Unholy Imaginings

vancouver

silver mists lift from
dove gray blades
of the lions gate

slivered skyscrapers
unfurl against
pine-dark mountains

bergamot seaplanes
bloom in the river
on hemlock wings

we never
drank
another
city

 

I went to the Art Museum with my photographer friend. It was my second time seeing the Gordon Parks exhibit.

The first time I got so excited that I cried. I wanted to feel that spark with somebody who knew the underlying mechanics of the artistic medium.

He asked if I had noticed how Gordon’s self portrait was fading at the top. This type of print only lasts around 100 years or so, on average. I hadn’t.

But he really got me thinking!

The best things in life are experiences that fade even faster. Carbs, wildflowers, the electric connection of making new friends.

Humanity invented art as a way to capture and evoke the immense spirituality of fleeting things. To cherish moments in the lovely flow of existence.

In that way, a poet is no different from a photographer. An artist is the same as any local dreamer.

We just use various forms to barter parts of our soul.

---

the photographer (for louis)

humid
first of june

all the daisies
are in bloom
so i show them to you

bright white bursts
diffuse in the
overcast
evening

reflecting
in your
steady
lens

i like your smile
and the way
you know
how light
falls

i think about you, later
when the rain comes through
i climb the three-trunked maple

wet bark
and teardrops
against warm skin

i grieve to leave my home
where i know
the land’s
nuances

how could
these flowers
belong
to anyone
else?

you found a way
to give them
back to me

 

the whippoorwill

i once heard a nightbird
who sang lies so sweetly
of love that never dies

three plaintive cries
meant for no-one

I wake before the Carolina dawn and leave my sleeping family. I start the car with a fear in my heart: I do not belong here. The same feeling waits in Cleveland.

I focus on the long drive ahead. The lie that peace waits for me, speeding somewhere along the twilit highway.

I grieve to leave all the love behind in the moonlit Blue Ridge Mountains. I could not reach it, though I tried.

Deadset, fast North, I will not give in to this feeling of isolation. I make good time through North Carolina and Virginia, but lose momentum near Parkersburg.

I cannot bring myself to leave the beauty of a West Virginia morning.  I pull off 77 and park at a Wildlife Refuge along the Ohio River.

Railroad tracks wind close against the water. I step a measured cadence along the creosote-anointed ties.  Butterflies lead me to a shaded path, past purple weeds and white dogwoods. I slip down the silt bank and sit on a flat river stone.

I dip my fingertips in the cold, muddy water.  It’s part of my weird superstitions, a ritual. To delicately place my hands into bodies of water as I pass. A sacred reminder that I exist, that I am part of something.

The riverflow breaks my heart in a gentler way than mountains in the rearview.  A profound current of loneliness takes me and I do not fight it.

I cry until I find hopeful tears.

I can’t recall how many times I’ve crossed this river.

I say a prayer of thanks.

And then I cross myself.

---

superstition

never cross a river twice
without paying your respects

go down soft
along the riverbank
and reverently touch her
with grateful fingertips
as bowed maples
know to skim
the slipstreams

the butterflies flash
among dogwood blooms
– white tears on soft silt

rivers make you wonder
why we hide from simple love
why we stay away so long

when gentle hearts repent
the river’s existence
is forgiveness enough

You can get glammed up and go to the bar, or you can read poetry in the bathtub.

I trust you’ll make the right call.

---

sheath

tonight
i wore
hot
pink
lipstick
and slid
into a
dress
that fits
like perfection

i step into
heels
then
slip it
all off again

shed free
of lies
like snakeskin
lain still in the
late-day sun

reckoning
my neon
mouth
and pale
skin

i
find
these
simple
words

i have
nothing
but my
body
to offer
the crowd

i have
nothing
but my
word
to tether
me to man

they
can’t
have it
both
ways

and
none
of them
can
touch me

Sometimes, reminders of the past owners of a house will randomly resurface.

On humid days, the hallway smells like cigar smoke. Nicotine weeps from the drywall. Old film negatives from 1977 that have been lodged behind a radiator slide free. A trinket shaped like a glass strawberry rolls out of nowhere.  Sunlight catches a scrawled scripture verse on a door jamb.  CAUTION has been painted on the basement wall, then halfassedly painted over.  Initials are carved in an attic beam in elegant script.

I slide the negatives back into their hiding spot.

What proof of existence will I leave behind?

---

isolation

houses cannot be haunted
at least not by the dead

our energy does not remain
once our bodies expire

not where we seek solace
or where the bitter despair
of nightmares prey

we believe
spirits exist
because we cannot admit
humanity leaves
nothing
but
cold walls
and hollow words
to be passed among
strangers

all is forgiven
nothing is owed
nothing is truly owned

a ghost is
feeling a connection
when there isn’t any

a ghost is
isolation
in a crowd

Do you ever yearn for an experience so deeply that you become careless?

It happens to me often. Usually with food. I panic, eat too quickly, and blister the roof of my mouth.

