Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

  May 18, 2010

  Metal Petals

  “I dreamed my genesis in sweat of sleep…from limbs that had the measure of the worm”

  -Dylan Thomas’ “I Dreamed My Genesis”

  From the stems that crawl with the measure of the worm,

  I storm as petals, which chain themselves to the ground while

  raindrops knock savage down on my petals.

  Excuse me for

  wilting, wondering about she-loves-mes or

  she-loves-me-nots, but I am at the finer gunpoints

  of this love and my freewill, which used

  to fill and thrill me, doesn’t matter

  too much anymore.

  While others urge themselves to

  bed early with slippers in one hand

  and a glass of scotch rotting in the other, I purpose

  myself beneath this solstice of an evening.

  For some reason, I murmur my

  freewill still, but with love as

  an opposite, I can only stay as

  metal petals chained to the ground.

  Migratory Paths along the 7

  This station’s some aviary.

  We break jokes like eggs

  to tickle the rafters

  that laugh out birds.

  The flocks thrive up

  into the sky, almost as tall as

  the city sprawls wide.

  The birds tide out,

  burning the morning skies

  into some winepress night.

  And even after the

  birds flee east, the ruby

  wine stain still

  hangs up in the air, dried.

  September 16, 2010

  Miltonic Writes

  I cannot tell where

  I end and the next creature

  begins. I can feel the teacher

  breathing down my neck,

  making me telegram – with

  a shaky hand – sentences on the

  blackboard, telling me

  that if I want to dream, I have to plant

  one foot in reality first

  and teach myself to wash

  in the fear of it all.

  I’ve always

  hated the staring faces, the

  stifled giggles and

  so on and so forth,

  but I cannot hope

  to climb the washboard

  and clean myself on the grill

  that thrills the dirt from

  me like maggots

  on the heart –

  I am a fool’s part, played

  by the actor with the brain to

  feign kings and writers

  but he retires to

  the role of the fool

  in the end and I cannot pretend

  to ignore these rich tears

  that tear and wear

  me down to nothing more

  than rumors and shotglassy

  eyes and I spy the blue muscle car

  that’s tacked in the far lot, beautiful to

  begin with but cursed to ugly

  endings but who’s

  pretending to know otherwise.

  I sometimes root

  myself in other lies

  and I cannot feel anything

  at all except the fiction in

  which I’m living and I

  fret the death of my muse because

  when – and not if – she’s

  gone, who or what do I use?

  I am nothing without

  the loving eye perched

  behind me, pushing

  the waterwheel

  within me to float

  the whole world

  with my words.

  Mowing Dandelions

  You know – I once wrote this song for you,

  some song strong enough

  to have evolved on its own

  hind legs – even while growing

  up out of the soil

  from which it came – a soil

  boiled over with daisies and the

  beginnings of ivy. I wanted my

  song to rise high enough – climbing

  over itself, its petals metal

  rungs on a ladder – until its roots

  were sucking rainclouds dry as it grew

  by, growing higher and higher

  until it fell up in the sky. I wanted

  this song to grow up like a weed until

  it wore the sun like a hat, a baseball

  cap to keep its head warm even

  during the new york storms

  that shiver down our spines.

  That is, although we’re drowning

  in June here, downing

  warmth like a chilled glass of beer.

  But you’ve always been

  a pair of gardener’s hands,

  a pair of scissors,

  a pair of gardener’s eyes

  that can only see the seeds it needs

  to preen from the yellowed

  pages of this song,

  this song I could only wish we would finish.

  Mulberry Napkins

  Here we go round the mulberry bush,

  the mulberry bush,

  the mulberry bush.

  Here we go round the mulberry bush

  on a cold and frosty morning.

  Once, this cupholder

  broke us the width of

  the foam cup, the

  coffee spilt like milk,

  oceaned in the tray – as we stopped,

  the sea sprayed out,

  staining sticky

  hellos in the carpet.

  Now, the cupholder gulfs us like islands –

  it’s just a shame that we never

  learned to swim. We wait

  to wake, but the closest we

  get are our waists dragging

  the wake like some albatross

  as we step out on the waters.

