Fast

Slender yet rigid,
The reed dances in the wind
But holds to its bank.

Professor at the Party

The music of your adolescence plays
As you step through their doorway.

It flatters and amuses you, although you know
It’s merely sport -- to dress the diorama:
Supposing smugly you’re still holding court,
You fail to see your placement's been arranged
To flaunt their sense of irony and drama,
Juxtaposing you with young and pretty things
Like dueling gallery curators.

Soaked in lust, suburban shame, and bourbon,
Toxic with regret and deference, failure burning
Through your rusting skin and brain cells.
At the speed of smell, these hardened young
Can tell a swelling sponge of desperate dying age,
Your graven masquerade among the garden-dwelling;
Selling only spite, you pour the stale, fermented rage
Of balding, private dictators.

They boast, “the play’s Our thing,” and mean to kill a king.
They Act; they need no words,
No words, No
Words to say:

You can’t take your class from us, not anymore --
With your coarse lectures spilled over your glasses,
Your acidic glances and your hovering, lecherous looks,
Your covering the same old books,

Your dark imagined romances,
One-too-many sour divorces, your 
Contrived and passive power gesture
Of referring our first-discovered lives 
And loves to "classic" sources,
Like some ancient-glory masturbator.

Yes, you used to roam here,
Grazing on the opportunities of youth
Allowing fattened fears like sows to root around,
But now, we, lions, pounce and choke them down
Then laze away tomorrow’s sun.

Yes, now, you’re just irrelevant in the room,
Unnoticed by the frail and waning moon
Illuminating cool and fading tombstones of long-slain gladiators.

Riptide

Float me up upon Her breath, never softer Her caresses
Gently bury me in the trough of Her presence.
Eyes above Her crest, the view to the beach so serene.

Hi, hi, hi!
Call the gulls/floats the moon/rolls Her tide
She is looming under me, unseen, to take me for a ride.

Scratch my surface, scuff my polish, rough and tumble me into the shore.
Salt on my tongue, sand in my teeth - I can’t get enough:
Will this memory keep as good as first this moment tasted?

I lose track of up and down, underneath, I’m wasted
But I beg her drag me out for more,
Burning lungs remind me I will drown to gasp this next so I snap free-

And I breathe air!
My eyes wide, I remember You are there:
I draw this desperate breath from You.

For now it seems that death was just a dream, the lustful wish of the Sandman's queen.

You have come for me and we are sealed together, under.
Do we hang enmeshed in this too dangerous embrace?
Or climb and claw the surface toward,

Will She wake, amused or jealous of your ruse to take her flesh reward?
One way or the other, welling up or choking down,
She will fight for what she owns,

You will hold my breath tonight,
Feel me splash against your skin;
And all the sound I hear will be your moans.

Wisdom

Parted on a promise to seek
The wisdom to be won from this world we've subdued
Not enough each other to keep
We who had once been one are now two

I climbed up to the top of the mountain and I waited
And waited and waited and waited
Till I weighted it down

Strange again to see you my friend
Many moons have lit my way since I saw the shadow in you
I have something on my mind
You've got something in your heart that I'm starting to want to unwind

I sank down to the bottom of the ocean and I waited
And waited and waited and waited
Till I waded on in

Shuttered your temple inside
Digging down into your breath you inhaled the emptiest blue
To the dark close your eyes
And wait for my light to come shining through

I wrote our names on the high cliff wall and waited
And I'm watchin' it watchin' it watchin' it
Washin' away

I've seen too many things in this world
Not to know that nothing I leave here
Is gonna stay

Trees

Thanks to my cousin Todd for introducing me to this poem many years ago as part of his Bar Mitzvah program. I never let it go.

Howard Nemerov, “Trees,” from Mirrors and Windows (1958):

“To be a giant and keep quiet about it,
To stay in one’s own place;
To stand for the constant presence of process
And always to seem the same;
To be steady as a rock and always trembling,
Having the hard appearance of death
With the soft, fluent nature of growth,
One’s Being deceptively armored,
One’s Becoming deceptively vulnerable;
To be so tough, and take the light so well,
Freely providing forbidden knowledge
Of so many things about heaven and earth
For which we should otherwise have no word –
Poems or people are rarely so lovely,
And even when they have great qualities
They tend to tell you rather than exemplify
What they believe themselves to be about,
While from the moving silence of trees,
Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked,
Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own,
Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath,
And perilous also -- though there has never been
A critical tree -- about the nature of things.

