Jazz!

The way it gets into the lungs of people,
the way it goes down there into in the blood
and when it reaches the heart, makes it
go boom, boom, boom... makes me think
I should like it. I’ve tried hard to like it.
I listen to the jazz shows on my radio.
I love the hosts with their smooth
enthusiasm and the tides in their voices.
I love it when they tell the stories tied
to the tune I’m about to turn off. I want
to hear about the clubs and the records
and how the deals went down and who
got screwed and why and how it’s better now.
Then the radio holds its breath a beat
and the music plays, not bad music,
just music–music that doesn’t go down
into my lungs, doesn’t make my blood
fizz, and doesn’t make my heart dance
the way the man with the tides in his voice did.

Assessing the Enemy

I hadn’t played in a long time and neither
had he. We set up the pieces, both fast
and at peace with this part of the battle.
I arranged my ranks in precisely the right
way, and so did he, I noticed. So here
we met on an even field as men with deep
hollows of mystery in our hands that may
house any history we might imagine.
A man with a sword on his lap may stand
and dance with it like it was charmed by God.
He may lift it in a painful grip with
the wrong fingers and put it clumsily
aside. But in his lap, it is both.

There with both sides ranked and facing,
we watched the others hands and waited
to see what kind of spark would move
from those fingers into the dead pawns’ heads.

Undeveloped

I have nine rolls of undeveloped film
because I don’t often think of them and
because nine rolls will be expensive
to develop. I don’t feel hurried.
I know that each still moment
that happened imperceptibly at the
loud turning and clack of the camera,
is staying where it is.
As I forget those moments a roll
at a time, each frame is collecting
the dust from my memory. And when
I unpack the pictures one day,
the moments will slide around
the moon surface of my memories
and find places to settle into.
Then I’ll have a more complete
history of myself, with the chains
of images drawing up something
that might as well be true.

New Light

Sometimes the light reflecting from a car’s
fender casts the shadow of the grit it’s gathered
on the wall you’re sitting against; your shadow
rises out of one corner of the light, an apparition.

Many times, I’ve held my hand up to a glaring
patch of light and moved backward, keeping
the shadow of my hand in the circle. The hand
grew and grew until I backed into the source–
a hole in the curtain, the soda can in the window–
and my fingers were as big as arms on the wall.

You lean closer to the lamp and the whole room
shifts color a little. The white of the wall nearby,
you realize, has turned a bit more the color
of your own flesh, your face shining like the moon.

Sleeplessness

This way of sleeping is like a nation
I came to by mistake and stayed in
for a reason I can't remember, "just
until I get back on my feet."
Somehow I keep going to sleep later
than the night before and feeling tired
at exactly the wrong times, so I stay awake.
I stay wide awake in the country
of dark closed doors and drunk drivers
on their way home from the closing bars
or heading out to Wal-Mart for light bulbs.
I long wake up at the slow sunrise hours
and feed my body on that unlikely light.
But that is the country whose dreams
and slogans are all I can remember.
Here, in this country of lamp-lit blacktop,
vaporous thoughts, and lightless eyes,
this is where I pull up my chair, this
is where I take my boots off the floor.
This is the only place where I have
a number of uneasy loves everyday.

This is not a poem

I'm giving a reading on Saturday, so I'm going to make some revisions to my work between now and then using the time that I normally use for this blog. I've been thinking of making this Poem-Every-Other-Day for the same reason. I've been turning out many many more first draft than I ever did before but I've revised very few of them.
In the meantime, I invite anyone who reads this blog to fill in for me. Just leave your poems in the comments for this post.

Celebrating

I like the holidays set aside to celebrate
an emotion. We have one for Love, one
for Thankfulness, and one, you could say,
for Fear. I’d like one, though, for boredom.
A day to celebrate ennui by forcing it out
of its room full of TVs, radios and newspapers,
and make it do something with what it’s learned.
We’d tell stories of the still minutes we spent
listening to our brains and waiting for them
to say something new, for our bodies
to move in carry us through the street,
lift our hands and knock them on the door
that we’ve somehow kept missing the last...
how long has it been? Then when you’ve told
your story, you listen to another. You’ve put
the one who’s celebrated today in a loud
pair of shoes and a long coat we all
recognize, and when he goes sweeping
his soles up the sidewalk, everyone
glances up fast before he sees them looking.

Not Going Out All Day

The moving air of outdoors licks my forearms
when I step outside and I see the clumsy dance
of my whole day indoors stand up and bow
out. Like a funeral far a man that no one
liked anymore but we all knew, so there
we are, wearing black and the mourner’s
poker face; then we go home and call a friend
for coffee. And the world is there for us.

It must be the hours we spend inside, out
of the light, that first gave us the cleft
between the mind and body, landlord
and renter. Right now–in the sunlight
my body drinks down and the wind that puts
me here in the world, a village of flesh
on a green map of the land–if you killed me,
every aspect would fall down dead as one.

Another Toast

I taught my daughter how to toast.
I showed her how and said, "Here's
to making new friends." She said,
"Here's to sitting in this chair."
We clinked and drank our chocolate down.

