when the dark comes,
with its unbridled silence
and the creeping cold that drifts slowly
across the cityscape,
aching with timelessness,
so too come the ghosts
the ghosts that carry our hearts,
the ghosts that stole us away,
the ghosts that let us wear the crowns of kings
so that we could finally feel
what its like to be God.
the ghosts, they come, and they will continue to come;
into our beds, into our mouths
that are filled with dirt and promiscuity,
into our veins and into the skies
that circle our mother’s casket.
nothing can be done,
no empty promises to be made.
the ghosts come with battered hearts.
reaping and haunting across rafters moist with tears,
floating at the bottom of the well
that you tumbled into all those years ago.
the ghosts come with rot.
when we heal, which often is a task hurried
by the mere presence of the ghost,
we start to pray.
the lord is quiet as the night.
bowed in black, with fog eyes
and photograph hands.
the lord is quieter than the dead forest
that still smokes as the sun falls into the ocean,
after we rise from the vespers.
and they said that rhyming things meant the world
to all the dying mothers and drunk dads
and that the best way to fuck pretty girls
“remind them that art is all we have ever had”
WE WHO LOOK ON TEMPESTS NEVER SHAKEN
and we who blundered blew up the lighthouse
kicking off out chastity belts brazen
and we pray the heavens will hear our shouts
I AM A LITTLE WORLD MADE CUNNINGLY
trying to find art in death of your hands
but im throwing up soliloquies now, see
all over your god damn sunday lunch plans
and once again im walking home alone
i guess the artist deserves this holy throne
Filed under poetry modern sonnet
michael jackson is dead and all you can do is
turn the radio knobs back and forth
(i should have been a crab to scuttle your skin)
and cross your legs like collapsing buildings and
boy is it steamy in here, my collars coifed and still i smolder
its been a hot summer, the radio lulls, and its only getting
warmer, since the smoke started sneaking in
curling upward like wolves’ lips
and you sat there laughing
and i sat there laughing
and we both just sort of sat there laughing
criss cross indian style backward crescendo
the smoke has always made you quiet
(i should have been a shower of sparks to kiss you quick)
Filed under poetry in progress
we live in wrecking balls and scowl at the storms and we go out with broken umbrellas, trying to signal winter through the wind and beg it to slow down. i havent been sleeping much and i am pawing at you through the dark and sometimes these walls melt and sometimes they sing but oh if they had eyes they would know that i am missing you and that home is where the heart is and they would stare and stop and see me standing in the center of the carpet, heart in hand, trying to find a map. im crawling.
hallelujah: (to various persons, XXXII)
i traced four hundered and eighty miles between the freckles below your eyes, the summer has painted them darker and all the space that sung out from stages and sorrows has made them grow further apart. paris is lovely this time of here, but you have never been lovelier, and the grand canyon has never been emptier. the red rocks wont be dry for long, i watched you wipe your tears on the underside of the pillow and i heard you sniffle long enough to know that you are weeping like christ before he learned what it felt like to become carpentry instead of a repentant, bound to temerate.
and we lay sideways in a bed of cameras, trying to develop ourselves in the dark, trying to remain forever close. we tried to become black and white, dripping with sepia, staying still, landlocked and liplocked and locked hand in hand and forming bridges under troubling waters and burning both sides of the land around us so that we can never have a reason to leave. we lay in a bed of cameras and our feet never touched the ocean, the storms blew through us the same way i have been trying to blow through you (there is something difficult about remaining a part of someone forever, i would leave my soul like a ghost in your wrists if only you would let me). “i am only miles away, i am only a voice traveling through wires, i am only one boy missing one girl before she even leaves, you are already crying and you havent even left my arms yet” and when my voice gets deeper and my eyes focus on the pools of aqua steaming with cold tears, there are only so many ways to say i love you without saying “i love you”.
even after you drove off into midnight, i still saw your brake lights and pretended it was you stopping and turning around and driving back just to kiss me quick one last time. but i am a dreamer, just singing yellow canary songs all alone in some silver cage, dreaming of lifting you into the heart of Montmartre (i climbed all those steps into sunset, skinned my knee three times, lost my breath more times than i have fingers, and rivaled the towers of paris because sometimes we really are on top of the world. that is what you feel like) but instead you are now only brake lights in the rear view mirror, and i am only a lighthouse writing poems like beacons trying to find my way back to you. but ive got four hundred and eighty miles between my lungs and your lips and i am gasping for something to breathe the life back into these dead, sallow hills. all they need is a little song, sung by canary, lovelier than ever, filling the grand canyon with her tears, weeping beautiful things the way only angels can.
