Safe from the Storm

You miss most of the storms.
The sky flashes in the east
out of the dark broth behind
the purple budding trees
down the street. The wind
flaps at you with empty hand,
all of its knuckles thumping
the mud in the next country.
You stand on your porch with
only the breath of the storm,
a little too aware
of the madness of the world
to even think to give thanks.

On Learning of the Evolution/Creationism Debate Taking Place At PSU

What it’s really about is
each of our own magic
spheres of personal space
and the ghosts that orbit
around inside of them.

Some of us are cloaked
in a bath of invisible
angels and crackling
flashes of spirit-sent
power and purpose.

Some are infiltrated
by the Earth, the breath
and the dirt, the heart
beating it’s music out
since the beginning, unknown.

May the winner be brave!
When the ghosts learn
they can breed outside
the spheres, they become opaque
with pride, and our eyes darken.

The Hawk

One day, a hawk flew into the warehouse.
Everyone worked slower after they heard
and asked when they passed each other,
"have you seen the hawk?"

There's a pair of wild eyes watching
from the iron beams in the ceiling,
and the whole building becomes new.
You watch the ceiling for the hawk.

When I finally saw it, I had almost
stopped looking for it. But I looked up
once more and saw it perched
on the red rafter before it dove down.

It sailed like a wraith and I felt
my chemistry coil up in my flesh
and go sour when it wouldn't take hold.
Then the hawk flew back up and disappeared.

Bad Tea

Too much water:

Old sandbox--
the castle's kingdom
spread thin.

A cup of bathwater beside
a neat, unopened bag:

Smoking by the pool--
the geese take over
the water.

Steeped too long:

The lonely man prays
until the single women
have all gone home.

Bad water:

Through the smog,
a rippling orange
sunset.

Sexual Frustration

I

Eventually, you start to have dreams
about the time you moved past her
in the bathroom and the back
of your hand happened to brush
her pubic hair and you both
noticed the other noticing
and the room warmed a little.

II

Sometimes you want to offer up
praise to the bodies of women.
YouÂ’d sing about the neck
where it curves up under the base
of the ear. YouÂ’d exalt collar bones
and toes and the skin visible
underneath the eyebrow. YouÂ’d extol
the shape of the towel sheÂ’s wrapped
herself in and the wet, wrinkled fingers.
YouÂ’d sing it to the skies
and imagine Aphrodite kissing
you back with ancient gratitude.

III

Your body is an engine on
an iron stilt, running...
running....

Inspiration

There’s a poem I’m certain to write. This
is not that poem. This isn’t even about
the same thing as the poem I’m waiting for.
Yes, it’s about you. This shouldn’t surprise
you by now. This poem is not about you.

The poem I’m waiting for is eating words
so it can’t be written. It’s a yellow vat
of hot aluminum so thin it runs through
the seams in the casts. It melts the casts.
When the rain leaks through the roof
the water that falls in explodes.

This is a string of cold aluminum beads
scraped from the floor while I’m waiting
for the vat to cool a bit. The fans
in the windows are turning just from
the swelling air pressing out of this place.

This poem is the moment when I turned
my back on the glowing vat and walked out
the only open door. This stanza is where
I stepped out in the rain and let it darken
my clothes until they hung from me like sails
and I felt the hard, dry flesh of my face awaken.

Apology to My Daughter

When I pulled you out of God’s garden
and brought you home, I did it knowing
that the ground was dry and that it hadn’t
rained in years. The pots were all broken
and the only soil left could fit in my hands.

I know that the ground was damp and dark
in the ether before I took you up
and into the world, but that perfect Earth
could only kill you now, and when I wish
you a better life, you become a vapor
in my arms. So here is all the water I have.

Fragile

I buy cheap wine in jugs with the loop
at the top for your finger. I drink it
out of cheap glasses that come in packs
of four for three dollars so that when one
breaks, which it will when it taps the edge
of the sink or you scrub it too hard with a brush,
you’ll have three more left to do it again.

