I'm back to writing a poem every day, whether they stink or not.

Saturday, December 31, 2005

God

He’s like an old woman who’s lived
on this block for more years than anyone
here has lived. Her house was there
before the town and she has the tallest
tree in the county in her front yard.
Someone keeps the lawn up, paints
the fence, and collects the mail but
no one’s ever seen her outside.
An old uncle says his dad used
to visit her and play on her piano.
Since then, everyone has a piano
in their house and someone’s always
playing one. Sometimes the sound
comes from the direction of her house.
Every once in awhile, someone shows
a card they got from her for a holiday.
The cards are always unsigned.
Everyone has something to say about her
and all of the kids tell stories
that can’t all possibly be true.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

"The House"

I’ve been to a few of them: houses
that someone has left behind
for the living to empty out year
by year, whether it’s the one
they loved the most, the one
who remembered the first time
he looked at the house and thought
of the job ahead of him, even
while the mother, the father, the friend
was lying in the next room
needing water and waiting to say hi.

At the moment the house becomes
his, there is no moment of silence.
Outside, two teenagers holding Cokes
and cell phones complain loudly that they
wouldn’t have to walk if they had a car,
while he waits for the ambulance.

Now the house is holding its breath,
growing gray and losing windows.
What does he say when someone asks,
“Is the house empty?”
“All of her stuff is still there,” I suppose.

He leaves it there, not waiting, just living
his life with a bleak task for him to do.
And the house sits on the familiar lot,
waiting for a ghost that never comes.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Chutes and Ladders

I bought Isabel Chutes and Ladders for Christmas.
It’s a game that you rarely finish–no winner, no
second place, no loser, just two to four players
pacing back and forth making illusory progress
up the grid, climbing the hopeful ladders, sliding
down the sobering chutes. It’s an endless game.
When you stop tracing the slides and just pick up
your piece, its face frozen in eternal anticipation,
and drop it down on the numbered square, then
you’ve realized something. It’s a life lesson,
one that might not be so good for us to learn
at any age. Unless the lesson is a broader one,
one you learn when you take your finger off
of the spinner, put up the game, and stretch.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Fame

When I stepped outside today, I saw the sunlight standing boldly on my porch. The air was warm for December, so I started some tea and took a book outside, my teapot, cup, and strainer lined up neatly on the porch rail. Across the street, a woman set up a tripod on the sidewalk in front of the fire station and I thought that a man enjoying his tea with a good book on a warm winter day would make a good photograph, maybe for one of those front page stories about the weather they often run in the paper around here. I started reading. When my tea was ready, I put the strainer over my cup and pored from the small read teapot, a nice looking teapot, simple, elegant, a good photograph–the amber liquor pouring into the cup while the man squints against the sunlight and holds a book open on his lap. She was packing her camera into her van by now, a large black van that looked like it might be one she used for business. I looked back at my book and tasted my tea with my right hand, the one that wasn’t between my face and the van. The tea was good; I’d made it just right. It happens that way with tea. Sometime you use just the right amount of tea, steep it just long enough, and the weather is just right. There’s a lot to it. Like photography, maybe. The light, the focus, the time exposed. Maybe the woman’s photo of the building would turn out perfect, like this tea. Maybe it took her so long to finally start her car, after she climbed in, because she was wondering if there was anything she’d missed. After the van left, I started paying attention to my book, the chapter about Confucius, and tried to figure out if Confucianism is best considered a philosophy or a religion.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

I spent all of the snow in the land of Doh,
but I paid only half of the going rate for all
of the impossible things they sell there.
We don't have words to describe them
but each comes wrapped in silk with one
silk worm, killed and guilded, sewn
to the top as a button to hold it together.
Once it's opened, you can't use it until
you understand it a little more. I've tried.
Here's a haiku I wrote about mine:

Christmas present--
inside of the box,
the inside of a box.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Not Impressed With Death

I read once of a Jain physician who, struggling with the Jain law against killing any living thing and the necessity of killing bacteria, concluded that to live is to kill; it’s inescapable.

Tomato seeds need to pass through an animal’s digestive system before they can germinate. The animal carries the seeds far away and, unconsciously, plants them well-fertilized.

Bamboo spreads underground and shoots up out of its underground network of roots. To stop it you have to surround it with tightly joined metal barriers. You have to kill it over and over again.

We once believed that all life needed oxygen to live. We found vents under the sea, too hot for any life we knew, with no light, no oxygen, but with bacteria we named for its breathlessness.

There are good and bad parasites, bacteria on everything, a patina of life on every surface and in every crevice. Death seems lazy--quietly taking one life at a time, as they come, no more or less.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Giving Up On the Protagonist

When you have children, you see the same movies
so many times that you start looking at everything
going on in the background, on the faces
of the extra characters and in the sky over the story.
You start looking for the ones whose stories
aren’t told. You start following the one
who doesn’t have any lines, but keeps showing up.
You’ve lost interest in the hero, his sweetheart,
and the villain. You begin to question, the way
we do in our own lives, the value of this story.
You begin to look for a better one going on
in the back of the crowd of spectators–
someone back there isn’t watching, he’s talking
to a woman nearby. He’s given up too.
Our hero has made the same promises a few
too many times, bested the same enemy over
and over again. Maybe we’ve missed the real story.
Maybe someone out there has a better idea.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Watched Through Dark Windows

It's late and cold. I park the car and lock it,
though this isn't a neighborhood where you'd need to.
The lawns are all well kept and the streets
are all curves, no right angles, no stop signs.
I'm looking for a house I saw once when I was young.
No one lives there now so I decided its ok
to get out and look, just from the street.
There aren't any sidewalks here so I have to walk
through the yards of a neighborhood that looks
like they'd call the police, and there are signs that say so.
When I find the house, it's hidden in the trees.
I stand at the no tresspassing sign, with nothing
to look at, just enjoying the feeling, hanging on me
like a long coat, of being a suspicious looking person.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Man, Work and Woman

When men get together to work
with their bodies, a sphere of prayer
encloses them–a prayer of bone
and the small, potent muscles
of the hand. This prayer is sung
to a rhythm of joints and weight.
The dead matter of the living Earth
moves through the air, weightless
with the angels’ wings of work.

