Adjusting Brakes

Old bike brake cable
thin cord of rusted metal
new auburn stained thumb.

ancillary inquiries

When I lean back and breathe in air
at midnight, why does it feel more real?

What is the Platonic antithesis
of this feeling of falling?

Did your peacock come with feathers
or was that just an afterthought?

When rain throws itself against a window
does it cringe before the crash?

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Can I find a space in the bottomless ocean
where the abyss is seen not thought?

Where in the world did we get
this much color in our bones?

Will the reeds rustle as wildly
in a thousand years as today?

And if God is a summer's day
to whom do we turn in December?

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Is there some heavenly calculus
for lightning seen and unseen?

Where do you find the thread
that stitches the hinges of knees?

Are we still slumbering upright?
Are at least the dragonflies awake?

Does surf slide across the sand in
night quiet as could be, or quieter?

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How does the layered sunrise
shoot through me like an arrow?

Why were these hieroglyphs written
so sharply in the sky?

Do the fractal stained window panes
show your faith like a mirror?

Or is there something else inside
that whispers like the wind of you?

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If all the shades of blue
can't contain us, can the sun?

Do we disappear like sound
of the flint-flint-flint of a lighter

when the flame's finally sprung
for it's pure and passing purpose?

Now that we've been thrown here
when will we dance?

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If I keep moving slowly through the wet grass
will my softly muddied feet feel free?

Who can make you feel young
after you've written a will?

And when the ink has dried does the paper desire
the tattoo of death written across it's face?

Could the end of something as true and
intangible as you really be forever?

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Does the thunder make you hide
as the stars hide from the day?

And just what is the thunder,
this ocean of sudden sound

crashing over even skyscrapers
like a tsunami of the sky?

But when the storm breaks in half
like a cloud of red sea under sun,

do you wonder how many centuries are hidden
in the making of this moment?

No Clouds

The pure summer blue above
seems sometimes to stare right back,
one great concave eye over
creation; moments like this
are when I reach deeper down
with my small and callused hands
to grab hold of the thick woven rope
that binds me to the anchor inside
and pull it taut to tighten
both its grip and mine
on whatever weight I've got.
But as sweat beads on my brow
and I lean back to gain leverage
I turn and look over my shoulder to see
the three blind mice named id, ego, and
soul scurrying, scrambling for straws of experience,
using them with the delicacy of morning light
to weave my rope together.
There are tiny green strands of quiet moments
watching wildflowers bend shyly beneath the breeze,
thicker burgundy yarn of loud nights with red wine and revelry,
and all the faces of friends rolled into thread
in more colors than I could describe.
To watch them work is incredible,
these three fabled minions of mine,
squeaking like sonar, calling out coordinates
with bits of twine 'tween their teeth
in a twelve footed sightless waltz of creation.
They give me the sense of having endless allies
in this beautiful broken place I call home,
so I turn 'round and smile, lowering my anchor
hand over hand on my tight-woven rope, deeper
deeper down within me
into a warm and shapeless place
where there is no bottom.

Walking in the Midwest

I imagine every tree to be
driftwood in a hundred years,
branches gone, the firm trunk truncated,
the wood's rough ridges of bark
ripped away at the roots by water,
the old deciduous' lifeblood
now crashing down in an Oedipal ocean.
I see whole forests of them
washed up on the sandy shore
of my thought--this is how I escape
the towering bookshelves of bibliocracy
that reign as the primal tyrant of our minds.
Still, we act; we built and are building
language. We built and are building
and are built by words. We built and are building
something slippery that sustains us
through the moments of winter and loss,
something deep and wide and gilt-edged,
something that allows us to take our morning coffee
with cream and sugar in a sunlit kitchen
the day after our fathers die.
Maybe that's why twisting roots of wood
worn soft like rain by sea surf
make "chaos" seem like a warm invitation
to change, make consciousness less like a bear-trap
and more like a window for flowers and sky,
make the lifeworld seem a lot more like
a world of life.

Why Running in Youth and Love Will Never Not Be(.) Good.

