The Desk:
Placid
The Pen:
Untouched
The Paper:
A Blank White Snow Storm
The Man of Too Many Words
Rooted to the chair
Feet swallowed by carpet
Hands paused
Above placid untouched snowstorms
Cotton in his mouth
Vocal chords unfretted
Unplucked
He had nothing to say.
It was Tuesday.
The oceans of emotions
birthed too many waves
Too many currents
Sometimes he spoke too much
Constructed vocabulary of full moons
Deciphered heartbeats with language
Worried over silence
Simply
He feared to be misunderstood
Simply
He feared in the silence
An invisible landscape of houses
Where red doors slammed against his eyes
Where shuttered windows wore iron hasps.
He feared her delicate hand turning rigid
The soft caress articulated with springs and pistons
Suddenly catapulting him from the edge of his safety
Simply
He misunderstood the power
and literacy of his rough hands.
Simply
He underestimated the clear speech of his sea colored eyes
Simply
He underestimated the ability of others to love him
Simply
It was more simple
Simply he sat at the desk with no alphabet
He could no longer write poems about her eyes
They were too deep
Too fathomless
Too complexly simple
Too huge in there smallness
To be stuffed inside shallow, awkward containers
of phonetic discrimination.
Simply he dropped pen
in simple round basket
Simply pulled away from the placid desk
Simply lit a ream of paper
in the daffodil yard
and waved a burning surrender flag
He washed the dishes in silence
He put away her water glass
and drank the rest of the chocolate soy milk.
He shuffled from to room
Saying nothing.
He made the bed
and counted the eyelashes
She left on the pillow.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Cautiously Reminisce
Do you remember me?
It’s been ages . Years.
Eons. Divorces. Marriages.
Kids. Babies
Sixteen changes in hairstyles
The death of Kurt Cobain
And Mr. Rogers.
Three moving vans.
Six funerals ago
Before iPhones
My Space
Facebook.
It has been crack ups
And breakthroughs.
Where are you?
Pass the red rubber
Ball.
Remember?
Remember hopscotch
And four square?
Remember recess football
On the black top?
Remember
The barbed wire
Constructed from
Thorn bushes
That we strung around
The tree house to
Keep invisible enemies out
Beneath the shadows of
Impending teenage years
And the promise of acne?
Remember?
Remember drinking
And puking?
Sliding off the road at 2 AM?
Remember hanging
from the balcony
By our fingertips
And building towers
From beer cans
In shady motels.
Do you remember
The hot green meteor
Fat as a house that
Streaked the atmosphere
Above the moon stained
Oil top?
Only we saw.
A private experience
That we can never
Relate the beauty of with words.
So we swallowed the Milky Way
And the moment.
We impregnated
Our blood cells with it
To keep for a day far away
When we would need to revive the
Magic of our being and
The luster of promise.
Remember the stolen water melons
And the toilet paper we hurled
At the trees of literary instruction?
While pumpkins grinned
And police lights flashed
We ran
Hearts beating
Big throbbing
Bass notes across
The country club grass
Finally rested laughing
That we had escaped
The tyranny of adulthood
Red tape, and the structures
Of constrictors.
Remember when Deroyce
Accidentally pissed
On someone’s back after
The lights went out
In the institutionally
Tiled bathrooms?
Remember how
Animated he was
Telling the story
With a mouth full
Of white teeth
And good natured charm.
Remember
When he was animate?
When he was still able to breathe?
When he was still with us?
Before he was on death row
Before he was dead?
Do you remember
Building castles with
The flexible blocks of corrugated
Cardboard?
Remember when a refrigerator box
Was a treasured find?
Remember when it meant
The presence or absence of an east turret?
Remember when sheets were tents
And saw horses galloped.
When Spider Man tennis shoes
Gave you super powers?
Do you remember when sticks were
Swords and ditches were bunkers
And how in your innocence
And abandon you already
Realized the need for self-protection?
Remember crayons?