In Response to Your Poems, Including "Wind"

Ah, I am a consummate voyeur.
I read the above and the afore-referred
And all I hear again and again
Is When?

What song served as your soundtrack
The day these were composed?
Which refrigerator-magnet poet
Were you out to beat
When you allowed these words to meet?

How long and how blonde and how straight
Was your hair
What gel, spray or fruit-scented mousse
Held it loosely in place
While that Wind whispered itself into you
And coaxed that one-sided
Smile from your face?

I know you might think it should be enough
For me to see likeness and loveliness
And loving-kindness
And kindred-spiritedness
And I do.

But I also know that these words
Don't belong to any of us now
Or ever.
They belong to feelings that seek us
When songs and partings and
Fluid and dust penetrate our surface
They don't come from
The things that hurt us
But neither pass entirely through.

There was inspiration, and gestation
And a painful crown and birth
On a very specific Earth
Someone was there in the room
With you, when you wrote them down.
Don't expect these words alone to remember
The miracle of their arrival.
You don't own them anymore.
You stand over there now,
(or over here, I don't mind the warmth)
With your inciting moment -
Your consolation prize
While I get to decide
If I will own them too.

To the Jumper

You ask if I'd follow
As if I now stand
Where you call to me,
Yet down you stare
And there waiting you see
Me, arms outstretched,
And assume I'm not reaching
Up for your hand.
How is it
I have to remind
You, at the summit,
That you've made the climb?

A (Poor) Boy and his Doggerel

Rowhouses rent
With violence brewed
On sugar-tongued promises
Sweetened on cue;
Poverty melted with
Solemn fall vows
Only to shiver
In winter's cold boughs;

Reality harvested
Doesn't yield much
When dream-seeds are planted
By farmers whose touch
Just the well-heeled will grease:
No elbows work rooms
Where hunger and ache
Hold perpetual lease.

Belle Weather

If your sister
Acted like this weather,
You'd have her committed
Faster than we both could say
"Bipolar."

If her doctor
Told you her behavior
Was a natural cycle
Would that make for
Better living with her?

If you'd admit
The hardest part would be
To change the things you do
To make her crazy,
It'd be a start.

Weather and the Girl

You might blush
If it were only whispered
At large family gatherings,
And no drinks
Or other secrets spilled-
We might get by with thinking
It's nobody's problem
But our own.

I remember the wedding,
When she smashed the ice sculpture
We didn't stand around pretending
She and it weren't melting down
In front of us.

Having seen it happen here,
If your sister bounced
This sharply up and down
By days or weeks
A little more each year,
You'd have her off to rehab,
Back on meds, or stuck in therapy,
Or something-anything-
But letting anyone else see.

So why, if everyone with skin
Can feel the bipolarity-
That's blowing in the wind,
Melting with the icecaps-
And rising with the tide,
Do we so snidely eschew insularity,

Pretending- now of all nows-

That we don't all live on a tiny island
Where everybody's business is co-owned?
While I hate to crash a party
I think it's started crashing down on us.

Ego, ergo Eco

Frogs float in a saucepan
Giggling at the bubbles
Ignorant in increments

Gum-flappers on CSPAN
Twaddling ideologues
Impotent in dependence

Polar bears strand themselves
On frozen funeral shelves
As the arctic circle melts

Facebook narcissism
Deepening the schism
Between the faceless billions

Unwired, unwitting, hired
(For cheap but not for keeps)
So artificial revenue
Growth unfettered can continue
Leaping greatly forward,

Nevermind us waking from
This Somnium Americana,

Uneasy with extremes
We dream of tropic paradigms
And hot springs hoping
Not to stir this slumber
While the numbers bear the tidings
To our coast-along habit.

Assume blind justice serves us later,
Last, or not at all (the end's always
Depending on your means)
Please just assimilate us faster
In this melting (boiling) pot
Of man's self-made disaster.

Dish Soap Opera

Each time you ask,
"Why can't you just put it
(The coffee cup, the spoon...)
In the dishwasher now?"
I realize I've failed-not me, but you.

I know my reasons-and
I need not list them here-
(And anyway, I'll do it soon)
The point is that I'm being asked
To justify myself again
And I thought we'd made clear
That "understanding" isn't tasked
With covering for your demands.

