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    Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

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      Can these words break

      your bones or could this

      stick never hurt you?

      The dancers step out a rhythm

      written words are hidden in. The stage is

      a spitting image of a page, the edges cringed

      at the thought of public speaking.

      This is simply the way the game is

      said. The singer hums to warm

      her voice, her joys bubbling at the surface

      of her tongue like a taste would.

      The fountain does not

      speak, though, until it’s given time.

      It’s only then she follows out the

      measure lined across a page, the

      staff written as notes in the margin,

      the ink hardened as resolve.

      We hide in the thin thickness of the paper,

      meanwhile breathing and

      tapping out words that are

      worlds longer and skies higher.

      March 11, 2010

      Branch Gives Way to Leaf

      I am someone’s son, but no one’s father – I’m afraid

      of the day saying I am someone’s father and no one’s son.

      My future bores into my buried grandfather

      clock, twitching its hands to pass

      the hours. I like to think its oak stock

      is seed and it will resurrect in branches,

      dancing in winds that are chilled but

      still steel up the warmth like gin.

      But I know the days of being grandson

      are already gone. I was too young to

      know him so at least I can’t forget him.

      They say a branch ends at the reach of its arm.

      But when a leaf

      shatters and

      rafters across the fields,

      who’s to say

      the branch stops growing?

      And who would

      guess it

      was time

      and nothing else that

      willed the

      lush wind to

      push that feather on?

      September 9, 2010

      Breath Fast, Stomach Full

      The clock’s hands are waving at me,

      all two of them in their honest glory,

      never missing a beat, a heartbeat in

      which things are buried, the stories

      of my people past and future. All

      this is no more than what I want to

      know of – the

      love isn’t there if everything

      else is, I think.

      At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

      Because two things

      cannot breathe and dream in the same place

      at the same moment, unless they share

      a mother and who says brain and love

      are brothers? Drummers move the clock

      along, the doorbell only bringing in the

      noon from the cold.

      I look the clock in

      the face. I don’t think it can

      tell a lie. It only dabs

      its eyes as it insists that now’s the time

      to wither my flowers and dry out

      in the pavement to look presentable

      for the dinner bell.

      Burrowed in the Sun

      I watched the sun

      wash all of the dirty dry,

      the spurts of green

      dying in growth until

      the weeds coffin

      into the ground – limper

      than hangman’s rope.

      And still the sun

      widens its precision,

      turning all the

      rocks liquid. Even

      at night, the lights

      hang there in their

      aching suspension.

      The city fountains

      its lit windows – the

      light-switch

      flick

      flick

      flicker of broken

      streetlight staccato –

      all the lights heavy

      in the sweaty summer

      evening, waiting to

      fall back down

      to the ground in

      morning like widows.

      April 15, 2010

      Calm During the Storm

      …train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng…

      -Molly Bloom

      It wailed as loud as

      whisper, passed about

      the chamber like a

      rumor, until it autumned

      down as thunder –

      the law of gravity loves

      his company.

      The skies all around

      thunderclap applause,

      hands squeezing out

      the friction of scribbled

      lightning. They live

      as quick as lust

      can. The wind kickstands

      the clouds, swirling

      the motions up – a mountain

      mirrored in the

      clear lake beneath.

      There are few songs as

      sonorous as the rumble,

      the thunder’s chorus

      rusting in the rafters,

      humbling me into deep sleep,

      an ellipsis beyond words.

      Yet I still love the

      flickers of daylight cutting

      through the midnight thunder.

      April 25, 2010

      Calypso for Excuses

      I remember her jumping up, quick as

      some slug gummed down with table salt.

      Her eyes of ocean blue were swept beneath

      the torn carpet as if for me forget before

      I could write this. Those tsunami eyes

      splashed what it was her mouth couldn’t strum:

      “You wanted to get lost like Odysseus –

      I’ve been waiting for you like Penelope though,

      drinking my coffee slow, sleeping off the sleep

      that comes earlier and earlier at this time each year –

      when the wind whistles away, walking its

      way to work, whispering our names

      into the oak trees for all who are near

      to hear and see. The leaves are

      shakes and rattles now, each a windowpane

      in the wake of some train’s roaring whistle

      muscling its tracks in the

      snow glowing along the bend.