Sometimes, though, a woman
walks in to give one of them
a message, a reminder, a favor,
and the prayer stops. After she’s gone,
the men stand in the thin air,
feeling strangely singular, and straining
against the heavy lead of their work,
with a new and fluid feeling of being
a whole person, doing a half-man’s job.

Friday, December 16, 2005

The Song of Time

They say humans first understood time
through music. I wonder who it was.
Who was the first singer that beat out
time on her knee while kneeling
at the edge of a cliff, harmonizing
with her echo, and received
the enlightenment of rhythm?

And when she came back to the cave
and sang, did they praise her and offer
her the best rabbit their fastest runner
could catch, or did they wait until
they found that when they cooked the meat
until the part of the song that goes,
“I carry water home in my hands
so you too can taste the stream I found,”
then it isn’t bloody and doesn’t burn?

Maybe she kept it to herself and only
sang at the edge of that cliff every
morning before anyone else was awake.
Maybe she died with that song in her heart
and let someone else bring song of time
to all of her kind. Maybe it was another
singer on another hill, who heard her
and, one day, hid his own voice inside
of hers, echoing back to the hilltop.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

A Dream About Fear and Love

Hundreds of us chose an empty building
by the mall and waited for the storm to pass.
But when we saw the roof of a Wal-Mart
floating past us like a space ship, we all
hushed. Someone started it in my corner.
We all began kissing each other. One
by one, we’d kiss one time, hold hands and smile.
Then we’d say goodbye and take up the hands
of someone else close by. We did this so
we’d remember each other the next day,
when someone asked, “have you seen my son?”
someone else would say “yes, I’m sure I did.”

Monday, December 12, 2005

Darkness and Light

for Jason Miskell

The way you loved darkness was like the way
I saw the stars yesterday, miles outside of town.

I think you wanted to extinguish every flame,
every lamp and candle, so you could have only
the light that survives the violence of this world.

You said you wanted to get a permit to carry
a broadsword with you wherever you went.
Is there anything left to fight with a sword?
Are you out there guarding the darkness
and re-killing the old armies that fell there?

They say you can see a candle flame through
miles of darkness. I don’t know if there’s enough
darkness left, enough respite from the glare
of all the unclosed eyes in this world, to see
if that candle is still lit, if someone took it
out of the window and pinched it to the wick.

I don’t think any news I might hear about you
would surprise me now, but no one has any news.

The last I heard, you were in Wichita and dying.
That was a long time ago.

And just in case you’re wondering about me,
I havn't heard anything. I could be anywhere,
but nothing here in the dark and the light
would surprise me anymore.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Snow Angels

Maybe some of us would look
like angels if we could see
ourselves as a blur of our entire
lives, frozen in one image.

If we could see our lives
in the snow, as we’ve lived
so far, we could watch ourselves
change, and know when to turn back.

If we could see our images
sweeping out the very truth
of ourselves as we lived, the world
would soon fill with angels and devils.

Kansas Gets It's Kids Back from God

My state came before the throne of God
and laid at his feet an offering, itself, the whole
state of Kansas, and said, “would you teach our young?”
God took them up and, forty days later,
sent them back, in love with everything,
and curious about this world. In fact,
no sooner had they come, than they began
studying, and, in between their speeches
about wisdom and brotherhood delivered
on the green lawns of the schools, encircled
by friends and some who laughed, they looked
out at this mysterious world saying, “Wow!”

Friday, December 09, 2005

Learning Coffee

The first time I smelled
coffee beans, I smiled.
I would smell the can
while Mom and Dad
drank that mysterious
black liquid that seemed
like the cup that all
adults must one day drink
and become serious.
Even when I forced myself,
years later, to like the taste,
I used the memory of it’s
smell to search the walls
of its flavor for the door.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Pouring Hot Water into the Snow

Close to quitting time
I turned off the coffeepot I use
for tea and carried the glass carafe
out of the break room and walked
through the cold warehouse.
The water rolled and steamed
as a walked. It look like something
useful still and I felt like I could be
doing something more useful
than I usually do here.
I would like to walk outside
and pour the rest of this water
into four cups, shaking
in the awkward grasp
of four gloved hands.
I would like to splash it
on the hinge of a frozen door
and hear it groan and give.
Instead I opened the white
metal door to the dock
of the warehouse and walked out
to the snowy edge and held
the steaming water out.
As it poured the eight feet
to the snow paved parking lot,
it gave up its heat in a puff
of steam that leaped out
of the thin rope of water,
and climbed up–the same way
we often imagine the soul
leaving a body as it falls,
suddenly killed, to the ground.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Killing Animals

I set up a plastic mouse trap and left the house.
When I came back, I’d caught one. The trap
hadn’t even broken the skin, but the mouse
was dead and I was grateful for the bloodless
counter top and the peaceful look on the mouse’s
face when I dropped him into the trash can.
He still had a peanut in his mouth.

If I should ever have to kill a man, I hope
it will happen the same way: bloodless
and quick, no visible injuries, an open
casket funeral, and a look on his face
that made it seem possible I’d just done him
a great charity–that I’d taken him before
his life got any worse, before he could do
whatever it was I had to kill him for
trying to do–hope still shining in his eyes.

Friday, December 02, 2005

Regeneration

Isabel and I are drawing
in the dirt with a stone and a
stubby twig. First letters and then
round faces with little dot eyes.