Perhaps the ritual
Of testing my defense
Is more important than
A confluence of need.

If what you're really asking is,
"Why can't you just want things
The same as me?"
Then I suppose that we're agreed.

Idling Thoughts

While my car heats
On freezing mornings
I develop theories
To explain to the doubters
How "global warming" is
A misnomer but
Not a mistake.

Pressure

 

These uniforms may be the last public reminder of their essential sameness -
A quaint official token that their norms have just begun to change.

Shorts and jerseys, soon they'll shed these as metamorphosis accelerates;
They'll paint new garish hues on outer forms to match the inner range

Of rage and vigor, perk and venom just beneath the roiling surface of the skin.
Their shifted, swelling landscapes shudder over storms, and they exude the strange

Magnetic condensation free of toxic sediments built up by fear and sin,
Regret and suffering and loss, of failures borne as their lives rearrange.

Well, so we elders tell them when we practice our clever barometry,
Forgetting that the pressures that transform them into us ever subside with time,

But stretch them almost to their tightest point-
Like shrunken, faded gym outfits that we once wore.
We have no sure idea what it's like to have no sure idea anymore.

Mutual Will

"Let there be Light,"
He said to Himself.
With no prior evidence,
Without a single sign or wonder,
But this unprecedented confidence,
Light believed Him.
And Light was.

Building Blocks

Your sister says "a stack." Your teacher says "fine motor skills."
The editors at Parents say "a strong portfolio."

"Awareness" comes to mind, and "diligence" seems apropos
Perspective on the strength successive sessions will instill.

Although your lips have formed the bases of a verbal life,
The letters carved thereon are merely undistinguished shapes.

So many things occur across the blurry lush landscapes
Of moment, and we rush to save each one as precious, rife

With meaning more than these obsessed parental reveries.
No single image held over the chasm cut by time

Will serve as keystone for an overarching theme, but I'm
Convinced no clearer blueprint's drawn for building memories.

CactUs

Do you need me to explain how I've
Discovered seeing you in this?
If I tilt my head to forty-five
Degrees it's hard to miss
The eye: unblinking, pink and
Sharp, shot-through with sleeplessness;
But that's only the surface,
What anyone (who doesn't know you)
Might make for obvious.

You know how to last the drought
I've cast across your skies,
And you know how to keep out
Hands that cavalierly try
To pry inside and pour your prize
Across lips stained by dripping lies;
So I am learning not to squeeze
Too tightly with my arguments and pleas.

Hallucinating, stranded,
Half-drowned in dust
I stagger through this backhanded
Apology for my chronic lust,
And hope as my dagger cleaves
Your flesh and yields what it must
That I might last another season
Dry as the bones
Scattered in the wash
From which you've grown.

Orchid in Winter

Orchid
Originally uploaded by BlueSkyDrive

Orchid in winter
You have naught to sweat about
I march into March

Dear

To Whom it may concern (or not):

We've recently become aware
Of circumstances currently
Confronting our unusual
Suburban domesticity,
And felt it prudent to inform
Your office expeditiously.

We understand that overbuilt
And overvalued housing stock
Has turned the whole economy
Back several "hours" on the growth "clock"
And left homeowners desperate
To shake upside-down mortgage shock.

Perhaps a local viewpoint will
Provide perspective overdue,
Suggestions may include: the till
You eat be that which grows near you,
And living spaces redesigned
To honor your communal glue;

Proximity you've written in
Genetic and computer codes
Might offer insight if transposed
To legal, health, and building modes;
Restore the green to parkways paved
And repedestriate the roads.

You've proven all this excess space
You've claimed has failed to meet the needs
Of population's swelling base
So...write it off! Restore the weeds,
The undergrowth, the slower pace;
Follow where un-developed leads.

You may discover arts you've lost,
Rekindle friendships long-thought past,
And bear (through sharing) lower costs
For love and labors you've amassed.
You wizened stone, now slowed and mossed,
Need roll no more, iconoclast.

In closing, we suggest you seek
A life less "owned," and truly freer:
Give back these woods, and find your wills
Less burdened with their ancient fear
Of scarcity. [Please meet us here
In compromise, and we, sincere,
Will "mete" your prize most willingly.]
Release all you no longer need;
Discover thus, all you hold...dear.

