Posts for June 3, 2021 (page 13)

Infrasonic 

I remember elephants trumpeting from a freight
& echoes ricocheting off the small town’s vinyl
siding & warehouse walls. Never such a blaring

before in the dusty factory town. The sounds, eerie
& regal, drifted inside my muscles.  They stayed happily
stuck like residue of tree

sap. That final sweetness of darkened
syrup settled at the bottom
of a canning jar. That heralding! A puzzle

never solved & even when
we moved north to the Second City
I heard it, a summoning. Follow

me, the elephant brayed. I reverberate
from borders, from underneath
ruffles. Where wheat becomes  ocean, where ocean
becomes
bird. 

2

10th grade English was boring. Mr. Blankenship’s
second period class kept getting worse. We taunted

him & he was turning — sometimes mean,
sometimes desperate. Whoever recommended

you for AP English was wrong, he jabbed.
Expecting another failure he rolled

out an animal unit with a creature
specific reading list. Books

about otters, gorillas, wolves
& whales. That’s when I heard

the stirring again; it popped up,
a jack-in-box sound from

within. I can’t say what
happened exactly. My world began

to sing again of elephants. This time
their call was direct

beckoning, elephant-to-human
telepathy.  They had been singing

to me all along. Bring 
yourself to my gray

rumbling. Dear
Matriarch, in the school

room I heard you. At the train
tracks you staked your claim.

In the drab, headache gray morning,
in a house appointed in the plush quiet of velvet cobwebs
in the dim corners of deep morning glory violet,
a sudden sound from the the street
(a man whistling past the front door, I think)
and the whole place holds its breath as if hiding.
The original faucet in the upstairs bathroom
bites its dripping tongue over a rust-streaked basin
while rounded doorways arch their chipping backs in the silence.
For a moment, tension glows cold like glossy hardwood
before fixtures and brickwork can again rest easy. 

Every night we watched
the original Claude Rains film

made by Univeral Pictures about
the Invisible Man while they sat 

each in an arm and curled fingers 
around my pink spongy ears.

If there had been more
than two, I would have been

an octopus to accomodate
all of them.  

Babies make precious beanbags,
giggling across the bed,

tossed by the trusted, bandaged 
hands of this thundering  

rowdiness—the Invisible Man— 
a.k.a. Daddy, my trumpet blaring

“You’re crrrrrazy to know
who I am, aren’t you?!

Alright!
I’ll show you!”

The sharp downward pull 
of bandages from the face

always revealed a scowl— 
and then, promised souvenirs:

dark glasses, ski cap, 
and a hilarious chance

to tweak my nose
for the hundreth time.
         
          From 1933 to 1951, Universal Pictures
          saw the making of six films loosely based
          on H. G. Wells’ tale of invisibility.  
          They were about various persons who injected 
          a serum under the skin of their arm to become
          invisible—only there were dangerous side effects: 
          the crazed desire to take over the world, 
          to dominate, to do only as one pleased, 
          and as it happened in my case, to involve 
          one’s self in painful divorce proceedings.

Old movies were a favorite
in the bed, recliner, 

and on the couch—
a something sacred, 

even a little mad, a something
silly keeping them

away from their mother,
who was all schoolwork 

in the other room,
talking with Australians,

typing in chat boxes
and impressions on her phone.

          Evening shadows against round
          faces, and apparitions 
          took shape and walked in the room,
          for shirts, pants, and stockings 
          could leap and steal bicycles. 

In time, the children disappeared from view,
but they were felt like water flowing quickly 

over rocks turning up leaves,
the wild signs of their passing,

wearing down banks
to smoothness over time.

Today we see each other, 
through blue and pink ink cages 

of little notes, briskly executed artwork,  
phone calls ever so small,

growing fainter as the memory
of who they were dies,

until they are unrecognizable,
and I do not see a way back.

It is said that the Palauan fishermen
have a word, 

haptitsetse, about the area
where currents converge

ahead with choppier waters
downstream of their island.  

This tells them where to fish
for a good catch.

I will not stop letting down my nets
out here where it seems

all is rough going.  

One day in the far distant future,
The fires of life will fade,
They won’t fade in some spectacular blast,
No,
These fires will quietly burn out,
Everything ends one day,
It ends when those fires are exhausted,
It ends when what was once hot and full of energy,
Grows cold,
Grows silent

Orange-red porchlight,
muggy-moist gloaming,
the inevitable as it is.

