wavers and is gone.

Beneath the half-moon,

One leaf trips across the pavement,

and dormitories blaze with a

vastly

inferior

light.

This is

This is my shirt

remember when I wore it last, the soft cotton slipping over my skin.

It was not cold that night,

and we had one blanket to share.

This is my shirt

remember when you felt the smooth fabric of its inner side

your hand slipping over my skin.

This is my face, my hair, tangled with uncertainty

And when you asked if this

was the end of the world

I stopped your words with my lips.

This is your mouth

smooth salt I had tried so hard not to kiss,

though we both saw this inevitable advance,

it was in our smiles that night

and we had one blanket to share.

This is my shirt

remember how we paused to wonder, muffle our voices in the dark.

This is the sleeve, the collar, your lips

and oh this is your face slipping over mine.

This is not the end of the world,

but this is how I’d like to spend it.

Storms

The morning after

a rainstorm

like so many other mornings after,

found unspoken.

Opening one eyelid in the thin light:

Lightning-scattered leaves, thunder-tangled branches,

closed furrows of grass still damp from the downpour.

A hesitant awakening into the humid day,

Some small pressure change,

Languid limbs unfolded at dawn,

draped with verdant sleepiness.

And in the air, the quiet uncertainty

that memories of the night before are not

quite

real.

Together

The wear in my knees tells me already

I’m going to die,

though I have only been eternal a handful of times,

and our paths are converging only for the tread of these few years.

Your flickering eyes – the finely veined fallen leaves of autumn –

will see ten thousand sights

before closing in a dusty clamp, a private pocket of ground.

The notched ivory keyboard of your spine,

where once I played with silent fingers

the discordant symphony of cartilage,

will dry and go still,

locked by my brief memory

– the same span as one quivering aorta –

into this muscular moment.

Let us try to forget that we do not have forever…

Find your hat and we’ll take a drive,

enjoying the absent-minded summer air and

brief contact of our floating atoms.

We will forget each other before the end.

Here, now, we will ignore the mossy, irrevocable future

While I, at least, cannot deny the certain quiet comfort of knowing that someday

We’ll be lying in the same earth.