      I would drink my hair as the wind

      blew the strands across my face –

      I would sip on the hair and keep on waiting.

      I’ve tried eating oranges to taste away the sadness.

      I ate them until they tasted like

      I imagine that red would.

      I’ve waited the days down, my thoughts

      spinning hard, spinning the hour

      hand on the clock around in a dizzy,

      until I fell asleep in the bedsheets

      of the apple tree’s shade, until

      the night rusted dawn and the day –

      and the wait – began again.”

      Cat Got

      Cat got my foot –

      find it hard to run

      away from my problems

      so I have to walk beside them,

      talking to them

      beneath a copper moon.

      Cat got my writing hand –

      got to learn writing

      with a pen stuck between

      my teeth, writing

      more than I can chew.

      Cat got my ears –

      got to plant my head

      against the floor, finally

      feeling the sound waves

      wash me all over.

      Cat got my smile –

      have to learn sprinkling

      that twinkle in my iris

      so that people woul
    d

      have to look me

      deep in the eyes

      to see if they

      made me smile.

      Cat got my “cat got…” –

      I’m now whole and full again,

      but like always and forever,

      I’m sitting here

      crippled in dependence.

      Chimera

      Our marriage? It’s a chimera – it’s

      not enough to say that it was never

      meant to live. All things – even

      the beautiful pottery – are meant to

      fall and break. No, it is a chimera,

      in that it should have never lived

      to begin with. I see that now,

      as we step on our memories like

      the crumbs of china,

      waking up the baby in the

      other room. But even with this

      madness, the two of us will still

      wake up in the same bed tomorrow.

      It’s going to take you

      saying “I don’t love you”

      to be the noose to straighten

      out my spine. It’s going

      to take that sentence to make

      me pack this bag and leave.

      September 9, 2011

      Cold August

      This cold August rusts the pipes

      lining the roof of my house.

      The rain – a leaky kitchen faucet

      turned on to wash these grimy hands –

      comes down in fallen bed sheets

      to cover the chilled morning and talk

      it back to sleep the way a mother would –

      just not as good.

      Yesterday was desert, the way

      the heat stuck and crawled down

      the short sleeves of my shirt,

      spinning webs made of beads

      of sweat down our backs, reminding

      me of late mornings and giggles

      we shared before, along with

      the ones we haven’t had yet.

      But now the rubber rain bouncing

      off the roof – scoop up

      the jacks before the

      rain bounces twice – sounds

      the same as rolling down

      snowy hills did in my youth –

      a rolling stone gathers no moss

      if it’s covered in ice.

      The crackle of the rain lingering

      in the shingles of the roof, it’s

      the static, the grey snow that

      glows on my broken TV, causing

      me to put down the remote,

      pick up James Joyce,

      read Molly’s soliloquy

      and believe.

      But now we’re growing dull

      around the edges – with grey

      in our hair and a faint to our

      talking. And sure, we

      could meet halfway at the café,

      but I know she doesn’t like

      to come outside when it rains –

      and she knows that I don’t either –

      so until this monsoon ends,

      I’ll miss her the way the

      sun misses the moon during the day.

      Color Me Blindness

      Color me blindness because my hands are eyes

      and my palms are gloved

      and I suppose my sight is also.

      All I want to see though

      is the spectrum to your

      patterns. If only I can warm

      the silk between the friction of my fingers

      like cats lapping milk between purrs.

      If only I could stop playing blind beggar, though,

      especially with this moment

      still billowing on beautifully,

      the furs furling and unfurling in the winds

      like tattered battle flags.

      November 9, 2010

      Colors (An Old Man to His Wife)

      “Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?”

      -Pablo Picasso

      You were in the corner, crying until your eyes crimsoned

      and I wondered if the sun – in all its ambers and orange –

      would rise today – like a flower – or hide amongst the auburn

      mud, the khaki stones, the withered tiger lilies in goldenrod.

