TRYING TO RETURN OR BECOME OR BE REMEMBERED

I notice the paths of fireflies,
the off-and-on-agains of magic insects,
in sex and out of place with everyone.
Keep in close and make the slightest movements.
Someone is watching if you’re perfect.
If all the worlds that exist found their special ways to you
and built together something massive,
universal,
larger than the living and all of those that have lived
would it still feel like pretending?

Dust is an apparition and grime is no one’s business
but god’s and his children’s –
whoever they are.
I am a nightmare someone had – maybe it was me –
before they woke up and finally accepted
that everything on Earth is real.
Or maybe I am a nightmare, sleeping through
someone else’s dream.

Touch my face. I have a texture like yours,
I am wax, a myth someone put a shape to, but
I still capitalize my name in the closings of letters.

I am leaning in because I think I can feel this now – again.
The old place in my sorrow that acts as the tranquil eye of my desire,
the restlessness and discontent of homogeny, processed, and packaged by  routine necessity,
the damned insistence that I become amazing.
I am leaning in because somewhere on the back of my thighs blood has been stopped by the edge of my chair
and the building pressure has pushed some warmth, a little electricity, back into my heart.
And I can feel it in my cheeks
just beneath my eyes.

But I can’t feel my elbows.
But they are not aesthetic pieces of my anatomy. They function
but do not need to feel.
They are not human
They are not artists.
I am not artist, but I have no function.

What does that leave me?

What name do I have? What color
would someone truly great paint my eyes if I sat
for their one true masterpiece,
the single most important action they ever made?
Would they regret that I did not sit before them,
trying not to blink my blue eyes,
gray eyes?
My eyes are green. Or brown.
Later would I remember his name, or simply remember him as the artist who once painted me,
who will always love the memory of finishing me?

Touch a brush to my face. Give it texture.
I am not an artist who has a name for someone.
No one who’s changed my life will remember me
after I have finally disappeared.
I am not disappointed, but I feel lost.

I am trying to travel the lightning bugs’ path.

To Where Before the Sea?

Here we are still
adrift,

taken by this most ancient of veins,
carried humbly and silently
along on the atlas shoulders of the same waters
that drifted in the breaths of Jesus, stuck
to the wings of insects in prehistory, and
steamed from the first cloth applied to a fevered forehead.
We, small creatures, keep notice—

we listen for miles to the static of energy
as it passes from one form to another,
to the heat that stores in our cheeks
and abandons our fingertips and knees.

There is never silence and we are grateful
for the company.

And in the morning we will wake to slow rain
freckling the river’s infantile face,
scrambling the reflections of a cool sheet of sky
that has been thrown by the winds over the basin.
We are surrounded now.

We are peculiar spots of warmth
shivering between two worlds of water
continuously shuffling between each other
a touchable, tasteable proof of the eternal.

It’s odd that we don’t doubt the current, we
who have become so humanly accustomed to control, trust
its decidedly relentless direction.We are taken
willingly but with an uneasiness that keeps our pleads for mercy
close to the sensitive ends of our tongues.

And when this river splits
or finds its own death at the sea,
I will go with you onto the beach
and watch the glory of a stoic unknown
approach to bring us, trembling and smiling,
to face our days to come.

And maybe by then, I will have sung
to you this song that I have ever struggled
to bring out of the one part of myself that I
could never control. Maybe by then
we will know where we have truly spent our years and

the absolute calm the river feels
before it gets to where it’s going,
as we will always find ourselves,

until the moment we become part
of the unfathomable sea,
still adrift.

In the Search of an Anchor for Her Eyes
(The Second Strike, a New Kind of Lightning)

there was once a perfect
time and place and good intention folded so tightly onto each other
they became a single thought in the mind
of the present and generous god of fallible millions

a wide-eyed child in love once was born
on other side of perfect and lived too many years
looking back and counting her steps forward

a night passed in the shadowy wake of perfect
came again to shake the trees around her
stir the sounds in the dark that had gone to sleep
suspicious hands reaching out across the quietest rooms
of strange houses behind doors
and signs of what cannot be.

waking up in sheets that rustle and twist
on the restless side of imperfection
the other side of heavy cheeks and lips that slip
much too close to mistakes that do not dissolve
in the wet of early winter rain
do not blow away in tornadoes
as she watches from her car

trapped again

and the whole imperfect world is telling her that everything is okay
that she is good and good’s to come
but she may not hear over the vibrato of the sky
falling down around her.

