In the Space Between the Snowflakes

The seeming loss of everything
still has me swaying as at sea

but the time when I was falling
into and out of myself
far too fast to focus
has receded,

and you know,

I heard somewhere that the Self might be God
of a warm and familiar planet
where we all are the savior of something.

The Flood was Never Coming

Bated by breath that bathes the Earth
I stand at attention
my senses poised to filter in
the bloom of morning.
And I swear beside these quiet stones
that my grief will be interred
before my flowers wither.
The fear that, could we backtrack
the landscape of our lives
we would not find a footprint,
is it you that binds our tongues and bodies?
I see some brothers and sisters moving mute,
ever scanning the horizon for higher ground.

Cafe in Mid-February

“To be surrounded by beautiful curious breathing laughing flesh is enough”

~Walt Whitman,
I Sing the Body Electric

There are other moments I encounter in this

one when everything moves slow

and I realize there is no difference

between drinks at the Groveland Tap and Guitar Hero
between God and drunken bike races in the snow

and I believe for half a breath

that if I bear myself in perfect honesty
if I tell my father and mother that I've done drugs and fucked
up my relationships with rash selfishness

then everything will be clear as the glass of iceless water

and maybe they won't turn in shame
maybe a hand would fall to my shoulder

and this weight of proof could be lifted
to fly from me like a flock of sparrows fleeing a bush
who just for a second
seem like they'll never stop

releasing something that continues
like the lines that are not segments
going on forever beyond where they end

Fairview Ave

Over ethereal haze of traffic and urban homes
the evergreens tower, but fade
to something less than backdrop,
vague notions of nature beneath the daily Real.
As we coast with complacent frustration through custom
their majestic singular green
blurs behind like highway passing lanes in the night;
but two minutes beneath the swaying scented pines
pull me back to my senses like a ghost into a body,
and all the invaluable infrastructure cracks like dried mud,
falls away before our living breathing bodies

On Being a Drop of Water in a Rainstorm

No one thinks you're special,
no one cares for the drama of your fall,
how you clung to the clouds fierce as fire
and fell with Luciferian grace when they pushed you out,
wings pressed to your back in the infamous dive
that could only happen once, that happens everyday,
and you wonder who is watching
and you wonder where you'll land, and you wonder
what music best fits your fall
as you plummet symphonic power
an inverted crescendo to the ground.

The Cigar in Berlin

Soft, slow burn,
power and comfort in carbon.
Caramel-brown paper wrapped round
so perfect fold lines snake in circle,
a helicoidal progress
like Breugel's Tower of Babel,
beautiful spirals that crumble to ash.
But it's all just window-dressing,
accoutrement to accompany
the ever-approaching ember,
my smokestack flame, my guiding glow,
a signal flair for God.

Intro. to Lit. Theory, MWF 9:40-10:40, Fall '05

Your old hooded sweatshirt smells the same
but the machinery feels foreign, out of touch
like these sports cars in the snow.
But we never knew how to handle one another
did we? Picturing future goodbyes over coffee and beer
was always my weak suit. Good thing you preferred denim,
falling through the seasons with the singular style and stony eyes
of a modern greek god. Statuary posturing to prove yourself
vulnerably invincible in your world of words and silence.
But these days I can't tell if it was different
before the early April afternoon when,
bathing in bright sky like daytime stars,
we slipped up,
and the rocks by the river
tore through your tough blue
to bleed black and white
'to Seurat's afternoon.

what happened after the storm?

the living room windows are breathing in sunlight
and you will be coming,
like horses thundering down the valley,
with feathers of summer rain on your skin
you are shivering with life.
the trees on your street were steely and skeletal
their power dormant but doubtless
like you. come with me to river's edge;
see the perfect movement over rocks?
see the endless source?
feel the warm brown mud between your toes.
hear yourself: "this is, indeed, comfort."
it is the lock and the key
it is the threshold and the leap
it is time.

Day In, Day Out

I skim sun off the tops of buildings at 6 a.m.
to stick it in my jeans' fifth pocket on the right hip
where we used to keep soda tabs, when we were kids,
for luck. So while they fashion new and terrible instruments
to help deaden the pain and excise capital from the afflicted
I try not to listen, pretending my filing cabinets are benign,
running a forefinger over the smooth distinction and clarity
that's pressed to my denim hip, a reminder that the tedium
will wash over me in rolling waves of paper and platitudes,
and if the grinding surf finally bowls me over
and I am scattered on the rocks for seagulls
I still have the sun.

Turning

We sure try, but we're running out of metaphors for becoming winter.
Jack says it is watching yourself fall from a great height,
but Susan is so sure that sometime in November
we all start skating along a mobius strip of ice.
Kristin reminds us that it's also a giant spruce tree
holding us in its branches like so many drifts of snow.
But here in the north, the crystal lattice of Decembers
only remind me of my father with snow in his mustache,
the way his breath hung before him,
and how he told us that the importance is in the icicles,
their perfectly singular descents
like the cold fragile distance of our lives.