Posts for June 13, 2023 (page 9)

i met you in my old room this morning
purple costumes on the floor those childhood
gowns you wore in the forest gathering
ferns to sell to visitors
as if you could buy all that away
maybe it was playing at capital maybe
it was wanting to receive those round
acorn tops in exchange to whistle with
position between your two thumbs carefully
blowing a shrill cry
that traverses the rotting log, your storefront counter
and into that house
down the hall where there are portraits
hanging

Even across greyed knolls of bluegrass pasture,
wild narcissus declare winter’s waning.
Thriving under forest canopy cover,
along winding roads, and what’s remaining.  

Blooming early to meet springs revival,
strong, resilient, powerful, enduring,
from the Greek’s to Kentucky’s arrival
perennial myth of nymph emerging.  

Over twenty-six thousand cultivars exist,
Fifty-six species, diverse elegance.
Amidst earthy loam and frosty lace kiss,
whispers from folklore and jonquil stem dance.  

These gathered bouquet of fresh daffodil,
reminders of hope from hollers and hill.

rest will bring the most
be simple and start again
before you are used

God loves every creature.
God is every creature.
When I don’t love my self
and everyone else
I be pissing on God’s shoes.

Jolted awake at 4:48 by the Messenger ding, 
my cheek unstuck from the pillow still damp 
and salty from my earlier efforts 
to drown out the cadence of your voice 
calling me baby, calling me at all hours of the night 
and the day and now at 4:48 in the morning. 

I’m rafting along the rapids of my own tears 
while you nonchalantly float somewhere 
in the vacuum of space between the people 
we are now and those we used to be together. 

I don’t know how to tell you about my date tomorrow, 
or maybe it’s that I’m saving this moment before dawn 
to stash under my tear-stained satin pillow 
and bring it to light when you no longer call. 

Your fourth birthday. 
Sunday after church. 
The three of us 
alone. No money 
for a party, teething baby 
on my hip, a mountain 
of laundry 
waits at home. 

But I splurge, 
take you for onion rings,
the biggest slice 
of chocolate cake 
your baby blues 
have ever seen. 
Tall glass of milk 
to wash it down, please.

Little brother 
tucked boothside, full
of midday sleep, 
you and I giggle 
as we share our feast.
My happy boy, my joy, 
yor smile lights my heart, 
but I could cry

when the waitress 
brings the check 
for just a dollar
ninety-nine. She claims
her service
was awfully slow, so 
everything
but the milk is free.

You wear pink, make you look like fallow sallow
Ought to wear black, that make you look pink
Pink make you look yellow like tainted tallow
Ought to wear black, make you look pink

You wear yellow, make your saunshine mellow
Dim your sunny smile, ought to wear black
Make your sun light up, make you look bright
Black for you is right

You wear red, goes to my head
But does go with black
Make you look dangerous, glamorous, amorous
Just a little of the red though, stick mostly with black

You wear green, make your blonde hair red
How can that be, go take it back
You maybe a poison blonde but not rust red
Ought to wear black

You wear blue, give you a golden hue
Stones sparkle on your gold washed skin
Dark rich gold in your hair be old and cold
But still ought to wear black

Gray today
So, you sad today? Look washed out, tired today
Go back to the closet, find something black
Ought to wear black jack

crematorium 

you looked asleep
i imagined you
resting after the tall day.
after the last time you laughed
while the sun ribboned dusk
into streaks of flame

after the black sky
swaddled you, blanketing you
in stars while you lay
silently on the ground,
fingers of grass stroking your arms,
the night shadows grown long.

i pictured you
reviewing your day,
saying your longing prayers,
taking your medication,
and waiting for peace,
before you closed your eyes
and finally went to sleep.

in the end, before the fires burned
the shell you left behind
i mama-kissed your brow
now gone cold.

i wouldn’t eat or drink
once i got home
not while the chill
of your forehead
lingered on my lips.

                                                            (the first page is missing)

1.

There are fish that bathe in the sand,
and cyclists that wheel over the waves.
I think of me. My schoolhouse on the sea.
Childhood already on skiff boat or bicycle.

Free balloon, the first balloon floating
over the screams that spiraled in the clouds—
Rome to Carthage face to tusk they went,
the fluid, sweet, French sailor boys in sandals.

Anda padrecito! no one ever loved learning Latin at ten.
And algebra, who ever knew what it was at that age!
Physics and the study of Chemistry—God!
Sunlight has better uses: a tan, girls, or futbol games!

And the open air cinema with its chocolate drinks.
Anne Boleyn, why I don’t know, in blue, takes the beach.
If the waves do not wash Anne over, a billy club copper
will dissolve her in the flower light of his lantern.

Penguin tuxedos with tommy guns enter to aim at 
my naked eyes, triggers half squeezed. Frozen— sent 
to cities of instantaneous heavens, I’m wrested
away without a soul, and—

New York flows to Cádiz to my home in the bay—
Sevilla’s fairs to París cafés, Iceland, Persia in a day.
A Chinaman is not a Chinaman.  A Pedestrian is Green 
while at the same time White or Black, don’t you say?

You are everywhere, from the stamen of your rose,
from your red, blooming center without a ticket 
to move—be still and rule all, king of everything you know…
and with every experience send out your postcards.

And by the multiplying passages
in the chase of the trains and trams,
it is not the lightning you imagine that brings your death,
but the million moons from your unassuageable lips.

2.

I was born with the cinema—respect me!
Under a net of cable and airline networks.
I was there when Royal floats were abolished,
and the Pope first ascended the automobile.

I saw phone calls sliding down the water panes,
angel feather blues from the skies raining sideways.
Those seraphic orchestras of the air
guarded the entrance to my ear canals.

Sing song fish from canvases, cloud and nickel
chasing newspapers and letters into the sea.
The postman does not believe in mermaids or sirens
nor in the waltz of the waves, but in death, certainly.

There are still bald spots tethered to the moon,
and sorrowful locks of hair used as bookmarks.
A rush of snow, bleaching the shadow, 
commits seppuku in the gardens.

What could it be my soul, how long ago 
breaks the running record of your absence?
What of my heart?  He is disconsolate. He never leaps.
Haha, stung by harlot’s chance and accident?

Look deeply into my eyes, and, lost,
you’ll break your swimming hips on the anxieties 
of the shipwrecked. The heap of the totally dead norths,
the only echoing be, a wobbling bobble of the seas.

3.

I know gunpowder and flintlock helmets, 
riders without a soul nor feedbags riding through 
wild grown wheat, the fields strewn with crumbling
basilicas, fire streams of blood, lime, and hellish ash.

But also each a bright sun of meeting in each arm.
The bird of morning. Shining like a goldfish, 
keeping a place in the book of love. Upon its head
a number, letter, beak a letter, without seal.

4.

P.s. (from the Great Ambassador to the Pope)

The voice, electricity and the tail 
of the acceleration of stars arose from
the confines of love in an explosion of 
the mechanical world.

Know about me? What I said on the phone
my mellifluous angel to men: who are you,
steel, tin, and lead?—One more bolt 
of lightning, there will be new life.

Author: Rafael Alberti
Translator: Manny Grimaldi