Rivets
“Rivets”
At the annual parade I carried you on my shoulders.
We kissed directly between the broken-down Ferris wheel and the cotton candy stand.
I could feel the metal rivets of your jeans pressing up against me.
I pressed back.
Your hair smelled like sugary peanuts. the kind they only sell in plastic bags out of carts with no wheels.
Near us someone wins a prize for throwing a baseball at nine-neatly stacked glass coke-a-cola bottles.
I tell you those games are usually rigged.
You put on chapstick with the tip of your finger and it makes me think about lemonade from a stand and sex and the tightness of your jeans and the rivets pressing up against me.
You laugh at the pickle on a stick as a boy runs by frantically searching for his older brother
who is not so coincidentally kissing a red-haired girl near the tilt-a-whirl.
I reach my hand out to stop the boy from interrupting.
You laugh.
March 4th
“March 14th”
a small stone holds strong against a sea of crashing water.
meanwhile they clamor in droves at the prospect of
freedom from death.
reprieve never comes for true suffering.
so they rally.
a hundred million people against one death.
they call upon the risen lord jesus and
allah.
they use
crystals and burn incense.
old italian women kiss the feet of their crucified lord.
little children believe in the power of wishing while a hundred million people storm the fortresses of death.
death holds strong.
in a brightly colored classroom, amidst crayon drawings of the stations of the cross
a little boy wishes for his mother.
death tightens his shoelaces.
the class takes a moment to pray.
death pushes back.
February 28th
“February 28th”
i wrote down my regrets onto thin slips of crete paper and I folded them into cranes
then boats
and we set sail together in December
even though weather conditions were not ideal and we
were guided only
by longing and wind
we sailed through boggy water littered with
alligators and
old friends
just the cranes and boats and I.
a cool burst of air nearly knocked the boats off course
we hit land and
i sent the
boats onward alone.
they sailed through an ice-tipped wilderness and scorching jungle stream
i haven’t thought about them in a long time
wondering where they ended up and
if i should have stayed the course.
the last i heard the boats ran aground under a
waterfall
in the arctic
tundra
and crashed and unfolded when faced with the sheer strength of punishing rock.
and the paper boats turned back into cranes and the cranes caught
a warm
breeze and ended in the
peaceful place between heaven and the moon
and lived happily there.
the weather is mild
like england only sunny
where no one is afraid to fly.
“February 24th”
“February 24th”
I daydreamed a village long destroyed.
Run into oblivion by ash or Wal-Mart or both.
I can still see the mothers sitting agitated in the park.
Closing their eyes for a brief reprieve from swingsets and foam mulch.
Or hopscotch, or 4-square.
I can see the deep oaken footprints of the mayor.
Forever enshrined in ash at his podium where he declared
war on drugs, or terrorism
and wished us all a Merry Christmas and gave
the closing speech of the town fair
where he told us all that “a place like this is really something special”
and we all believed him.
I saw the owner of the general store stop and grab his back,
overcome with pain, or grief,
or both.
His sturdy handcrafted store doors reduced to automated glass or rubble.
He used to run specials on peaches year-round
because his late wife was from Georgia
but everyone called her Dixie.
I daydreamed a town overrun by girl scouts and
factory workers.
All busy making their way around.
Now you can smell the thick aroma of
finely bleached plastic.
It invades your nostrils and burns the little hairs that give old people their character.
It’s almost unbearable.
The only consolation is that even though you can still see the sky,
no one remembers it.
I daydreamed a thousand angels to swoop through the roads and
bless the streets.
Like they did for Moses in Egypt.
But the people in the village forgot about Moses too.
I thought it strange how they keep the statues clean,
when everything else is ash.
And stranger still how the pimply-faced teenagers and laid off factory workers will throw pennies
into the wishing pond instead of
saving them.
No one can even agree on the correct price for wishing.