Magic markers. Church Camp.
Sunday School. Remember
When the teacher exploded
Her cool with
The certainty of an
Aneurysm when you
Colored the Texas capitol
Blue? When you colored
Outside the lines?
Remember roosters
Made from colored pasta
Corn kernels, and white glue?
Remember how all the art
Projects were planned to
Look the same? Remember
How your creativity was manipulated
By the heads of programming
To teach you to stand up straight,
Stand in line. Stay in line.
Keep your mouth shut.
Do you remember
The beauty of fractions?
One quarter
One sixteenth
One one-thousandth
Finally a way to keep track
Of all that was cut from you
All that you swallowed.
Each word that you didn’t speak
Each need that wasn’t met.
A precise formula
To gauge the fading of your shadow
The decrease in laughter.
A micrometer to analyze
How little of you was
Left and how
Well your body
Fit the uniform.
Remember sunglasses?
Remember feeling cool.
Remember hiding your tears
In the class room to avoid the teachers
Incapable of knowing your pain
Because they had swallowed theirs years ago
And couldn’t be reminded of what they ate.
Remember hiding your blood shot eyes?
Remember getting high walking from field house to classroom?
Remember sunglasses.
Remember hiding who you really were?
Remember hide and seek?
Remember dark corners of closets
Where your families hid their secrets?
Remember not wanting to be found?
Not wanting to be found out?
Remember hiding to well
And feeling forgotten?
Remember wanting to be found?
Remember wanting to find yourself?
Remember the bright stars you lay beneath
While the family screamed inside
A broken house?
Do you remember how bright and pure they were?
Do you remember feeling that they were inside you,
That you came from them
That they understood you better
Than those that put their arms around you
And threw rocks at your window at 2 AM?
Remember feeling good about being in trouble.
Remember feeling giddy for doing
What you had been told what not to do
By those that had done it too?
Do you remember laughing
When they expected to you to be sorry?
Do you remember holding your tongue
When you knew that you knew
More than they knew that you knew?
Remember the orange merry-go-round that you spun wildly,
That you rode like a cowboy that broke the unbreakable?
Remember when you were unafraid of dying?
When you were invincible
Before the teachers fluttered over holding their skirts in the wind
With first aid kits on hand
Before your parents screamed
And told you that it was impossible to fly from a roof
With a cape made of Super Man sheets tied to your neck?
Remember the willingness of bed sheets to take the shape of all that you imagined?
Remember the sheets that made tunnels?
Remember the sheets that you stretched over chairs and beds
To create a new route to China?
Remember the Strawberry Shortcake sheets
And the Super Friends sheets?
Remember Holly Hobbit sheets?
And Battle Star Galactica sheets
Stretched over your tiny safe bed?
Remember the white sheet that turned red when the hymen broke?
Remember the white sheet that turned red
When the police covered the body?
Do you remember the white sheet on the concrete
Of the car wash?
Remember how big the moon was?
Do you remember how it turned orange as Halloween
As its yellow lips absorbed his young red blood?
Do you remember how his blue Chevy truck sat
Door open waiting for him to get up, climb in, and go home?
Do you remember wishing he would get up?
Do you remember wanting to wake up?
Do you remember wanting it to be a dream?
Do you remember wanting to pinch yourself awake
And start a new day with a fresh sun
That illuminated the smile of a Lance Darnell
That was still with us?
Remember graduation?
Remember when they switched from cloth robes to those thin paper ones that we had to pay a stupid amount of money for?
Do you remember how they gave us empty folders and threatened to withhold our diplomas if we cut up or acted out?
Remember how they threatened to keep our diplomas if we celebrated our accomplishment and dared to have fun?
Remember how free we felt afterwards.
Remember not knowing that we were escaping the imprisonment and censorship of school just so we switch cell blocks for the chains and rules of jobs, politics and society?
Remember celebrating afterwards?
Remember fleeing into the woods in fast cars loaded with beer and adrenaline?