But the finest glass I’ve had, I found
in the thin strip of grass by the street.
It was thick and simple, sexy and heavy.
I drank more wine after that, but it
was still cheap wine. I married her
to common blood and it killed her.
She burst her hip against the sink one day,
just slipped out of my hand. She rang
like a bell for just a moment,
and she didn’t even bleed.

Hunger

My hunger is like a bell struck underwater.
I feel it on every shore, and every swiming thing
inside me darts about nervous and alert.

All the foods seem to ring me longer and I keep eating.

Every time I see you I walk away vibrating.

Leaving the Woods Behind

We hung an umbrella inside-out and upside-down
over the fire in the rain and warmed ourselves
under the tarps hung up in a circle around it.
The fire stayed dry and the wet umbrella steamed.
When the smoke blew over me it stung my eyes
and I clenched my eyes like fists, stood still
with two hot tears blooming, and took it like baptism.

I was baptized in a pool, holding on with both hands
to the strong, heavy arm of the pastor, who pulled me
back up with a strength that could have held me down
until I drifted into heaven still soaking wet.

But now I'm baptized as Jesus was. He knelt down
into the river on his own strength and imagined
the moving water running through him and taking
the salt of the old man away to the sea.

This is a baptism of smoke, not water's opposite,
but the opposite of mist, the opposite of rain.
I walk out of the woods with the smell of smoke
in my hair, in my clothes, and even in my lungs.
The first person I see looks at me like I have something
eternal to offer her. I'm certain I do. But I leave her
with only the smoke and no stories to tell.
When I go home, I shower away the new man,
all of that salt washing away in the water.

Coming Down (As requested by Aurora)

To find the top of a mountain, look around; whichever
way is up is the way you go, and if you get lost, look again.
When you get to the top and you've looked down into the mist,
sit down and drink a long draught of water and breathe.

When it's time to go back, and you have what you came for:
the wisdom, the moment to stand just underneath
the trap door to the rest of the sky and wonder about God.
It's time to bring it back down. But you slept here and now
you don't remember which way you came, every way is down.
Your fire is smoldering at camp by the river and your friends
miss you. Pick a direction, one that looks familiar, and walk.
Whatever you found on top of the mountain will start
to talk back as soon as you stop recognizing your surroundings.
Keep going. That voice is all you have now.

This is not a poem (2)

I'll have to leave this blog inactive over the weekend. I'm going hiking in the Ozarks until Monday. If the forcasted rain doesn't soak all my paper, I might have something to make up for lost time.
If you'd like to fill in for me, you may leave your own poems in the comments for this post. In fact, if you do leave a poem while I'm gone, then I'll write a poem just for you. Post a subject you'd like me to write about (the more detailed the better) and I'll either post the poem for you with a dedication, or I'll email it to you and you can have it for your eyes only.
Thanks to all of you.

Evidence

A plush elephant stuffed
into a coffee cup.

Pink vowels walking backward
through an open door on the chalkboard,
“U O I E A.”

On the floor, a vague human face shaped
out of rubber scrapers and silverware.

Plastic cats in my pocket
and coins in my hat.

The Cello Player

I

There's a pedestrain tunnel under Front St.
and, sitting inside of it, you played your cello.
The tunnel is tiled like a bathroom floor
and there's a always a damp rivulet
running down the middle.
You sat against the wall in the dim
twinkling light and held the neck high
right by your own throat.
When you pulled your bow, the tunnel moaned.
The whole city had a throat and you
opened it that night. And outside
the rows of houses, painted white like teeth,
rattled and everyone asleep started dreaming.

II

I drew you in pencil that night. I took you home
like a photo in my head and traced it.
I drew your green coat hanging like curtains.
I drew your thick socks piled up around your boots.
I drew the cello too small and I fell asleep exhausted.
I didn't have it in me to draw your face,
just left it a white oval shining
from the waving halo of your hair.
I ripped it out and gave it to you.
Now I can feel it like a missing limb and the sound
of a cello makes the frayed paper edges tingle.

Turning Point

Everything but the storm is lit
by artificial light. I’m sitting
cross legged in a deck chair
writing on my porch and lit
like a painting by the porch bulb.
The pavement glows dull gray
in the street lamps flood.
There’s a jumble of lit windows
in the dark ugly face of the apartments
across the street.