She wipes out everything I draw
as soon as I finish. Each face
disappears the moment it’s born.
I’m annoyed a moment and then

I notice I’m getting better
at drawing tiny round faces.
Each one comes a little faster.
Each one looks a bit more alive.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Inside My Home at Night

At two-o-clock in the morning, my light
is the only one on. There's nothing
for the windows to let in so they've turned
on me. They reflect my image as a gray
ghost sitting in a chair so black, it punches
a hole in the window and lets in just a few
dirty gray stars. When I look at the window,
I can feel them at my back, holding me up
with the dim fact of their existence.

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Wishes

When the radio announced a tornado warning
for a nearby county, I felt a little jealous, though
I knew to be grateful. Part of me wants
to drive to work in winds that make the car
dive back and forth and make the wheels
chirp. I want to work in winds so strong
they make the building rattle till you ears hurt.
I want to sit on the dock with a cup of tea
and watch the tornado yank up trees
until we see can feel our clothes lift
like kites. Then we’d rush back inside
and look for a safe place, wonder which
one of our shelters might hold up, wonder
if any of them might hold up. Surely
there’s one place in this building
that won’t fall hard enough to kill us.
That’s the moment I’d wish to God
the tornado was gone. But I knew
about that moment the whole time.
When I stood on my porch watching
the gray sky churn and flash, I knew
I’d hate it if it came. But I still
looked with my door open and watched.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Panic and Scream and Cinnabar

My daughter, not quite four, said these three words
in the middle of a string of gibberish. I didn’t think
she knew “panic” but when she said “scream”
I guessed she must have learned it from a movie.
But cinnabar? I had to look it up: a red mineral
that yields mercury. And I thought, here in the same
dictionary where I once looked up the word
“glossolalia” is the beginning of a mystery.
My daughter is speaking in riddle-laden
tongues and somewhere in the ore of her words
is a vein of quicksilver madness, or maybe
a message carried by the wing-footed god.
But there is also the cinnabar moth. A black moth
with bold red streaks on its wings. A moth
with a kind of beauty like the butterflies
my daughter likes so much. A moth that doesn’t
live here in Kansas. A moth that just flew out
of my daughter’s mouth, maybe full of dread,
fleeing some nightmare it didn’t want to be
any part of. A moth that leaped into existence
and fled in a panic, screaming with its tiny voice.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Your Poem

I’d just noticed how many of my poems
begin my pointing to me, even this one.
The capital “I” stands like a marble column
at the entry to some crumbling Greek temple
where, once inside, a colossal, looming statue
of me gazes down on you with empty white eyes.

But this time, I want to write about you.
This is a temple I’ve built for you, and you
alone. This poem is our only liturgy.
This time I want to write the kind of poem
you like. I’ll give you metaphors because
you like them. Even this temple is a metaphor.
This temple is a row of white teeth
behind which the tongue prays.
I’ll give you narrative because when you
came here and saw this place, you went
and took bright silver fish out of the stream,
wrapped it your shirt and pushed it
back under the water, up to your wrists,
your ring scraping a smooth flat stone
on the bottom, and pulled the fish back
out still soaking wet and ran to the temple.
You held the fish over your head with both
hands and let the water drip into your hair
and run down your arms, tickling
your flesh as it ran down your sides
and soaked into the band of your pants.
You lay the fish down, and with the long
jagged knife on the altar, gave the fish
as an offering to yourself. This poem
offers itself to you too. And since
you like poems that end clearly,
this is line where you raise knife,
and this is one where you bring it down.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Couple at the Laundromat

A couple holds out
a large white
sheet between them.
They stand erect,
arms out wide
with a corner
of the sagging sheet
in each hand.
They’re looking at
each other. She moves
her mouth and both
of them close
their arms.
She shows him
how to slide his hand
down to
the crease and pull
it up. He moves
his hand, she,
her lips and they fold
again.
Now they stand
a long time holding
the long rectangle
between them, saying
one or two words
at a time.
Now they turn the sheet
up--a short, white road
between them–and wait.
She nods and they both
take two long
fast steps to each other
and clasp hands, each still
looking at the other,
like they just might
let the sheet
drop.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Change of Plans

For some reason, the coffeeshop was closed
early on a cold and misty Saturday night.

Isabel was riding her bicycle there but the chain
popped off every half block she pedaled and I
pulled and rolled the chain over the gear again
and tried to keep my oily fingers off of my pants.

She was walking beside me when we stopped
in front of the shop. I held her bike over
my back, the seat on my shoulder blade, and stared
at the door looking for a sign explaining why.

Inside, the barista worked in the dark cafe
in a bright cell behind the bar. The tables
and chairs seemed to give a tired gray light
they'd absorbed from the well-lit business hours.

He never saw us standing there on the sidewalk.
He almost danced between the sink and the bar,
bobbing and turning with a rag in his hand.
He looked like a dream about to disappear.

I told Isabel we needed to take her bike home.
We didn't even go inside, just tossed it in.
We walked back downtown, where nothing was open,
noone was driving, and I followed my daughter wherever.

Soldier's Feet

I have a pair of camouflage pants
but I don't remember buying them.
I found them on a high closet shelf
and they fit me just right but still
I'm sure I never picked them out
for myself, or took them as a gift.
I wouldn't even buy camouflage pants.
But here they are. I'm wearing them
as I write this after work with my
boots still on, not military boots
but boots nonetheless, with big
metal eyes and sturdy laces stitching up
the leather just broken in enough
to look like they're pulled
so tight they'd crush any part
of them human body inside.