“live with the lemons long enough and the lemonade ain’t so sweet”

no matter how hard you’re kissed by quotes
no matter the wind in the grass
aren’t you afraid you’ve already seen
all your best days has passed?

i’ve got a hungry chest
but i’ll never have my old man’s
old man’s rifle and hammer hands.
I’ve got my dirty feet
but i’ll never have a back to carry men
or a silence as calm as centuries.

as many nights as i try
to breathe easy before i sleep
the questions still hang over me:
how will i ever be anything
that means anything to me?
and if i ever get there will there be
anyone i love there to see?

and some days i wake up and think
“fuck it all. i’ll just become a painter
and make some real use of my misery.”

“Bearing Down on Something I Need to Be: I Journey Without Stops Across an Unknown Sea In the Good Company of Ghosts“

in the quiet hours of the morning
i woke up wishing
sleep had never set me free,
that silence was all i had ahead
waiting for me.

you see these people here
just won’t let me be happy,
keep stealing my laughter
and crushing every crumb of hope
my tired dreams allow me.

you know, i’m sorry i cry so much.
sorry. i can’t stand all of these
words i put to my apologies.
but they’re all i have past quietly
passing everything in sleep.

so when the room is empty
of everyone but you and me
i have to let myself open up
and pray to my idea of you
somewhere close listening.

this place you left me to suffer through
its full of the ghost of you
so i’ll hang on to that old knife you gave me,
keep it sharp enough to cut the anchor free,
keep free enough to keep the wind in the sheets.

you know i can’t promise much to you,
but i can honestly say i hope to,
take this name of yours and make it something
big enough for you and fit perfectly
to size of imagined memories
and a man i never met but love with every bone in me.

“To Make Amends, Make a Home”

Catch me in the morning
While quiet pans flicker on the eye.
Don’t let me slip away without an adequate goodbye,
‘Cause when I leave, I’m gone.
And when I’m gone, I’m all but a shadow left behind your eye.
So, before I go, “Bye bye.”
The winter’s come on quick
With a splash of rain on the shadowed streets.
Cursed be the thing that keeps me constantly
Excusing myself, moving on.
And cursed be the questions that get pressed against me,
“Why must you go? Baby, is it me?”

And cursed be the path that never returns
Again to the blessed ones,
The blessed hearts to which I went,
From which I’ve run.

And cursed be my heart that never learned
Never made it’s fickle peace
With all the blessed things I miss,
Ever reluctantly.
Sweet and low, my ghostly chariot,
Won’t you come and carrying me away
Swing me off to that mystery that I have ever chased
Take my hand. Take my hand.
For to show my sorry feet the way.

“But I Ain’t No Cup of Tea”
(a poppy song about identity crises and their adverse effects to those with identities)

quietly like a morning cup of tea
steaming like a southern swamp,
i am always something like
something else but me.

i used to be a barefoot boy
in the backyard pickin’
hibiscus off the back fence
and feeding ants to lions in the sand.

used to be a cloud taking shape,
light and rising up forever.
i was my father’s child but i
never toughened to have his hands.

i used to be a quick wind
blowing warm through your car,
driving recklessly southeast,
used to be a sign pointing to the beach.

i was once a patience bird.
you kept me on the outside,
always singing your love for me
through into my insides.

but right now i’m like a book
sans an introduction, i am
open to my middle pages.
will you find your way through?
through on to my end, i hope
to justify my means, and
i am always mean
and the effects are obvious, but
sometimes the causes…
sometimes they escape me.

i am like a pronoun
hanging on faceless verbs.
i am a baby learning and trying,
but i’m like… still choking on my words.

when all the dogs come out of their doors and point their noses at the leaving clouds
the superstitious morning will tell me where i should’ve fallen asleep last night
tell me my fear of disappearing has kept me from arriving and i should’ve
left my childhood so long ago.

but when the night comes and the cats duck out from under the porch to swing their tails
in the cool air and the branches of the dogwoods hang lower with no sun at which to reach
ive never felt misplaced, never carried this mortal heaviness so lightly and i am sure
that i am better off than a dog inside a window.