The Obliquity of the Ecliptic

(or, Circular Love and Logic in the Arctic)

*Degrees:
There is a ring around the north pole,
At six-six point five-six*,
Where at noon and thirty minutes
On this longest day,
The air might swoon at forty.*
If you could lay your head
Upon this line in winter--
You might tilt your gaze
One hundred forty-four*
To see the star that all the universe
Grooves around (if you view it from the ground)--
It is not this day.

Radiance:
This day,
There is only one star, and only one celebrity.
For this single set of twenty-four hours
The sun apologetic circles me:

As if at once he could atone
For the last six months
That I've been left in the dark,
To reflect alone
Without reflecting.

Playing the polar ingénue, I pirouette
My jagged arctic bodyscape,
To the proscenium edge of perpetual day.

I exude exactly sixty-six degrees
(And thirty-three minutes) of indifference
To his revolving spotlight.

Like every other dancer on a pole,
I am only as strong as I can make him
Want to look but not let him touch.

I refuse to let his gaze melt me
(Though we both know everything within
Lives for its attraction)

I dance a ring of endless light,
Proud in my denial
That in six months time
This principal of cold, glittering crystal
Will languish again, ignored,
In absolute daylessness.



(image reused courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation)

Paradox in Two Verses

Verse One


who is being watched,
If the whole world is on the other side of this glass?
what is under “control,”
if nothing I see can I touch?
where need I go,
if the Q waits on me?
when did I get “disconnected,”
if the cable still comes through just fine?
why is it “remote,”
if it’s always here in my hand?


Verse Two

Delete Space? Lofty promise.
Six weeks and four techs
Just to install two sets.
U-verse? My ass.
More like vs. Me.

25 Things

1
I have trouble setting priorities,
Not least of which are the items in this list.
So this is in no particular order.

2
Having a February 29th birthday
Makes me kinda insensitive
About everyone else's birthday.
If I miss it by a day or two,
I don't really see the big deal.
Unless I'm married to you.

3
I am trainable. But I wouldn't try it.
Unless you're married to me.
In which case, lighten up a little.

4
I snore.

5
Grey's Anatomy seasons 1 and 2
Were guilty pleasures to me.
Now I just watch to mock it.
Prom?
[2011 edit: still ridiculous, it now has me again.]

6
I lived on a LOST-TV message board for 2 years.

7
Having read that, it shouldn't shock you to know
That I played Dungeons and Dragons
Religiously in high school.
I had a mage named Raistlin
And a warrior named Daryl.

8
I have an annoying compulsion
To try to sound clever.

9
I used to try to write text adventure games
On my Apple IIe.
Nothing ever really beat "Pirate Adventure."

10
With my guitar on hand,
I do a serviceable "Let's Get it On."

11
I've been to or through
All the US states (and the District) except:
Arkansas, Alabama, Rhode Island, Maine, and Alaska,
But outside our borders
I've only been to
Canada, Jamaica, Costa Rica, and Israel.
It's a little embarrassing.

12
I'm not a hoarder per se,
But I keep random small collections of things
On the gut feeling that
I might use them interestingly someday.

13
Some call it non-linear thinking,
But having ADD
Diagnosed earlier than age 31
Might have made some
Things easier along the way.

13
I'd like to shave my head
And grow a really long beard.
Not necessarily at the same time.

14
I've recently taken to wearing two pairs
Of heavy wool socks around the house.
Necessarily at the same time.

15
About fifteen years ago,
This girl's dad told me this joke
About a guy taking a truckload of penguins
To the zoo, and now it's pretty much the only joke
I ever remember. Ever.
That, and the "why was 6 afraid of 7?" joke.

16
I really, REALLY don't like watching me
On video.

17
I still treasure my autographed cast photo
Of the "Diff'rent Strokes" gang.
Dana Plato (RIP) signed it,
"Dear Adam, Love Always, Dana Plato."
Short, but very, very sweet.

18
cf. #17 above,
I just lost the last 15 minutes
To the Wikipedia entry on Dana Plato.
I love the Wikipedia.
More than Dana.

19
I love, love when my kids
Wake me up in the morning.
If it has to be anything,
It might as well be them.

20
It's been almost/at least four years
Since I joined Facebook,
And I just lost another fifteen minutes
Trying to find the exact day.

21
I sense I'm leaving out significant details here.
That is, however,
A significant character trait.

22
I desperately want to convince my wife
That going skydiving
Again
Before I die is probably a good idea.
(I mean, not RIGHT before I die.)

