A Classic.

Old Stuff

The clouds linger, impetuous waves overwhelmed by the pastel twilight. They may dissipate and make the earth seem small in comparison to the vastness of the sky, or they may persist, clinging to their existence a little longer, and obscure the cosmos until the morning.

Decked out in sweats an aging couple enjoys the breeze and the blossoming dandelions that adorn the piles of shit the horses have taken in their boredom. I pass a tan horse with matted coat and we exchange looks of indifference. The bicycle squeals in agony from neglect. The tire parts a patch of sand and I feel like a Moses inspiring a desperate people. Only, I look back to see the empty expanse of road I’ve traversed, suffused with the odor of spring.

Tonight

It's these nights, everything still, every rustle of the sheets deafening, every time I open the door like the beams will give out.

I feel like plummeting.

I feel so melancholic.

I feel like nothing is sincere.

The window is open of course. I couldn't stand these nights if the windows weren't open.

And of course there is him or her, which is so sentimental.

A loud noise, so inappropriate that the house should settle now in between refrains. Or a crumpled plastic cup should relieve itself of its crumples.

At least everything smells as it should and I can smell everything. The lamp chain wavers if I choose to notice it.

There is something on my desk that has been there so long I don't see it. A small television my mother bought for my aunt in the nursing home. And I can't help but think about the bedsore. And her spine. And the shadows are so long for the hour. And not even the crickets. And not even the cars. And not even the dogs.


And of course no music is sad enough.

Untitled

Against the pregnant sky
the trees look more like oil paintings than frescoes
stucco branches bud in the womb
of a steady drizzle that chokes the gutters
that line the shingles
of all the houses
that line the street

Remembrance

50 people entails a killing field
the newspaper said
in Berdichev, Telsiai, Belarus;
boundaries drawn
for the purpose of a Yad Vashem Study

A generation or two
that passes into the pogrom
of I.V. drips and respirators

take their cues about
whether to live or die
from sterile strangers who
shuffle languorously
from waiting room to waiting room.

River (Bridge)

It comes and flows in showers
soft seeping silt
That wraps around the iron snow
softly singing, grating
empty
When it’s gone
And days are quilted in night’s arms,
we have a lot to say,
Like spines grinding slowly
on stiff polyester.
It came when we had a direction and slowly
a sentence that made its
way around the block
and came back for something left
to sing
I took your dream
And spun its seems
out of hewn cloth.
In paths of dark willow
I’ve seen
Branches
Closer than
I care to see again
I’ve seen their intricacies
in the river
And in the folds of flowers
Writhing whilst crossing,
Shown softly in light
Cast from above and to the left
Cast from a whirring
A bleating and a beeping
A bump in the bridge
Reluctant to cross

The Places We Can't Go

There are spaces between us and places we have been. There are places we are supposedly going that allow us to experience, alternatively, those places that have planted seeds of experience of the places we've been, but are obscured by the space between us and our experience of it.
Like seeds that grow to saplings that grow to become something twisted by an environment (too much or not enough sun, climactic conditions, etc.) we can't foresee the "future," so the spaces we once inhabited mentally, intellectually, and artistically are no longer available to us.
Those experiences are warped, like the sapling growing toward or away from something, and are accessible through other means, memory excluded.
Exploring those spaces-half remembered, dreamed of, wilting- those spaces that come to us as readily as we seek them out, is difficult. It is difficult to re-experience those spaces that have so affected us.
We, each and every one of us, knows those places that we can't go intimately, like our belly buttons or the insides of our mouths, but we can't re-experience them. It is very frustrating.