Falling Through a Chair Without Pants

I know why
this chair holds me up,
keeps me from falling through
its tattered corduroy and wood and foam,
just as I know why
I need pants to go outside.

But once, just once,
I'd like to fall between the fabric,
into the space between things
and customs and what should be,
a naked, descending angel,
and be free.

Parallax

The sun lounges on high,
reclined,
resting its legs
on ottoman clouds.
I watch it doze,
drifting off myself,
in a hammock,
the gentle river air
caressing my hair
and cooling my cheek.

For you the sun is already sinking
from its reverie on high,
to stalk the street corners
and lurk the alleys,
its last shady dealings
before crawling behind the world.

Parallax,
a different point of view.
I wish you could see it
where
I am.

Little Child

He pulls the blanket taut
against the tucked corners
to his shoulders, his neck,
his chin, his nose.
Eyes framed by cloth and hair
scan the twisted hands and fingers
the moon sends grasping for him.
His heart thrashes in his chest,
beating against his ribcage
as he finds himself cornered
by the unknown.
The startled scream is answered
by his mother
whose soft lullaby and gentle touch
pulls down the shades of his eyes
and the fear from his mind.

He presses his face to the door,
tracing spirals of grain with a finger,
and looks at the shoulders,
the neck, the nose,
a face framed by the circle of glass
and deadbolt and chain,
and twisted into a grimace
by the long beard, the long cloth.
He feels the safety in his hands,
the soft click and gentle weight;
the metallic reassurance
pulls the fear from his mind.

Yesterday's Pockets

I set my alarm for seven
but wake up at eight,
running late by the time
I crawl out from the covers and,
because I forgot to pay the gas,
freezing my balls off
as I scratch them

and step haphazardly between mounds
of clothes, stopping to feel these socks
and that shirt
and pulling on the first pair of pants—
do you really need to wash them?
they only get more comfortable—

and head to the bathroom,
curl the tube from the bottom
and scrape the last bits of paste
across my teeth
and skip the shower
because there's no time
and I forgot to buy soap
and my pants are on already, anyway,

so it's out to the car
and put the –

so it's back inside
to look on shelves
and through drawers of envelopes
and pens and bills
and look through piles and pockets
and finally,

finally,

it's back outside
and it's in the car
and it's starting the drive
and it's listening
to the crackling new-gen voice

preaching the same ol' same ol'
of finding Love or God or Happiness
like they're as easy to find—
and keep—
as keys in yesterday's pockets.

Ten Seconds of Eternity

It's narcissistic,
an artistic masturbatory practice,
hanging the faded memories,
memorialized in splattered ink
and smeared graphite,
upon the walls of my room.

Stories of childhood and death
and innocence lost
like it was written in a notebook,
only to be misplaced in an attic, or basement,
under a box of fading baseball cards.

It's narcissistic,
an artistic masturbatory practice,
immortalizing the mortality
of my life
in these stories of my memories.

But even ten seconds,
just ten seconds,
could be an eternity in memory,
if only you could recollect it all—
to describe in enough detail
the smell of jasmine,
the fields of oaken brown
lapping across black lace,
the taste of raspberry on her tongue,
and the beating, pounding, drumming, sloshing
your blood made in your head and chest
as your legs wavered with the fluidity of water
at the end...
If you could describe
in such perfect, minute and encompassing detail
such an ineffable moment
to evoke the same feelings,
the same throbbing, enticingly despairing emotion
in another,
then you would know eternity.

But to know it as only ten seconds
is to know the deepest,
most substantially wrenching regret.

And so, while
it's narcissistic,
an artistic masturbatory practice,
I hang my faded memories,
memorialized in splattered ink
and smeared graphite,
upon the walls of my room
in an attempt to hold onto
some piece of their eternity.

The English Professor

He is blue flannel, set off
from the white walls and
black chalkboard and
dusty drab brown blinds
that stand righteously between
us, the students, and the midday sun.

His hands punctuate each sentence
in wide arcing gestures—
periods are thrown like a dart
and commas shined like a jewel
and ellipses plucked like grapes
from a vine in Piedmont—
and he talks of Emerson and Thoreau
and Whitman and the wonder of nature.

A student's notes rustle and fall
like leaves of grass in the wind
and he rises to shut the panes
and block the breeze.

Not Hearing

It was the 60 Hz hum
of a light bulb, hanging
over your breakfast table, the nook
where you slice your grapefruit
and write in pen the answer
to 7 down.

It just hangs there, humming, lost
to the back of your head,
behind your eyes and red and gray stuff
where song lyrics and friends' birthdays linger
and wait to drip down
to the tip of your tongue.

I said goodbye, but it was lost
in the crowd, pilfered away by voices,
word by word, and stowed away in wool pockets;
another forgotten hum in your morning routine,
eating grapefruit and writing in pen the answer
to 9 across.

