at 3 a.m. when sound travels
up the full moon hollow
you hear men’s voices
like watson heard bell
the volume of one man raises
for you to make out
send her on over he says
then a little louder
send her on over
the other’s voice is muffled
something like pancakes
for breakfast
then another
send her on over
raw dark nothing
magnolia martyred
loved between
squamous moons
ebony chest-
lies blaze for
ten thousand
never caught
blood purpled error-
ballad of sung cement
forest lighted
letters
perched marble
maven prey retreats
to orchard
snagged fir
cedar sold
coops your mouth
of withdrawn beams-
your mortal paradise
death
tomorrow.
A droplet of rain,
digitally dashed upon the screen,
on a grid mapping, far and wide,
to watch is to believe
that what began as tear of sky,
somewhere, becomes the sea
and what began with queried eye
sparks with curiosity
Teacher said, Make a meditation
out of anything, so I contemplate
the path of the tossed
away & forgotten. Some things get storm
battered, slung into the bumpy
river where they drift or lodge
under rocks, lost to deepening
mud. Is there a reason to grieve
a crumpled Butterfinger wrapper
whirling down train tracks? What about
Mr. Rossini, my former neighbor, silver
templed middle manager, who on his walk
home from the e-train always
smiled absently at me like
a ventriloquist’s dummy? He put
himself to sleep by idling
his 2005 Aviator overnight
in his covered garage. Teacher,
this meditation is for Mr. Rossini. It’s so
easy to get lost, all it takes is one
wrong turn or just a bum
set of directions.
Nostalgic delirium-
through rose-tinted glasses I watch
adolescent callousness
transmute
life
to
memory,
innocence ensnared,
a civil war
sanctioned by silence.
Through car windows limp bodies are cataloged,
given names and offered apologies in silence.
Through the assembling of words
that never seem to fall in the proper order,
I atone in silence.
Growth requires stress,
It requires struggle,
Otherwise you’ll remain the same,
Muscles must tear,
Hearts must break,
Fears faced,
And limits pushed,
At first it’ll be painful,
At first it’ll be hard,
But in the end you’ll grow from it,
You’ll be better than before,
And forever be grateful for what you did
I could forage for words
delicate lemony
velvet intoxicating
But why?
Find one you can reach
pull it to you close your eyes
now breathe
Tell me now.
Was your coming here a secret?
Blue Mars is planted
and finally breathing
with icy oceans
swimming
and seething
with sabre toothed fish
formed by men and fanned
with fins 100 feet long,
lumbering gigawhales breathing
the free Martian air
sounding shallow oceans
to gift the Martians
“hefty lumps,”
the 10 lb rocks of ambergris
to perfume themselves,
who wouldn’t want this?
Blue Mars is a germ
from the picture postcards
and paisley placards
of promise hung
by the N.A.S.A. years over
for decades
and we are the third iteration,
after many generations.
Our red Mars was naked
to space, barely holding
atmosphere to contain
the spectrum we were sending.
Rippling dynamos
of targeted nuclear explosions
liquified the outer core
of the planet to give it
an eclectic magnetic field.
Then we patiently witnessed
the waters to come and close
the vast canyon rust,
and then the Utopia Planitia
began to generously seed.
With our help
was a world built from chaos.
Tell me now.
Was your coming here a secret?
I charted a ship to take me
to this lonely place
with my crops,
to know my peace.
No one knew the ship’s manifest,
but the menagerie aboard:
mutant alligators, birds with ridiculous
wing spans, and putrescence—
the foul waters of the entire Mississippi
all borne here for experimentation.
2001—she made contact.
She found out about my pills by the fistful—
I am rocket bound
for the arid land swept with bullet
storms where the cops beat up
on the good guys,
where I never made mistakes—
again, she caught me again.
She had said goodbye over and over
again, she said goodbye then.
Not you, not this
any longer.
2010—I traveled on after my work
was done.
I write this report from a window
near Europa, its icy plains hiding
true life
giving warm waters.
I write this from the vantage
of Jupiter, the king
among the wanderers
on the hyperspace highway
across the dark matter
of the Sol system.
Who are you?
Why are you here?
she asked me as I lolled
in our bed.
I charted a ship
to take me to this lonely place
where they can’t hear me scream.