23
Kingsbury,
Bay Point, Cherrywood, Willow, Pelham,
Sherman, Lincoln,
Prospect, Lydell,
Foster, Agatite,
Talbert,
Marine, Seminary, Orchard, Lister, School,
Greenwood,

Stratford,

Castlewood.
All the streets I've lived on,
Geographically separated,
In chronological order.
Oh, and let's never forget
Old Highway 70.

24
My brother and I share an affinity
For singing TV sports show theme music.

25*
My wife deserves many medals
At least a dozen dozen roses,
A Sweet Mandy B's cupcake, and
A serious vacation for living with me.


Epilogue
Because 7 8 9.



*Yep, It's actually 26. I used
#13 twice. Did I mention
! have ADD?

Golden

It might as well be, I concede,
Scottish
For all that I can read...
Is it blurred from refraction
Or am I drunk (the slightst fraction)?
A thousand words
Fail anyway to speak
Of golden nose
And single malt, high grade;
The sunset poured itself
A tumbler
Hours ago, a splash of salt
To taste
The summer January made.

Paper View

Upon a single foot begins
A journey of a thousand lines;
To meet a reasonable pace
The second stress is borne four times.
The early steps, in certain climes,
Are glazed with icy rime, and trace
A path from prior space and time
So there, by God, I go with grace.

But forward motion’s warming feat
Will shake spears loose of cold dies cast
And fade the scars of past defeats
And melt the mourning frost at last.
The coming spring brings ten essential
Words worth wit-men’s pens at play:
If I compare thee, truth, to beauty
I see but a summer’s day.

By two, I break on through this pen’s
Restrictive wooden script and burst
Open, flaunting well-lettered men’s
Established rules for every verse.
The sun, its climb peaked, radiates
With vigilant sincerity,
So I for half an afternoon
May bask in golden clarity.

But further off, the waxing moon,
Though early, stands attentively,
Reflecting light too bright to gaze
Directly on, like ink and page
Distill thought-dreams that can’t be seen.

By nightfall, stumbling whence began
This pilgrimage toward works that mean
Anything in the end, I land
Upon a blanket sheet of dreams:
Unconsciousness will guide my hand.

(Before I fade, have tribute paid
The friend who rescued me, enjambed
And drunk from every still of trite
Distraction, never left but stayed
Afoot, so I am willed to write:
I think, therefore I thank, iamb.)

Own

This age of free agency fails
To teach what being "owned" entails.
Yes, I confess I want to see
Possessive pronouns used for me.
I'm asking not for flags nor borders
Nor for rules nor marching orders.

Whether "lover," "partner," "friend"
Works best for you, I understand
That none perfectly captures how
Connected I am to you now.
It's not the noun it modifies
That pounds my heart or wets my eyes;
So I'll just ask the smallest sign:
That you consider me your "Mine."

Poetic License

For my names' sakes please tell me,
Which stands out more readily?
My absent I, or missing U?
Would it could drive traffic too...

It's not my car (OBVSLY),
Though I'm a "Muller" (WECANC).
Mine, after today (UNFCLY),
Will say MPLOYD. (FINALY.)

Though this post may feel foolish,
I don't care - it still seems




Though the weather may disagree,
Indeed blue sky shines down on me. GR8FLY.

The Vanity of Vanities

OBVSLY.

If you don't see the irony,
I'll just enjoy it privately.

WNKWNK

Reflection in an Hourglass

When we are young and top-heavy, feet stab floors with balance rare as disinterest;
The hourglass sand appears to never drain, days dilating into years;
And yet, beneath the weight of great potential, fourteen thousand
Feet above the firm and verdant lawn of recollection, each cohort
Of grains confined confront the present portal, chutes packed,
Shuffled forth by nervous elders stacked behind. Standing
-—in their primes-— feet squarely rooted to the floor,

Ears ring with curdled howls of those poured
Through the jump-door, until they’re
Hurtled out with a gruff

"Go! Go! Go!"
Now! Now?
NOW.

Into
The narrow
Breach of moment,
All cascading into
Memory at thirty-two
Feet per-second per-second,
Exactly as each precedent’s freefall.

