Brew

Older now, and stirring I do

The chances curdling in the thickness

The days lining a shallow coat along the walls

And memory,

What trace is left sunk for the last sip.

All I beg,

bottoms up.

Respect to a recent poem that I loved:

 Dedication

BY FRANZ WRIGHT

It’s true I never write, but I would gladly die with you.

Gladly lower myself down alone with you into the enormous mouth

that waits, beyond youth, beyond every instant of ecstasy, remember:

before battle we would do each other’s makeup, comb each other’s

                   hair out

saying we are unconquerable, we are terrible and splendid—

the mouth waiting, patiently waiting. And I will meet you there

                   again

beyond bleeding thorns, the endless dilation, the fire that alters

                   nothing;

I am there already past snowy clouds, balding moss, dim

swarm of stars even we can step over, it is easier this time, I promise—

I am already waiting in your personal heaven, here is my hand,

I will help you across. I would gladly die with you still,

although I never write  

from this gray institution. See

they are so busy trying to cure me,

I’m condemned—sorry, I have been given the job

of vacuuming the desert forever, well, no more than eight hours

                   a day.

And it’s really just about a thousand miles of cafeteria;

a large one in any event. With its miniature plastic knives,

its tuna salad and Saran-Wrapped genitalia will somebody

                   please

get me out of here, sorry. I am happy to say that

every method, massive pharmaceuticals, art therapy

and edifying films as well as others I would prefer

not to mention—I mean, every single technique

known to the mouth—sorry!—to our most kindly

compassionate science is being employed

to restore me to normal well-being

and cheerful stability. I go on vacuuming

toward a small diamond light burning

off in the distance. Remember

me. Do you

remember me?   

In the night’s windowless darkness

when I am lying cold and numb

and no one’s fiddling with the lock, or

shining flashlights in my eyes,

although I never write, secretly

I long to die with you,

does that count?

A Note on the Author: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=7562

Starting Over #6

Inhale

1.

The earth holds the dead,

questions them and relays the answers

in tufts of grass, iris blooms that shiver,

mounds of ice cascading, even the footsteps

upon.

 

2.

Storms are the questions unanswered,

the riot of death.

 

Exhale

1.

The intolerable grasp of dirt subsides,

the worms take their first taste,

we deliver unto ourselves.

 

2.

Welcome the sun, the questions

that ignite laughter, a jewel

that cannot be touched, held captive and sold,

welcome the stars, the questions

that ignite the map,

a relentless forgiveness,

a birth.

read write prompt #109

(Using these words: drawing, brunt, fertile, enthusiast, Hercules, elite, froth, sundered, question, shouldered, thigh, simple, stones)

The Map


The drawing by the bed led to the tree,
a trail stained by stones, pine needles, and the maroon
thorns of honey locust, cicadas churning up their quarrels
in the hot air of noon, wads of spit speckling the grass,
a froth formed by spiders to protect their young eggs.

Hot breath cradles the earth, trickles of sweat parading the
veranda of my thigh as I crouch to slip the fertile soil between my
fingers, a cooling relief, the earth an enthusiast of compassion
shouldered by a thick smog of pale yellow air, my body
the brunt of the dance between earth and sun.

Even in the elite solitude, the Hercules-club is a strange creature,
formations of cone-like growth rise like freckles across
the smooth trunk, tiny pairs of thorns protect buds, and yet it is
just a tree, just a collection of deciduous leaves, a home to
birds cascading through the limbs, squirrels screeching in mis-step
and the tackle with thorns, a lonely sway in the wind, a sail.

Curious, my knife burrows through bark and pulls
from the soft, sundered wood, a taste, a wound to heal a wound, a bitter
punch on my tongue before my entire mouth goes numb.
I question the reasons for nature to be compassionate,
turn inward in my simple mind and discover,
even in the elite solitude, I am a strange creature
tarnished by language,. freckled by structures of grief, wonder, pride,
driven by hope into the very depths of madness as
the earth begs me to listen, listen, listen.

Starting Over #5

The ocean built the town,

built the factory,

wave after wave lapping

the shores like a child

begging for candy,

a few more hours of daylight,

the chance to live forever, to be forgiven.

The old man left the factory

with the first brick,

the old ridges of his hands

deep enough for particles of rock

to collect, to stain the edges

with the smell of smoke,

cold winters,

the old jokes.

Then came the wrecking ball,

a dreamlike sequence of long strides

through thick, heavy air

beating the length

of an aged, crumbling wall

where a man pulled out

a loose brick to find a stash of smokes,

a loyal embrace,

unswerving

like a stone.

But.

Even the ocean rips what it cradles.

Starting Over #4

There's a tree in east Texas, on a campus
between the small stadium and the one road,
just beyond the parking lot laid empty, pine needles
gathered in piles while pollen blankets the asphalt.
The tree with thorns growing out of its back and out
its mouth, the tree with fruit that hangs like an orange
but burns the tongue.

I saw it one last time before I left that state
of heat, juniper, and limestone,
and I begged the tree to come, to grow where I grow,
to lock with dirt and pedal through the roadways
as I galloped beside, I begged the tree to be brave,
and it turned and twisted to give me
a branch, a polished green thorn
that would only die as it wrestled with the rivers
that no longer sped through its veins.

Walking, just recently, in a wood of fern and dead birch,
a wallop of cedars that are not Cedrus and all that salal,
I felt a raindrop pat-pat-pat until it splashed at my feet,
a distraction that lead to a mis-step, an embrace:
a tingle of nettle and a punch of salmonberry.
Tears tickled my eyes as I recalled the tree in Texas,
thorns enough to break skin but lonely enough to never have to.
I remembered wanting to be like that,
and watched a welt wash across my wrist from the nettle,
the sensation swelling like a great wave
and it hit me like water, like a cold punch in the morning,
that I was alive, that I was engulfed, that my thorns
were worn down because of what begged.

Starting Over #3

Starting Over
(take one)

I want to learn to forgive(under her breath, myself).
-cut-

Starting Over
(take two)

The way geese keep flying long after the loss
of one of their own, long after the bullet slips
through the heart and forces a swell of feathers
to parade along the clouds like a ghost,

how the gap fills long before the feathers
ever find the earth.
-cut-

Starting Over
(take three)

I want to learn.
-cut-

Starting Over
(take four)

The earth let me love her first, let me wallow in her dirt
as a child and place her rugged grace in my mouth,
and then she started to hold me
with wind, with water,
she let the folds of my palm be her settling ground,
the dept of my hair, her solitude.

When I beg her to forgive the things I have done, she
-cut-

Starting Over
(take five)

I want.
-cut-

Starting Over
(take six)

tells me the secrets I needed to know when I was young,
when I still believed in magic, when my own flight
from the top bunk, my one true wish guiding my invisible wings,
would have saved my footsteps from trampling her flowers,
she tells me
-cut-

Starting Over
(take seven)

I.
-cut-

Starting Over
(take eight)

I trace my fingers along the borders of the map,
place the names along the back of my crooked teeth like
piles of dirt or limbs to burn,
where they pile up and gargle my speech, my breath:
Belarus, Estonia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan,
I never learned enough the way the earth already knows.
-cut-

Starting Over
(take nine)


-cut-

Starting Over
(take ten)

forgive yourself, the rest will follow.
-cut, that’s a wrap-