Posts for June 11, 2023 (page 9)

Saxy Ledy

Triffic Laght

Glabal Worming

Fareign Longuage

You brought home from college that boy with the long 
hair and beard who was high day to night, cooler than cool,

jamming to Layla on the FM in his avocado green Fiat,
driving back from Lexington rolling joints while steering

with his knees: the road rushing past the little window
in back where I sit with Ace, the coal black lab, growing

older than my twelve years with each mellow mile we make,
taking our time because that’s what we have coming

out of our pockets, time and a couple of dime bags scored
from his friend who grows the weed on an unmapped

plot of state forest land. When you end it with him 
it breaks my heart. Where he is now, anyone’s guess,

but he lives on in the wind-borne scent from a group of teens
in the mall parking lot smoking a j and laughing,

in burning engine oil and the slow drift over hump-backed hills, 
in sly grins and shared secrets, in glorious rock ’n roll.

Does it seem as if
the birds are singing louder
these strange gray mornings 
the better to convince us
that everything is okay?

A wind comes in waves all this December night
It rises and falls then rises and sighs and falls again
Sweeping across the plains and lakes from so many miles away
At first calm with a hum and a whisper that builds to a roar
Then slams on the window and goes back to quiet
Way off high in the sky something is strong

Thick ice breaks off the branches and thuds on the roof
Sudden, shocking without pattern or rhyme, distressing
Flying ice and sticks come scratching at the glass
A pitter pat of raindrops without purpose or meaning
Automatic consequences of the wind

I only wish upon a storm that in our lives, you and I
Could feel meaning in our robotic expressions of affection
And why is there scratching and skittering and bickering
Like sticks scratching at the glass. And the thudding fall of
Ice into my life without need or cause, distressing
The pitter pat of meaningless formulae, numbing

For I know that way off high in the sky, deep in the heart
Of what is us, there is something strong
As sure and steady as nature. There is love
It’s roaring at the window
Let us trace it back to the whisper of its origin
Let us hum it to each other

              limit every
type of limit possible-
 the new may still see

the heat is starting to get to me
im delusional and clumsy 
ready to go home but 
wanting to see another castle 
my shirts are sticking to my back and stomach
yet every shop we go into doesnt have AC

 A strange time of year, it’s eighty-three

a roadside cluster 
of wild tiger lilies 
stands in silent witness.  
I have long loved these flowers, 
begged my mother to let me 
gather a brilliant bouquet,
but it’s illegal
to pick them, she always says. 

Now she picks 
dirt from my gravel-stung palms,
rinses my bloodied legs
with drinking water.
A puncture wound 
in my left thigh throbs and throbs.
The lilies are nothing but vivid 
orange flares of blurred vision.

I keep my eyes on the smudges of beauty
even as I cry.

weighs heavy
each body its own yet tethered by the next all
along a great trajectory not just space
but time too ties skin and flesh to earth and air
we travel as if this were a place
the place and it is but it is also just one place
the seeking, searching once complete-
because there can be a completening some call it resignation-
ends there, where the search began to begin
in the weightedness of skin and bone and blood and cells
in this body we each unwrap and wrap anew
each day. It is why we are here at all after all
no high state to unknot, but sure, go there to pay a visit then
realize we can only glimpse and smile
satisfy a bit of the longing, and go on living in this scaled fleshiness,
smiling again, and sigh.

Self Portrait a la Federico García Lorca

1.

Pressing through the city square full of sobs and sighing,
the papers, the papers read my solitude was reality,
with its teardrops, wine bottles in the ash around my home,
my home where my children woke to play with their toys,
and the dogs joyed in the moon over my home,
and my wife brushed her alabaster hair, a green toothed comb,
of ten jade rivers, from ten jade gods—                 
and I lost this all, for why, ay me, I do not know,
for the sunlight had left us in the twilight long ago,
and green field turned black with fireflies, they lit with fiery soul,
my love was hidden from me, there was a monstrosity in the wood.

And today I desire to taste those bullets made of lead or silver,
to savor each a meal, each one in robust relief to figure
what a man who gawks at every single woman will hope to find—
a barren desolation. Her middle is vacated, no place for him.
With his teardrops as the black and green bottomed wine bottles, 
his skin mottled the color of prunes and chameleon like the octopus
navigating the sea, and dogs baying at moonlight at noon.
Green hair brushed with smooth white stone, children playing ball at home,
gone, gone—the sunlight twilight makes sunshine fable of us all.
The best is to select green fields instead of August plains, fragrant and burned. 
Finally, here is the truth, I am the monstrosity.

2.

Pasando en la plaza del centro llena de llantos y suspiros,
los papeles, los papeles leen que mi soledad fue realidad 
con sus lágrimas, botellazos de tinto en la ceniza alrededor de mi casa,
mi casa donde mis hijos se despertaban para jugar con sus juguetitos,
y los perritos gozaban en la luna sobre mi hogar,
y mi mujer se cepillaba los cabellos de alabastro, un peine dientes verdes,
de diez rios verdes, de diez dioses verdes—
y me los perdí, por qué, ay de mí, no sé, me los perdí,
la luz me había dejado perdido en el crepúsculo hace mucho tiempo,
y el campo verde se volvió negro lleno de luciérnagas, iluminado con alma ardiente,
mi amor escondido era un monstruo del bosque.

Y hoy deseo aprovechar de esas balas de plomo o de plata,
para saborear cada uno, una separada comida, cada uno un bajorelieve robusto
para figurar lo que el hombre de boquiabierto hacía cada mujer 
esperará encontrar—una desolación estéril. 
Un medio vacío, sin lugar para él. Con sus lágrimas como botellas de vino 
de fondos negro y verdes, y su piel moteada como ciruelas pasas y pulpos camaleónes
debajo del mar.
Perros chillan a la luz de la luna al mediodía.  Y la mujer, su pelo verde cepilla
con piedra blanca, bella y lisa, niñotes jugando pelota entre las paredes de la casa,
pasado, ido, el crepúsculo de la luz hace que la luz del sol sea una fábula de todos nosotros.         
Lo bien es elegir los campos verdes en vez de los barbechos de Agosto –fragrante y negro..  Total, aquí es la verdad. Yo soy la monstruosidad.