| Mice, Cat Litter, Bird Feathers
It was the single eyebrow
and your painful limp
in March snow
It was your hungry smell
the way you sweated blood
and cried bitter wine
into the spring fresh air
It was the broken fingernail
the tangled hair
the old dirt
between your toes
It was the parts you shed
like a leper in a footrace
frozen bits floating down
the river of our love
I adored the fact that you were not whole
or clean
or happy
No one else could be so content
in my smoldering alleyway of lies
or so enthralled by my abstract hate
for supermodels full of teeth
So it was me you chose
in your dope filled haze
me you pulled into your dumpster
amid your dead roses and
shiny sour cat litter
And I was content to keep you there
content to help dismember you
remember you Sep-
tember you all through Fall
I would have been with you to the end
until there was nothing left of you to love
but the stink of your brilliant stolen loafers
But you couldn't wait
couldn't keep it together
had to fly
into pieces of abstract street music
without words
without words
out with the words
They're out and you're gone and I
wait and watch
for planes to crash into our alley
And the rats bring me dead
birds every spring
long flights for nothing
Their wing muscles are stiff
and it takes hours to
file them neatly on the high windowsills
My eyebrows have grown together now
and I only remember every other syllable
of every other word
you used to use
I stir them together in a greasy soup
can to make new versions of you
but the flavor never seems right
Perhaps you are made of mice
old cat litter
fresh bird feathers
and broken vowels
I suppose I'll leave our alley soon
leave the pigeons and the cats
cross the gum spotted concrete
brave the asphalt and the taxis full of wolves
If I do I'll check my eyes at the corner
and feel for dirt between my toes
I'll keep it in this soup can
with the bird feathers, the mice and
the cat litter that I still refuse to let go
I'll skip with your shadow along the center line
force a limp and twirl your hair
until this street collapses in laughter
And as this city spins to a stop
I'll catch enough consonants
floating on the breeze
to write your name in flame
across this tiny snatch of sky
that you left
in my tattered
coat pocket
Faces
you have so many faces
he said
and all of them beautiful
now here is one he hasn't seen
your face when he is gone
how did he know?
Ancient Remains
They found my fossilized remains
while excavating a freeway on-ramp.
They were encased in volcanic
rock, millions of years old.
In fact you can still see the site today,
abandoned within the cloverleaf of I-89.
Of course, after the construction
all that remains is a vague outline,
a foot, some hair, a couple teeth.
And there isn't even a plaque
to memorialize the find.
When I drive past my remains,
camouflaged in the army green rock
twenty feet above the roadway,
I try to remember myself and
my life lived among centuries of extinction.
But every year the rain washes a
a bit more of me away.
Freezing ice dislodges
a tooth or a patch of skin.
Birds carry off my hair for their nests.
The fallen bodies on Everest
lie trailside for decades,
climbers glancing uncomfortably down
to see them become more windblown and tattered
with each passing summer.
Soon my remains will be completely gone,
and only the hum of traffic will remain.
Tooth and bone and hair will
go the way of all that decays.
Nothing but dust and broken fragments
lost amidst construction rubble
and plans for the mall expansion.
Alternatives to the Chainsaw
I'm waiting for the brick
to fall from the sky, or
the earth to open up
at my feet. Anything
to scatter the beads
of this perfectly ordered
and far too peaceful life.
I am dissatisfied
with this contentment
annoyed
by my good fortune.
To the point I can barely restrain from
sticking my finger in a light socket
or pounding a ten penny nail
into my forehead.
On the news today
I heard a story of a man in Japan
who claimed to have been attacked
by a chainsaw gang
who cut off both his legs
in a violent orgy of destruction.
It was later determined
that the wounds were self inflicted.
How much adventure
did his life lack
that in the end all he could do
was hack off his legs
with a chainsaw?
Had we met that morning
we could have battered each other
with fists and sticks.
Pounded our faces bloody.
Bit and tore and scratched,
then held each other afterward
and laughed.
That would have been my gift to him.
And before I pick up
that chainsaw myself I will
seek a kindred soul to batter.
