LEAVING EDEN

Leaving Eden

Was the hardest thing I've ever done
nest of perfection
to wander the world like an albatross

You plus me
to a land of marbles
Trying to touch but unable to stay.

DEBORAH

It was a screen-play break-up
When I contrived a reason to fight

I resorted to names
You conjured hurt dignity 

You agreed you were the sore loser
Who wouldn't hit the ball pitched

We surpassed our own stereotypes
In a way hitherto unsurmised

I called it The Deluge
I was really Deborah.

GENESIS 23

Across the ancient lands 
Like watercolor dashes 
On the first map of the world 
Ever made.

Sarah's years wrote a telegraph
Until they were full
Stop.

He laid her to rest in a cave 
in a field full of trees
to contain his great grief

But she learned early on 
Home is the tent 
Where God speaks.

CHANGE

Everybody grows
The oak trees grow the longest
It's the weathered tree
in memory's eye
that appears the most beautiful-
the one that has lived the longest
and weathered the most
twisted, rough-edged,
grown.

MEDIUM TWO-TOPPING

Pizza in the backseat 
when I drove freezing cold roads
through mountain villages 
between pines and boulders
golden-browned crust 
tomato sauce spicy hot and your texts
on my way home from work.

You were the first coast that I touched
in my voyage of self-discovery
the dock that made every other sea unchartered 
the landing that I've looked for ever since
until this time that I'm in the front seat 
three years past and on sea legs  
eating Domino's again.

ROMANCE

Romance is the moment that we almost kissed but didn't
I said, It hung between us for years like Grandma Moses
an awkward picture in the foyer of our friendship 
faces half-shadowed and expressions half-caught
the magical snowflake of tension that we can't catch

You said that romance is walking down a road
your hands brush accidentally
and catch hold as the road goes on
where it's going

-Like the road past my grandmother's house, I said,
That we walk down every Christmas
asphalt under the trees and
tar melting down by the river in the summer
wild weeds and impatiens in a ditch-

Yes, like that, you said.

WAVES

As hard as I try to throw stones at Heaven
They all fall into the sea
a wash of turquoise and aqua marine
drops of sky blue
echoing glowing circles.
Every poem unfolds it leaves
and grows into a Psalm
a shout at Heaven or a cry to God
perhaps just a reflection
glowing in circles
beautiful weeds in a pond.

MISSING RIB

As Solomon said
the wine is half full and the blood is half-spilt
As Achilles noted
The warrior is half-god
and half mess of bloody human heart 
and broken human bones.

We are made in ribless halves
half our cockle shell of happiness
sails away on a half-calm sea
Like an orange split in two and bleeding seeds
When the eggshell of appearance split I saw  
the blessing is half broken.

ANOTHER BOY

Taking off this sweater 
is like stripping you away
hanging up the memories
wet and shriveled
by the window 
air-dry and flat
they dominate the view
Of everything.  When
neatly I tuck them away
they remind me 
That is where
you took them off.

JACK

You can never get it all out
There is always a piece
You hanging by a thread
Somewhere crying by itself 
Trying to horde his smell
So you know he is there.

FRIEND

I probably won't stop listening
to hear my name in your voice
all in capitals
Three marks at the end
like we're jumping
Arms waving like birds.

GOOD DOG

Death loses you like the old sweater
That I still miss every morning when its cold
The one that every day saw
Hugging me at my desk
Curling up in the cold on the porch.
The only thing cutting about your death
Is the cold 
From the door that I thought you left open.

HINGES

That first time in that first crowd
The twinkling party lights came on
And my martini got a shot
When you hovered close so I could hear you
And you hovered close because you liked my necklace
In a room crowded full of people.
The last time in the last crowd
The door never opened
Because you weren't there.
And the party fell off of its hinges
And I let the bedraggled feathers crawl away
While I picked up the pieces of my self.

NE 8TH EXT. DRAFT I

 This is one I always meant to finish...

Down the twists and turns to the basement stairs

stumbling through the canned Rainier and Pabst

The house is locked

Twinkle lights swing across the concrete

Portrait of a Cheshire cat 

in  wall peopled in pictures

Drum, key, melodica
In snug tee and tight jeans

Twinkle in the tom toms and tambourine

Like furry woodland animals 
of the crochet concrete forest
In a snow hat, no shampoo

Then there are bells

Looping through like Christmas lights
Through the holes of the walls and the furniture

Seattle is in the basement
Of the house that has one week left to live
Plank by plank.

BOYER AVE

I am a pocket of lake

Holding the toe of the marsh-mapped body

Lapping at the tubers.

Lagniappe of water,

Swamp of sea,

Moved but not moving.

DUSTSOUL

This is the place

That none of us like to see ourselves in.

Having taken head-first

The cup that God set before us

And found that the bottom

Is aching for rain,

A dustbowl like your soul,

Licked of life.

There is nothing here

But God.

LUCKY ME

Ants, blossoms, one thousand and I find it:

Four-starred luck for all eternity,

I can’t hold it tightly enough.

It fell through my fingers

Patches of green years ago.

After fields of rough time,

Skinned hearts and uprooted knees,

I found you with your four-starry eyes

Your summer soul, your green arms, your muddy roots.

I can’t hold you tightly enough.

PERFECT COUPLE

To rearrange us you can’t buy a paint-by-numbers kit

And expect me to be 3, leaf green, and you 4, sunlit yellow,

Nicely cut and trimmed to a composite shape by our own black lines.

You’ll have to slice off my arms first and put them back by my side

Unclasp our fingers, and probably trim around the hearts

With a sharp crafter’s knife, the kind that cuts through glass and putty.

To be composite and self-sustaining there must be blood,

Preferably your own but probably mine too, since we are joined at the hip

Like a gingerbread couple baked together.

FIVE PERCENT

The distance of chai holds both arms around my soul

As we take a train to India.

Orange zest

Licks my nose

And Seagram’s fingers my ears

Vodka, solid.

The taste swirling around on rim of my tongue owes 95% to aromatics.

Five percent holds the soul.

BEHIND THE BEND

The riverhead is always behind curtains of vine

cedar fresco in Spanish moss
The prophet Job speaking in your ear.

We float on the voice of God 
beneath the bridge where the waters meander
Psalms reflect in the camouflage

Chaos of leaf-shadow ripple
and the lap of the voice of David – 
There is nothing ahead but God.

PINK NOTHING

You fingered the story of us
in a ribbon of uneven script
that soldered when I burned the rest.

The last line to go 
I wore wrapped round my waist
like a song that hovered in the air 

Days after it played
til it curled in the dustbin
pink nothing fringed with lace.