There’s a complex emotional equivalent that I’m trying to capture. The attempt of a sensitive starveling to be satiated by affection, to finally belong.

You can want it too much.

You can burn the roof of your soul.

A poem about a day that I burned both ways, with tears in my eyes behind a lobster pound.

---

belfast blues

strangers in a coast town
slipping away, swaying
salty as the sea breeze
behind a faded shack

crying gulls
stall thoughts
of trawler engines
churning beneath the bay

rime on my lips
blood on my teeth
losing my voice
in shallow gulps

the fighters
and the fearful
all get boiled alive

blistering tongues of fire
against the misplaced intentions
of a maple-lined harbor

(01-OCT-2018 – Belfast, Maine)

It’s cold and rainy today, but the first hot day of Spring is coming.

Prime napping weather. Sweaty naps so good that you feel like you woke up in a different dimension. You’ll have no idea who, where, or when the hell you are.

An ode to those naps. An attempt to describe the adventure of adjusting to the first few moments of waking reality.

---

first hot day of spring

wrapped in thin lace
of just-wakeful grace
before time sorts memories
by relevance

touching the ruched fabric
of a fitted sheet
tracing raised patterns
of satin chromosomes

my childhood home
and the scent of hot gravel
combine, pungent
like a punch to the nose

my spirit is running
barefoot, pure
where lilacs bloom in the alley
strangers to betrayal

i wonder if you taste outside on your lips
if the scent of wind clings to your hair
the passing cars sound like waves
just like every room you ever loved

Spring showcases the regenerative power of life.  A time when the desert blooms and romance intensifies.

A time when heartfelt words to old loves, sweet muses, and dear friends seem the most appropriate.  Please enjoy this collection of weird affection.

• Glow – Musings of a wallflower. Feeling like an outsider and overlooked. Watching somebody confident that you wish to be.
• The Hitcher – The first throes of deepening attraction.
• The Direwolf – An ode to the bluest eyes.
• Yesterday –  One time my friend Jane asked me:  “Can you write without pain or a muse?”  I thought about it a lot.  I can write without pain or a muse, but never my favorite lines.

---

glow

i never burn
very brightly
maybe
i’ll never burn
at all.

i glow
softly
phosphorescent
like
foxfire

i live
to watch
the arc
of your
shooting
star

---

the hitcher

we are not
born
for the piss-elegant
facades
of a
gilded drawing-room.

your
simple energy
pulls
me to
truth

i am
all i
have
to give
and i
am enough

i will travel this path as long as it will take me
i will travel in peace as long as you are mine

(Mt. Katahdin Trail – Maine – October 2018)

---

the direwolf

someday
when the earth
is no more
than sea and desert
when the icecaps
are melted
when cool springs
and crystal lakes
bake dry
in the punishing sun

humanity
will only have
your resplendent eyes
to remember
the icy thrill
of glaciers
glittering softly
in the morning sun

a canid
phantom,
those eyes,
tenaciously
cutting
across
the ages

(Berg Lake – Canada – October 2017)

---

yesterday

i have borrowed
the wings of your
unburdened spirit

now let me rest
the windings
of my febrile mind
and aching body
against you

hold me in the
quarters of your heart
where you keep
youth’s bright convictions
and luxurious absolutes

keep me here unless i drain you
hold me near until i am free

if i can repay
a fraction of the hope
you have restored to me
i would be absolved of my sins
and for handling
the sacred
spark
too
freely

(Eastern Tiger Swallowtail – Chardon, OH – July 2018)

I am in love with a Marine! I’ve never met him.  I don’t even know his name. He comes to me in recurring dreams with the same scared and searching smile. Early twenties, blonde, stubble-chinned, sturdy.  His ears stick out a bit too much.

In this life, I live in a single room in some war-torn tropical hellhole.  Just a bed, a stove, a small table, and a few chairs.  There’s one dingy window, but it’s always night.  It’s my home-office, so to speak, but my Marine just comes to talk.  We hold each other.  Tell our sins. Sometimes we kiss or cry.  I place my palm against his beating heart to calm him, and he returns the favor.  We fall asleep together.

Our souls must have sublimated somewhere, entwined like that.  In a past life or some alternate reality.  Maybe it’s a false memory of true love that can only exist between archetypes.  The Shellshocked Boot and The Saintly Hooker.  We must have been one hell of a match!

Sometimes, in crowds, I get the notion he’s around.  I haven’t found him, yet.

But I still write him love poems.  

 

---

 

obligations

every
night
i plan
my escape
from
the
weight
of
imperious
owing.

in lies
of dreams,
i belong
to no one,
and seek
the shelter
of your
patience.

in these
moments
you hold me
and i am safe.

morning
lies
in wait,
springs the
cruel trap
of
awakening,
where i
submit to
truth
by degrees.

morning
has not yet
found me.
i still feel
your
touch
and
ache
with
something
like
nostalgia.