At noon, it rains ash. At six, more rubble
and at midnight the sky clears so
that those who remember them, can still see the stars.
Children with good enough eyesight
have the task of mapping the midnight sky so that it can be turned into braille.
So that when there is no one left who remembers the sky,
they can still feel it with their fingertips.
I daydreamed that little girls will grow up to be princesses and little boys, fireman.
So that they can finally get rid of all the ash
through royal decree and really big fire hoses.
But instead they fish for wished-upon pennies in a fountain
filled with soot,
loose change soaked in
rubble.
I daydreamed that I wouldn’t have to be so alone.
January 2nd
“January 2nd”
Yesterday I rode a drop of rain into a town I’ve never seen.
I hit a bearded trucker’s windshield and listened to the screaming of his CB radio before his wipers knocked me away.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on a coffee shop window,
I watched the baristas fix drinks.
I couldn’t tell if the town was special enough for me.
Say more so than Cairo, or Rome,
but I watched the people there anyway.
I wondered if they have ever been to Cairo,
seen the things I’ve seen.
Could these plain people know of pyramids?
And water-zapping heat?
A woman in a gray tweed hat sips her tea while she grades papers.
A little boy breaks away from his mother’s grasp and tries to wipe me away.
He uses his breath to fog up the window.
He draws a cloud. A pyramid. A frown.
And a drop of rain.
little horses
“little horses”
I used to see in your eyes, kingdoms,
little horses and a valiant prince.
I would gaze into a world where honor and valor dictated status, not riches.
But now I spend my days in coffee shops,
and I write about the valiant prince and his little horses instead.
How despite the grim odds of a crumbling kingdom,
he inspired hope.
He gave big speeches atop little podiums.
And he rallied people with words like ‘hope’ and ‘joy’ and ‘consequence’.
In his brief free moments he spent his time memorizing classical French love songs on the estate piano.
But even with all the stunning resolve of his father, the king,
the valiant prince couldn’t keep the kingdom together, or whole.
A woman next to me leans over and asks me what I’m writing about,
her breath smelling like department store perfume,
and coffee,
And I tell her about the valiant prince,
his little horses,
and his far-off kingdom.
She smiles and tells me that fairy tales are cute.
I opt not to tell her how the valiant prince lived the rest of his long life in squalor,
desperately searching for just one opportunity to demonstrate the valiant nature of his good and decent character.
And how ‘cute’ it was that the opportunity, for the valiant prince, never came.
January 16th
“January 16th”
Men are faulted for thinking with their groin.
For letting their penis lead the way.
But a man’s pelvis is shaped like a heart. His penis, a rod.
The heart is the Hallmark symbol for love.
If the heart is just a muscle and the penis just an organ, the brain can only rely on the solidarity, strength and steadfastness of bone.
Women carry ovals underneath their jeans.
But men, hearts.
Women bear oval saucers good for catching and holding displays of artwork.
But men bear the shape of romance and thin pink construction paper cutouts.
The scent of lust leads them to thin ivory saucers so that they can rest their trinkets.
Led not by the points of rods but by calcified and unabashed bone.
January 10th
“January 10th”
I asked you why you weren’t afraid of death,
and you pressed your face against the cold, frosted window.
You showed me the splotchy face-print that you left behind
and told me that the the next time the window frosts over with cold,
you’ll reappear.
Like magic, I said.
Just like that.
You closed your eyes and inhaled deep.
You traced with your finger on the window.
A circle, then a heart, then a key, then a smile.
And you put each one inside the other like a Russian nesting doll.
You pushed away a hair that had fallen in your face.
And you told me the minimum necessary conditions for Lake Michigan to freeze over.
Then you took my hand and showed me forever with your fingertips.
Your faceprint frosted over with cold.