The parachute blooms, the flash blinds:
The instant ends with a skyward jerk, once
Familiar sounds lurk far below this place, this
Softer time for quiet minds. Now we are old, unsound,
Top-heavy once more, groping two and three and four legs
At a time for flat ground and hard floor. As the pile grows
Of grains below, the gathering gains its own gravity; a greedy,
Rasping chorus calls, “Down here!” In trance, time appears to slip
Away the faster, the dance crescendos as the coda nears; isn’t that the
Funny thing with years? They count more in proportion than duration,
And we count each less with accumulation.

First Poet

[Note: the transcription of Ms. Alexander's poem is my own - I apologize for errors in format, capitalization, and punctuation -- AB]

Click for a complete list of Elizabeth Alexander's books


Praise Song for the Day

Each day we go about our business walking past each other,
Catching each other’s eyes, or not,
About to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise.
All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din,
Each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem,
Darning a hole on a uniform, patching a tire,
Repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere
With a pair of wooden spoons on an oildrum,
With cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky.
A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words:
Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will
Of someone and then others who said,
“I need to see what’s on the other side."

"I know there’s something better down the road."
"We need to find a place where we are safe."
"We walk into that which we cannot yet see."

Say it plain: that many have died for this day.
Sing the names of the dead who brought us here,
Who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges,

Picked the cotton and the lettuce,
Built brick by brick the glittering edifices
They would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day.
Praise song for every hand-lettered sign,
The figuring-it-out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Others by “First, do no harm” or “Take no more than you need.”
What if the mightiest word is Love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national;
Love that casts a widening pool of light;
Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air,
Any thing can be made, any sentence begun
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp.

Praise song for walking forward in that light.

-- Elizabeth Alexander, for President Barack H. Obama, January 20, 2009

Beautiful Now

This single frozen moment, beautiful now,
How long can it last?
Should spring come soon
These hopeful spines will sag,
Icy flesh will decompose,
Slurred shades of "Yes" will necessarily
Resolve into "Adieu,"
And other facets of this jeweled vision--

This plastic bottle's accidental gift--
Will be clear:

There are rooms and walls beyond this pane,
Solid surfaces on which this dream will melt,
Appliances and countertops financed
With the same hope:
Beautiful now, beautiful...now.

Maybe it's unfair of me, on such a day,
To pray so cynically;
To see the beauty of ice amid historic lows,
What does it show? Serenity?

We once looked backward over painful times
And saw the beauty of struggle
As the centerpiece of--framed blandly by--
Our present comfort;
Why should we, the gods of irony,
Choose any other way but to look out across the void
Through spectacles of Hope,
And celebrate the beautiful Now.

Her (Actual) Words, Not Mine

"Daddy," she said,
"Whenever you're alone,
And you're locked in a cage,
I can open it up
With a special key.

It's just a pretend cage."

Don't worry if the mask you made
At Brandon's party falls apart
From cheap construction long before
Your interest starts to fade.

You don't need it to be my superhero, kid.
Unlock this pretend cage? You just did.

Herspective

It hurts my knees but I don't mind
Squatting to remind myself of you.
With so much standing in your way,
And crowding out your view, to huff
And fold your arms despairingly
And pout out loud seems reasonable enough.

To want things only half within your reach
Each simple seed of craving
Struggles to find purchase
From the lurching sponsorship committee:
Roll our eyes, slurp our lattes,
Part our ears from cell phones otherwise affixed
And answer, "Well, we'll see."

Not really, though, not much.
If we'd squat more often
To this fifty 'cent perspective
We might soften our rejective clutch
On age, and size, and rushing to be tall,
And recall: we do appear up here to have it all.

Still Life

What so intrigues the fish-watchers?
The effortless fluidity?
The endlessly self-scouring memory?
What bliss, to feel always renewed,
Floating--unpursued--in two feet cubed,
To dart about for never-changing flakes
Of paper food,
Companions fixed and constant
(Seeming so: The mostly orange uniform obscures
Who comes and goes).

Thus viewed from inside,
Does our cube of atmosphere
More or less trump theirs?

With jagged, fretting struts
Of our daily anxiety
O'erdrawn so blatantly
Before their bulbous stares unblinking,
Our manic, clamorous troubles
Slightly muted by the droning pumps and bubbles,
Who lives a life more sheltered from fear?
Who should envy whom in here?