It's as good a reason to toast as any.
Are they like prayers sent up
to an empty throne, maybe to a bank
of causes and throaty sentiments?
Does the wine from a roomful of raised
flutes pour down and annoint an icon
by the name "friendship" in the heavens?

Here's to turning the mind to the moment
and saluting whatever you find there;
here's to finding a name for the ghost
that's hauting you now so you can shake
its hand; here's to writing the poem's
penultimate line and feeling the end ahead;
here's to drinking deep and filling the cup again.

Reading the Science Stories

One story said we've discovered how bees fly.
Another said that ancient humans were hunted
by birds. It's no wonder our angels have wings.
How long have we feared the talons sweeping
down under silent wings from out of the sky?
How long have we wondered ourselves mad
at the tiny mysteries, darting around on fast
invisible wings, that wouldn't give up their secrets?

Limbo

Now that the Catholic church may get rid
of Limbo, where will all of those people go?
Will the floor drop out and dump them
into a long freefall through the blackness
toward the flickering red pinpoint of light
down below? Or will the sky crack open,
and all the souls grow wings that finally
catch the wind that's blown their ghosts
in aimless tides for countless eons; then
they'll fly up into the light at last?
Will a judge be sent, Saint Peter out
from behind his bench for the first time
in two millenia, to sort out the damned?

By now, they must have a culture all their own.
They believe the souls in Hell were weak
and easy to tempt when they walked the earth.
Those in Heaven are now sinless and live
in perfect joy, hardly human at all.
They believe only they are eternally free.
God is not there; Satan does not tempt.
Here, they shovel the sidewalks and mow
the lawn when needed; they pay no taxes
because no one needs bread or medicine
.
Maybe their religion fortells a day when a man,
an angel, once alive as they were once alive,
will come and usher in the last days of Limbo.
Or maybe it will come as a surprise. Maybe
they rarely think of Heaven and Hell at all.

Homemade Kite for My Daughter

I made it out of clothes-hanger wire
and wrapping paper. The string
came from two balloons we'd left
hiding in a corner of the ceiling.
For more string, I used thread, it
was all I had. Then we took it outside.

I pulled it against the wind and let it go.
It stayed just above head-level
and jumped left and right. It dove
at the ground and back up. It tuned
backwards and inside out. Once
it jumped up higher than the house
and crashed hard into the grass.
It was like something that never
wanted to be born. It raged against
the line until the thread snapped, then
it fell easily to the ground.
The paper was torn, the glue and tape
gave. It was clearly done. This
was like many moments in life.
I took it in and set it aside, grateful.

The Music

Music is now the sound of time passing.
It's the last layer of the audible ether.
It's our soundtrack of silence.
If you sit in an empty room,
breathing noislessly, and let
the top-40 tunes echo in a sealed off
arbor of your brain so that you don't
hear your heart beat or your lungs empty,
you've found the new meditative place, our
tranquility. And when you hear
one of those songs again, you'll wonder
where you'd heard it before. What
you'll decide is that it's just music;
you know that sound--and then the door
in your head will shut and the silence
will come flushing back in with thin
tiled walls that crumble with the least listening.

Ways

My way to work is the one way
street that becomes two ways,
but it's still my way. It's the way
of the railroad crossing that often
stops me in my way and sends me,
not a new way, but another way,
a way I know, but not my way.

The post office is not a landmark
on my way to work. The post office
is just part of the way. It's part
of many ways to many places.
My way is the way of the post office
passing and the tracks letting me through.

When I have to go somewhere without
a way, I'm lost, even with directions.
It's a madman's way, filled with objects,
marking out turns I should take, warning
me I've gone too far. It's a strange way
that's not my way. It's his way. He
gave me the directions. If they take me
to a place I need, a place I want, then
maybe I'll take his directions--the third
light, the brick gas station--and make
a new way for myself in this new place.

Chore

The wind blew a dumpster across the street
into my yard at the exact spot where I put mine
on Wednsday nights. It belonged to the acounting
firm across the street. They no doubt thought
that it was mine, the next morining and that
they'd lost theirs. It sat there for two days.

As I rolled the dumpster across the street
in the middle of the night and parked it
at the corner where they usually keep it,
I wondered what they would think.
Was it stolen and returned after the thief
was haunted by a guilty conscience? Did
the trash company bring a new one?
Did someone borrow it for the weekend?
I walked back across the quiet street
in a clean breeze, having done the good deed
of milking a little mystery out of the world
and leaving a few people in wonder over it.

Letting You Know

Don’t try to tempt me; I can’t be tempted.
Maybe in a dark distant place in the center
of me, I’m tempted, but the door to the room
is locked and rarely is anything sent out.

When I do visit that room, long after
you’ve left, I find things lying on the floor
and the table pulled out from the wall,
so I put everything back where it was.

My heart is a waxing November moon.
There’s a face on it--a man, if you like--
that looks at you, but there he stays, far out,
surrounded by countless, even more distant stars.