      You only used to forget shoes, staining feet with fern green,

      holding olive bark like playing cards between

      your fingers, doubled over with laughter, burgundy

      in the face from smiles and giggles. Aquamarine

      was your favorite stone, reminding you of the sea

      near your snowy summer home in Beverly –

      a town full of rusty piers and champagne houses.

      Now though, those are no more than denim memories

      fading away into some sort of mousy

      magnolia you’ve already forgotten, doused

      by the old age, the ivory hair,

      the lemon chiffon paint peeling off the walls of our house.

      But though you’re forgetting things, and you cannot bear

      to think of the things you’ll miss, I have colors to spare,

      I have colors to mix with yours – your greens,

      my yellows together make the most wonderful pear.

      Dancing for Writers

      I write the same way I dance:

      preferably sitting down.

      My weak knees are bully, having

      pushed me into a desk chair.

      You know, some glue up the

      walls, calling their cubicle a castle.

      They hallucinate wars between the sheets

      of their reports, the paper weights cannonballs,

      felling the stray notes like trees.

      I go steps further with my words.

      I wrestle with my sentences, pinning

      them down with periods. Or letting

      them flap free, not bothering to paperclip

      the wings. I grip the pen so hard

      I bleed out the ink, let it sink like

      ships into the paper’s pulp or whatever

      it’s called. I press the pen so harsh it

      drips through. Now a backwards sonnet –

      perhaps a better one – is on the other

      side, glued there, too full for any more food.

      Without saying a word, writing’s the rough

      growl that dries my throat out.

      This is my life

      and it will be my death

      regardless of whether

      or not I can sell it.

      But writing has killed

      many writers

      in a way

      the war never could.

      And I’m not even a shadow

      of that good.

      March 28, 2010

      Dancing Swans in the Sun

      She was dancing swans in the sun,

      which settled in its wedding bed on

      the ocean yawning, stretching

      with a lazy blue and red. On one foot

      perched, she spun string in the

      wind that leans on the cliffs –

      the wind coughing on cigar smoke that

      curled and hooked

      the skies above. Some

      called it the evening, but we

      called it the wind’s fondness

      for hand-rolled cigars.

      She leaps far and leaves the world for

      two seconds pawned from this

      beach we’re standing on –

      two lovers against one world.

      Power in numbers,

      the saying goes; at least, that’s

      what I’m told. And though the

      night sticks to us

      hard and fast, she knows

      where the beach holds its

      ragged seashells and waltzes between

      them as the waves swell

      their chests and pound the shores –

      I can feel the sound sink into our


      souls like the shipwrecks strayed

      across the seafloor of

      this forgotten bay.

      This harvest moon feels warm

      the way a rainbow does when

      it runs through dying storms

      which forget how to beat their drums.

      I can see swans roam the moonlight

      that lights the water asleep

      against the beach – a beach

      within our arms’ reach and all

      we need for a world.

      And it’s then she falls for the first

      time I remember – she falls into

      the love I hold like a wreath

      between my arms.

      At that, the beach felt warmer as

      the skies blushed embers.

      Days Stretched Long Like Shadows

      For an hour or two, I

      walked in the wheatfields –

      the cousins’ dog

      barking like seals,

      thrilling some crows

      paddling the waves of grain –

      their fallen feathers

      flocked together

      in the autumn wind.

      The dog sees a scamper of grey

      and a minute and a chase later

      it had already caught its

      breath – along with some rabbit

      stuck like gum in its jaws.

      Oh, I love the honeydusk,

      how it drips slowly like that color does.

      The fields of grain were all waving goodbye –

      I waved back at them as I walked by,

      walking with the dusk, arm-in-arm,

      for the longest day ever.

      Desk Scribes

      Rap, rap, rap.

      I tap my finger on the desk, chatting

      in morse code with the tanned oak.

      The echo laughs with me.

      Even after all of these years,

      this desk still boasts the blush

      of lumbering, limber tree lumber –

      although now in peaces it rests.

      It holds my ledgers of writing,

      confusing the ink with its roots.

      And those ledgers? They’re biting

      on a weather of hopes. And those

      hopes? My heart is tightening

      its screw through them, and

      the hand is still turning.

      And that smell – that smell of

     
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