Thoughts of You in Banff

I can see you

in the reflections

of mountains

so crisp

and gently laid

against these emerald

glacial lakes.

Coming back

through the rain
does little
to wash away
your sorrow

or

to soften
the edges
of a jagged
mind.

A deep sigh

The bottle you once
gripped so tight
dislodges
from between
your legs
and rolls away.

Epistemology

From my bed I hear
the screaming of rabbits
murdered in the night.

Although I never hear
your screams,
I know that they are there.

She falls into bed
like cement.

We carry our disagreements

down along a spiral staircase

and bury them among the dead.

When the bones of our past have risen,

we will know its time to part again.

A tangle of living

A young man brushes past simplicity

and sighs.

Beyond the grainy chips of skull,

the dents of having loved remain.

In the bronze factory of my mind,

the girls are all dipped in liquid strawberry.

Oh dissertation... please write yourself

I find you
crying in the fridge
again.

Among
the sour milk
and rotting greens,

you've keep cool
your salty
tears.

She squeezes
at her heart
like a beet.

In red,
she watches the juice
of her past strain away

Dear Emptiness,

This is just to say,
you've been filled.

In the pantry of my mind,
all the women have spoiled but one

Treachery builds
first in the stomach
and then upwards
toward the lungs.
A splattering of chunky
yellow vomit.
Why is it at these times
I remember you?

News from Watching the News

A car syphons milk for young babies.

A telephone cord gives CPR to the nearly dying.

A mirror watches a young girl starve to death.

Shrapnel eradicates hunger in Iraq.

A paperless sky

The faint unraveling

of tears

unlozenged

and descending.

I watch

as a poster of sky

detaches from the ceiling

and falls between us

Companion

She ratchets

imaginary love

back into existence

and drags it

to bed,

screaming

of the mechanical

unfleshing

The yellowing
of our faces
nearly browns
us away.

Perhaps
when the purples
of mistrust
have faded

our hues
will have softened
in the pinkening
of recovery.

The measured pasting
of our congratulatory handshakes
repeats like mindless keystrokes
from one window to another.

The windows have all sprung leaks.

In the memories of warmth

you just barely survive.

Procession

All the cars are white but one.

We are in dire need of mulch, my dear.

The weeds of our words to be drowned

The roots of our souls to be nourished.

I have been trying all day

to bake into the kitchen 

your taste

but the aroma of your touch

keeps calling me

to bed.

 

The king of the kitchen
has fried himself into a corner.
In the last remaining steps of life
sizzled flesh melts to the floor.

Recording the sounds
of your disappearance
has been an arduous task.
With a boom mic
and some headphones
I have uncovered
tiny fragments here and there.

The misery of your passion twinkles in the night.

I have highlighted you in bright neon yellow,
so that I may find you again
when I have turned the page and set you aside.

While it used to be
you drank to forget,
now it just reminds you
why you ran away.

I miss you

In a whisper
you went out
and never
lit again.

Euclid points in all directions
but none that far from me.
If you were on this plane my dear,
I'd send you my love
in polygonal approximations
to my heart.

I summoned dementia
and a longing for iced tea.
I traveled past euphoria
and landed on Santa's lap.
In the twinkling toes
of battered wives
sits the calmness
in your heart.

The communicability of frustration
and the pounding of nails into wood.

If you've ever...

The wooden pieces in my brain
are back again.

They'll tetris around
for a while

And then settle down
before bed.

Yellow

The boring of life
is quite yellow.

Ever

We lean
on each other like twisted pines
and shed our needling friends.
Drip by drip our wounds
outpour a thickened syrup
so ripe with scotch,
it intoxicates our dearest
loves back again.

The promise of chocolate
unwraps in colored foil.
Even in the hollows of your love
it is safe to bite

She wished to be broken
into pieces
like a magnet,

so that each piece of her
I would love
like the whole.

We are flinging pancakes
from the kitchen window
and the children in the streets
are screaming, "Look! Flying saucers!"

A delicious meal

I paddled over to you in a soup bowl
filled with fresh garlic cloves and spice,
and watched you drown
in the thickening paste.

The taste of scraping lingers.
So mechanical our words,
our gestures.
In the parking lot,
you kissed me on the cheek.

Cardboard drags
across wet
grainy cement

as tiny feet
echo
in an alley-way
near my house.

While oil
soaks into strands
of brown fiber,

a child
beneath the window
sleeps.

Silly blue tricycle
bends in the rain
where a girl has fallen.

Muddled screams
and washed away tears
follow a trail of blood.

------- (edit) -------

Silly blue tricycle
bends in the rain
and a girl falls.

Muddled screams
and tears awash
a trail of blood

Demolition

The kitchen collapses
into my heart
and sinks
like the heaviest of liquids
far beneath
the flooded
baseboards.

In the cellars
of this house
where I still
cannot forgive,
the darkness remains
vivid.

Poetry

I will decide today to view writing poetry as a way to learn. It is a way to learn through observation and participation. I am firm believer in the idea that one does not intrinsically know oneself. Just like you learn about the world by observing and participating with the world, we learn about ourselves by observing and interacting with our own thinking and behavior. Often times I will read a poem I have written and say, "Wow, I didn't know I felt that way."

I also believe that poetry is good practice in changing perspective. This is a skill to be develop for poetry's sake, but also for other aspects of my life - music, friendships, family, and even my research. A poem is something that creates its impression through interactions with its reader. The stuff of poems doesn't reside in the poem, nor in the person; but like all things good, it is neither here nor there.

The front door protests my arrival.
The whole house sags and nearly bleeds
when ever I am home.
The walls lean inward.
The floors have hardened.

Someday I will climb up and sit upon
the roof and watch it crumble.
From beneath a dusty pile of cement
and drywall, I will rest my head and sleep.

The clothing scattered
about my room
searches for you.

Under the bed.
Behind the dresser.
In the closet.

Someday they will
give up on you.

We've thickened
in the fallen leaves
and earthy mud.

The footprints,
where you've stepped
so carefully,

are now just dusty fossils
that neither crumble
nor fade.

The hypnotist's fog
burns halos in the night.

A Life of Violence

I stab at everything with a tiny pacifier.
But the memories of you won't budge.