Labyrinthine

Written 6/2

It took me three weeks just to
lift the wire shelves you'd used to hold
your clothes - the shirts and jeans,
workout shorts and lounge pants that overflowed
from your bureau.
I lifted them hesitantly, now empty,
as if I might find some hidden piece of you
lurking on the floor beneath them.
The criss-cross pattern of the bottom shelf
was etched into the carpet, and I followed
its labyrinthine maze with my eyes,
climbing it like a trellis,
reading it like a heiroglyph.
The indentation of the carpet carried
the weight of your clothes, of
pieces of you - the imprint of your existence
pushed into the floor, which slowly
gave beneath you, over time,
to mold itself to your shape.
Soon I will lift and move those empty shelves.
I'll stare at the imprint on the carpet
and soak in the last semblances of you
in my home - of your physical affects here.
But my heart will not spring back like this
carpet - it, too, bears the imprint of
the weight of your existence, but it had
caved in, given in completely to offer itself
a home to your feet when they were tired
to your head when it was weary
For your body when it ached.
Perhaps I can be assuaged
knowing that I, myself, am one of the
living effects of your life here.
The weight of your body on my body,
the changes in me that you manifested.
They are still here, like an imprint,
a handprint, a labyrinthine indentation
that not even time and distance can erase.

For R--, Sleeping Beside Me:

8/25

You kissed me on the threshold of the
bedroom closet of my new apartment;
Taking a break from sorting through ties
and vests and old button-up shirts,
the vestiges of past identities and
the only things I packed that carried
any weight - along with my dog
and my heartache.
We met, open-mouthed, our bodies
about-to-touch, our tongues poised
to drink in each other's language,
in that just-before moment between
the giving and the receiving, the intertwining,
the yes-and-no of our futures,
that liminal space we occupy,
while our eyes dance circles around one another,
my hand taking in the nape of your neck,
and our bodies colliding in the
quiet space of our transitions
and our transcendences.

The Space Between

Written 10/18/2010:


You brought me here, to white-washed walls
To the place where the space between
People becomes the space between words
Becomes the space between particles
Becomes the space between water
And the inhale of breath before the
Exhale of speaking becomes the inhale
Of wind before the exhale of leaves
Becomes the breath of God.

Happy Mother's Day

five years ago we celebrated a mother's day with you
not knowing it was the last time we could congratulate you
on raising the three of us so well. At least, officially.
I know I said it so many times those last few minutes
before you left us, standing around you, singing songs,
and holding hands. But sometimes
on days like this, when people celebrate those like you,
or like the you you were when you were here, it just seems
important enough to write down again, for eyes and ears
other than yours to read.
Happy mother's day, then, to all of my fond memories
of you.

what i have isn't poetry

What I have isn't poetry,
but then I never really consider it poetry
until it leaks out on the page -
chinese waterbrushes pulling lillies
and mountains laced with fog from the
quiet text that ripples outward with each stroke
of my finger on the silver keyboard.
What I have isn't very tidy, and I guess I have
people like Allen Ginsberg to thank for that,
and all the others that have howled their
projective verse into the paintings
that hang on the walls of my inner child.
What I do have are words,
words that I like to arrange into cute
or profound little sentences, depending on my mood.
Words to which, like the magnetic poetry
on the side of my fridge, I'll most likely come back
again and again to reform into more
and more intricate and delicate arrangements -
so many flowers on so many graves of so many poets
to whom I'd pay tribute if these flowers made me
any money.
I have words, sometimes musical, sometimes lovely,
but always passionate and attempting purpose.
Words that are here, now there, first within me,
and now stuck to you, playing in your ears,
and lingering fully-formed
on the tip of your tongue.
Try as you might,
once you've read these words, you won't
be able to forget this poetry exists.

4/27/10

unfolded

Remember when we were younger, and
we used to think our teachers lived
at school? I always pictured oversized
desks where they could fold themselves
up at night, packed nicely in among
their books and pens and apples. This
is how I envision you - folded up inside
my cell phone, your voice coming from
somewhere among the buttons and wires.
Occasionally I'll open up the
back and peer in, wondering it you're
really there - longing for the day
when you unfold yourself from within
and come to me. You will unfold to me,
only to be folded again into my arms,
and I'll no longer have
only your words to keep me warm
on days that I am feeling lonely.

songs my mother gave me?

