Skip to main content

One Year Later: The Geographical Cure

With volumes of Proust
and a French-English dictionary,
I climb five flights
of winding colimaçon stairs
to my new-old Paris rental:
yet even at the edge
of the tent of the sky,
my baby brother
is still
dead.

Through the attic skylight
I raise myself onto the roof
from the waist up
like a jack-in-the box,
catching scraps of rock music,
roar of the Metro,
vintage apartment buildings,
shimmering Seine,
Eiffel Tower like a
cake ornament.

Deisel fuel in the air
as I explore Père Lâchais Cemetary

As It Is

I am afraid of the ocean in you.
Like my mother did with me, I try to love
by catching your waves in my hands.
And, as I did to her, 
you swell and overwhelm
my desperate loving hands.
I can’t hold your tempest for you.
 
I can’t love you from the shore when you are an ocean.
I can’t kiss you from land
when your nature is to break it.
 
So I try again.

Repercussions

I know see the repercussions of loving a broken man. 
I can look into your eyes and all the doubt fades to the background. 
The consequences of loving a man that cannot give himself in return. 
A lifetime of hurt you carry in your heart, closing off any hope for intimacy on a giving level. 
You hold your head high, you guard yourself with I don't care and who gives a fuck. 
I've seen past it. In to who you very being is. 
Behind sad and tired eyes.

-ology

A Clovis point's a sort of arrowhead
Invented fourteen thousand years ago.
I wasn't there, of course; I only know
The term from books and web sites that I've read.
At least, I think.  This modern age has bled
My brain cells dry, yet still they overflow,
Minutiae a spinning undertow
In which I try to swim but drown instead.
 
When Google's net can snare ten million ways
To say "I love you" or "please pass the salt,"
Attention skips and slips and snaps and strays.
With miracles our everyday default,
Mere ancient spearheads fail to amaze—

Winter is Awake

The crisp oranges,
the oak wood browns,
swirl together in piles.
Few escape,
and tumble rebeliantly
into tornados down the pavement.
A blanket of cold
sunggles into our lungs.
We look like dragons with
our smokey breath.
Sweaters grow thicker
over our goosebumps.
Shopping and pumpkins and
family and food
frollock across our minds.
The clouds shake glitter
like salt and pepper
over the town.
Each blade of grass
is wrapped up in a white scarf
and we all rest 
and wake up 
to crimson reds and forest greens

Secret Knowledge

Secret Knowledge
 
I know that the moon is made of chalk and cheese,
and smells of fresh apricots. By moonlight, cats dance,
twenty or thirty at a time, padding in silent circles
and weaving their tails in a complicated way.
It is best viewed from a low cloud or from the
uppermost branches of a yew tree, the sort that has
caches of rubies and old gold coins buried at its roots.
To find buried treasure sing a song in the key of D minor
about your mother, the moon and some cats,
accompanying yourself on the triangle or the rhombus.
Subscribe to New Poems