Andy's Poetry

No Graying

2009-09-25T10:47:00.001-07:00

People snipped away at my faith in people,

but at 13, the scissors slipped.

My insides ventured out and squinted

in the light.

Stars, enormity, light stomachs, fluttering, me, you.

Every person is a blowfish, and every

morning a validation.

She: paper chains, longer than I thought. You:

clothes made of locked doors and parallels,

and I: out by the river, the only quiet place

I could think of.

A cold blade, the water; my feet,

the renewal of winter, the twist

of a Coke cap, the forgetting of absolved sins,

the slick rocks kicked

gently along the bed.

Voices. A voice.

I confess, I have at times wished for Hell,

if only to be alone for a while.

But a doe on the other bank

reminds me of my need.

The Waiting Room

2009-09-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

The TV has a happy ending

again: newborn baby,

glistening mother, father;

no longer to wait

for rescue. Every breath is prayer,

thanksgiving, star-linings, coloring.

Her eyes fall back to the coloring

on the wall: a mural of children, ending

with the serenity prayer

in the corner. The things I cannot change. Her baby

in the room, lungs pried by tubes. Wait

upon the Lord, like Abraham, father

of many babies. Our Father,

who art in heaven, coloring

the air with presence, angels like lilies wait

on you. For thine is the power. Enough ending

for now. The size of her hand, this baby,

this lily, the magnitude of her prayer.

David had been here, too, becoming prayer,

a heap of sackcloth, no father,

no water, interceding, all for his, his baby,

who could pray only with a cough, coloring

everything with gray and stillness, and in days, ending,

weightless, the wait.

What to do in the waiting room, but wait, and wait,

and in waiting, find that waiting is prayer,

and prayer is the beginning and ending

and middle of the unpartitioned Father;

dimensionless light coloring

existences and lives alike. Her pale baby,

eyes closed. Lily-white baby,

flying wherever she will. A hymn too: We wait

for Thee 'midst toil and pain, something-something sighing. Coloring

drains. It shouldn't be like this. Hannah's prayer

answered, and now David's prayer hanging, father-

ing the night. It can be only God's ending.

Another baby cough, fragrant prayer,

to wait more patiently upon the Father

of all photons, coloring, becoming, ending.

Driving to Albuquerque to Free Child Soldiers

2009-05-03T21:22:00.001-07:00

Tectonic plates squirm. My seat belt is uncomfortable, an AK strap.
4 AM. There’s a dead coyote by the road, but we’re world-changing.
We read Isaiah’s “true fasting” to the tune of a Sabbath sunrise.

Sitting with Gödel in My Refrigerator

2009-05-03T21:21:00.000-07:00

I need your atoms
to stare inside me
once again,

a trillion eyeballs
carving designs
in my pale skin.

Will you taste music
with me
from the same spoon?

Will you sketch
your waist
in charcoal
in my book of poems?

Will you surrender
all your seconds
and fly with me

to a place
still as space
atomless void
where even sighs
don’t break

the silence

Precipitation/Stigmata

2009-04-15T18:32:00.001-07:00

Hailstones stripe my back, welding welts as I bike one Holy Saturday.

Too-Tight Ties and Other Unfortunate Realities

2009-04-15T18:31:00.002-07:00

Twelve forks, six rolls, four coffee cups, two candles. Dozens of smiles, forced.

The Poet as a Gladiator as a Reluctant Red-Tailed Hawk

2009-04-15T18:31:00.001-07:00

Claw to top of poets' carcass heap. Wipe off blood. Get anthologized.

Poetry Junkyard

2009-04-10T23:35:00.000-07:00

Just past the city limits of my mind, there is a junkyard or Gehenna of all the the poems I didn't write before they skipped town. They're way better than the stuff I usually produce. You'll just have to take my word for it, I guess.

The poems in the Gehenna graveyard or junkyard cover a vast array of colossal topics, each more soul-piercing than the last. As I recall, they are alternately profound, hilarious, pithy, and devastatingly sexy. Passionate spirituality, mountain-moving love, the whispers of God and angels are all almost certainly discussed, although I cannot verify it. The poems all make love and progeny. The colony must be self-sustaining by now, if my calculations are correct.

I tried to drive there earlier, but the roads all end suddenly, in ramps, catapulting the unsuspecting traveler off the edge of the known world. I screeched to a stop just short of the abyss.

Tuesday

2009-04-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

That lamp looks like an egg. Cars whiz by. I will never see her again.

Nehemiah

2009-04-10T23:33:00.002-07:00

Painting at Habitat. Community service: great for resumés.

As I Try to Breathe

2009-04-10T23:33:00.001-07:00

Water will shape to fill the hole excavated in my warring side.

Treason

2009-04-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

Covert op. Hiding my notebook, I write poems among engineers.

Sylvia Plath

2009-04-10T23:29:00.000-07:00

Before the oven incident,
her best friend was a bee;
a leftover from Otto Plath's
harsh apiology.

Invitation to the Wild Ghost

2009-03-10T07:41:00.001-07:00

in memory of Peter Wild

Be thankful that you are not among us
as the tobacco-squirting Harley you with tattoos,
the 1960 badass apparition riding free.

Be glad you're not the uniformed Catholic school you,
fidgeting for recess; the specter of a wagon boy
with a 1951 dinged-up brick of a radio.

Be grateful, because you could have been stuck
as the pipe-smoker, trying too hard, haunting us for eternity
in your poorly-fit 1982 sportcoat.

And though you hoped to stalk these halls
scampering around on your 2009 curmudgeonly cane,
I'm afraid you have been healed.
********************************From here on out, it's 1970,
and you will forever eat luminescent cottage cheese,
sitting reading villanelles in your first real office.

