Posts for June 3, 2023 (page 11)

I could no longer bear the weight you brought to each conversation
My strained muscles weren’t always overused and full of lactic acid 
Lengthy treks through your trauma without respite will do that

The fire began as an unnoticeable ember
your misery fed with each exhale
Smoke surrounded us and I couldn’t see through it
see through you(?)
and I failed to heed the crackling tinder’s warning in my grip

The tears in my eyes I mistook for golden glitter of those
childhood rules about friendship and treating others as
you want to be treated 
The tiny saline drops couldn’t stop the wildfires spreading through my body

I collapsed beneath the burden when I should have sent an S.O.S.
and I still don’t know if it’s fair to name you Pontius co-pilot for 
the crash I feel from the flight of my broken promise to stay

young man wrecks bike
bloody kneecap and thumb
hide it from mother

heart after heart
used once before

along with you-
some may use
help over time.

keep some taken
from the heart-

as often as
your blood hard
walls may need.

Twenty eight oil cans: 
I’d wipe each down and stack them 
one by one, offset, 
so that the can above
was supported by two below,

first a row of seven, then a row of six,
then five, and four, and so on
until I placed the last can in the apex position.

A break to smoke, or fill up with leaded,
wash a windshield, carefully uncork 
a scalding radiator cap, 
draw a dipstick from its slender sheath, 
or pace the lanes like a sheriff on patrol,
the heavy coin changer hanging from my belt, 
the big bell’s double-ring
with each car that came and went 
like the bell telling boxers when to fight
and when to quit,
admiring through the plate glass window 

this monument 
to big oil and minimum wage, 
chevrons all aligned, checkmarks
on the ledger of my dull but earnest labor:

I thought that it would last forever.

    Out on the fence line, hot work
    She brings me water

    Water, they say, is life
    Precious, natural, resourseful
    She brings me water

    Water is thicker than blood
    And indeed, the covenant of marraige
    Outweighs family 
    She brings me water

    Water is polar
    Charged positive and negative
    Manic and stoic
    She brings me water

    Water is wet
    Not alone but as a companion
    Takes two, a wetter and a wettee
    She brings me water

    Water is blue and cool
    A balance for red and hot
    What she is and I am not
    She brings me water

    She brings me balance
    She brings me companionship
    She brings me love
    She brings the outer edge
    She brings a covonant
    She brings life
    She brings me water

One night each year 
the celebration sounds
like a war zone. Swaths
of four-legged refugees flee
fields filled with ear-splitting
squeals and bright booms. 

To escape, they infiltrate 
the subdivision. 
The young buck panics
stilt-legged down a driveway. 
A frenzied fox pants wild-eyed 
on a landscaped lawn.

Poor fellas. 

One neighbor has the gall to call 
animal control, but God 
bless the USA, they are closed  
for the holiday.

The day I turned 13, my guardian angel went out for a smoke. I like to imagine her as the dark-haired girl painted on the Amazing Grace pillow my mother has shamefully hidden under the work-desk in the garage. I named her Olivia. One cigarette turned into two, then 3, then 4, and then 20. She smoked the whole pack. I like to imagine she walked the 1.1 miles to the Speedway and bought a second. Then as she pushed the door ever so softly, some realization that is still beyond me made her take a step back. She walked back up to the cashier and bought the whole carton. Marlboro Golds. I think she likes the little yellow halo on the rim between filter and tobacco. It reminds her of something she misses. Something Holy. She walks out, 220 cigarettes in their individual soft packs, waiting to be unboxed and pressed between her thin white raspberry lips. All they want is a taste of something divine.

Olivia craves for something beyond me. Something that will heed her warnings and not just crawl back like a little dog at the front door whimpering that realized the world was bigger than it thought. Olivia craves God. Olivia presses her hand to the glass at those purple-pink sunsets because it’s the only time she gets a peak at the world she knew before me. Olivia misses her wings and can’t help but touch the open wounds on her back from where they were ripped off by the Lord she revered more than anything. Olivia knows it hurts to touch these ever-bleeding scabs, the merlot color dripping between her fingers. Olivia doesn’t mind it. She just keeps smoking.

there are no words

Make for blindness
grinding glass to scrape our eyes
with tinctures of quicklime
and boiling sand.
Snuff out the luster that colors our acts,
the speech of the elder tribe–this 
sainted word that edges true lights out.

Make for death without fanfare or joy,
without the promise of comfort or plainsong, 
without the wit of grave men who judge the shadows of the past.

Make a pact to wash our hands in ash and walk the waves.
The past is a bloody obstacle, 
a dead weight, 
a dry oblivion.

Author: Rafael Alberti
Translator: Manny Grimaldi