The air is almost no temperature
at all, a little cool perhaps.
It’s cool because of that storm
flashing out above all of the clutter of lights.

I want to make a big decision now.
Not even a good decision. But one
that means when I go back inside,
I’ll be a better man, or a crueler man,
just not this one watching the storm
and feeling a peace that wants
to be eternal.

Elegy for the Dragon

When new hooves crunched through old bones
and blackened armor lying in piles
around the tower, she jealously rose
on her haunches and uncurled her tail.

As she lay flailing with the sword
tamped into the softest scales
of her throat, she watched the white knight
climb the maiden’s hair to the high window.

Before she died she snaked her tail
into the cellar and felt the empty nest.
She saw the maiden riding away
with a bulging braided straw bag.

No one ever buries the dragons.
Their towers crumble in less time
than it took to build them, and their bones
turn to powder the next time it rains.

By now, the White Knight has ridden
his horse into a new pile of bones.
He’s dropped his visor, drawn his sword
and let the ring fall from his finger.

By now the Maiden has begun
letting her hair grow long. She’s kept
the baby dragon in the barn and taught it
how to build towers and how to breathe fire.

A Mystery

I woke up sick.
Why was I sick?
I ate too much.
I also drank too much.
My daughter was sick.
I went to work.
I worked down to bottom
of my muscles. My stomach
groaned and I sat dizzy.
I sat until I could work.
I worked until I must sit.

I went home for lunch.
I slept. I drank tea.
I ate an energy bar.
I was well again.
Why was I well?
I wanted to know.
All three, perhaps?
I did exactly the right
three things and I rose healed.

I stayed well the rest
of the day. The way
a body works is still
a mystery to me.
Still a scupture of locks
and the world a box,
heavy and sagging
with keys.

Aging

The small plastic Adirondack chair
has been on the porch long enough
to turn brittle and flaky
in the sun. A cloudy sheen
of plastic dandruff glazes
all of its sunward surfaces.
If you sit in it, it cracks.
It's a ghost of a chair.
One day it will simply collapse.
Or, I'll forget. I'll see it
facing the bird infested tree
across the street, jutting
halfway out of the roof's shadow.
I'll take my cup of tea out
onto the porch and sit.
Among the dry flakes
of memories in my brain that have
sloughed off and gathered
at the base of my skull,
will be the piece about the chair's
untenable state, so when I land,
the chair, the ash can of my skull,
and the brittle bag of my body
will all bust into the air like confetti.

Packing for the Hike

I’ll need a knife and a small saw,
a lighter, a metal cup, a pen,
a flashlight, and silverware.
I might take a book, but which one.
I won’t take a book; I’ll
take a blank book and a pen.
I already have the pen.
I’ll need a bowl, I forgot
the bowl last year and regretted it.
I forgot about food.
Granola bars, peanut butter, oatmeal,
nuts, dried fruit, candy, canned fish...
...I’ll need toilet paper,
toothpicks, mouthwash and bug spray.
I might need rope. Of course I’ll need
rope. What for? How much?
Forget the rope. What about
tea? I want as much tea as possible.
Alcohol? What kind? How much?
Should I bring the cell phone in case...?
No. No phone. Simplicity; stark
angular, simplicity!
Or comradery. A guitar
and lots of that alcohol.
A sleeping bag big enough
for two, just in case. And soap.
Soap and toothpaste and mouthwash.
No phone, though. Meditation.
No sleeping bag. A hammock!
Or my arm and my coat. I’ll go out
ahead of everyone and sleep
on the other side of the rocks.
Or, just in case, whatever comes up,
I’ll pack for each way. I’ll walk out
with strong legs and sore shoulders.
I’ll carry a garden of minds
in the five pocket on my pack.

