I felt like god from eighteen stories high
above St. Paul the winter that I died.
I didn’t jump; to jump would be to fly.
But pieces of me fell each night I cried.
And on the nights when I was smooth as glass,
while framed in darkness, focused on one light,
I felt the time, the time that wouldn’t pass,
and watched the sinners from my godly height.
Below me in the park they bought and sold
their chemicals to ease their bodies pain.
Their cloudy breath proclaimed the living cold.
Some nights it snowed, some nights just freezing rain.
Epiphany was all the help I sought;
but death and god was all the help I got.
My chlorine days lay heavy on my skin
As I lay down in sheets that might have been
Engulfed in variations of your sweat
Instead of washed and dried in “just forget.”
Tonight they’ll twist in fits of restless thought
Of creases on the day that they were bought,
In plastic wrap, smooth, flat upon a shelf,
A perfect presentation of their self.
But now we lay on this imperfect bed
Entwined like roots entangled with the dead
As cleanliness begins to make me itch
And wish for all the comforts of the rich
Who sleep like kings and queens in satin sheets
While wide awake the dream I dreamed retreats.
I smelled Fort Bragg in 1984
this morning in my silver Jeep while dressed
in my un-camouflaged blue suit. I swore
I’d never be a businessman. My best
guess was I’d wear the green beret for life.
And yet, as I drove through the slow school zone,
not half a click from where the only knife
I use sits on my desk, beside my phone,
to keep my fingers free of paper cuts
from envelopes, I swear I caught a whiff
of diesel mingled with that canvas must
that used to make me homesick. It’s as if
some static line is still attached to me
and I can’t make the jump to tear it free.
The new nurse fumbled with the ultrasound
device. She pushed it like a cattle prod
against the curved, unmoving flesh, but found
nothing. I held my breath and panic. God
don’t let her die or be already dead.
The sterile room, unholy, and the nurse
pulsed with the nervous tension of the dread
of the unknown. My prayers have gotten worse
since then. My feeble, fetal spirit died
the same day that I didn’t hear her heart.
Predictably, we drove back home and cried,
not for the latent lump of flesh, the start
and end of life. We wept for all the days
ahead when we’d remember this one.
Remembering the river where we walked
The bridge above the water, strong as life
Remembering how every day we talked
Of all that should be said by man and wife
Remembering the rains of middle spring
The rivulets of memory are clear
When washed by words of love, remembering
The torrents of the passion of one year
Forgotten are the times of fear and doubt
Which vanish like the dust within the rain
Forgotten like a storm forgets a drought
Like rapture brings an end to tears of pain
Envisioning the fount of love and peace
Which flows forever, nevermore to cease
You shake and cry when pleasure is intense
You shake and cry for what? I thought I knew
It must be something deeper than I sense
When I’m a million miles away from you
You shake and cry behind the thinnest veil
You shake and cry and tear the veil away
My mind absorbing every small detail
In hopes to hold forgetfulness at bay
I hear you in the distance, like a storm
I see you on a page within a book
I smell you like the rain when it is warm
I taste you like the fish can taste the hook
And then I break the silence with a sigh
Unsure what made my lover shake and cry
To mark the life I think I live, I write
Reflections of reflections in a lake
To mock my life the words I choose seem trite
Reflected only for reflection’s sake
The surface is disturbed by rippled waves
The soul below is buried in the mud
The most illusive poems are the graves
I dig to warm the cooling of my blood
Oh yes, I try to dig within the lake
You laugh to watch the water flood my work
I cry to see the ripples that I make
Obscure the place I think my soul may lurk
But laugh or cry in pity or in spite
I think, to mark the life I live, I write
Her kiss is more than simply lips to lips
It’s more than teeth and tongues and heated breath
Her kiss is more than tracing fingertips
Through lipstick red as life and deep as death
Her mouth becomes a passage to her soul
The act becomes a breach of space and time
Like chaos losing ground to self control
Or poetry surrendering to rhyme
But when she slides her hand behind my neck
And lets her hair fall all around her face
And when she knows my will is held in check
Her kiss becomes my solitary grace
My world contracts to nothing less than this
Where nothing else exists except her kiss
I tried my best, like autumn’s auburn leaves
To cling to spring or summer if I could
But found that winter offered no reprieve
And learned that clinging doesn’t do much good
The roots, the trunk, the branch gave up at last
And doing so they left me little choice
Their need for me was somewhere in the past
And mine for them a dry unheeded voice
The west wind blew and shook me from my place
The southern winds exhaled my final sighs
The east wind was a slap across my face
The north wind froze the teardrops in my eyes
Then winter came without a joyful sound
And I was dead before I hit the ground
These roots will make me sway, but not collapse;
they melt the wisps of visions barely seen,
distill their plastic nature and perhaps
such distillations sharpen what they mean.
Encapsulated beauty, fattened kine,
a place to fish where fish should not be caught,
all symbolize intentions that are mine,
although they all escape my waking thoughts.
These roots do not inflict me with desire,
like alcohol’s ambition, nor its pain.
They have no need of water nor of fire,
Although they bring the sun and cleansing rain.
And though we dream within the sleep of death,
in these I count the coup of waking breath.