Sometimes, the hall
inside my house
is as dark, as empty
as outer space.

You know what?
I miss a story-song.
Johnny Cash sang a ton
but his best was real lonesome:

“Don’t Take Your Guns To Town”
and you know what Chekhov said–

My legs lay still
in icy creek water.
I let the droplets
lick the pinprick hairs
along my shin bones.
Drifting pine needles,
dead and brittle,
collect around my knees.
The pads of my toes
touch mossy rock beds
and slippery stones.
My eyelids swirl
on soft ripples
and sunlight.
The creek whispers
and my body listens.

—an aspiring blue upon martins’ backs
or esurient roots unbound in budding blazes,
slavering gleam of lightfast, lustrous steel
that a simonizing star distilled  

(on anemic wax’s phantom stroke  
 wanned theorists fear fresh children slash,  
 the eye-white smudge of a blunted crayon  
 across this palest page                                      
                                           to limn the corrupted jib  
 of a new-shorn sun  
 that singed the sky a suspicious cerulean,  
 chillingly alice blue, or the buttery hue of a chewn and chastised cuticle),  

albeit from frigidly far-off hoarforth thrust
from a soundly browbeaten mountain’s haze—  
what withe-tongued wench’s iris wrecked
and wrapped around blackening rapture’s heels;
wry hustling pulse of a mandrill’s rump,
wan glow of a swallowed and glaucous lump;
what cringing cherubic cheek cathects
this oenomel hue of a smoldering soul
and, annealed by the roiling smudge
of a spiraling martin’s back,
like a sapphire skipped across
greigely baying, sepulchral puddles
glib darkness claws, sopped soles redouble—  

Rebuttals of bibulous briars’ bark!
“Know blue is blue, no blues apart  
 from martins’ backs or the gripple crabs  
 gaunt azure breakers sadly surrender,  
 abash’d and bedraggled hearts  
 or the chilblained tinder twisted in glistening veins,
 the sputtering horseshoe’s blood exposed,
 or blood that a swollen nose, some rusted jaw
 shrill-lachrymose measures seized,
 suspends in the blithering burden’s breath;
 no air arresting, eddying pinions of
 house martins                        
                              strident shrikes                                                  
                                                             must bloodlet—”  

(blue that hydrangeas dredged with acerbic soils should blush with;
 blue of the lead-eaten gums of a crazing painter cracked across chasms of canvas;
 blue as the succulent berries bursting sweet and springly green as sage scrub;
 blue as the indigo’d tabard tossed ‘cross caskets cradling spoondrift sloughed
 from hessians born upon rank and piss-tinged soil, seduced by Samson’s sirens,
 sloppily folded in oily pigments, scrubbed across sere and sunburnt skies;
 glib blue of a shadow smeared across cross-eyed macadam,
 that moon-licked tear uncurled around stiles of quietly quavering toes;
 burnt blue of a man o’ war split against blistering, sea-tickled shins
 or the blue of ballooning feasts for a sunfish;
 blue of the stridulous cellist’s slanting song
 that soothes the sea-bound schooner’s
 slinkily whirligig, sunken struts;
 frail blue of the thoughtless stripling’s nuts,
 fey blue of the false and mismanaged blood;
 old blue of belaboring burdens bravely balked,
 of an envermeiled face’s scrunching threads
 untethered from cramping scales and mudras,
 no more assailed nor burdened by bludgeoning pulse or ablating breath,
 bent blue as the shroud on a tragopan’s breast
 that slackens and sprawls like a beckoning crank bait;
 blue as a spy ring stymied by— 

You grant me the heft of heavy trust and my heart is unburdened.

Candle burned

Acid words reveal the messages, my chains are broken by

THE rule;

grace and love given unreserved, undeserved.

24 karat, valuable and bending to shape our tomorrows.

No looking back.

Today is my treasure.

inside the house of compassion
red faces &
fanged mouths
disappear 

beyond the threshold
of release
haints zig &
zag into
rest 

outside the window
of presence
dholes dance
to bird
song 

atop the foundation
of love
I am
finally
home

welcome back punxsutawney 
did you forget this year too?
i am in dejvu with another
stranger, unsteady smiling across
the room. we are past-life beaming,
silently screaming, can we pick up

where we left? i am a kid punching a hole
into the cosmos. how do we stitch 
this time into the rest, exactly
what universe of trauma is this?