Remember the phone calls at 4 Am?
Remember the cars that twisted like straws with the screech of metal.
Remember the vigils?
Remember counting how many people in your school never made it out alive?
Remember?
Remember me?
Pass the red ball.
Pass the obituary
The mortgage, the dead end job, and the death certificates of individuality.
Pass the ash urn, the insurance policy.
Pass the blindfolds and the ball gag.
Pass the barf bag
Pass the bolt cutters and the blow torch.
Pass the skeleton key.
Pass the finger paints
and the crayons
Pass the bus ticket
the plane ticket
the train schedule.
Remember me.
I’m a pulling a green hot meteor out of my mouth.
Remember me?
I am ripping out the microchips and deleting the programs they downloaded.
Remember me.
I’m finally getting free.
From The Morning the Mechanism Broke and Other Poems
It’s been ages . Years.
Eons. Divorces. Marriages.
Kids. Babies
Sixteen changes in hairstyles
The death of Kurt Cobain
And Mr. Rogers.
Three moving vans.
Six funerals ago
Before iPhones
My Space
Facebook.
It has been crack ups
And breakthroughs.
Where are you?
Pass the red rubber
Ball.
Remember?
Remember hopscotch
And four square?
Remember recess football
On the black top?
Remember
The barbed wire
Constructed from
Thorn bushes
That we strung around
The tree house to
Keep invisible enemies out
Beneath the shadows of
Impending teenage years
And the promise of acne?
Remember?
Remember drinking
And puking?
Sliding off the road at 2 AM?
Remember hanging
from the balcony
By our fingertips
And building towers
From beer cans
In shady motels.
Do you remember
The hot green meteor
Fat as a house that
Streaked the atmosphere
Above the moon stained
Oil top?
Only we saw.
A private experience
That we can never
Relate the beauty of with words.
So we swallowed the Milky Way
And the moment.
We impregnated
Our blood cells with it
To keep for a day far away
When we would need to revive the
Magic of our being and
The luster of promise.
Remember the stolen water melons
And the toilet paper we hurled
At the trees of literary instruction?
While pumpkins grinned
And police lights flashed
We ran
Hearts beating
Big throbbing
Bass notes across
The country club grass
Finally rested laughing
That we had escaped
The tyranny of adulthood
Red tape, and the structures
Of constrictors.
Remember when Deroyce
Accidentally pissed
On someone’s back after
The lights went out
In the institutionally
Tiled bathrooms?
Remember how
Animated he was
Telling the story
With a mouth full
Of white teeth
And good natured charm.
Remember
When he was animate?
When he was still able to breathe?
When he was still with us?
Before he was on death row
Before he was dead?
Do you remember
Building castles with
The flexible blocks of corrugated
Cardboard?
Remember when a refrigerator box
Was a treasured find?
Remember when it meant
The presence or absence of an east turret?
Remember when sheets were tents
And saw horses galloped.
When Spider Man tennis shoes
Gave you super powers?
Do you remember when sticks were
Swords and ditches were bunkers
And how in your innocence
And abandon you already
Realized the need for self-protection?
Remember crayons?
Magic markers. Church Camp.
Sunday School. Remember
When the teacher exploded
Her cool with
The certainty of an
Aneurysm when you
Colored the Texas capitol
Blue? When you colored
Outside the lines?
Remember roosters
Made from colored pasta
Corn kernels, and white glue?
Remember how all the art
Projects were planned to
Look the same? Remember
How your creativity was manipulated
By the heads of programming
To teach you to stand up straight,
Stand in line. Stay in line.
Keep your mouth shut.
Do you remember
The beauty of fractions?
One quarter
One sixteenth
One one-thousandth
Finally a way to keep track
Of all that was cut from you
All that you swallowed.
Each word that you didn’t speak
Each need that wasn’t met.
A precise formula
To gauge the fading of your shadow
The decrease in laughter.
A micrometer to analyze
How little of you was
Left and how
Well your body
Fit the uniform.
