Saturday, November 21, 2009

Opus

Opus

She slips an arm forward to gently glide
it into a rhythmic dance of water ripples.
First one arm, then the next, enters to dig
the route her body follows. Her feet
kick a slow, fluttered abbreviation of the beat
until she reaches an end and arcs
chin to chest to retrace the vanished path.
After a seemingly infinite composition
of repetition, she lifts off the liquid dance floor
and stands at its edge to towel off: first
her black hair slicked back into a point
at the nape of her neck, next the legs from
her slim ankles to where the firm thighs meet,
and finally her taut torso.

Each day she water-dances to silent music
only she can hear
before fading back into the rhythm section
of another person's opus.

Like a Comet

Like a Comet

He races against the traffic of time,
pushing past barricades that strive
to slow his frantic rush through
life's red lights. He runs when signs
say walk and dashes up dead-end alleys,
searching the sweet scents that aim his journey.

Once, he followed a narrow arrow
and found himself squeezed
into a line-up of bowed heads waiting
for the slick blade of death's descent
to separate them from their thoughts.
He watched their patient resignation,
then broke ranks to repair the scorch
of his singed psyche.

You will not see his gauze-covered burns.
He changes the dressings at night
when the lights are out, revealing only
a few smoking embers drifting to earth
as he arcs across the sky in an incandescent
flash, defying gravity until he burns out.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Cipher

Cipher

In an obscure corner of the gallery, a graphite portrait,
smaller than a page torn from a dime-store novel,
waits against the shadowed wall for anyone's eyes
to make it real. The artist's bio says that
after the second war in Europe, he spent seven years
in an asylum before re-entering the world.
He spent the next twenty-three stacking empty boxes
in a warehouse during the day and, at night pacing
a one-room cold-water flat behind diaphanous curtains
that shielded its single window like a thin strip of gauze
over an open wound.
Then, when the neighbors complained of a stench,
the landlord found him decomposing on the floor,
disappearing amidst a legacy of frenzied faces
penciled onto ten thousand paper scraps, each sketch
an echo of his image pleading not to be erased.

"Great Assonance. . ."

"Great Assonance. . ."

What not to say
to a drunken
Aryan Nation homophobe
who's just recited
a scatological limerick.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

In The Outhouse

In The Outhouse

My old man pukes a gallon of stale beer
then wipes his mouth
with a scrap of newsprint.

Mama reads the Real Estate section
and tries to imagine living in a house
with a porcelain toilet.

Whitey jerks off
while staring
at a lingerie ad.

Sara scans a theater review
and attempts to project herself
onto a stage where drama
doesn't leave bruises.

Eddie fingers a knothole
and reads last week's comics
before using them to wipe his butt.

And I search the empty night sky
beyond the wind-ripped roof,
struggling to make some sense
of the poem I've just written.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Redecorating Your Amygdala

Redecorating Your Amygdala

I think I'll sneak inside your head
and run down the narrow corridors
of the cerebral cortex to the
trapdoor into your hippocampus

If I can find the tattered map you've
hidden there, I'm sure it will guide me
toward the cluttered room that holds
the heaped debris of your memory.

I'll dance across the trail of dendrites
to the rotting door of the dusty closet
where you threw my picture after you
yanked it off your mnemonic wall.

In a new frame, my grinning image
will look perfect properly rehung
smack in the center of your amygdala
where I know you can't ignore it.

Then I'll slip out the back like a lost
thought and stand by your front door.
I can't wait to see the look on your face
when your return home.