January 5th
“January 5th”
I asked you for a slip of paper to write down your number but instead you told me your name, Daisy, which I said was a flower and you said I know but I said it was beautiful and you brushed up against my hand with yours and I shivered because it was cold or maybe it wasn’t and you told me about your brother in Phoenix and I stared at your hair and you bought me a drink and I drank it and you brushed up against me again. I wanted to take you sailing and impress you with my sea terminology but you have a fear of water so maybe we’ll go flying but you have a fear of sky but that’s okay because if you fly high enough you get to heaven and no one has a fear of heave because it’s so beautiful there and I think I’ll buy you another drink. My mother’s favorite flowers were daisies but she died before I was born so we won’t talk about it but I guess you hear that a lot are you sure you don’t want to go sailing because the ocean is a lot like heaven and I don’t want to repeat myself but heaven is very beautiful and I think there are a lot of clouds.
Robert Wadlow
“Robert Wadlow”
Robert Wadlow was the tallest man in the world.
I see advertisements on the city streets. Large posters stationed at the bus stop.
“Shut off his pituitary gland!” they read.
I bet he wishes the same thing sometimes.
It can’t be easy shying away from cramped streetcars,
walking erect into clothing stores.
I imagine Robert Wadlow was very lonely.
Loneliness is much more lonely looking down than
looking up.
Robert Wadlow had a delicate soul.
Being tall must have made him feel essentially and clinically small.
To Her Explorer
“To Her Explorer”
She didn’t think that he would be so far.
But thats the danger of loving an explorer: the exploring.
He wrote to her about a scuffle in Cairo with an unhappy street jeweler.
He described the blinding heat of the Egyptian sun.
He told her that Argentina wasn’t all what it was cracked up to be.
And about a quiet dinner he’d had in Venice.
Candlelight, soft music. Moon.
He said he had wished she was there.
She wrote back that she wished for that too.
But there are such dangers in wishing; pitfalls.
Unseen molecules that escape from the thin seams of dreams and somehow get lost.
Lost somewhere over the crashing waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Somewhere very deep.
He never told her when he’d be coming back,
but told her to not tire from the waiting.
That’s the other danger of loving an explorer: the waiting.
She put her heart in his notes and the notes in a locket and the locket on a string and hung it from her rearview mirror;
So that she could travel with him too.
She felt that it helped ease the deafening silence that often accompanies the relentless waiting for her explorer to tire of searching the sky for stars and come back to her.
Skywriting
“skywriting”
you don’t speak anymore,
but you hold your breath,
and I time my breaths with yours.
i hold you while you sleep.
your eyes speak fables, stories, fairy tales,
paint pictures of Aesop’s words,
and i try to look on with you while you skywrite in your mind.
you paint purple clouds that streak across the expansive orange serengeti sky.
i tell you not to forget to dream the zebras.
otherwise the colors of the sky won’t seem as deep.
and i’ll be there when you wake up from tanzania.
and if not, I’ve just gone walking.
not so much walking as trying to figure out the clearest route to escape into your mind.
November 14th
“November 14th”
I tried to capture time in a glass bottle of sand.
I didn’t have a lid so I couldn’t turn it over.
So I guess time stood still.
I grabbed some cork from an old bottle of wine, and used that instead.
the runoff stained the tan sand red.
I imagine the world was made the same way.
Across the street a man in a pageboy hat reads the newspaper on a wet city bench.
He holds it cautiously.
intent on maintaining its perfect folds.
July 15th
“July 15th”
Giraffes are missing their vocal cords.
They can’t whisper,
scream
call out to you in a crowded train station.
And they can’t use their voice
to tickle the quiet spots of your back.
They have the longest necks,
the ability to spot you over miles and miles of road.
But if they spot you,
they can only exhale a dark, desolate air from their mouths.
It must be excruciating.
Never being able to ask you to dinner,
ask you to dance,
tell you it’s raining and to bring an umbrella just in case.
Tell you about the stars.
But I think they still try,
wishing that you could decipher the molecules they expel into the cold, night air.
A silent scream.
red herring. 