Lines

i.

At five am, after nibbling
the coarse corners of dawn,
our mouths are full of hours,
our feet are bound to earth.
Goodnight, he says, and tumbles upstairs.
Through the hundred-year old floorboards
I hear him walking-
a heartbeat through old plaster, pummeled waterpipes.
His footsteps are fingertips
tapping a table. Together
we slip into our rooms, then out to the bathroom.
Hallways mumble at our passing.
I hear him walking
then we stand, spines aligned,
brushing our teeth at the sinks.

I am a line extending forever from one fixed point.
Ten feet up he is sleepy-eyed parallel.
We are railroad tracks, those curved and rusty ghosts.
The waters runs, falls silent, creaks on again.
Hinges squeak. We pace
a balanced minuet to sleep.

ii.

One night in the trainyard
He tries to tread the tarnished beam
but always tumbles back down.

We discover
that side by side with arms outstretched
like flimsy spring branches,
we can run.
His mitten locked around my fingertips,
fleetness is a matter of inches.
Our feet telegraph those two cold spines,
meters skimming by.

In that hand-held darkness, surefooted,
I suddenly believe in flight.

November Nights

November night
piled beneath old blankets,
cold close
enough to feel the stubble,
see summer creases on the skin.
We lay, legs colliding,
our arms curved like bird wings
around the others slow-fluttered ribs.

Each word is a jar
opened and spilled out:
coarse nutmeg, papery anise, cinnamon bark.
Each touch shudders: fennel seeds
spreading on the tongue.
We are bright with questions: cloves and broken glass.

Will lips touch those laugh lines?
What explanation is offered for the minutes
between now and dawn?
It is enough to have these phrases.

Morning comes open-mouthed
without words,
only soft thoughts
that crumble like walnuts
between the fingers of a moment:
waking up curled around one another's toes.

Want for Anything (Insurance)

I took the money that they sent me
to get a ticket home,
and I bought a xylophone.
I took the groceries that they bought me
threw them in the Mississip:
snapping turtles, fish and chips.

I don't want a girl with health insurance, cause I
don't wanna want for anything.

Fine meals eating from the trash can
a diploma as my napkin
thought you were looking thin
And then, when you did a headstand
through your ribs I saw your heartbeat
we lost our heads but kept our feet.

I don't want a girl with health insurance, cause I
don't wanna want for anything.

One night standing by the river,
had to hop some chain-link,
don't those fences make you think.
Cold enough to make you shiver
the water bears the trash away,
and I don't think that I can stay.

Ghost Sonnet

The hammer and the pulsing drum that ring
inside my ear like voices singing clear,
these tiny bones that float in darkness bring
all sounds into my waking brain: I hear!
Those quiet specks become my walking stick
stuck deep into the streambed as I leap
from shore to shore - the river rocks are slick-
how small the sounds, the bones that balance keep.
Without those sturdy sticks we should fall down,
live robbed of height and breath and summer light,
lie still as skeletons in dry ghost towns
beneath the canyon walls out west. My sight
keeps on, my hearing right, these feet stay true,
in truth, these bones are you, they're you, it's you.

another haiku

so softly in love
with all those windy moments
blown quickly away.

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.