That's the part of the soldier
that looks the most like a soldier
to me. The tops of boots meeting
the cuff of the pants. Even on me,
though I've never been to war
or to anything like war, they look
skilled and purposeful. The feet
are always at attention, always
on the lookout, ready to hold
the rest steady and let the gun
shoot. If the body dies, the feet
lower it to the ground and stand
up in their black robes, praying.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Silly Poem About Existence

I cranked the bicycle pedals up to the top
of the ridge and lost balance. My feet
stuck in the toe clips, I folded over
off the side of the ridge.
As I fell in that long pause our brains
give us, maybe to extend what might be
our last moment of life, I was certain
I would injure myself. I saw the tree
that I would use to pull myself back
up on my feet if I could. I saw the rock
at the tree’s base where I would grind
my shoulder or my ear as I fell.
But when I hit the side of the hill
and slid down a little, I stood up
sore but unharmed.
It made me think that if its true
that there’s a universe for every
possibility, then maybe we feel
the branching happen. When I hit
the ground I felt myself split
like wood and stood up on the right
side of two selves, one with a leg
bent in the frame of the bike,
and one right here, sore, stunned
and grateful for his luck. If so,
call this a eulogy for the thousands
of dead selves I’ve left splintered
all over this one thin strip of existence.
They all gave their lives for each other.
Some of them believed in each other,
and even though I’m one of the ones
who doesn’t, when I climbed that hill,
I turned around and walked back
to the trail head with thousands more
imaginary, indebted lives following.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Parsley

I keep finding parsley in the fridge,
not just the flat severed fans but whole
bundles curled up in a bag and stuffed
behind the eggs. I’ve even found two,
One in the door and one with the lettuce.
You are like the parsley.
I buy the parsley for hummus or salad
and sometimes, I find I have twice
as much as I need, some I didn’t plan on.
It makes we wonder what I could make
with the rest. I want to put it in everything
just to see how it tastes. But mostly
I want to make something I could eat
with my hands, something made
with parsley and very little else, something
that would make everything aromatic
and saturated with its deep, vivid green.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

While Walking Downtown with My Daughter

Across the street, a block away, a man
dressed as a clown trudges to the back
of a plain gray sedan and pops the trunk.
He pulls his yellow wig off of his nearly
bald head and packs it carefully away,
then his bright nose-ball with both hands.
then his candy red jacket with gold trim,
folded and lowered gently into the trunk.
By the time we cross the street, he’s standing
in a yellow shirt and jeans, a short man,
a little overweight. He looks nervous.
But just as we are about to pass behind
the church at the corner, he raises his round,
white painted face to us, lifts his hand
off of the trunk to wave and starts a smile,
just as we disappear behind the church,
that looked like it was going to keep spreading
off of his face and fall like some magical
crescent moon into the trunk of his car.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Strawberry

"And home they went as fast as they could go, over the bridge, up the road, through the meadow, and under the fence. And there, sure enough...." (The Poky Little Puppy)

I

My favorite part of The Poky Little Puppy
is where he finds a strawberry growing
on the ground and it means that someone
is making strawberry shortcake at home.
Since I first heard the story I’ve waited
through smelling the rice pudding
and hearing the chocolate custard
for that magical strawberry in the grass
that the puppy knew to sniff and all
of his brothers knew the meaning of.
What better to make a young boy look
at a woman’s shoe he finds one day
damming up the rain gutter, and smell
the impossible, god sent aroma of love
filling his whole being from the sinuses
out, with anticipation of a day he can’t
possibly brace himself for, one he’ll fall
asleep to every night for the rest of his life.

II

But I recall that it was after the strawberry
that the poky puppy learned his lesson.
He plodded back, over the bridge with it’s red
bark of curling paint and bowed wooden slats,
up the road with weeds growing between the ruts,
across the meadow full of dragonflies, and up
to the fence where the hole was now filled in.
As he stood outside, looking for a wide hole
in the fence to squeeze through, I’m sure
his head was heavy with images: the ripe
berry, numinous as a burning bush; his mother,
stern and wise, waiting for him inside; and
a new one, with no face, no name, and no place
in his heart yet–the one that keeps us up too,
wondering at the powers that put things
down in the grass for us, and the ones
that devour them before we know their meaning.

Friday, November 11, 2005

Meeting Place

My brother told me once, as he cut
the venison from the deer he’d shot
that week, that the first time
he shot one, he cried. He cried
because he’d removed something
beautiful from the world.

Yesterday, a deer swept across
the road in front of my car, my lights
on his hide making her look
like a ghost that I could drive
into like a fog and she’d burst
like swiped candle smoke.

My wife hit a deer on the highway
and came home well but trembling.
The car had a dent and deer flesh
in the grill. She felt lucky and guilty.
She felt her mortality like an ache
and worried helplessly about the deer.

I imagine the hunter crying with one
knee in the leaves, leaning on the gun
he’s holding in his gloved hand,
saying a prayer that isn’t asking forgiveness,
isn’t blessing the hot bleeding body,
but rather a prayer that comes easily

from the place where two beautiful
bodies have come together and one
of them stands, one of them falls;
one of them dies and one of them
kneels at the meeting place where
there’s one living heart still meeting.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Nine Years Old, Visiting Gene DeGruson's House

My dad needed to pick up something
he’d left at Gene’s house. An errand–
one of those little tasks adults do that means
you sit in the car or tag along feeling
that second flesh of boredom grow.

He parked the car at the curb
and showed me which way to walk.
Just over the trees I saw the tower,
with a roof that looked like a kite.
Just inside the trees, the house
was a stone monastery under
the broken prow of a fast ship.
The house was not a place for any
kind of adult that I knew. Only
a madman could live there. A recluse
in a lab coat pacing a room full
of red smoke and cobwebs of glass
vials and pipettes--maybe a whole
roomful of madmen, chained to stone
block walls, shouting manifestoes,
and clicking their foot-long fingernails.

We went inside, the door left open because
Gene was out that day, got whatever
it was Dad needed, and drove back home.
I sat in front seat, with ideas about what
it means to be adult, years of them,
drifting like broken moths’ wings
out of my head and through the open
window of that very quiet car.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Elementary School

Even if I looked like I was paying attention
I would often forget what class I was in.
The carpet was as hard as dirt road and paved
with gold squares, each containing a circle
that would fit my spread-out hand to the fingertips.