Vigilance

I do the same things everyday. This poem
was written at the same time of day
as all of my other poems. I'm reading it
to you at the same time I always do.
My weeks are as uniform as my days.
My years have been passing this way too.
I like to think of this as a kind of
meditation. The kind where you stare
at a wall with your eyes closed and try
to look at the tiniest possible point
just in front of you, a point the keeps
shrinking just out of your focus,
and while your doing this, your mind
winds down and idles until it stops.

They don’t tell you what you do in heaven.
You may sing around God’s throne or just
exist in a state of homogeneous joy, but
never that you do this thing and then another.

This, right here, this very thing I’m doing
is on the blurry corona of the single point.
I’ll keep doing everything I do, the same
way I do it, until my life begins to hum
until death is the same as life, until this
poem is the same as shaking the lint
off of a bath towel or washing a wine glass,
until I don’t even know if I’m singing,
if that light is the throne or whether
this is joy, love, peace or what even words are.

Seven Cups of Pu-erh, Gong Fu Style

The way this tea comes to be is
a state secret. This small cup
is a dark both of whispers.
The dirt the tree grows in,
the leather from the donkey’s
back, the blood from God
knows whose opened arteries,
seems to have leached out
of these twisted smoke-black
leaves and now that it’s all
inside of me, I know I won’t
be able to sleep until
the tea is dry again and all
of it’s secrets lie dry
and quiet, and the stains
in the cup set up hard and cold.

Defending

I have tiny black ants in my house, but
I only find one at a time, never the rivers
of them running from the crack in the wall
to the bottom of the bookshelf. Of course,
they mean to start building soon, a whole
busy civilization flowing over
my wood floors in two lane freeways.
But for now, they're staking the place out.
They're waiting for the word from
the little pioneers, the explorers sent out
one by one every house in the neighborhood.
Every day, I sink another Columbus with my toe.

Marketing Death

One of the brochures on the Breast Cancer Awareness Month
table read, “Men Can Get Breast Cancer.” Inside it told you
that breast cancer is not just “a woman’s disease.” It showed
an old man fishing on a dock. The water was gray. No sun.
There was no pink anywhere in this brochure.

I heard a story about women with breast cancer waiting
for treatment who are given a care package with a teddy
bear, some paper, and a box of crayons. “Why the crayons?”
“In case you want to write down your thoughts.”

When disease takes us, it must choose between pink and blue.
You either pump one last hard breath out through tired lungs,
drop your pole and roll off the dock into the water where
your body floats gaunt and tragic halfway out to the rising
moon before it sinks to the bottom and the water ripples,

or

you sit reclined in a clean white bed surrounded by flowers.
You hold your small plump teddy bear just under your chin,
the simple beauty of your face no longer hidden by your hair,
your eyes sparkling with the long florescent lights... and you sleep.

A Father Reads the Parenting Websites

“Single parent” is a polite term for “single
mother.” “Spouse” quickly becomes “he.”
If you search for “father” you’ll learn how
to get him involved, how he thinks, what
he feels about his kids (your kids), some
things he should know (print this article
and have him read it), maybe how to
find him and get him to pay his share,
what to tell the kids about him and what
you’ll need to do when they want to see him.

I don’t feel like I’m allowed here.
The word for reading the posts
on a message board without posting
is “lurking.” That is how I feel here.
I’m the one in the long coat. I sit
in the back with the same paper cup
that looks older every time I show.
I come in last and leave first. I’m not
sure I have the right address. But
I know I’m a parent. That’s what
the sign reads on the door and no one
has pointed me to a different room,
but every time I cough, the subject
seems to change.

Breakfast

I ate my breakfast on the porch this morning
because it was sunny, windy, and warm,
and because I've read about the effects
of sunlight on the body, about vitamin D
and circadian rhythms. I sit here so
I'll learn again what daytime is. I want
to be driven by the sun again. I've worked
to many nights. I run the machinery
behind the curtain and I only walk out
in the light where everything's working
on my way home. I sleep through the show.

My skin leaches vitamin D into my blood
like a dirty rag in a pail of clean water.
I can feel it happening. My bones become
tough and pliable, eating my flesh
from the inside out and growing mean
inside me like a foetus so when I die,
my bones will stand up with fresh marrow
and get to doing the important work again.