And with its end, there are no dreams to come,
No mortal coil to shuffle,
Just a gentle roll and sinking toward the surface;
Only We soliloquize on action, future strife, and purpose.
Yet, to continue this forgetting, birth 'til death,
Is that still life?

I must confess my secret pleasure:
To watch in fourth dimensions,
To sit beyond, at right angles to both ogler and angler
And watch the symbiotic tension
Of mutual voyeurism
As a separate, living organism.

Pura Vida

All the Costa Rican locals
Flip their thumbs and pinkies wide,
Smiling "Pura Vida!" at you
While you bask in tropic sun.

In the tree canopy above
Our rum and pineapple-graced
Infinity swimming pool,
Three-toed sloths would chew all day, dazedly,
On Cecropia leaves
Known to alleviate depression,
While we bob and loll on a throne of liquid water
Overlooking the Pacific.

Would it change these Tico attitudes
To cross north of forty latitudes
And see this "Pure Life" frozen still,
Bottled up so brazenly?
Either that's what shocks me,
Or else my brittle mustache shivering
In minus twenty degree windchill.

Dark Night

So now you're one of those
Whose gaping absence stands for presence,
Every brilliant mumble in extrapolation
A soliloquy of potential.

I haven't seen all nineteen,
But this will always define you to me.
I can't help thinking, just like Twist,
You could have had it another way.

I could add your drama to this post,
If only I would wait another week,
But I've a deadline to keep,
And my voice isn't silenced by the flash.

Magic Beans

My winter window frames, ironically, these same hues.
The naked brown elms huddle, shocked and knock-need,
Like panicked birthday candles,
Dying just to light, and pry their feet from the ice.

Inside, though, these beans seem warmer for the white,
Snuggled plump and cocoa-shiny in my mug,
Waiting like a lump of coal to burn this furnace bright.
I can almost smell their smug potential.

Yet I could no more swallow inspiration
From a day like this
Than I can these beans
Unless I lace up my boots
And grind a walk through it;
I suspect the view from inside
Does no justice to it.

Pretty picture, though, and worth a sigh:
I know the best taste of this coffee
Requires I swallow my frigid pride
Then, later, stagger back inside and brew it.

Strings Attached

They say pure love comes without them,
But I know there are strings attached
Because when your cord was cut,
I held the scissors;
And because when you pluck,
I feel the vibrations in my heart.

50/Fifty

I had to be here, on Division east of Western,
At 50/Fifty; and you there, north of North.
I had not to call, nor text,
Not to wonder, I knew you were safe,
Because you did not call or text.
I had to hear myself over the rumpus,
Just to remember that I could name names
Of the overdressed and oversexed,
Shrugging off wars but immersing in stats and games
And critical scores,
Not that there are any to settle anymore, at 50/Fifty.

Down in the basement,
We stew in a broth of desperation.
We stir and caress like sister-brothers,
Roll eyes at and bump against Others,
Thinking and tagging them so,
When only the slightest salty dash of data:
A favorite Psalm or poet of choice or private wish
Could ricochet now off a dish in northern Virginia,
Spill into my Palm and flavor this moment, this space between
With something worth savoring—with tongue but not voice—
Worth saving, in flesh-memory, not Flash drive.
Alas, now that we are digitalive
There is no either/or anymore,
Only half what we see and half what we say.
We are 50/Fifty.

These primates drown themselves in their own noise.
In squads of three and four we pose, and posture, and lose poise.
Bartering to winnow down the ratios
Close to one-on-one,
We stir unearned pride into twelve-dollar bourbons;
We choke down the joke, and baring our teeth
Lest we forget this setting
This round of getting to yes/no's,
We flash and light down this pageant
Onto a magnet of 1's and 0's,
At 50/fifty.

Upstairs in our room we lay, in our binary bed, one up one down.
I had to be there to get back here,
To wager the ball of that moment against the wheel of these years.
The curves of our respective gravities turn so oppositely
That you and I, now, across the twittering interference of the blogosphere,
Might never have met.
It may feel like marital Russian roulette, but compared to that?
If the odds that we make it are 50/Fifty,
I’ll take this bet.

Music Lessons

Don't listen to them, son.
They'll think it's fun to gloat and say how dumb
But then you all would miss the sweet irony.

When you walk the forest
To the meter of your own boots,
Banish airwaves from your mind,
And bandwidths, and click-throughs;
Listen only to the whine
Of dancing marionette branches enslaved to the wind,
Wouldn't you expect to find
The real music lesson is within?