Remember sunglasses?
Remember feeling cool.
Remember hiding your tears
In the class room to avoid the teachers
Incapable of knowing your pain
Because they had swallowed theirs years ago
And couldn’t be reminded of what they ate.
Remember hiding your blood shot eyes?
Remember getting high walking from field house to classroom?
Remember sunglasses.
Remember hiding who you really were?
Remember hide and seek?
Remember dark corners of closets
Where your families hid their secrets?
Remember not wanting to be found?
Not wanting to be found out?
Remember hiding to well
And feeling forgotten?
Remember wanting to be found?
Remember wanting to find yourself?
Remember the bright stars you lay beneath
While the family screamed inside
A broken house?
Do you remember how bright and pure they were?
Do you remember feeling that they were inside you,
That you came from them
That they understood you better
Than those that put their arms around you
And threw rocks at your window at 2 AM?
Remember feeling good about being in trouble.
Remember feeling giddy for doing
What you had been told what not to do
By those that had done it too?
Do you remember laughing
When they expected to you to be sorry?
Do you remember holding your tongue
When you knew that you knew
More than they knew that you knew?
Remember the orange merry-go-round that you spun wildly,
That you rode like a cowboy that broke the unbreakable?
Remember when you were unafraid of dying?
When you were invincible
Before the teachers fluttered over holding their skirts in the wind
With first aid kits on hand
Before your parents screamed
And told you that it was impossible to fly from a roof
With a cape made of Super Man sheets tied to your neck?
Remember the willingness of bed sheets to take the shape of all that you imagined?
Remember the sheets that made tunnels?
Remember the sheets that you stretched over chairs and beds
To create a new route to China?
Remember the Strawberry Shortcake sheets
And the Super Friends sheets?
Remember Holly Hobbit sheets?
And Battle Star Galactica sheets
Stretched over your tiny safe bed?
Remember the white sheet that turned red when the hymen broke?
Remember the white sheet that turned red
When the police covered the body?
Do you remember the white sheet on the concrete
Of the car wash?
Remember how big the moon was?
Do you remember how it turned orange as Halloween
As its yellow lips absorbed his young red blood?
Do you remember how his blue Chevy truck sat
Door open waiting for him to get up, climb in, and go home?
Do you remember wishing he would get up?
Do you remember wanting to wake up?
Do you remember wanting it to be a dream?
Do you remember wanting to pinch yourself awake
And start a new day with a fresh sun
That illuminated the smile of a Lance Darnell
That was still with us?
Remember graduation?
Remember when they switched from cloth robes to those thin paper ones that we had to pay a stupid amount of money for?
Do you remember how they gave us empty folders and threatened to withhold our diplomas if we cut up or acted out?
Remember how they threatened to keep our diplomas if we celebrated our accomplishment and dared to have fun?
Remember how free we felt afterwards.
Remember not knowing that we were escaping the imprisonment and censorship of school just so we switch cell blocks for the chains and rules of jobs, politics and society?
Remember celebrating afterwards?
Remember fleeing into the woods in fast cars loaded with beer and adrenaline?
Remember the phone calls at 4 Am?
Remember the cars that twisted like straws with the screech of metal.
Remember the vigils?
Remember counting how many people in your school never made it out alive?
Remember?
Remember me?
Pass the red ball.
Pass the obituary
The mortgage, the dead end job, and the death certificates of individuality.
Pass the ash urn, the insurance policy.
Pass the blindfolds and the ball gag.
Pass the barf bag
Pass the bolt cutters and the blow torch.
Pass the skeleton key.
Pass the finger paints
and the crayons
Pass the bus ticket
the plane ticket
the train schedule.
Remember me.
I’m a pulling a green hot meteor out of my mouth.
Remember me?
I am ripping out the microchips and deleting the programs they downloaded.
Remember me.
I’m finally getting free.
From The Morning the Mechanism Broke and Other Poems
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