Witless

I have the wisdom of fools today
and my wit is a cicada in the earth.
We're sitting with our drinks between us
and I want to make you happy the way
the witless and unwise  try to make
happiness, out of laughter and long
hugs, out of memories, and floral praise.

Here is a story I've told you before.
You laughed and looked like a saint
when you heard it the first time. I notice
you pretending you've never heard it now.
Let me take the ring from your finger;
here is a ring for you. Here are the best
times I can remember, tied up
in new ribbons and given to you again.
I'm practicing for next time. I'll come
out of the earth and cover your heart with wings.

The Half-Mast Flag

The post office flag hung at half mast
but I felt no sorrow. Why is my country
mourning? The wind had wrapped
the fire station flag around the top,
the stripes like a barber pole. It seems
the country is divided. All at once,
it’s dizzy in the thin air of pride
and fallen down on it’s hard knees weeping.
I’m here again, impassible and happy
on my porch with a cup of strong tea,
watching the train of my nation pull away
from the platform where I stand waving
at the wallet-sized snapshot windows.
I'll call the post office and ask them why.
I’ll get back on the train when it comes around.
I might even tell the firemen the reason,
and we can all rend our garments
and feel like brothers who’ve lost
something, someone we both need.

This is not a poem

I'm taking a few days off from this blog. It's been keeping me up too late and I need to get that under control. My days have become short and unproductive because of it. I'll be back soon.

Lights

I light my room with white Christmas lights
nailed along the edges of the ceiling.
They don’t remind me of winter anymore
except for the shadowless light they cast.
I don’t remember Christmas in their light.
Neither do I think of Christ, the tiny
lights in the sky over the manger,
or the one that showed the way.
They are not a poet’s lights, not
the lights of apocalypse or prophecy.

They are the lights that banish
the darkness just enough to read by.
Some of the bulbs have burned out.
The string has pulled itself off
of a few nails. They’re empty of ghosts.
The eyes that give light to objects
have closed. The light has lost its mind.

Gasoline

I like the smell of gasoline,
just a whiff, enough to make
you think about the thin elixir
running through the shining pipes
with the gray resin of earth
and fumes on the outside.

But someone parked a car
with a leaky tank nearby
and I can feel my memories
smelting out of my brain
and burning like a new fuel
for America’s engines.

If you’re a traveler, America
is a whirling dervish vision
rising out of the blur of all
the grassy roadsides going by.
The smell makes the past combust
and you live in the present, burning it up.

Fantasy

If the lightning punches a surge
into the frail capillaries of my computer,
I could lose all of my poems, stories,
and half-built plans for a better life.

I’d stand in the middle of the room,
and, with curses drying up on the floor
and the sweat of helpless rage in my clothes,
I’d put a chair out on the lawn and sit.

I’d look away from the house and try
to forget it exists. The grass would be
a little wet, and I’d let the bugs crawl
up to my knee before slapping them flat.

I’d let the sun set and feel every last
thread of the illusion that my life
just started over, and that it only began
when I fell asleep that night.

Combat

I’m struck by the clever method of the trap,
the poison a favorite food taken to the queen
who must delight in the first ant to bring
the rare, aromatic gel. The queen, glutted
with eggs, touches the favored ant’s head
with a feeler and sends her back up the tunnel.
The little ant droops to the floor and,
when the ants behind start dragging her body
out of the way, believes it’s the queen herself
inviting her back to the chamber to share
a bit of the golden ambrosia in her jaws.

I feel a tiny red insect of guilt moving.
I’m glad for it. My queen is not dead.
My guilt is wingless and sterile. I set
the traps in the best places for a quick kill.

While the ants find the traps, my queen
asks me about metaphors. Have I
poisoned sweet food for the queens
in the chambers of another’s heart?
Am I the bait, the worker, or the poison?
I tell her the truth, and she takes my food
for the firey red larva moving in my chambers.

Stone Heart

It is said that if you don’t
worship God, the very
stones will cry out.

I keep my peace
among the stones.
My heart holds my mouth closed.

If the stones cry out
I’ll let their songs
loosen my throat again.

Power

Back in grade school, I once heard
one boy tell another about the time
he killed a man. He’d been hunting
ducks from a bridge when one shot
missed and hit a man fishing
from his boat on the river.
We learn to tell lies long before
we learn to hear them.

I could feel the warm halo
of death on that boy from my chair.
He had stolen power from the locked
toolshed of adulthood and found
that his hands fit the grips.
When he saw his shot, he must
have raised the sights, just so.
I could not have; I wrung my useless hands.

Poem

We’ve given God love’s name.
When we feel our prayers
rising into a Godless world,
we speak of love and feel
God turn to hear his name.

Creativity, wit,
passion, strength, and patience
are the virtues we use
to make the hearts of lovers
hurt until even the flesh aches.

He feels uneasy with this name.
Without God the damned stay
uncreated and never weep.
They never look back on love
and wish constant, hopeless wishes.

Watching the Chiggers

The chiggers like the concrete slab
on the sides of my porch steps.
I often have breakfast out there
where I can watch them up close.
The slab looks plain and gray a moment,
but when you lean close, countless
needle pricks of dancing parasites
draw into view. They move in fractal
patterns of turning and stopping,
and seem never to touch. They must
be looking for blood, but they don’t
act at all tempted by me. My nose
is a foot away at most, and they should
smell the CO2 of my breath and know
there is a bouquet of capillaries
for each one of them in the sky.

I like to watch them and know the trouble
they would bring me if I put my cheek
down on the slab and let them come.
I don’t pour out my boiled water on them,
or spray window cleaner just to see
what it does. They allow me to look
patently at the face of villains, and don’t
we all long to see the devil’s face that way.

Cold Fire

My daughter stomps on the blue chalk
until it’s a lump of powder on the floor.
She pushes it into a neat pile
and calls it a “cold fire.” The small
toy animals huddle around it
and she joins them, keeping cool.

I imagine a few small twigs
turning dark and glassy, the soft
locks of just visible blue flame
dancing with one toe on the ground.
It draws the water out of the air
and freezes it to the fuel.
You keep it going with wet moss
and green leaves until it starts
to slide of the mound of ice
building beneath the twinkling embers.

And speaking of inverting the extremes
of nature, I could have often used
“hot ice” to warm my tea or my hands.

Imagine a planet like this. You’re welcome
to the arrange the gravity however you like.
But when you come to its inhabitants,
you’ll find their emotional lives identical
to our own. Once in a while, they’ll have
to imagine impossible things to set
the world right in their hearts: fire
that burns and blackens, cold ice,
wet rain, and creatures living lives only
slightly different from their own.

The Curse

You want to be seduced by the eyes
of pythons; you want to stop breathing.
You want to see the bones bent
over the rocks on the Sirens’ island.
You want your body bent over
those rocks in the burning salt water.
You want to lick the stem of a rose
and grow sick on your own blood.
You want love from the sons of devils
and impossible oaths from their throats.
You want back the blood they took.

It’s in a heart shaped bottle stuck inside
a devil-man’s chest. But you’ve lost
the power to break hearts. Your own
is so full of glass, it can barely beat.

Giving Up on Your Dreams

I remember that it was this mug
I was looking for, not the chalice
with the stem long enough for the hand
that passes and the hand that accepts.

And I was looking for the cold tap
instead of some hot spring turned
baptismal magic with the salt
of legend and dream-crafted quests.

I need my slippers, which I would
have found by now if I hadn’t looked
so long for.. what was it,
the plane tickets and the frame-pack?

My neighbor is burning his trash
in a bent metal can. I’m certain
he’s done something wrong. This
is the wrong I’m here to right.