Things that Rhyme

I see your face in a new magazine

a liberal, libelous trendy new dream

where everyone lays down their "Silent Night" theme

and picks up a play, digests a scene:

A man hits his mum with a dandelion flower.

A woman cradles her child in the shower.

A boy catches frogs with magnanimous power.

A girl kisses skin and finds it quite sour.

These are all part of the tapestry of dreams

the quiet, the tranquil, the twilight, the obscene

playing around a little "Silent Night" theme

while sleep washes the night-time soul clean.

Seven Seconds

I will dream you for seven seconds every minute

and in that time, I will become a better version

of myself. I will try, in many ways, for the next

fifty-three, to forget you. I will attempt to leave you

and the way your body feels first thing in the morning,

soft and round and full like the canopy of a forest.

I will sandblast you from my mind. I will occupy

that space with facts about oil tankers, harbor seals,

and how many times Al Gore has been on Saturday

Night Live. I will finally remember the answer

to the clue from the crossword puzzle we slew

last Tuesday, but there you are again, and I will try

to forget. I will daydream of mountains and Harvard

and doctors, but I will not think of how beautiful

you are cooking in the kitchen next to me, when,

through the open window above the sink, the sun sets

and a loon cries on the lake. I will slay memories

of dinners and dates and late night kissing

in a thunderstorm, getting soaked with rain

and the smell of fresh skin. But by then, a minute

has passed, and seven seconds of you begin again.

Motion

We pour out our iron feelings

on a skillet of half-done dreams

and this only gets us as far as

sleep again tonight, especially

after the other night, when it

only got us as far as sleep before.

There is a dance I want to teach

you that goes so badly into the

depths of you it is like the monsters

you knew lived under your bed;

it's the kind of fear that plumbs the

depths of whatever is in your head

like dreams and stories while we're

half-awake and falling back into our

bodies and out of the state

of pure being. I suppose there is a

final way we could organize each

other, that might complete the

understanding and leave us to go

out and have happy finalized lives

but we cling, and I cling and cling

and live out a fantasy while I still

may, while it is still May, and the

sun is shining and October won't

bend it's dead-leaf hand to bother

the windy happiness of two people

in a constant state of emotion.

Quite a Time

I haven't written in a long time. I apologize for that. Quite honestly, I've had little time to myself. I'm auditioning more lately, trying to become the ambitious young man of some promise that was told in Mrs. Robinson's art class, "You will go places." I feel I've stalled that all-important journey till now and I'm trying to make up for lost time.

I'm sitting at an EPA, trying my hardest to come up with something to do while the hours drag like the ashen scar of a cigarette along a 35-year-old whore's calf. I'm bored, tired, and hungry. These are feelings I should probably get used to. It seems the lot of the artist: to suffer, just as the lot of the banker is to exploit third-world countries; the rodeo clown to dance with the bull's horns.

So I'm here, undulating in the tide with the other refuse of artistry in this city. We are without talent, not without splendor, not without presence - instead we lack a purple slip of paper with our name printed above the glory of "Actors' Equity Association." And we are expected to wait.

To wait is the worst suffering in humanity. Something makes me think Hitler was forced to wait quite a lot as a child. It is an unnatural human condition, especially in a city as verbose and dextrous as the island of Manhattan. One is always on the move in this great seething landmass, as if an invisible were pushing us. Instead of gentle guidance in the small of the back, though, it is an unfriendly slap in the back of the head. It forces our eyes down, our shoulders up, and our spine to bend like Cookie Monster's favorite letter. We are creatures meant to move, to run, to throw our hands in the air and shout, "YES! I believe in fresh air as my drug of choice!!" So waiting becomes the arduous task of the millions whose artistry will be tested, trimmed, pulled, considered, reconsidered, rejected, compartmentalized, and thrown to the rubbish heap. That's just the few first few seconds, too.

But we go back again, because love is the most important force in this world; the mover and shaker of men, and therefore anything and everything we lay our desires on. We gamble with the wind of tragedy, because sometimes it all comes out ok.

Starting Off

I crammed myself into your pocket

like an old lottery ticket. I jangled

with you as you went to the bodega

and picked up one of those stale

ice cream cones they sell in the freezers

that are not cold enough.

As you walked out, you stepped

in a pile of dog poop, and cursed

the animal for its loose morals.

You strode up the street, me

bouncing in your pocket like an old

lottery ticket, and your worn out

white chucks beating a drum pattern

into the mint gray sidewalk.

You had on tight white jeans,

faded as the cover of an old country record

and bad bad Ray-Bans you stole

from your dad's sock drawer. Bouncing

in your pocket like an old lottery ticket,

I felt like the paparazzi at a street fight:

all wound up with the rhythm of you,

struggling to get a good look at what

exactly is going on, but always only

finding the two dimensions and

rectangular box it takes to make a

black-and-white-know-nothing story.

Cuz I'm just along for the ride.

Love Poem #9

And then there was loss,

a pain like a sharp tack

on a corkboard, and there was no

answer coming from the mass of tan matter

that was comforting

or easy to understand. I was shut

out of a piece of you I treasured most:

an inimitable congregation of tiny glances,

parted lips, and small electric pulses

from your fingertips. I could find

no reasonable explanation for my loss

and we went on, inexorably, till finally

you came back and danced the elegant

sonata of us; and I felt a green part

of your joy travel from your tongue

to my lips, in a simple, sensual, quiet demure.

Drowning Palaces

In many cultures, in many nations

there was a small boy who aspired

to always be a little bit more than

his fellows and he felt that, though

misunderstood, he would achieve

this lofty goal because he was and

always will be, someone special to

his mother. So he grew up, and he

fell in love, and then his heart was

broken, but his father was there

to put him back together. So he

went off to the city and fell in love

and his heart was broken again,

but his friends were there to put

him back together. So he graduated

from college and went off into the

world and found it was crueler and

harsher than he ever would have

known. But he met a girl, who

built him into something. She

laughed a lot and he began to lose

his fear of whatever came before.

He began to exercise his vasty

resources and make something

of himself. But winter was still so

cold, even with that someone to hold

you in the dark empty spaces

between starlight and moonshine.

Because what lies in the space which

occupies the synapses that create

the next great work of art, or dream

of our fondest attainability, the

newness of genius? Wanting more

is a sin visited on those with some.

Such some is the diaphanous visible

of the ambitious mind. Such is the

some of the tired minstrel wasting

words in a dry, cold room. Such some

is the cracking, crumbling society

built on the sum of its mistakes.

Such sum is the art by which we

exist.