Threatened

You were placed here purposefully:
Downcast eyes would count the windows,
Calculating morbid options.
Crushed within or without? Matters
Little to your near-dead readers.

Nineteen floors below, the pavement's
Cold enough for skin to fasten;
I acknowledge yet look over --
Cream brick walls, white rooftops bask in
January afternoon glow.

Swollen, confident the westward-
Sloping sun, in acquiescence,
Yields the lakeside sky, the Gibbous
Moon thumps its chest to be strung up
Over such a cloudless blue. You,

Sadly, turn your shoulders inward;
You admonish without knowing
What I know now, what He told me:
"See differently with the good news!"
My heart-lining healed completely.

Someone really down and out--not
Only pointed that direction--
You might peddle your "protection"
There, but nothing truly threatens
My heart but the fear of beating.

Buzz

This is School for me;
Always Two of us, really,
Me and ADD.

Through a shuffling tube,
Hot, concentrated raw pubescence
Overlubes

This listener's senses
With chopping-block cadences,
Run-on sentences,

Fluorescents humming,
Pairs of "this week's thing" gumming
Each other -- stunning!

Audacious in lust
Until the buzz interrupts
Vows of sacred trust.

Without such structure...
Ego drowns in calenture,
Lost in adventure,

Swirling, clouds of these
Stinging bits of memories
Fractured by disease.

Locked in Lethal realms,
I summon every last calm:
Fight the Overwhelm.

Breathe in, breathe out: Free.
Only what I used to be.
That is not now Me.

Gamesmanship

Aha! You've seen my work
And have, inspired, composed
Your own response haiku:
A bare-boned 2-4-2,
Straightforward wants and needs
Uncluttered, freed from prose.

What were the chances, you
suppose, that I'd not see
This list, and stumble through
My day without coffee?

When you get home today,
I'll kiss a genius, K?

Toss and Nocturne

I

Sweat beads trickle
Down your neck
As you look back at me.

II

Crimson handprints
On each shoulder
Moments after.

III

Your red wine breath
Tickles my face;

A slash of winter moonlight
Mocks the window’s gauzy skirts

And divides the waking
From the sleeping
Sides of our bed.

Frozen Sage

I hope your scent is locked in there,
Bitter and familiar as the truth.
How dry and brittle your skin -
Keep still now, or you'll tear yourself to shreds!
Come spring, when your tongue thaws,
Let it steep and sing in my head,
My boiling brain will run over with You
And your potent brew.
Not now, but then I'll want to taste your thoughts, because
I should really know all my flaws.

Cold Reflection

 

Upon reflection, you appear serene, upright, steadfast.
On either side, companions shed old leaves,
Digging in toe-roots to wait out the freeze.

Soaked in post-Solstice alcohol,
The Januarians exuviate collectively,
A synchronized reverie, a casting off
Of last year's ills
Upon a drowning sea of fuzzy memories.

But long before the budding comes the test:
These Resolutions--not to have regressed
Back into That, rather toward This.
After the well-dressed kisses
And the Auld Lang Synes fade,
What Progress have I made?

Morning after morning I confront the mirror:
Have I merely added millimeters
To this rust-blond beard?
To right this upside-down portrait
Would expose the bald lie lying there.
Those ghosts of future whitehairs
Floating on the surface, where
Dual states of matter coexist:
Fluid and unbending, edged and neverending,
Winter's ice deciding if it's truly time to melt
Or if the image captured is worth keeping.
Sleep on it, then.

Remember, though, the evergreen does not ever live;
Better yet to turn the dream back over,
Know the central image isn't always meant for you.
Relent the view that tells you what you Want,
But not your Need. With earth and sky
In proper seats, you plant the Seed,
And wait for Spring to call, and
(With a little Grace)
For all things to fall into place.

Motion at the Museum

The camera lies:
When you move I see you snap clear
The circus red blue and orange
No match for your ecstatic ruddy cheek
Baubles fall in time past your swirl
As you climb the upslide

The camera's eye
Froze on the smiler behind
Though he may, posing, have falsified his moment

Truer still may be the deepest pouter
Clutching what he has got tight
Letting "left out" trump his right to play
To let go the car and watch it fall its path
You care not, or else for naught
For you will make your choice to stay in motion
I will let you go
And I will see you through