Identifying a Lover
Stalkers, we make excuses.
Like anyone caught, feign
indecipherable Glaswegian.
It’s these beginnings where empathy
has a tendency to not run rampant.
A notebook to document
time, place and environment
hangs from a string.
The convenience of it all
and then a slow stroll
back to the van.
Discarded mattresses
from personal eulogies
align these comforts
with pathological sin.
Weather Machine
Nerves transmuted into fireflies,
I wait for your hands, pretend
my couch is a backyard.
I want less fingers to count
the next time we can make
our bodies into swamps
worth leaving secrets in.
The Warm List
Our dreams turned to liquid
And we drank them
Like a rare wine
We tasted before
Though could never afford
You tasted it
Just like me
The sweet nectar reminded you
Of life as you played it
A reminder you lost the tape
Or was it lost
Like the both of us
If we are going to be lost
Let us be lost on love
We floated like clouds
Like the sky
I touched you
And you touched me
Like the world has been touching us
From the very beginning
Since the start of the list we made
Is it complete
Are they whole
Let us start from the beginning
Until we know
And if we never find out
Oh well, we tried
Like the birds in the light
With the sun at our wings
Would warm our minds at least
Ice Massacre
You will reach your hand in the fire
to recover the lost pieces of yourself
The unthinkable becomes possible
when your hand is forced
Hunger can overwhelm logic
Desperation is the greatest motive
The sheep will ask why
No one wants to be slaughtered
Some things will only make sense to you
The only option will be to evacuate
In the end
there will be no one to ask
Little Fears
Hey, you dark sky prison for the birds
and their muted songs.
My sister is a flower!
Can you pick her up and lift her up
to the sun drunk of tar?
Allah doesn’t care for alcohol.
Water is the natural state of love,
as old age knits its endless webs hidden in
the dark. Myths dwell in my dusty attic,
and there they play of oblivion with
the yellowing photos.
Hey, you dark sky how many summer moments
do you need just to inhale once?
I have to grease your hinges and you will
stop creaking during the long autumn nights.
I know that your belly is enormous and you
can swallow all of the human sorrow.
We walk under you, with our heads bowed, our
arms raised, waiting.
Your endless clock is our own calendar
to eternity, that we’ll never be able to understand.
Philosophy is the other word of ours that leads us
to another of your countless dead ends.
Hey, you dark sky please kiss the mountain lakes
and search in their mirrors for your grandeur.
Be humble!
Rain is your tears, which I drink with endless thirst.
Could I cut you up with a wing of an albatross?
Could I dream your nightmares?
2.
How many gods do you hide up there in your crowns
of illusion?
I want to climb your highest peaks and look through
your all-seeing eyes.
You’re not blind, right?
Let’s sing together for old times.
The memories are not forgotten, but reborn in your
eternal cycle.
What kind of photo album you got?
I will play my next heavenly part, then I will
share with you my plans for the future, which includes
wine, fish, and bread.
I believe we could arrange something!
Bring out your chess board, but beware– someone
else has prepared the winning moves.
The game is eternal!
Hey, you black sky peek through the window
and read these lines in my shabby notebook, before
I fed them to the hungry and burning candle.
Because I need some light.
Your imperishable darkness blesses me.
A Night for Paralysis
Sometimes my blood crystallizes
and refuses to do anything
but scratch at the veins that cocoon it.
No air passes through me,
and I am locked in place,
a doll in mid-smile.
At these moments,
I’m afraid a breath will topple me over
and I will shatter,
my glittering insides
dancing across this floor.
the brief and wondrous death of jeremiah tompkins
they found him crouched
under a cardboard box
at the intersection of twitch
& lynch. he was sweating softly
when they took him in, having just
swallowed his tongue
whole.
it was a bright and thirsty
afternoon. his silvered hair
caught in our eyes. he
was fluid and spoke softly
when jaunted side to side
by the boys, yessuh,
and the horses, yes’m,
and the wives.
the tree was thronged
by eva’s twelve grandmothers
and my three sons
and the sun’s slivered proximity.
i grabbed my youngest, addam,
and said, nowlookaway –
he didn’t kick
as the noose tightened.
on the way up
he gazed at us
as if
we
were the gnarled woods
that fed into the fairy spring
and
the constellation of freckles
dotting his lover’s cheek
and
the sister he’d left
needling her way
through blanched postcards
and war rations
and stiffened script
when he went up
north. he looked at us
as if we
had been the ones
lying
under a cardboard box
at the intersection of twitch
& lynch: saliva congealing:
pockets rustling: a sweet
and fumbling acrid: heavy:
on our lips:
(in the corners of my eyes,
i make out
the hunched posture
of my retching son)
why: he looked at us
until he couldn’t:
Survival of the Species
You explain shrews in winter,
how they mostly freeze and die,
how just a few survive
but they’re so adept at propagation
that that’s all it takes
to renew the species.
You think nothing
of a hundred thousand tiny rodents
folding up inside their fur
to futilely ward off sub-zero temperatures,
their blood, their flesh chilling
from the outside in
until there’s just a heart
beating its way into that icy oblivion.
You think nothing of that
scramble of survivors,
half-sensual, half-desperate,
to grab at the fleeting shreds
of living left to them,
replenish their meager species
just so there’ll be more
to suffer through
what they have suffered.
You think nothing of saying
there’s a beauty
to that rustle in the leaf-molds,
those high-pitched
squeals of lovemaking,
the bustle of litters, of feeding,
of shrew imprinting shrew.
It’s all part of our walk
deep into the forest.
It’s all part of our childlessness
and the deeper chill
that brings you.