Confabulation

I made you
out of the gray matter of my mind,
bit by bit, ears and nose and smile,
arms and legs and eyes.
I made the memory
of you and me.

It may be just me,
but it seems that you
(I hope you don't mind)
are more beautiful in memory.
Those green eyes
and that smile!

The smile
that means more to me
than anything that could reach my eyes,
even one from the you
in my memory,
in my mind.

And in my mind
you smile
at the memory
of chasing me
so that you
could see my eyes

with your own eyes
when you blew my mind
when you,
with that same smile,
told me
that my memory,

my faulty memory
of our first dance to “Pale Blue Eyes”
was wrong. It was “Lean on Me.”
And in my mind
you just smile.
Just beautiful, smiling, laughing you.

But that you,
those eyes and that smile,
is only in me, my mind, my memory.

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.

Vices are great.

Wake up late, grope through bottles
that go clink clink clink
while you think how great a night
it must have been
to have left so little for its 'morrow.
Inhale through stained fingers
and feel it linger in your chest
before it stretches out
like a cat after a nap
and fills your body.
Your gullet sprouts legs and feet
and your lungs take arms
while your brain suckles,
like a newborn to a teat,
the fluids and chemicals it has found.
And, bound in the skin of a man,
the vices walk out and shout,
“Here I am!
Bow down before me
and be free from this world.”
And you walk,
an idle statue of flesh and hunger
for what used to be a heart,
but is now just a part
of some feeling
somewhere,
an urge to see your world burn.
But your vices will keep you warm
by the fire
while you sate that hunger
like a ravenous dog with a piece of steak,
because your vices are your face
and hands
and oasis in the desert.

Sodium Chloride in Dihydrogen Monoxide

and she was fading and flowing and falling
through fingers she gripped so tightly around
a chest that heaved and groaned.

Her chest heaved and groaned
and croaked a warbled tone
that Fate had let her down.

Fate had let her down,
let her walk against the tide
but only for a time.

Only for a time
and then she was
fading and
flowing and
falling, a

pillar
of dry
for having one
compassionate eye.

For having one compassionate eye
turned back on those who were passed
by the rushing waters and the rushing tide.

The rushing waters and the rushing tide
that said who would go and who would stay behind
and for looking she faded and flowed and fell.

She faded and flowed and fell
until her body and her eye
could be washed away.

She washed away
with the others.
No one could stay.

Not even those who obeyed.
When the river said move
and they moved,
or became a pillar for a day
to wait for the waters to come
and wash it all away.
But the waters always come,
even for those who obey.
The waters will come
someday.
No one can stay.

The Moon Will Make You Blind

The morning dew was drip dropping
from the leaves outside,
and the blood was slish sloshing
through his temples.
There was a pounding behind his eyes
like his head was full of Muppets
and Animal was playing a drum solo.
He had dreamt of a hill of grass
and a birch that branched
this way
and that way
and this way again,
feeling its way across the clouds.
But always,
always,
it missed the sun.
Teased by the breaks of its cover,
but always,
always,
it would be covered again,
or the wooden fingers were pushed away
by the northern winds.
Always,
again and again
until the tree crooned to the setting sun
and was left only with the rising moon.
And it grasped it tight for another night
as a starving man would an apple,
but the tree would bear no fruit.
And so he had dreamt while he had slept,
and so now did he wake
to an empty bed and the empty bottles
he measured his days by.
And so too did he now curse the sun
that left him blinded
and dazed
and sticky,
and living a life of regret.
Staring at the sun will make you blind,
but so will living only at night,
and grasping only for the moon.

Six Seconds

One second.
Two seconds.
Not that my mind counted then,
but it does in reflection.
Three seconds.
Four seconds.
At seven seconds the heart stops.
Five seconds.
To find out they shocked mice
and extrapolated for people.
Six seconds.
Six seconds and it stops.
My heart keeps beating.
In the movies sparks fly,
lights flash.
They shake and they convulse,
dancing to some sped up techno remix
that no one else can hear.
They experience it,
putting on a spectacular show,
and they forget it.
I experienced it,
but I put on no spectacular show
and I will never forget it
each time I cringe from a power cord,
feel my lungs empty of air from bare copper,
or the blackness fades over my eyes
at the sound of thunder.

One second.
Two seconds.
Time seemed to slow down
as I counted the seconds away.
Three seconds.
Four seconds.
A soft breeze licked the nape of my neck.
Five seconds.
My hands were damp, but I dared not to wipe them
out of fear of missing a single moment.
Six seconds.
Six seconds and she freed herself,
pulled her snagged skirt back down
over her white flesh and green cotton,
covering her flushed face with her hand
(her nails were green too)
and disappeared,
her shoes going click click click
against the pavement
to the beat of my heart going tick tick tick
against my sternum.
Thirteen years had been lived
before the shock of puberty
and seven more after
before the shock of stupidity
(although it can be argued they are the same)
and still,
in just six seconds,
your life can change.