I decided that, for my mother's side of the family, I may put together a group of my poetry, about my mother, and her passing, and give them to my aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I think they will appreciate the sentiment, and something tells me it might help some of them push through and do the moving on that is so necessary in times like this. I plan on titling my collection "Songs my mother gave me," cliche as it sounds, only because I hammered out the following introductory poem (and I welcome constructive critique - is the meaning clear? does the metaphor work?). It is slightly cheesy, perhaps, but I think it serves its purpose, and my family will appreciate it:

To the Reader:

The time to sing is now -
Our grief slowly lifting, the tears painted over
with all the smiling faces of those she left behind;
It's true, she's gone - but
when the time comes, we could all lament
that we, too, were plucked early from this life,
forgetting that the most important purpose for us here
is simply teaching other people how to sing.
And my mother, she taught me many songs.
These are songs my mother gave me.

wordless

We speak, therefore, we are -
all space and body is lost to us,
and we, the word-wielders, the wordsmiths,
shouting "love" across great distances,
wrapped each night in proverbial arms --
we, built on words.
How odd, for us, to desire that moment
when words disappear.
When the touch of your hand
and the warmth of your flesh
becomes the wordless opening chapter
to the book of my happiness,
and we become the text, realized,
and relish the moment when we
don't have to say anything, at all.

inner rooms

There's something quietly romantic about the thought of you.
The halls of my mind, my inner rooms, become porticos, breezeways.
I become large, doors to you opening, I realize my space and my
potential and connect with you in the very stillness of our words -
and real distance, and real time, and all the corporeal distractions
that people think should matter more, tend to melt away - our bodies
melt away as we become just voices, spirits, ideas, imaginings,
perfect golden beings walking hand in hand along the sunlit
porticos and breezeways that link my inner rooms to yours.

love can build a bridge.

I remember middle school, singing songs
our parents taught us,
no longer swinging on swings but holding on
to everything the older kids taught us was cool.
The wiggers, the skaters, the preps, the freaks.
The misfits. The marginals. The empty spaces.
The empty chairs. The kids that wanted,
but couldn't. The glass window separating us
from the haves. The have class. Have style. Have
friends.
I suppose, looking back, that I can be greatful
for fortitude.
I can appreciate me now, for the me I was so long ago.
Then why do so many people assume the position
of complete regret, for the years
they spent in solitude?
Those of us who couldn't laugh our way
through puberty
look back and attempt to erase it, and make those empty
spaces
and empty chairs
an empty memory.
Perhaps it's true that I can learn and grow.
I know I did.
Regardless of seeing how far I've come...
Does anybody like to look back at where they started?

My grief observed:

He was right; you went away,
slowly at first, but faster and faster
with time, with memory, with grief,
I exhale your absence more and more
until there is nothing left
to breathe but air, and
My writing becomes a flashlight shining
back into your empty spaces,
now my empty spaces,
the voids you will no longer fill,
the maps you wrote into existence
that still hang on the walls of my
history, still asking me to follow them
after all these years, even when
you are no longer there to point your
finger in the way you felt I ought to go.
You’re gone still, and even the writing
seems unreal, and even the thinking
and pondering and dreaming you back
when you cry in my sleep that you
didn’t want to let go,
you’re still gone, and it’s not you here
it’s nothing but me
and my empty pages, shining lights
into empty spaces.

Letter from a Canyon: trois

I am made of this stone.
It took nature a million years to
carve these canyon walls,
just as it took a million years
for nature to carve me. Perhaps,
I am made of all these
missing pieces, the sand and dust
swept away long ago into some
mysterious corner of the divine,
before forming the limbs and
flesh that sprouted from my
mother's womb. Perhaps, traveling
here is not an arrival, but a
return home, the missing pieces
finally placed together - the
dust and stone from all our inches
of flesh, the living reminder of
the void now left behind, unable
to be rebuilt, undesiring of
the attempt, undaunted by the
return to such insignificance.
I will remain small, smaller
and smaller, as the
earth grows large around me,
towering above all these pieces
of stone and flesh, wanting
to be reabsorbed yet told to leave,
seeking a new life in the vibrant,
living world outside these
ancient, breathing walls.

