floating and leaving no trace
anything when
with the little now
a time to pocket the wind
like a watch
the wind up blowing
a hole in the pocket
of the little now
a pitcher’s blackened pitch
and the smallest wrist
turning
white and perfect
anything when
when now not
like a watch
or being watched
—–
Been reading e e cummings. Seriously, there is no poem better than this one:
i carry your heart with me. I would post this one, but it is still under copyright. So go ahead and click over.
sun-sick and weary of the heat
collapsing in a heap
and freezing in the
air conditioning
i stink like a salad
waiting and willing the lawn
to die
to go brown
it’s the drought, you see
but really
i hate mowing the lawn
a conspiratorial whisper
or maybe i’m hallucinating
from the heat
since there’s no one there
the face seems
not quite right
maybe the chin too soft
or the brow not strong enough
no
something insouciant
about the mouth
but the clay
–red on the hands
red on the fingers
red under the fingernails–
the clay forgives
and forgives
and forgives
while you can fix a
broken nose
with a thumb and your index
finger
and scrape away
the lips with
a wire loop
and start again
you can’t re-sculpt
any words that pass
those lips
refusing dinner
the post-surgery dog whines
demanding a treat
a sinking feeling
comes when you
examine yourself
socrates said
the unexamined life
is not worth living
but he wound up
inhaling hemlock
because he was such
an ornery bastard
when he could have
just moved to
another city
it’s the principle
of the thing
you might say
i’m inclined to agree but
so is turning off
the light
every time you pass
a mirror
the tree falls
almost without a sound
or without enough sound
would be a better way
to say it
the slow leaning
the uprooting
the huge tractor
pushing it over
a bully on a school
playground
to make way for
boxlike houses
not a single bird flies
out of the branches
maybe they abandoned it
long before the heavy
machinery showed up
clever birds
spinning and twisting
like a middle school
science fair
project on DNA
made of multicolored
styrofoam balls
jammed together with
white toothpicks
or popsicle sticks
notes about bases
peeling where the glue
didn’t keep it
attached to the poster board
points off for that
we twist and spin
an expression of genes
phenotypes
and madness in the blood
and in the bones
and in the loins
we spin
we turn
driven down
into the earth
like screws
tightened down
by the immaculate
divine
hand
step into the light
and everything about
you is
illuminated
the glow starts
in the blood
like a 50s sci-fi movie
about a man
with radioactive bones
who becomes incandescent when
angry
or
in love
everything is hard to look
at when you’re the sun
when you burn
in the pit of your stomach
the palms of your hands
and the sockets of your eyes
are fire
it isn’t as if
the future
–any of the potential futures–
depended on where
i placed the comma
or broke
the line
no wormhole opened up
when i changed a word
no future me or alternate reality me
stepped out
buffed up beyond belief
wearing an eyepatch
with a thin scar running
under it
from forehead to chin
to warn me
–not that metaphor
or
–why not a traditional meter
like i would have listened
i don’t owe them shit
let the future worlds
and alternate worlds
take their chances with my words
i take my chances with them
every time i type
the tree so dry and gray
lacking its leaves and
far enough away that i can’t
identify it
not that i have a knack for that
rises up out of equally dry
grass only feet
from a running creek
its roots not long enough
to reach i guess
or not greedy enough
to put so much effort into leaves
a single dove, fat and rough-feathered
sits on one branch
when a second bird
a yellow-chested oriole
arrives
they don’t speak to each other
though the oriole regards me
with tolerant indifference
as i respect its personal space
and commit it to memory with
the aid of binoculars
Words and Feathers 