Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Keep Your Hat On

Hold this while I pack…
…or am I unpacking?

                                                Neither, really, they’re just
                                                two fallacies eyeballing

us, we shed our skins
whenever we grow out of them

                                                or they grow weary of us
                                                and we slither towards some

familiar thickets to scratch
our bellies, or to bathe in the

                                                long dewy grass, home is
                                                whenever the outside meets

the inside without touching
frequency is a matter of wear

                                                You can keep that…
                                                …I never use it

Monday, June 6, 2011

Gare Centrale


Of all the places you could have been today,
you chose here: five centimeters away,
your back pinning my right arm flat, your
briefcase tenderizing my crotch as the car
twitches out of each station, the penny
of my thoughts stretched into copper wire,
holding me victim to your wife’s
poor choice in cologne.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Tintern Abbey



The ancient entry is polished daily
by whispering feet and careful tongues.
Only whispers live here now.
No one profits of the acoustics,
as if they fear direct retribution
From the Holy Mother perched on the West wall.

A placid strait of green sweeps before the alter,
swirling around jagged islands of once proud columns,
a sea which Man or more may stroll toe-to-heel.
The walls seem scaled, the plump fish
Which nourished mind, stomach and soul for centuries
Content to wallow in the valley’s shallow spring.

To stand in its belly, ears alert to
the sun’s arrival in a flock of sparrows,
eyes anticipating the tingle of the approaching wind
through the lilacs you smelled upon entering
this outcrop of Man’s immortal soul,
Is to stand pleasantly corrected.

Richbourgh



The sun strikes noon through the elms
and we repose beneath their parasol,
chewing reverend silence with our back teeth
daisies clutched, salting a boulder with our hides,
one small enough to conquer but colossal
enough that our toes blow raspberries
at the thirsting milkweed below.

As much boulders as we were explorers,
chunked quartz and lime measures
for a requiem for a simpler time
when broad men cobbled fortune,
 
drifting in any direction they chose
 
and reinventing themselves.
Cyprus could be wrenched by the roots
and stamped anywhere, their leaves
no less stiff, blood and sweat no less
fertile even when imbibed by arid chalk.
One plus one equaled two for but an instant,
men were disposable, women were grainy
and structures were temporally eternal.

Before us, the wind taps cat tails in Introitus,
Kyrie whistles through doors never dreamt of,
the Agnus Dei grazes upon the broad grass
rolling out of trenches which now contain
rather than repel, only the frame remains.
From our perch, we let our petals scatter
 
in remembrance of a time which bore us and wilted,
our candle lit across the pebbled Earth.


Lament




There is no need to feign interest in my deep
lines, pétillant personality exposed by several
millenniums nor in my particular position,
rebelliously pitched amongst the clover and
 
crabgrass, stoically standing guard before
 
chain links stretched for no one’s convenience.
You didn’t trek all the way from Heliopolis,
Athens or whatever the place to be is these days
to point your back towards my acrobatic neighbors.
You’re only looking at me now out of obligation,
the tales of this place have grown tails that take
hours to work through, so you find yourself savoring
that moment which you’ve planned and saved for
 
over a decade while staring at the triple XL cherry
poncho draped across a loquacious woman from Virginia
or pretending not to be annoyed by your three year
old’s constant need to water the English countryside,
whether or not it needs it.
 
Stones included.