  This silence of seagulls and hulls,

  though, is enough to

  smother us lovers back to sleep.

  And still a lone finger hovers

  on the remote control,

  scratching the mute

  button like wool.

  I keep the time in looks out the

  window or at the radio. If no-man’s

  land could talk, this is what it’d

  sound like: shoulders dressed

  up in bedsheets like

  cream summer dresses.

  It’s funny how a face turned away

  can still send a message.

  You’re sitting there now, folding

  your napkin into origami, anything

  that could bleed wings and float up

  quicker than leaden leaves drop.

  The medics flutter out like

  dandelions to splint the silence

  – here’s to the wait for the

  next barrage of arguing.

  Good, more mortar

  shouts for us to hide in.

  April 12, 2010

  My Hands Are Wings

  “Hold fast to dreams, for it dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.”

  -Langston Hughes

  I flew before I ever had dreams of flying,

  sitting there on a phone book on a

  chair, watching constellations

  float over like clouds do in the afternoons –

  that cloud looks like a dog, that

  cloud looks like a spoon.

  I chewed the gum like food. Although

  my ears hadn’t popped, I still could

  feel the life of the loud propeller

  filling up my empty stomach first,

  then my veins, drowning me

  from the inside out. I starved

  for the droning sound – as a child,

  I always used to fall asleep

  to the vacuum cleaner working.

&
nbsp; I played with paper airplanes before, sure,

  bending wings out of them,

  pretending a fighter pilot

  into the folds, shooting down the dust

  crusting around my dresser drawers.

  A year or two back I had a dream –

  the skin on my arms feathered and I

  called myself bird although it was

  just for awhile. When I woke up,

  the first thing I did

  was look up at the flecks

  of paint peeling from the ceiling,

  dreaming them into constellations

  where they should belong. That paint

  looks like an eagle, that paint looks like a cup.

  My Own Zookeeper

  On nights like these,

  I’m my own zookeeper –

  kicking up the dirt in these

  inside wilds, my curvy

  hand – clinking with

  wishbone fingers –

  tossing scraps to myself

  on the other side of the fence.

  On the other side, I catch

  warm fish with bowed

  teeth stronger than a Polish

  name or absinthe on

  your tongue.

  And I snap and leap

  at the crowd of

  familiar faces behind

  the fence – a crowd

  that roars applause.

  My Newspaper Kites

  I’ve watched time kill

  off all of my gods and my heroes

  softly, their breaths drawn long

  and sickgreen on the canvas.

  The dreams they’ve imagined and lived

  are now funerals shrouded in

  these textbooks that I write, these textbooks

  that I can only hope will be glanced at

  by some myth class in some

  other place and time –

  and I hope those snored students –

  some using breath mints

  to rinse off the rawgin coughdrink

  they had the night before –

  I hope they grind their eyes on each page

  until their sight is as polished smooth

  as those gods and goddesses who once moved

  my finger through the sand,

  digging a line – and though

  the winds pick up and the sand

  moves, that groove still stands

  and, hugging at it still,

  I have yet to move.

  But those gods and goddesses?

  They’ve since moved north and I cannot

  join them for another year or so.

  They’ve since moved up north,

  where it cries snow –

  I sometimes see snow, but it only

  shows up on my TV screen,

  a TV almost as old as me

  and – at least these days –

  is always in need of fixing

  so it seems.

  And here I am, wishing I could outlive their deaths but

  no word has outlived its muse,

  the hand that breathes the clay.

  My name is word.

  At least, that’s what they told me to say.

  And though I’ll watch time bury me,

  making me work off my death as a gardener

  amongst the sun carnations and honeysuckle,

  I still madly carve holes in this

  long-winter sigh of a nighttime sky

  and call those tears my sea-bearing stars.

  Names to Grow Into

  You know, I remember when

  she gave birth to you.

  We didn’t know what

  to name you at first.

  It wasn’t until I took a picture

  of us three that we saw your eyes

  glowed embers that fought

  off the night. The red-eye effect

  throws some off, makes them

  think of paintings torn by

  vandals’ hands.

  It’s enough of a startle.

  However, we knew better. One look

  at those strawberry eyes in the picture

  made us know what to name you.

