Tuesday, February 24, 2009

A Fisherman's Knot

My wrists were zip-tied together like broccoli stems.
I lived through days nightly;
the film negative of an old tree,
but I was moored to you.

I was wide, starred, and away,
a smirking kabuki face, a pigeon, a man.
You sat still by your window,
but I was moored to you.

There were colors worming into me,
photons moving, paradoxically bipolar,
and pacifistic neutrons burning their draft notices,
but I was moored to you.

I eased my eyeballs out, gingerly,
and showed them to all who wanted.
I stored them in salt water at night
and slept with the lights on, but what did it matter,
for I was moored to you.

There were wars, and rumors of rumors,
and bitterness in the chocolate. You,
you were bread, and we agreed to disagree,
but I was moored to you.

I made another signal fire.
Violins all smell the same
when burned,
but I was moored to you.

The wavelets turned me slowly and I saw you.
I hadn't before. I was moored to you. The snow
confettied us, and it fell on your beard. I still remember that.
I was moored to you.

The Flower King

concentric ripples supernova. bring
false words of comfort to the flower king.
his lover's toothbrush, naked, limp, and damp;
her apothecary scent beside the lamp.

the clocks with silver rounding hands will move,
a fragile ballerina. whispers prove
themselves like film on sunlit days. they met
outside this window, smiles deftly set.

the flower king stares at his hands. despite
the tower, what he seeks is not insight,
not murmured sonnets, not rough hands to till
the fields, not women's water jars to fill.

she floated there; a colored mist to take;
a wraithlike bird-of-paradise to make.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Light and Life

There are small fires walking all around,
and all our apogees are flying back.
I try to whisper, but there is no sound.

The world in a spoon is yet more round,
and hearts eke out a glimmer through the black.
There are small fires walking all around.

My memory, like a spool, is tightly wound,
fearing no flame; dreading nothing but slack.
I try to whisper, but there is no sound.

Both shrubs and men burn long on holy ground.
My form ignites; an artful tinder stack.
There are small fires walking all around.

When men are made of fire, I have found
that just to brush against them makes you crack.
I try to whisper, but there is no sound.

Fire sputters, stutters, starts, and spreads around
to people. What save fire can quell the black?
There are small fires walking all around.
I try to whisper, but there is no sound.

The Neanderthal

What can we say about the Neanderthal?
He makes bone and flint tools as precisely as he can.
He is romanced by domestic fire.
He hunts big (or rather, mammoth) game.
Admittedly, he envies his Cro-Magnon progeny,
but he too is a cannibal.

He, if his hyoid can be trusted, has fledgling language skills.
He toys with poetry with each spear toss.
He runs couplets over in his head during the drawn-out defleshing rituals.
Some scholars even claim he discovered the sonnet,
but the evidence is circumstantial.

Your MRI

Are you ready for your MRI?
Your heart; your blood and pressure seem OK.
Do you have metal shavings in your eye?

Remember, fees and charges do apply.
For your safety, we strap you to the tray.
Are you ready for your MRI?

Ferromagnetic histories can pry
violently forth out of the gray.
Do you have metal shavings in your eye;

shrapnel from an inky day gone by
or unforgiven shards left by the fray?
Are you ready for your MRI?

Slide in. The creamed dome becomes your smooth sky.
Your protons stiff—a manicured array.
Do you have metal shavings in your eye?

Death gives no pause. One heard a buzzing fly
just as a bright disease lit up her day.
Are you ready for your MRI?
Do you have metal shavings in your eye?

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

January 4, 1643-February 4, 2001

Newton assures me I can't fall forever.
Nearby in my own Milky Way
there are several stellar-mass black holes.
but there is a supermassive one in Sagittarius A*.

Nearby in my own Milky Way
a lucid cricket is sounding,
but there is a supermassive one in Sagittarius A*.
I'm sitting on a couch in a room.

A lucid cricket is sounding,
incongruent and maniacal, atop the wormwood.
I'm sitting on a couch in a room
with Xenakis on the record player.

Incongruent and maniacal, atop the wormwood,
there are several stellar-mass black holes.
With Xenakis on the record player,
Newton assures me I can't fall forever.

Sestina

A tuxedo-clad piano
plays, and somewhere else, a woman
in a red-haired building
earns herself a nickel.
“Tell me you love
me,” a man commands. God

sees her, and God
hears the jazz from the piano,
and God wonders which one made Him cry. He is love,
the stony woman
had heard once, from a nickel
nun in a cathedral building.

The pressure is building.
She gives to God
what is God’s, and to Caesar what is nickel.
The faint wails of the drunken piano
harmonize with the woman
sighing half-desperately in thespian love.

She wasn’t thinking about it. I love
the black costumes of each building;
the blue contacts of a woman
who has become a god.
The action mechanism in the piano
is all alloy, part nickel.

People are all nickel-
smiths. Isaiah knew this. Deaf to love,
we settle for the jazz dribbling from every piano.
Nehemiah took up re-building
the city of the Lord, the God
of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and that other woman,

Hagar. “Get rid of that slave woman
and her son,” Sarah said. “He will never share a nickel
of inheritance.” God
remembers her tone of voice. Love
was shelved. Building
commenced on the piano.

The black-and-blue piano fades with the woman.
Every building is made of nickel.
The Apostle John said love comes from God.