Replaced Sidewalks
The city was still filled,
to my surprise,
with all the people
I had once been.
Living out the little dreams
I once had.
In red light of beer signs,
in concrete sweep of street corners.
They don’t see the same things
I saw, the funeral home brickwork
long gone for art spaces, coffee pubs.
The same – what I saw was
not a dark sea
rolling with torments;
it was changed before I got there
it only ever does.
It’s just I once knew
wonderous tones of the new.
Paper Headstones
Your names don’t get granite etchings,
not great ones no villains in time;
you merely float, on lips, in transit,
until the modest star burns,
until we stop holding you close,
rest some other portrait between
our front teeth and bite down,
lupine and ripping for it to be ours.
We never gave you a name to stop
the bleeding of possibility to ether,
the shock of creation to stand apart,
the training of hope from tired faces.
We wrote it on parchment; less than that,
captured the day in digital squiggles
so that we can tell ourselves,
anyone who passes:
You Were.
A Graceful Exit
I wished to leave Celtic,
vanish into night, fog,
rain on Burren.
There is nothing that tethers
to the party tune,
a monotone already heard
by hundred-thousand aloft,
a films viewed anxious,
half-understood, forgotten by morning.
You tap me on the shoulder,
angered at the shoe leather
print on carpet:
Too soon for it all,
to finish the a moon cycle,
too late for hearts to heal.
Love Letter in Violet
I meet you in the middle of rooms,
scent-stained with unused shoe bronze,
withering in sunshower heat,
to find how sinking bodies
fit together against skies
of social license, parental voices,
to find what we were meant for
except the falling of masks,
the repetition of Bergman scenes.
I meet you without petals for armor
without rapiers for quick-cut wisdom,
just holy fruits to anchor
our low-lit expectations
to become what was meant to be.
Blood Strength
I watched your life drain
into vials, a red neon shade
coursing through plastic tubing loops;
lab coats and hair nets with Peanuts characters
blocking the view
from where I sat, distant on
uncomfortable plastic, reaching occasional
to give what breath and comfort
hands can manage when they shake
under their own torments.
Under cloud skies from beyond,
the coats try to add everything
as numbers on punch cards,
part of an equation hidden
behind veiled eyeglasses.
It never takes on the full flesh of Spring,
cheek cold dampness of deep winters
with you, in olden times we’d
suffer with our meanings,
now just wait for phone calls,
to read entrails again.
Old Chairs
When I’m standing in doorways,
nose against fogged glass of time,
I see you:
You still have Batmobile clock.
the one from Forever,
not the Nolan films.
There is still a soot cover,
of cigarette ash,
gray market marijuana trimmings
on the table you’d toss
coins, affects from pockets
of jeans you don’t wear anymore.
You move with purpose,
full of reason for being,
rather than the peace made
with death’s relatives now.
February (Victorious)
I feel best when the music
gets up loud enough to
drown chatter of restless
narcissists, the sense that I
am alone, complicit in
waving shards, stacks
flame on the night sky,
television crystals.
Somewhere in the neon canola glow,
I lose myself to rhythms falling
at feet, to marshal stomp of
marching boots down laneways,
smack of hard rain against
windshield glass.
I knew shapes shadows would take
against stone carving,
holy places brushed clean of snow,
Clean of accusations against
life and heart, some kind
of communal elegy,
carried through crowd,
When the shouts became too much
for me to pass on,
and I let others speak
in dark noon of who was
gone that they remembered
just as annoyance,
as apparition;
The same as I,
after the page turned.