AFTER AUGUST

somewhere beneath a sun
that occasionally disappears
and out beyond the places where
passing time and traveling money combine,
further on than the wind
that blows the sounds of smokey brass
through iron flora, over patterned paths,
sleeps again the torso of the sea
one arm wrapped calmly around
the hips of our city
where we give those restful
tidal dreams our blessings
breathing, in the same breaths,
a trembling and unconvinced hope
for our lives once overtaken
by a tossing nightmare of a summer sea
to somehow find again
a cadence, calm and confidently without
the alien desperation we’ve felt growing
within the walls of our homes and whining
in the hinges of aluminum signs
swaying streetside and ignored,
without the malicious hush
that replaced the familiarity
of chattering foot traffic
in the last anger years
after august

• • • • • • •

Inside, Out Among Our Place

From this wooden perch,
swaying lightly
with my weight on my elbows,
there are in my view
many sights that promise to
be warm and held true as soil
until it is the soil itself that swells
and the sun is taken again from us.

Robert builds with quiet hands
a small fiber corner in the shadows
of a patient yet ailing roof
and he leans against
the exposed insipid-white ribs
that are also
waiting.

Ms. Johnston, in her proud anger,
rubs the loose skin of her knees
bending in her seat with hardly any sound.
Her voice is seldom except to speak.
Feels like spotting the charcoal arches
of a lone porpoise from the shore
seeing that it is traveling
but having no idea to where.
She comments on how
quiet the streets are now and you know
that she is missing him.

Little Cameron lost her bracelet
and passes, in the medium shade, swaying
her head and neck from left to right
and back like a lighthouse
bites the corners of her lower lip
and seems as if she has also
managed to misplace the memories
that might make a child want
to stay inside.

Several cars grind by
blue, and brown, all dusty.
It is more evident than ever which drivers
are bound for home and which are looking
for sights they wish they hadn’t seen.
The price of tours, to some,
sometimes seem
exploitive.

We call her Lulu, because that name
is quicker than her legal name, or
maybe because it is truer than her honest name.
She waddles in to make her say
stating the money still hasn’t come and
the heat is becoming inconvenient.
We all know she has larger wrongs to voice,
but respectfully presents only the smaller
a public word.

The smell here the past years
has been unfamiliar, not like
the hint of home each of us carries differently,
more like walking into a hotel lobby
or hospital room that’s just been cleaned.
The difference, I think, was stirred up
from beneath our feet,
or maybe it washed in from the south.

With my feet here, firm on this floor
above the matted ground,
I can see this place in which
I have kept my house and
saved my friends.

Here up on these boards,
I know where I am
and all those that have chosen
to be here with me,
each a wandering piece
of an aimless circle.

• • • • • • •

Herein, Where History Lives

We are all at the end
of a line of some length,
with  proud-mouthed fathers,
mothers we may know,
may heavily remember.
Our pasts precede us
endlessly and without knowing
what plans we have
for crossing other paths,
tying relative knots
or making friendly tangles

We take turns,
like good school children,
eyes ahead to those preceding
those beside.
We’ve all seen life,
a die rolling across a crowd
of blind canes tapping
on each other’s ankles,
and sometimes when
the wind is low
and the birds have come back
we will deliver in short words
what our two eyes, two ears
have received over time.

So let’s, on the coming days
of careless birds and sun exposed,
gather in the shade and
remember with no whispered words
those sudden sea,
the thunder heard,
the rain that stayed
and choked our roots.
Then we will know the story
of all our storms.

• • • • • • •

Aside, Where Efforts Complement

When the clammer of chaos stopped
and learned to work in silence
where no pen or camera could be put to it,
we knew solitary desperations
and they seeped into every bit we owned,
dragged their hungry fingers across
every inch we’d earned.

They were partly our backs
that rose this roof and
put these walls upright.
Not one name, but
a circle of names
to list on the door.

A congregation of cheeks, a
meeting of eager hands
in this place where we all come
for a common quiet
and other eyes that know
what ours are looking for.

We are here and
our hidden grottos, our
fragmented shelters
are empty now
while we are out together
gathering light and air.

Four Minutes Left in the Day of Resurrection

people
so cruel and guilty
created their own god
to forgive them
then killed him
for all the things
they’d done wrong.

he was a kind
and obvious man,
had a mother in
the audience,
a father who wasn’t
in the picture.