There was a square patch of carpet worn down
to the sinew where the wheeled cart stood,
with it's black rubber mats on both shelves
and its cold metal frame painted a color
precisely centered between green and blue.

On the cart was the breathing swan body
of the the projector, its brightly lit
organs visible though the fan vent,
and its two glass eyes on its bent head,
one looking out and one looking in.

The projector dumped its light out
on the roll-down screen where you could see
the shadow of the pond-ripple glass plate,
the permanent smudges, and the scratches
that stayed when the teacher pulled the transparency.

When the teacher walked past, the screen
would breathe. If the door opened or closed,
it would jump and the words on it would
bend like leather over your elbow and slip
about the screen like a sonnet on the water.

Even if I looked like I was paying attention
I would often forget I was in the music room.
Now the lights come on, the projector's heart
cools to a stop. The teacher says to find
our places. Everyone but me moves.

Each has place they know is theirs, the place
just shown to them on the bright screen
in the dark room with the shining windows.
Each has something to do in their place.
I look at the circles again and wait.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Missing Words

I wanted to write you a letter
telling you about youself, or at least
about myself when it comes to you.
But just after I wrote, "you have a
magical way of erasing my memories,"
I found a hole in the language.
There is no noun meaning,
"a nostalgia for the heartbreaks
of the past," not even close.
So I tried to write my way
around it but then I found no word
for the memory of the skin,
which can almost put your hand
back on mine. Even my thesauras
was no help. So I gave up.
What I need to say to you, I need
a whole new language to say.
That is way I would always look
at the unfolded letter of your eyes
and say everything but what
I meant to say and why, I think,
I read a sentence in your eyes
that ended in a long, trailing elipsis.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Many Ways

I boil water on a gas stove everyday.
I've boiled it with my breath and a small
tent of burning sticks in a rock box.
I've boiled it in a microwave
and with the focused sunlight
reflected off of the crecent mirror.
I've boiled it with electricity
and with the marriage of two cold
chemicals that surge together and scald.
Every time, the pot boils and steams.
Each time, I make my tea.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Dead Bird

I feel a well-captured urge to pick him up
and pull his wings out wide, even
if the joints groan, look him
in his opaque eye and feel his death
on him like an oily patina.

He's a little black spindle fat with thread.
He's the very glyph of a dead bird.
I want to look at his belly and find
the cat's teeth marks, the scar
of a power line that breathed fire.

Held out like this in my hands, his head
slung low, he looks like a man-made symbol--
the way we always span the wings out.
But I'd bet the birds put their ghost in the claw
or the throat, and wear their wings like a shroud.

Overhead, dozens of the same bird, alive
and loud, bounce along the power lines.
I've left the dead one untouched and started
walking home. Some flap their wings in place,
some perch like Reapers, still and watchful.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Tribute

Here's to the poem I'll never read
aloud to all my friends and make
unconqurable memories of.
Here's to the poet who wrote the poem,
who'll have to settle for someone
less manicly empassioned by his work,
someone less fit to be his biggest fan.
Here's to the religion I won't convert to
after the conversation with the stranger
I'll never meet, who'd have asked me
the most important question I'd ever heard,
and given me a hint that would have
had me searching for the rest of my long,
wandering, stark, and diaphanous life.
Here's to the strange pleasure I might
have discovered in the hands of a man
and his black box full of pills I'd have kept
chasing, and chasing with money from
the freshly-cashed checks that kept me
screwed down tight to a job I hated.
Here's to however many women who would
have said yes if I'd ever asked.
Here's to the thousands of towns
I'll never move to and rent
a small house in close to downtown
where the owner of the coffeehouse I love
most knows me like a brother and has
effervescent debates with me about it all
over hot tea she won't let me pay for.
Here's to all of my son's and daughter's
whose souls will stay in the ether.
Here's to every person who does
any one of these things in my place
and to each and every thing they
might have done but left it to me.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Awakening

A few times, I've fallen asleep in the middle of the day
and woken up with the sky colored dark blue and had
no idea what time it was. I've looked at the clock:
around six, but which six and what would it mean
if it were either one? I've stood up and walked outside
with a wet sheet of sleep wadded up in my head
and stood on the porch, listening to the sounds
of sparse traffic, wind, my door closing, and four
different kinds of birds chirping blocks away.
I've stood knowing I would quickly shed this body
for the one that was late for work or up too early
and anxious to get back to sleep, but this one,
the one with nothing to do but accept existence
and sense all the things around it, would stay
here until the last possible moment passed.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Three Haiku

A cricket and I
danced in the bathroom today.
I bowed, and stomped him.

This moon-like street light
won't even allow the mist
any of its secrets.

A jack-o-lantern
and I sit on the cold porch
with our two faces.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Halloween Gourd

I carved a tiny face into the bulb
of a small green gourd and cut
two holes into its head for air.

I carved a candle small enough
to put in it's head and cover
with the scalp I took from it.

It was a face with almost no
detail. Two diamond eyes,
a wedge nose and bow smile.

It had a fire in its head just
breathing enough to stay
awake and out of the wind.

You held it by the neck
upside down as the fire
heated the head inside.

A smell of hot pumkin-like
flesh came furtively out
of the bright eyes and mouth.

It's serene little face
looked ancient and glazed,
like some fossil that finds you

and tells you with its dead
features, all the dreams
of the hands that carve it.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Seeking God

In a clearing formed
by dozens of converged
trails, a tent stands open.

I've come here by one
trail or another, dropped
my bag, crawled in, and slept.

By morning, the tent
is gone and I'm sitting up
at the head of countless trails.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Food and the Hands

Apple

The fist with a weapon.
Yank out the stem like a pin
on a grenade.

Peanut

The knuckles know the seam
to press and split the hull.
They work like a rhythm section.
The hands labor for the mouth.
The hands don't think about
the mouth; they work, and when
they're done, they sweep
the empty shells together
and off the edge of the table.

