Thursday, December 13, 2007

One Evening

Thinking became walking
as my pulse slowed. My body
traced some cartographer’s line.

Walking became gliding,
a moving sidewalk of charcoal asphalt
and me, too slow to blur into colors,

floating with a mythical dignity
to the foot of Jacob’s stair

where living became climbing.

First Words

My little brother cried, “Boo jay!”
as the winged watercolor flew past the window.

But these were not the first words,
for, approximately thirty-three years prior,
my father, then an infant, through the tinted glass
of the dilapidated family Ford,
spotted a bus with his oversized eyes
and bumbled “Saa bus, saa bus!”

These were not the first words, either, however,
for his father had spoken before him, and his father before him,

and suddenly the Ford is in reverse,
speeding back through history
to that historic fur-draped first forebear of ours
who grunted a disgruntled grunt
which translates to “Me hungry!”

But then again, who is to say
that the ape to the left of him on the evolutionary chart
didn’t deserve the honor
for his vocal, though not quite verbal utterings?

Backing up even more, maybe it was the first land-dweller.
He was, after all, the first to speak through air—
it was so much clearer than his previous gurgly aquatic chats.

And we drive back further still
to that immortalized paramecium, whose wiry flagellum
first made a microscopic ripple in the primordial soup.

Then the Ford breaks down, as it often does,
but we still listen in the rearview mirror
to the voices which preceded mortality;
the songs of blacknesses
and the luminous speech of silver angels
praising…what?…something
just out of earshot.

a little vinegar

flashbacks I play on a green guitar
the music drips
and I recall

how your face
used to scrunch
when we would almostkiss
and we never did

it’s too much
the world is all bass
and no violins

but I—

I…

funny…
I always was
never the same—
differing and offbeat


you were all too normal.

and always an airplane but never flying


flying


f l y i n g


our silence was a movie
or an affectation
or an unclear wall
that ribbons outward


always from you-to-me


a seesaw stuck
one way,
never returning.

a seashell
that, upon your ear,
sounds only
half the sea.

fracturing

again

a heartbone or two,
but

iwillplayfasternowandforgetaboutit.

something finite

a red couple on a brown bench
in park greenery.
she whispers

into his mind and a mockingbird
does that for which it got its name.

the girl twirls a fiery poppy
which is all she is, the boy buzzes

a blade of crabgrass
which is all he is, the mockingbird

swims through the skywater.