Hangover

Last night's frantic voyage
(pizza joints, stoplights, spinning stars)
gives way to this morning:
corked lungs, stomach slick like salad oil,
blood filled, filtered,
drained of cheap wine.
A long sore gullet, a long clear head remain now,
they cannot be traded for last night's blur.
This body stands limp, glassy, an empty jar.
Today has been stitched to the cuffs of the coat
worn warmly
beneath autumn's disheveled yellow leaves
and cool marble sky.

Ride

Perched, precarious, I hold his sleeves around the corners,
barely balanced on the slight suggestion of handlebars,
his lanky knees at my straining back.
Our faces side by side I enjoy the pavement disappearing
beneath my feet dangling like heartstrings.
My hair gets in his mouth, we giggle just a little,
he wheezes once going up a hill.
And how we glide! faster than my brain can turn,
beneath bowing trees that hold the stars
above this gravel-ground night.

Of all the things in the world I want,
I only want this to last,
each instant growing brief and perfect
as we slide home
to the end, a few blocks closing fast
this moment
our faces side by side
2 am riding on his bike.

October 7th, 2008

On a day like today
a man I haven't met
will sit beside me
eat onions and white rice,
break fortune cookies,
watch the rain.

One of us will make a joke
as small and damp as the sunlight today.
We will be quiet
and slowly grow dry.

There is no day like today,
only other days
to sit and drink
cup after tiny cup of tea.

October

One day
I will not get off the train,
leaving my bed unmade and Scorpio
slung across my shoulders.
I will count my change,
catch the bus down town, some town,
eating the freedom of a one-way ticket.
One day
I will wrap my ankles to survive a long trek
in withering shoes, carrying goldenrod seeds,
scattering milkweed as knees brush sumac leaves.
My bags have been packed for years,
each day they grow lighter,
like sidewalk chalk in the rain.
One day
I will shimmer like sunset.

Old Jack Kerouac, let's split a piece of apple pie-
you know the weight of nothing in your pockets.
Tonight let's sleep in the musty lungs of a haystack down the road,
let's sleep dizzy with hunger, pricked by raw rotting gold (one hundred thousand spikes
of the railroad we've found ourselves to ride).
I know in the morning you'll be gone.

Invocation

I have never written a poem to God.
Father of verse, we climbed those secret nights
twitching, sighing, (on) high...
you scratched your beard and my pen
exploded.
Midnight blew by obscured by leaves
as we tried to stay awake.
It was easier to dream
with wine in our cups.

God - allow me to be filled.
Heaven is a white house with narrow stairs.
When I try to find that place again
I do not know the address,
remember,
you always showed me the way.

August 20, 2008

There are six hundred and eleven shades of green this summer,
twelve in the cornfield alone, depending on the time of day.
Tonight I followed the acorn-shaped tracks of a deer
between those narrow rows, the coarse leaves eager
to serrate my edges.
Through milkweed, wild carrot and tired goldenrod I wavered,
then surprised the white-tail in the short grass at the side of the road.
It waved its long flag, leapt up and ran
away, like summer.
Tomorrow when I move to the city
it will still be August,
the sunset will, like today, arch like an eyebrow,
pink with surprise.
Again the moon should rise orange,
muffling that deers wet dirt clover footsteps.
But
will I have lost this green,
this eye?

Morris

I.

Oh Morris, the plains bring us to your door.

This western prairie is not kind, it is not benevolent;

it is brown and bare and flat and lovely,

the breasts of an old woman, of a young girl,

rushing too fast.

We never see your summer, it is a flash of heat.

There is only the feel of perpetual autumn, the trails of

swans, cranes, and pelicans leaving this behind,

leaving broken houses in eyeblink towns that even in spring are not green.

Beneath the unbending wind, the pelting winds that circle

like blue skin below the eye of the world,

beneath this clamor clench storm clouds, rolling clouds

tired of so much soil, so much potential, so vast a space as this frontier.

II.

Oh Morris, your midnight streets are cracked and windy

trees bending, time bent, leaves scattered,

uneven curbs and the hum of the plant somewhere to the south or west-

side suburbs and grey grids of homes, rope swings, kids on bikes.

5000 strong you factory workers, barroom glarers, staring at the

young money that just walked in through the door,

who only know these eight streets, from the hospital to the park,

Dairy Queen to Pamida, the ice rink a slick spectre,

grain elevators harvesting the horizon, gathering in, carrying

corn through chutes and shooting seeds,

spare piles of spilled grain lying dusty in gravel, dropouts who remain

washing dishes, making meth, getting drunk,

tripping down railroad tracks.

Those trains are not yours, they tear through the night

and push on to greyer stops, more grain, states flat and unimaginable.

III.

Oh Morris, look at us.

We trundle through the night,

bundle into classrooms:

shitty classes, whiteboards wasted, hours whored

to papers, posters, cigarette lectures.

We choke down dry rice, soft-serve, coffee in our hearts,

we are dancing. We are in love. We hate you, Morris, you are ours.

These same paths take us place to place untouched on lonely nights,

unrequited.

Let our pockets ring, call and answer, we will hear nothing.

Not furnaces roaring, not life behind dorm room doors, not sidewalks over secrets.

We will dig our mittened hands deeper into cold pockets, deeper into one another’s hands. Find some comfort there.

Fifteen hundred students at the TMC, laughing at the wind.

IV.

Oh Morris, we love you as if you are the only thing we know,

at 3 am when we only have each other.

This poem will go on long after we have gone

and been replaced by other shadows.

riverside

Weeds tickle your upturned thighs

as you crouch, back exposed to the dusty sun,

head bent toward the rocks resting round between your shoes.

Tired muscles quiver like willow leaves,

breathing slows to the sounds of birds.

Focused entirely

on drops of moisture curlicuing down-

you become that tiny vital crevice

in so large a forest

waiting to let go.

Paths

I spent the summer following your elbows down mountains;

at night above the hills, the stars were cold and slick as river rocks.

The sun was a walking stick, the moon a nectarine.

Your arms grew tan, leading through pines, lupines,

across upturned beaver-dented logs.

There were flowers between our fingers and our worn-out toes.

The coughing wind dragged me east, I went.

Close the book! Today is here!

My arms have grown tan now, too.

Yellowstone

A frozen map of flowers,
waterfalls,
hat-brims soaked with sweat.

Lost Lake, Blacktail, Cascade Creek,
footsore in the tracks of bears.
Shoes: waterproof!
They climbed mountains

improbable! Their love
the snow in June, seeming
never to melt.

They came looking for the yellow stone,
all they found was gold.