Banana

You hold,
tight.
I'll crack
the end.
Easy now.
One,
just so.
Two, again.
Three.
Keep holding.

Manna

They must have held it
in both palms together, lifted
above their heads with open
mouths and let it sift down
through the hour glass
of their two cupped hands.

Water

Drunk from your own hands,
it tastes a little like you. Even
your body makes a circle
from your shoulders around
to your hands and mouth.
You swallow and bring your hands
a little closer in, not like the snake
eating itself forever, but like someone
who's just discoverd something
inside themselves worth taking
and has just begun to reach
with their hands.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Not Listening

Sometimes I listen to the news on the radio without
paying attention to the stories. I listen to the voices,
how many and how loud. I hear accents and gender,
temperement and interest, but no news.
This comes from listening too much. The way
you can eat too much and taste little but feel
the chew and swallow, the heaviness in your gut
and the swelling of your belly in your clothes.
I'm full of news and words. A bag of memory
in by brain is swelling with slanted questions
and irrelevent answers. A man makes his voice
swing a fist of indignant contradiction and laughs
too hard. A woman speaks in a language and
her voice fades to another woman speaking
another language, English I think, and then
the sound of traffic and whistles and words.
When I get up and turn the radio off, I feel
like I've walked out of a room with a patient
still talking about the reasons he needs me,
and I've discovered he's hurting me and that I can't
help him. So I stand in the hall, listening
to the sound of his voice that I'm not certain
isn't just the echo in my memory.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Good Use

We're looking at rows of pupkins up on hay bales
to find the best one to carve a face into and light
from the inside out. I wonder what percentage
of pumpkins are used this way until they rot.
Are the best pumkins the ones with good round
ribs, smooth orange rind, and a thick straight stem?
Are these the ones God meant to create? Is this
the Platonic form that all pumpkins imitate?
If I were put up on the block, would someone
come along and say, "His mouth is just fine
for pinecones, and each foot could keep four
flowers wedged between the toes, just so?"

Monday, October 17, 2005

Small Pile of Pebbles

The tickle of bee feet on a smooth forearm.

The knot of breath in the neck and no "goodbye."

The thorn holding back the blood.

The lost tongue when the candy falls out.

An itch you don't scratch but brace against.

A language you love the sound of.

The sentence you won't say.

The moist weight of tired, open eyes.

Those eyes closing and just feeling
the mossy edge of sleep and opening again.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

On Trying to Implement Taoism in Your Life

If I took away the stuff the walls
are made of, what would I do with the rest?
And how much larger would these rooms
be without their walls? Without walls
my rooms would be so large, there would be
more than enough room to hang all
the world's great art. Without the paint
in the painting I could send the masterpiece
to you in just the right words. Without
letters, words are too long to read
and by the time you're nearly done
with one syllable, you've thought
of something better to say. There's no
way to say it. Saying it changes it.
How is this going? Is it working?
Let me check. Um. Just keep going.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

Four Identical Stanzas

The ticking clock and the dripping faucet
played percussion for me while I typed.
The clock had the beat and the water
clearly had the rhythm and I just sat
back and believed in what they were doing.

Whenever a reporter on the radio has
to whisper, I listen with my whole body.
Something in the hiss of their throats
transmits the human hum of being
and I can't help but feel akin.

Out for a walk downtown, I feel drawn
to the left, like a nerual turn signal.
I turn left at each intersection until
I come back to the same place I started
and the feeling stops.

The slower I drank
the water, the better
it tasted.
I drank
water as slow
as I could.
I drank
water.

Friday, October 14, 2005

Guilt

All you have to do is listen a little closer
to the one distant bell of a guilty memory
and then the hymn plays forth, the one
they play when they try to drag
the spirit in, willing or not, just to make it
dance. But this church has instead of
an altar, a chair, and there you are,
and the hymn has your name in it
and your friend's name, too--the friend
you punched in the groin out of dumb
curiosity, and you still don't know why.
Maybe it's a reason you still have.
Maybe that's the person you are.
And there he is in the front row.
Now the hymn has her name and you
close your eyes but hear her voice
and begin to recite all of the good
things you've done since then.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

At The Pied Cow in Portland

They asked you for a name, which they would shout
from the door and you would raise your hand.
Noone gave their real name and noone laughed
at any name you chose. You are Agamemnon
and that's just fine because your waitress
is Desdemona Lisa and you believe her.

When the plate of cheese and oolong tea
arrives, and you cut off the tip of the chalky
white wedge you've never tasted before,
you wonder if this is how Agamemnon eats.
Yes, it is. Of course it is.

Saturday, October 08, 2005

A Broken Man Finds Respite

Here is a caterwaul of flowers
and a whisper of grass clippings.
Here is an argument of hedges
and a cacophany of climing vines.
Here I am sitting in a gripe
of a chair on a nagging porch
without a sound in my clang
of a throat, waiting for something
to happen in my tambourine brain.
Even the bees and the flies
are quiet little chimes in this
drum-roll weather where I can't
even remember what time it is
or what it would mean if I knew.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Eclipse

Once, in high school, I saw an annular eclipse.
I saw it a thousand times on the ground
like raindrops, a thousand rings of fire
cast by lenses of arboreal light. Each
like a gold coin spilled out by a long-
vanquished god who hid his blessings
in a scrambled clockwork of sun, moon,
earth, and sky to unwind long into ages
where all of his stories have unraveled
and taken other names, other nations.

I showed my friends the rings and each of us
took just what would fit in two open hands.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Watercolors

The row of watercolor cells reminds me
of the portholes in the side of an iron ship.
A couple must be making love in the first one,
and someone's playing a cello in the second.
Even from this far away, I can see the fight
happening in the orange window. The black
cell is almost empty. There's an oval of white
in its middle where the soul is escaping.
Maybe it was the first room to fill
with water on this sinking ship, the brush
having finally worn the hull through.