The Mustang

2009-03-10T07:37:00.000-07:00

(ignore the *'s, it was the only way I could get that line break to look right)

When I finally got the man to pull the truck over,
there was already a long stripe of blood—
a new red-hot lane line slicing the freeway.
The bottom had fallen out of his horse trailer several miles back,
and, with a snap like an electric shock, the daydreaming mustang
was suddenly being dragged at 65.
*********************************The sandpaper ground
first through hoof, and then quickly through flesh.
362 horsepower against 1.

The beast's body swallowed by its eyes,
frantic, blitzed, boiling, thinking not of cause
or posterity; snorting exhaust, writhing,
running from its own stumped legs.
I realized I did not understand mercy
as the man shot it in the head.

A Fisherman's Knot

2009-02-24T20:34:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-24T20:32:00.000-08:00

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.

Light and Life

2009-02-19T15:01:00.001-08:00

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

2009-02-19T14:58:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-19T14:57:00.000-08:00

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?

January 4, 1643-February 4, 2001

2009-02-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-03T20:18:00.000-08:00

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.

Chang'E

2009-01-09T22:35:00.000-08:00

I'm Under the Soup Spoon of Alaska

2008-12-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

I’m under the soup spoon of Alaska,
not in the sun. When sky blends into
desert, even clouds melt.

I tried something new, but I don’t know why.
There is something rich about the lilies of the field
and the porpoises of the Pacific,
but my worship often reverts
to calves or crowns of gold, or groundedness,
securities, or past or future ghosts.

The inevitable is harsh; starkly walling,
but undiscovered freedom is a pity.

racism

2008-10-21T04:09:00.001-07:00

a maddening scab
and picking at it
does nothing at all.

in the rain and stench
is there nothing left
to try?

shall we dance again
our tactile tango
of dirty guns?

a gun is nothing.
it only changes
the pain.

bullets bleed
and targets quiver
and survivors,
well, they survive,

and souls like blackbirds
and whitebirds
rise in alluring parallel.

Poem for a Friend

2008-09-12T01:04:00.001-07:00

I am wetter than the rain.

Clouds and me tearing
up into peaces.

Monsoon Season

2008-07-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

The rain is melting the windshield. No wipers.
Streetlights become sparklers, and I become you.

Thirty-Eight Lights

2008-07-09T23:12:00.000-07:00

Night. It's the Fifth of July,
but I see fireworks. Barricade light blinks the street orange.
Flashbulbs everywhere like toy lightning.
A police car. The beacon pirouettes,
but no siren. No sound.

Thirty-eight lights live and die each second,
and no one else seems to notice. Oh,
and the pharmacy next door is on fire.

Complex

2008-04-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

I can still see you on a white tour bus, nibbling potato chips
and theologizing; your captive audience
sometimes escaping to that shoebox of a bathroom
as Massachusetts blurred by beside us.

But as I pass you in a bakery, offering hello,
you are perturbed. Your eyes head for safety,
and the man in your memory frantically scours
files and microfiche for a clue to this strange stranger.

You have forgotten my face and name,
but I forgive you. It simply squares you in the packing box of humanity;
among a sheepish and oblivious crew, captained
by Oedipus, who forgot even his own mother's face,

making love to her in blissful ignorance;
whole worlds swirling unnoticed about the bed.
He was not blind yet, but he was a man.

lifting waits

2008-03-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

I hold still; lifted up
by a pulley. This is not flying,
and there is no breeze. Still, I
wait. I will never know how
to fix a carburetor or raise beans by a pond,
but still snow will fall this January,
and I will take a weighty number
and exotify the wall stucco from an orange chair.

Holy Week

2008-03-13T09:22:00.001-07:00

I
Bred in a red birth.
Behind your eyes, our bread's worth.

II
You last, I backlash,
lashing your back with black ash.

III
In black the red dies.
Stillness, and last, the dead rise.

reflection and object

2008-03-01T20:45:00.000-08:00

a blackbird careening into
a mirror. a mirror
becoming me, becoming
a blackbird, and lifting
me up to nature.

a blackbird
on an oak branch,
mirror shards for leaves.
The blackbird leaves.

cathedral

2008-02-24T22:14:00.000-08:00

there is a horn and a sanctus bell
and an orange and an oak tree
down by the river

oh brothers, let's go down
and shed our sandals like leaves

mud and murk in our toes
vines' branches winding skyward
in warm breath of sunlight

we will whisper prayers and poetry
and discover a dove nest with fledglings

Mesopotamia

2008-02-12T23:29:00.000-08:00

cutting up old newspapers
to papier-mâché today's headlines

toenail clipping for a moon
and broken cookie on a plate

2008-01-27T22:10:00.000-08:00

Stand on a mountaintop and twirl slowly; your eyes' satiety spiraling with you in an explosive double helix. It is odd enough to be a speck of dust in space and time, but to think: there is nothing meaningless. All ripples into the sublime. This is the most beautiful food chain: a thousand thousand small things nourishing the Kingdom, and I am one.

resurrection

2008-01-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

I see sea shells. I ogle them
and smell Easter lilies
to my right and left.

This, too, is a resurrection. I flow
and my costumes ebb. Existence
ends without fanfare, leaving only
a sigh of satiety and an embrace
of sunlight. We were the sun once,

burning away cloud after cloud;
life in our breath and a river of
completeness.

bildungsroman

2008-01-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

Like a petal on the wind the toy plane
flew east. I stood centrally, a sentry,
watching the moon pull the sky
in an alluring ebb, and I knew that the
days of my life until now were over. I
cried and smiled and went home
to look at old yearbook photos by the light
of a new candle.

One Evening

2007-12-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-13T16:45:00.000-08:00

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.