  And that’s how we came

  to call you Rose, and all we

  did after that was

  feed you water and light

  and sit back and watch you grow.

  Nautical Compulsions To Get Lost

  The city grows in charm, the

  skyscrapers a glistened pink

  in the morning

  currents – refracted sunshine

  dries in the river’s tea waters,

  adding that lemon flavor.

  The froth in the waves takes

  its quick white strides to

  shore, leaving footprints

  inside the plucked soil.

  Each tower is a hayblade grazed

  in frosty clouds like harvest

  gone wrong yet nothing’s ever

  looked so beautiful frozen.

  Picture is the scripture, darling.

  Nothing’s clearer…not even

  air in a bottle passed

  off as fresh tap water.

  May 23, 2010

  No Stop Between Karaoke and AA

  Your singing is wind drinking in the

  aluminum like rum until all

  is mumbles and all is peaceful for you.

  That’s until you finish and I wish

  you wintered into the stage, holding

  your tumbler closer to your lips

  than you have with me.

  You walk past me,

  you forget how to speak.

  I’m starting to think that

  the only time I hear you

  talk is when you sing. And

  I’m still not sure

  if I like that or not.

  September 16, 2010

  Nobody Goes to the Nursing Home to Live

  She’s just an old house now –

  gone grey

  in the hair, though

  still with Christmas tinsel

  of that old red here

  and there. She

  wears a pair of glasses

  that are older

  than me. But with

  her blues turning

  darker than the

  Atlantic at midnight,

  what else is left for

  her to see?

  She’s seen nothing but

  dark hallways for

  years, but that’s

  fine with her.

  When you talk

  with her, that’s

  all you see too,

  behind those shuttered

  windows of hers,

  shutters so splintered

  they almost look misty.

  August 25, 2011

  Not Sure If We’re Sinking or Floating

  I can hear the wine bottles,

  even from here,

  rolling around in the

  liquor cabinet like

  torpedoes in a sunken hull.

  They must still be cold – let’s taste

  chilled Elysium together.

  I already feel the

  floorboards swaying after a couple

  drinks, the house rocking like a marina,

  a marina rocking like Venice.

  The sails in the curtains

  are pushing us forward,

  back into the hull,

  where you know we both belong.

  September 9, 2011

  October Coup

  “Natures first green is gold.” – Robert Frost

  Nature’s first gold is green, cash wilting from the

  hardwood trees. The last week of October

  is rarer than sapphire – but just as brilliant –

  with all of the fiery colors dying down,

  cut to pieces by the trampling that hardens

&n
bsp; it all into smote jewelry. We try to stand

  on these plutocratic mountains, but we seem

  to be too heavy, even for autumn. We ashes

  fall down and when we rise, we’re weaving

  the autumnal crowns in our hair like kings

  and queens – and for that bitter week

  we keep ourselves honest in all

  of the ways that nature shouldn’t be.

  November 18, 2010

  Ode to a Mountain’s Oil Colors

  I ran my hand along the painting,

  feeling the drumtight canvas

  hum in the spaces

  between my fingers and

  my thumb,

  and when I tore

  the painting, I could feel

  all the different paints

  spill off, staining my hand

  and when I looked down

  at my palm, I could see

  the calm browns and

  greens that once

  colored the painting’s

  mountains

  and when I saw

  that, I was

  the strongest

  that I had felt

  in days.

  Off the Book

  To some people, there is nothing more

  gorgeous than math. For others, there’s

  nothing more leprous. We run

  in huffs from the crime rate, the rise

  in the mortgages, the dotted lines

  on the contracts, all of those straight

  and narrow numbers – more rail

  than your marrow – dipped in

  their evening blacks.

  So I’m not surprised that no one

  thinks about the airplane ticket,

  a price steep enough for

  anyone to fall into.

  February 20, 2011

  Ophelia

  I can feel your shouts drown me out

  as we break dishes and our English

  against the walls – I was once

  a lover and you could be love

  but we’ve long since lost

  our sense of touch in the

  darkness and the candle

  long ago melted its wax,

  leaving us to thoughts

  that wax on our waning