Monday, October 03, 2005

You and Solomon

Your two breasts are like two fawns,
twin fawns of a gazelle
grazing among the lilies.
-Song of Songs 4:5

Your breasts are like wine glasses,
two glasses of red you've poured
for me to taste with my fingertips.

Your eyes are like dimes,
the glint in the pupil like the torch
on the reverse.

Your hair is like an ounce of tea leaves
unfolding in the kettle of my lap
giving up their liquor to me.

Your shoulders are like two beaches,
one where I found a bone in the sand,
one where I found the terrier.

Your belly is like my porch,
the corner of my porch where
I sit and drink my tea.

You skin is like Kansas City,
both sides of the city
with all of their nighborhoods.

Your mouth is a lake,
a lake I swim on looking
for a fish to catch.

Your feet are metaphores,
twin metaphore with twenty
implications for my mouth.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

Wreck Anniversary

The first day that felt like autumn was the second
anniversary of the wreck. The one that took my dad
and dumped him in a ditch, as boken as the bike.
I spent a lot of time on my porch not remembering,
with Isabel urging me into games with plastic rules.
I drove home from work that night in the cool
window air and felt the wheel of seasons click over
another time. This was another fall coming
when I wansn't looking; another summer I lived
and sweated through until the days waned
enough to bleed the grass pale and sallow.

But I haven't told you that my dad survived.
He's in his Eden now with Mom
building a mansion with one room and as many
windows as they could find. He sent me a picture
that day with a note that said he'd forgotten
the wreck until they started driving home.
It's a place just north of here where I doubt
anyone could think much of the past. It's a place
made of eons of future and ages of present time.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Ted Kooser Eating Cake

He sat down at a table with a small
piece of cake and started signing books.
Whenever he was left alone for a moment
he ate slowly at his cake with slow,
even clumsy, stabs. I wanted
to talk to him, about his poems,
his paintings, and art. I was armed
with relevent stories about all of these.
But something about the way he ate,
with certainty of purpose, caused me
to pause the way you would to interrupt
a person reading or a dentist drilling.
His cake was an hour-glass, when it ran out
he would stand up and ask for his ride home.
And he did. I let him take three of those
bites and went home with my book
unsigned, leaving him with nothing
to remember me by.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Second-hand Smoker

Even though I don't smoke,
I imagine doing it as a gesture.
I've learned a sign language
of smoke signals from movies
and from movies through friends,
but I can't use these words.
It's a dying language with no
dictionary, like the language
of hats and glasses.

I've practiced in silence when
I didn't have the cigarette to say
"yes" the way I needed to.
If you whispered "Let's
get out of here," I'd pull
my glasses to the end of my nose
and stare you down, I'd draw
my hat down my brow,
and I'd flip my half smoked
cigarette away with that sharp
tap that sends it out
of existence and leaves us
alone and speechless.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Cuts (this is a second poem today to make up for yesterday)

I found a cut on my arm,
a cut I didn't remember
taking at all.
And I find them
often
when I'm most
relaxed and have
time to look
at what my body's
been up to while I
wasn't paying attention.
More and often and less
I think or reason or know
that my mind and my
body are different
persons and love
each other less
and more
often as the case
may be.
But then
I'm ready for two selves,
One that does everything
while the other does
nothing. One the moves,
one that changes. One
that hurts, one that bleeds.

Mirror and Dance

She stands with her hands lightly linked on her belly
and everything around her is brown and white.
The wooden table and the tall mirror, the white wall
and the floor boards, everything but she, in pink
and black, leotard and tights, tapshoes and ponytail.
She looks at her own eyes the way we all do when
we want some answer, some oracle for ourselves
and wait for it to come like an annointing or curse
out of our eyes or the pores of our skin. We want
to stare ourselves down and know the truth
by the way we look away, or keep looking.
Isabel is looking like that and probably getting less
than she's asking, but I see the way that my own
thoughtfullness as a father, the love that heard
her say she wanted to dance and found the dancers,
I see that it isn't in the mirror.
She is the dancer before the dance, the dance
before the dance. Not the dance the father made,
not the dance he cleared a floor for. She isn't
the girl that might dance. She's the dance that may
happen and she's looking for the dance in her eyes.
I'm the darkness around the dance, around the light,
around the girl who dances for she who dances.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Cycles at the Laundromat

A van with tire-spinners turns into the parking lot
of the laundromat. I'm certain that before I had
tire-spinners, I'd have my own laundry room.

I leave my soap and empty quarter-can
in the trust of the other patrons and go outside
to practice walking like a real human being.

This tree has leaves that look like siamese twins
who've finally had it and have started
a deadly game of tug of war.

Walk across an empty parking lot on a Sunday
afternoon and any town fills up with the ghosts
of unsanctioned coming-of-age rituals.

The woman across the street walks toward the place
I'll be if I cross here. Was I going to cross here? I'll cross
here then act lost and cross back. She's gone.

There's a blue sports car surrounded with children and one
young woman pulling on a shirt that doesn't fit right.
She's yelling at the children. They all get in. No one's driving.

