Behind the Scenes

1990
I was four and the world shook
from the feet of faeries and dragons
and angels and demons
and who can say what else
that tread outside car windows
and behind walls,
always hidden or too fast for my wandering eyes.
In the car I imagined the men behind the scenes
tearing down the old and building the new
to keep up the illusion
that we were moving.

2010
The bankers bailed and took my money,
I'm told,
by pictures of plastic hair on plastic faces.
“They're the reason you have no car,”
they say,
“and why your wallet growls at your ramen
so it can be full again too.”
I don't know if that's the case,
and while there may be creeping
behind your walls and outside your windows,
it's nothing more mystical than men.
The illusion is gone.
The men behind the scenes may still be working
but they're not building the new
and we're not moving.

Seductive Hardware

The Space Between Words

To Tess, my baby blue.

I can't croon like Frank Sinatra,
I can't move like Fred Astaire.
But when my hand moves
down the back of your neck
and my fingers grace your body
arched against mine,
fitting curve to curve,
each stroke lays
melody over harmony.
A mix of licks remembered
and improv'd positions and
movements leave me
intoxicated, when
out comes your music and
into my ears, through my body and
out each finger tip
in between your lines until it
comes to fruition in
the space between words.

The Love Song of Murphy, Age 22

When I was twenty I walked past
the woman I would marry—
--Gary Soto

She had a cat,
or loved cats,
I don't really know.
I can't remember.
All I know is her eyes were blue,
her legs were long,
and her lips tasted like peaches,
though I'd never seen her eat one.

We listened to the Beatles
and the Pixies,
and we would laugh and drink
and laugh some more
and drink some more,
sprawled like a writhing starfish
on her Murphy bed.
I had never seen one before:
a bed, then push,
and it was a wall.

One night we put the bed up
and had dinner—
spaghetti and day-after bread.
And, pouring wine into jelly jars
from a bottle we opened
with a hammer and screw,
I asked her to marry me.
There was no answer,
no talking at all,
just a kiss with peach lips
and a bed
that was stuck as a wall.

I never could get that bed back
from behind the wall
of the woman I would marry.

Summer

What was she like?
She was legs, mostly
that stretched from heels
to the heavens
and moved with a grace
like the sun's rays
gently kiss a glistening lake.

How did you meet?
With a smile
in a crowded room
and eyes that...
I know it's cliché,
but eyes that I knew
saw right into me
and I knew it was meant to be.

Her beautiful brown eyes?
No, blue.
One a deep sea of blue,
the other lighter,
like the sea had iced over,
and both of them framed
by black locks
that curled like even they
wanted to see her gaze.

Aren't Mommy's eyes brown?
Oh, yes.
Your mother's eyes are brown.
But Summer,
she was quite a lady...

Dad?
Go to your room, son,
and if you tell your mother
you're grounded
'til you're twenty-four.

It's in the Blood

It's Friday night.
The bars are hoppin'
and people are poppin'
all sorts of pills,
drinking and smoking
and dancing and fucking.
The night gets into their veins
and makes them crazy.

My veins are stained with ink.

I have four books next to me,
a notebook,
and a pen.
I switch between reading and writing,
fiction and non-fiction,
poetry and prose.

My brother calls, to discuss our plans.
“Am I interrupting?”
No, I tell him,
I'm reading and writing,
fiction and non-fiction,
poetry and prose.

He was reading
a book I bought him
as he has time and time before
for me.
He will be writing soon as well.
Fiction,
substituting poetry for drawing
as I sit reading and writing,
fiction and non-fiction,
poetry and prose.

Two-hundred miles away,
our mother does the same,
reading and writing.
It runs in the family,
it runs in the blood.

Our veins are stained with ink.

Brother Moirae

I watch them coming and going,
coming and going,
treading their line
and following their thread.

They do not see me.

I pluck as I mingle,
intertwining and unraveling,
making music out of nothing
and a mess of everything.

Or so my sisters say.

They tell me to sit quiet as they work,
the one spinning,
the one drawing,
the one cutting.
I sneak away and I run
while their backs are turned.
I will find the people,
I will find my fun.

Or so I had.

One night
with their one eye fixed on me
and their one tooth behind three grins,
they held my thread to the shears
as a threat.
I should be quiet,
they said,
and stay put
or snip snip.

But I'm faster than those hags,
my old spinster sisters,
and I took that thread and
wound it around another.
Loop loop loop
and the bunny went through the hole.
A tug and a pull
and we are tied together,
you and I,
your thread in mine.
And now they can't cut it too soon,
for it's your life to cut too.

I hope you don't mind,
but it will be fun,
being intertwined,
I promise.
And I won't play with it too much.
Just
a little
pluck.
Did you feel that?
I did.