My inner psychic life a sailor
along the shore of something strange,
he minds and mans the gap from Wisdom
eyes with envy rolling plains
from starward deck of Sartrean vessel,
destined morals : auburn clay
are cargo in my hold forever
molded million times a day;
and cardinal virtues not a quartet
nor orchestral symphony,
much more the seconds in a century,
soft touch of lips, or eyes to see;
for even disenchanted worlds--
though knife-black freedom can alarm--
hold the dictum that no other
but myself could my soul harm.

Dear Santa,

This year I turn
older, just like last,
so could I have a few more
porcelain years to place
on my granite mantel,
Hummel talismans to time?

Also, there are some things—well, lots—
that my teachers won't tell me.
Why does the grass grow and
stars shine and people
keep killing one other
amid the miracle?
Why do we always hide?
Are you and God related?

I can't understand
how air bathes the globe.
I can't understand the words scribbled in the sky.
I can't understand how death fits so firmly
in my hip pocket each morning.
So please help me shore up my defenses;
cast my soul in iron, my hope in brick,
plaster over my fear and mortar my faith,
teach me to see the empty fleeting nature
as a flitting bird in flight,
as a fact like a flower,
as a bowl of warm soup.
Teach me to be

Yours, Truly.

Where Are We Headed?

The hawk glides in place-
Effortless anchorage over
The strong summer wind
Barreling down the cliffs,
Lifted by nothing
But the air of the earth.

This is where we are
Supposed to talk about dreams,freedom,
Maybe God. This is the point, the rift
Where grandiloquent proclamations of hope
Seep in through a crack in the poem’s foundation
And collapse like wet cardboard
Under their own weight.

But maybe it’s best
Without all that?
Maybe this is just where the hawk stands
For himself, where the confluence of the universe
Who put him before me
And me behind him
Is enough, maybe this is
That part of our story:

A day that once would have been
Nameless, predestined at a point to be July,
Under relentlessly loving sun
Plants growing
A universe of their own
All around us.
This is where we are.

Summer Rain and Such Things

Flowers tickle the back of my neck
like cigar smoke, curling in
and out of me, blooming vanilla
and pearl, a scent so fresh
as the birthing of souls
it's almost enough to forget
the gauntlet that lies ahead,
the endless trap of the gray mundane;
Red alarm 6:15 glowing through the winter void
anxious lines for coffee that steal
my kindness like a fly in the gaping maw of venus
where our lives seem simple as cigarettes
in geologic time, regret and relaxation but
burning, always burning
down, it leaves me feeling
anorexic again at the table of life,
no communion, every line on the menu
a brand new way to be damned.
But no ink of despair is so dark
as to blot out the spin of our sphere,
and Heaven as the sky and not a mandate
turns ever around us,
and the only way to wash out stars
is light
and the crashing storm always opens
cloudless blue
opens again, to purple, to green
to all the layers that allow
grass, gods, bodies.
Grow.

The History of Post-Medieval Love

If the body is a temple
For the mind
I could use a reformation,
Though the thought of theses
Nailed between my ribs unsettles me.
Still, I read somewhere in a book
It’s not the nail but the hammer,
It’s not the cross to bear but the witness
To the way the aurora is unspeakable,
Before we all supernova sometime
Out into our otherworldly light.
Yet despite the stars
My worst moments feel terrestrial
Godless, scarred all over with scorn
Like a poor man’s memory,
Like the August midnight hours
Awake, humid in our earthly autoclave,
Thrashing through black bedsheets of guilt
Until I calm at the penumbra of dawn
To open my heart to hope,
Nestling my head between pillowy prayers
And hollow doubt.

Dear You,

Under the Half Moon of the Almost Twilight, cream-blue sky
I looked at the flex of your body and thought,
We have such beautiful machinery,
Instruments of the Universe as we are.
But also that and how could I forget
My Instrumental Self was always programmed
To endeavor to show the Ultimate
Ephemeral Nature but Persistence of Love
in all things was my passion, my passion was
in all things, You saw the Great Coalition of Doubt
grayblack and shadow-edged, lurking in the abyss beneath
and through the retrospection
of the Time we are not thinking,
when we wrestle ourselves awake,
when will we dance?
when will we dance?