Now the laundromat is filling up again with the usual
lot of magazine ad readings, prideless fantasies, bleach,
and me coming back full of oxygen and yellow exhaust.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Vacant

There is a parking lot on the block where I grew up.
Before that it was a grassy vacant lot with a deep
ditch at one end between two white houses.
And farther back there was a burnt out shell
of a small house that was never boarded up
before they tore it down, and one day
we opened a window and went inside.
Before that there were no trees in the yard.
Once, there were no trees in town and once
there were no trains, and once there were no
roads and once there were no houses, once
there we no horses and once there were
no wheels, and once the state was a grassy
vacant lot, and you could see father than
your eyes knew how to guage and the grass
turned into a gold paved parking lot
just under the horizon, but your eyes
weren't there then and there was no
horizon to surround your body with its
closed windows from where you'd imagine
a circle and a center of that circle that moved
as you moved. You weren't there.
I wasn't there either. And we couldn't
have been because they haven't torn us
down. No one has even thought
of forcing open our painted-shut eyes
and crawling in to find out what happend.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Elizabeth

I read a version of Little Red Riding Hood
that gave the girl a name, Elizabeth.
Here was a girl with a name, dirty
fingernails, and knots in her hair,
and she sat at my table now drinking
a cup of tea while I felt like the bad
uncle who never kept up and didn't
ask questions about Grandmother.
She said "please" and "thank you"
too much and asked for blackberry tea.
While she ate her cake I looked
at the old book of fairy tales I kept
just in case and found her there
with no name but Red Riding Hood.
When she finished I poured the tea
in the sink, picked up the phone and called
Elizabeth's mother to come get her.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Teeth

Teeth are a curse we've earned for the sins
of our ancestors who ate animals with teeth
and beaks, who chewed at each other with tools
and ideas, rules and rebellion.
Teeth come twice and then they stay in
our heads like our first erotic thought
and erode over the grains of each real thing
we feed them.
Some of us chew our teeth to gravel at night
and wake up with new bodies that scrape
our tounges and burn those nerves now out
of their white iron sheaths.
Somehow they're like a key in your fist
when it sweats and you taste metal.
You want to pull them out and run your tongue
over the gums--like a shaved head in a warm
October wind.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Simplicity

Sometimes I clear off my table
just to show off the little print
of a Chinese painting that hangs
just over it. It's a pink flower
in a few blades of black grass.
It reminds me of the kind
of simple way I want to live,
sitting at my table, the chair
faces the wall, the cup
holds the tea, the wall is white
and holds up a single pink flower
at eye level. It's held there with three
nails because one corner bends
to the wall already. But too often
the table's a mess and I sit on a chair
with my pants hung on the back,
I put the cup down on a dictionary,
and listen to the news.
I still think, though, that sometimes
it opens something up in me when
I happen to notice it across the room,
a little lost in the jumbled objects
gathering around it like weeds.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Mouse and Me (a "lower standards" poem, I think)

I'm typing this poem with the same keyboard
that the mouse eats my peanuts on.
I have to turn it upside down
and sweep it with my hand to get
the little bits of red skins and shell powder
out of the keys so my "i" quits sticking.

I baited a trap with a peanut one night
and slipped it into an open bag of nuts.
I listened to him crack them open until
four in the morning when he got full
and ran back to whatever hole he's made.

I even saw him one night. He was standing
on the keyboard and saw me in my bedroom
doorway. He stood still and looked.
I could see he was glad to have this chance
to see what it was he always knew about
but only now had the comfort of meeting.
I could see he felt less afraid and ready
to make a life for himself here, and to lose it
when the force against him finally had its way.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Consumed

In Kansas, you know
that the food chain
has a clasp,
and maybe we
are the pendant
but when I sit
on my porch and watch
the welts form
from the straw
mites and mosquitos,
and watch the liquid
dance of chiggers
on the concrete,
I don't feel
like the eater.
And mayber that
is why we believe
in God here; someone
has to be the all-
consuming,
the unconsumed.

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Not Writing Today

I
There is an old woman who crosses this street
everyday in the early morning, with my help.

I eat breakfast on my porch and watch her
slide imperceptibly down the sidewalk and stop

at the curb like an empty train car. That's
when I get up and cross over to her.

She never looks at me, but when I pick up
her big hand she can move again.

When we cross the street, she's the one
who lets go and keeps on walking.

II
She didn't come one day, and I sat there
until noon with an unfinished egg.

III
Today she came back and when she stopped
I sat there eating and sipping tea.

She looked for me once, put one foot down,
and set out like a heavy boat into the sea.

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Light

If you close your eyes against
the light of midday, then you see
the red-orange light of your eyelids
almost like the color of the sun
itself, maybe the hue of the universe.

What light could shine though
our whole body and turn it
into stained glass panes of hearts,
lungs, stomach and black skull boxes
of the brain. Only a light
so strong it would leave whoever
saw it with a certainty he's seen
the hue of the universe and every
shade of his place in it.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Evening, September 15, 2005

On this cool summer evening, I smell
hot rubber and deisel fuel
and I don't know where it comes from.
But in this easy breeze when my body
doesn't fight any element,
I breathe it down, good or bad,
and take it as the scent of my city
doing the ugly work it does
everyday, this one too, where I'm
sitting outside in the damp gray air
blowing kisses with every slow breath.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

My first drug poem

There is a chemical in tea,
theophylline, that creates a sense
of well-being, or that’s
how it’s put in the literature
I read. A being-well drug,
as all drugs begin, I guess.
Thus by the end of your jade-green
cup, you are there, being well;
in the midst of ennui, well;
in the mist of longing, well;
in the embrace of rage, well.
And this is slower than caffeine.
Theophylline stays like evening
until you notice its gone
and you can’t remember what
that broad and shallow joy
was all about.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Observer

The tree across the street is furious
with birds. It flaps its thousands
of hands like it's shooing them away.

He remembers that if you clap loud,
the birds stream out and possess
an empty tree across the street.

One flies out and back like a solar flare.

He claps so quiet, only he can hear.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Stealing Pleasures in Hell

Just before you're slid, feet-first,
into the furnace, notice the way
the subtly different shades
of orange flame curl weightless
in the coals. See how the mossy
blossoms of fire bud upward
out of black embers like mushrooms.
Notice the symetry of every split
in the wood, tiny windows
blinking on and off, a whole
ecosystem of firy life. Stop
and wonder at the beauty,
the uncanny order of it all.

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Initial Post

I've started this blog out of curiostiy. We'll see what I do with it. This post is more of a test and perhaps one of the most boring things on the web right now.

Friday, July 01, 2005

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