- 7/14

From the Canyon: A Love Letter

You came into me here, stranger,
beneath my pines and sculptures;
You combed your fingers through my trees,
breathed my breath, traced my paths
with your strong legs, drank from
my springs with thirsty lips and gazed
at my stars with watery eyes;
beside me, you became my lover for a night
before you left me, leaving only the pieces
of you buried inside me, and the footprints
across my chest,
only taking with you my air in your lungs
and the memory of my face, like a postcard
etched behind your now-heavy eyelids.

- 7/10

Letter from a Canyon: deux

How many of you, half-gods, planted
and harvested here, before we, the gods,
arrived? How many years, decades,
did you wait for us to bring you
our deadly wisdom, abandoning your
primitive temples for our tabernacles
of gold and steel - was this what you
went in search of, when you left the forests?
Did we bring you your heaven? Would you
laugh if you knew we looked back at your
letters and landmarks, searching somehow
for those secrets you held that elude us now -
those divine secrets that show us
how ungodlike we've become?

- 7/8

Letter from a Canyon

Your water eludes me;
the water that, piece by piece,
tore the hearts from these valley giants,
leaving petroglyphs of ancient races,
and ancient waters; the same water that
carves our road carves out my heart,
carrying it too, piece by piece,
millions of miles away
to blend into the vast, unreachable
expanse of the Universal.

- 7/8

On Comets

In sleep I dreamt of you,
unsure of who you were or who we
could be, but moving towards you
more and more, as a comet travels
toward its sun forever curious
and drawn to such a vibrant body;
you are elusive, mysterious, and
I'm sitting here underneath the
curve of a clear sky knowing that
you share the ground I walk on,
and that somewhere hundreds of
miles away, your work and your day
and your soul are continuing,
and I hope very soon to hurl
myself through space to join
with you in all your brightness.

Written while in Denver, 6/12

Keats on Solitude

O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep, -
Nature's observatory - whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
But though I'll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refined,
Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

- John Keats

Attempting to Capture Denver in Free Verse

No kickstand, I took Denver
by the handlebars, my gear
ratio lessening with each step
of my pedal; I poured my
blood into this city, and
drank with the gods of
beer and bicycles -
Anti-hipsters with their
cutoffs and indie music,
PBRs on the front porch with
vegan burritos, I was part
of this collective,
worshipping around the vibrant
center with so much family,
so many like-minded people.
I have family in Denver because
I shared my blood with this city
and traveled here with my
own sweat and muscle, hoping
to impress no one,
expecting to uplift myself.

***

I traveled through Denver with my bare hands
I gave it my muscle, my own sweat and blood
took me through those busy streets.
I was intimate with Denver. It took my moisture
and in return, I voraciously consumed it
and its people.

How Every Moment is a Memoir:

upon reading Paul Monette's book, Becoming a Man

I remember first reading you at twelve,
Your letters sweet in my mouth, even when
I couldn't vocalize your name. My every thought
was for the literariness of what you would
become a decade from then, now a brushstroke
of my pen, countless nights of tears
comparable to endless drops of ink
as I write this. I cannot paint what
then I was, wrote Wordsworth,
but then I can look back and see how
every letter of every name of every
man I ever loved had burned itself into
this journal, this paper, long before I
ever picked up my pen. How, as a child,
every searching moment was one more
stroke of ink to this moment, how painting
what I once was is not what I do now,
but what I've been doing, from the very first
moment I cried my sins to God to the
moment when I realized that God would
let me Live, and let me Love.
How I started spelling transcendence
before I learned I could truly speak.

God of Letters

These bones and sinew
God of Letters, don’t spell me
Like l-i-f-e spells life – because
Life in all its letters spells
Existence for everyone who reads it,
And b-o-n-e-s could spell anyone.
Even my name, each letter sounding out
A word I’ve heard in my ears
These 23 years, would do no more on a page
To reflect who I am, my own identity,
Than c-o-l-o-r reflects the brown of my eyes.
No, my letters and my names are not
What define me; but these words that I am writing,
God of Letters,
Spell out my soul in immortality the way
It did once for Shakespeare when he penned
Immortal words: So long as men can breathe,
or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this
gives life to me.