Or pin my arm under a
boulder, gnaw it off,
and become a master
of the one-handed haiku.
| | Taste of Spring in an Early Winter Chill
When I was little I yearned to be big.
But I got big all too fast and soon I was dreaming
of what it would be like to be little again.
When puberty chased me down I celebrated
becoming a man, until I began to sense
what it required. As a young man
I lusted after the gray bearded sages
and balding biker men who rolled through
town every spring. Now my beard is catching frost
and I see my lost youth in the eyes of the kids
at the bar who only want to drink and fuck
all night long. I am big now dreaming of
being little and so I retaste my youth
on the lips of an eighteen year old
who doesn't yet know who he is.
I know who I am and I remember who I was,
but in his naked embrace the two are not
as separate as I supposed.
And who would have thought that
in an early winter chill
I am so content to be
so fractured.
George
Ink and hardware paint upon a canvas of my desire.
You draw me upon your skin and pierce me like
the bitter tang of cigarettes on your tongue.
Were I to sketch myself as a panel in your story or
hang upon you, my weight pulling against tender flesh,
would you carry me, or wear me?
I could lift my feet from the ground, pierce soft skin,
slide through dark blood and emerge shiny bright.
I would hide silently beneath clean linen and
drink in the scent of your tortured flesh.
Hiding from the world until
you let sunlight fall upon
your ink and hardware.
Fractions
You are half of his heart
and half of mine
so when we kiss
there is more of you
than either of us
Distant Thunder
I. The First Year
Somewhere, off our mountain,
the rumors say old
battles continue.
But here the sun is warm,
and distant wars mean
little to hummingbirds.
News can be slow to reach us,
and harder still
to comprehend.
Yes, we know they are dying still.
But the planes don't fly over
here anymore,
and although the thunder can sometimes sound
like a thousand marching feet, the storms
mostly pass us by, and do not stop to rain.
So we water the garden,
and we are putting in
a new window box this year.
We have plenty of birdseed,
and power outages don't
get noticed until dusk.
Strangers on the road
with dark and weary eyes
often stop to look up our hill.
We see them, but look away to watch
the sunset. And when we look
again, they are gone.
II. The Second Year
We gather wild berries
that grow in the shaded
gully behind our house.
I find more, so
when you're not looking
I put some of mine into your pail.
We eat them together in
the silent morning air, a sweet
breakfast gone too soon.
Warm sunlight streams through
the open windows
of our sleeping home.
We've long since stopped, you
and I, flipping useless light switches,
or listening for the hum of the refrigerator.
We've become accustomed to the silence.
Especially since that day
that the last of the batteries died.
That first year we talked incessantly.
Shared our lives and tears
on days far too long.
But we share mostly silence now.
And when we talk
it is of counted canned goods,
the mushrooms we'll risk, where
we saw the last rabbit, and
how much water weighs.
The sky is always blue
now, with never a white line,
and rarely even a cloud.
I remember when you used to say
how useless you thought
it was to go on.
But now we just do, because
to lie down and stop
just feels that much harder.
I try to feel, to love, your
sleeping form. And I seem
to remember when I did.
But now there is only time
to keep the knives sharp, and hope
they won't be needed in the night.
III. The Last Year
To find you in
the forest I only need
to follow your laugh.
It's not the last thing
I thought I'd lose,
your laugh.
But it is what
remains of our once
endless decade.
Your laugh,
and a few more days
to count together.
Your laugh,
and a shady tree.
With a squirrel
who watches
as we sit down
to wait.
Dissolution
Open palmed to the gray sky
you accept your wounds.
The salt of the world's oceans
no longer stings your chest,
or perhaps you just don't care
anymore.
On the turtle's back you rest
and release the butterflies of reason,
one after another.
If you could wash away your body
one small piece at a time,
you would begin with these eyes
that no longer see beauty,
or this tongue that tires
of lapping at waves of pain.
But flesh cannot melt,
not in this world.
So you will abide in silence,
palms open,
dreaming of rain.
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