toys

You abandoned me on the steps
of the love we'd built for one another,
and I hadn't the key to unlock any of the doors.
You must have been watching, surely,
from the windows of your guarded tower
as I stood up slowly, dusting myself off,
starting my way back from where
you'd led me with your beautiful
words, dreams, and desires.
You must have known, too, that I
heard the door open behind me,
and heard you beckon someone
inside before my bed was even cold.
Knowing now I was erased to you,
wondering how warm I ever really was,
Knowing I might as well have never happened,
wondering if this had been done before,
to men like me,
and I shoulder this, my burdens,
as I am the one who walks forward, then, from there
down the road I'd paved for us, now only me,
while you're the one now left behind,
up inside your tower,
with all your childishness, and toys.

inspiration

5/07

She drips onto me like water,
sometimes slowly - a faint trickle
I barely notice, dancing onto my
moppy hair, until it collects and dribbles
in ice cold tributaries down my back.
Sometimes it comes all at once,
overwhelming,
forcing my head into a vast, ice cold ocean,
plunged, with no warning, no time
to catch my breath
as I flounder, trying to use my useless arms
to force all the salt water back into my eyes
before I drown, or
someone else notices
and I drown someone with me.
She drips onto me like water,
sometimes warm, like a soft
cascading waterfall,
sometimes cutting me like ice.
She drips onto me like water.
I am forever thirsty.
(She is no longer there.)

Oklahoma City, 11:00 PM

4/07

It's like Seattle here,
like London,
like all my impressionist dreams
which Monet could have painted better -
The white of bradford pears
made hazed and haloed by
stoplights peering cautiously through
the bulbs of a million candied
water droplets
descending like silk curtains,
light and billowing,
throwing a thick net of
liquid air, porous like igneous rock,
over my slick and glowing arms.

From Pittsburgh to Portland; a Love Poem

4/07 - This poem was published in the Sigma Tau Delta poetry journal, The Rectangle, in 2008. It's also the poem, in my mind, responsible for sparking the arguably most meaningful relationship of my life thus far. I think it only fair that I immortalize that poetic sentiment here, as well.

If we were men,
we almost-twin cities -
you with your music and greenery
and I with my industry, my dirt,
we'd make something,
you and I -
you would be soft
and fond of caresses,
leaving your cherrytree blossoms
scattered in the bed after making love
and I'd comb them from your hair;
and then my rivers would
meet your ocean,
and I would bridge you
like I would bridge the nation
to be next to you -
they say we'd get along,
They don't know I've loved you
and your cherrytrees all this time,
and share your rain,
and bridge you, I'll bridge you,
God, I'll bridge you.

My Mother's Mysticism

4/07 - this is the poem I've been looking for. This is the poem that inspired the title of my blog, and I have no idea why I never put it here. It took me a while to find it. It was written on the same plane flight, home from a Pittsburgh conference.

We're still in the clouds, mother,
and I think of you every time I
pray to God for his existence,
or feel the wind, or meta-wind -
something more than wind -
wrap itself around my hair
or hold my hand as I walk these streets alone.
You taught me these ideals;
these arms, like rocks,
you worked milk-smooth with the
love and tenderness
I try to reflect in my eyes as you did yours.

I was raised by a woman,
and some say it shows,
though you were no Amazon, and your
brown eyes were framed with a short stature,
rounded face I will never forget as it
hovered over my school-age,
tired eyes, like an angel in a dark green nightgown -
"Sprout," we used to call you,
when we were tall enough to see over your head.

But the rock on which you built me shines now
like translucent glass and streaming flowing waters,
and I want to look out of the window
into the clouds outside my plane
and let your face see mine completely,
so you could know your mysticism
lives on still, inside these liquid,
living bones.

Melancholia, don't call me, anymore.

4/07, on the same plane flight

Melancholia, don't call me, anymore;
My cell-phone is already packed full
of everyone else's problems, and
I've turned my ringer off - no, to vibrate,
in case my mother calls again.
I've checked my e-mail again and again
as I peel off the words and
attach them to my skin like an overcoat
of other people's emotions, from which
I refuse to be disconnected. Go ahead
and laugh at my sensitivity and
my armor of papered words and
selfless thoughts, but I cannot separate
myself from the world without
separating the world from myself, and
I fear the thought of being left alone
under the covers of my bed, drawn tight,
like a wiry pencil that can't write
back with disconnected words.
I fear the void, and being left behind,
just as much as I fear the familiar
ring of my cellphone, when one more
friend calls to dump on my the morning's
garbage, and leaving me without apology
to pick up my own pieces and wait
again for you, my melancholy, to
order me a rum and coke and play your cello
softly, at my bedside.

steamed milk

4/07, upon returning from an English conference in Pittsburgh

It's like a portal, a pathway,
a liminal, literal, white space
we have to pass through to achieve reality,
as if everything else we experienced
down below and miles away
was nothing but a dreamy fantasy.
Coming, and going, both,
I've seen this milky froth
dance just on the other side of my
pane of plexiglass, rendering
the very tips of the metal wings
almost invisible.
I am not anxious to be grounded -
I want everyone to meet me
in this sky of steamed milk
and find another fantasy
on the other side of these clouds.
Maybe I won't have the same reality
when and where we land -
but the world always assures me that
while good things are spontaneous,
the bad things never go away,
and the ground rushes up to meet us
with the speed of two
jet-turbo engines.