Recorded Ourselves

It was laying in a box waiting.
All the memory recorded on a tape.
Disposable.
Or priceless if you listened.

"Hey that was me," the words of youth.

What form now wraps around my heart
like rope, squeezing under
the bulging weight of feelings without words,
of all the loss
and the sound of not knowing in your voice.

Something of existence that lives on,
some leave behind of us
so the world knows the story,
so it cares that we had names.
Such is the deep living pain,
to leave nothing.
So human the sadness
and the hope.
Such is a hollow, hollowness
all round and quivering with fear.
To die alone.
To die out.
To be nothing but dust and
memory, briefly
before you fade from Earth.

Fall Your Rain O’er My Desert Mountain, Dear

-->

Each surrounding peak slopes sharply upward 

spilling black talus down its ribs

through fields of pale green prickly pear 

clinging to the mountainous terrain. 

Occasionally, as in a rhythm, the hills cleft near their precipice

and rise again in two discrete masses, 

revealing remote canyons unreachable but for birds and wild unknown animals. 

Local rumors speak of hidden prehistoric ecologies 

harboring giant and tropical flora never seen by human eyes, 

of secret grottoes where sweetwater spills from split-rock faces 

and tumbles into dark pools that lay in permanent shadow, 

Of jaguar that hunt there, 

enormous cats somehow strayed off course on their journey from distant southern regions, 

drinking from remote, perennial water tanks, to come down the mountain 

only for the occasional range cow.

Life After Death

In the physics and math library of a university I don’t attend,

waiting in the quiet, pretending, I fit in here too.

We thought I should get out, get some air

look for work from in here

or someplace similar.

And there are long lengths of books that smell as books should

but say something new and not fiction.

I’d get lost inside tangents and cotangents

Greek symbols meaning actions, meaning

do something.

Analytic geometry and calculus.

I have that book on my shelf.

on my desk next to html and German and French

and other things I should learn but haven’t yet.

Inside are problem sets and explanations.

And in the margins, on occasion,

a small pencil mark, a circle round a question,

A scrap of paper with a calculation.

These are yours and Mom’s too, according to the two names

scrawled on the inside cover.

You were good at this

space in which I’m an imposter.

Where I sit hands open to equations with proofs.

And what do I do?

The proof of life after death is an equation about energy,

where life is energy and death

And the symbols are actions unknown yet.

You were good at this too.

Imagine the day
when your name is spoken
for the last time
ever

Back Home

At night, my headaches,
and I still don't know
good living
from social routine.
But I do know now
the way the sun lays across the grape fields
and the way the bubbles are small
when the stuff is good.
And where to sleep in
and when to wake early.
And how risotto and gnocchi
should feel in my teeth.
And if I'm good,
and quiet,
I can hear the good living
breathing in you
and smell the sweet life
in us going on with the day.

Closing Down the Market

I want to wear the wares of people

who made them with their hands
Give the paper money I earn a shape,

a new color, a reason

made meaningful by an exchange of

hand to soiled hand. 

When the market closes, the tents

at half mast, metal poles

collapsed for packing, old suitcases,

colored bins of plastic, copper

earrings, bruised sweet apples, folded

tapestries with rough

patterns asleep, prints finger-browsed

sorted and left behind in a

Sunday hunger satisfied only

when your design is her desire.

For him to survive it must be

paid for, not merely

admired.

Nightlights

The lights inside houses at night

Are all listening, no sounds

But the nods of passing shadows and

Small sorrows,

Your broken loneliness beneath the lights,

The pale rising of a new day and a soon

Forgotten fog.

I know love and it knows me by

The distance that separates

Wanderer from homemaker, doorknob

From trodden pavement.

Economy of scale

Social marooning, USA,
without ships or transport
an unwalkable distance between
an unhealthy infrastructure,
but expanding. Economy
demands expansion.
Breathlessly growing. So tired.
To survive the day you need water
food, sleep, accessibility.
Walking shoes once but no more.
Once supporting muscle and lifting,
strain and exertion,
the human day to day.
Now specialty cross-training, aerobic activity
outside the day to day.
Marooned by the vastness of this vastest of places.
Contiguous but deserted sprawl.
Infertile and swollen, greasy and oiled,
who can inhabit or survive can sit still.

What is this lonely place you see
no refuge here
no legacy
no arc of blood
no continuity
but a special kind of violence
a creeping dizziness
released by razors
propelled by a pressure
that builds beneath your harbor
while you relish your calm
knowledge stacked to the rafters
you will find no quarter here
it lay in the shadows
it lay in the depths
always there,
patient,
solemn,
unrelenting.

14,696 +/-

Mockers in the cedar brake,
Ruby-Throats in the bonnets and brush.
Pseudacris crucifer audible over the whine
of a neighbor-kid's dirtbike.
All in the ember-glow of dusk.
The brakes take to shadow,
ambitious jutting in the days' remains.
I walk inside to grab a calculator,
to tally the setting suns-
Fourteen thousand six hundred
plus ninety-six spins of the globe,
give or take.
I walk back outside, and she asks
"What are you doing with that calculator?"
"Writing a poem," I say.
It is mostly dark, and I can't distinguish
bluebonnets from paintbrushes
or see the nubile shoots
of brushy bluestem and clover.
A Cardinal makes a last-ditch call-
Tew! Tew! Tew! Birdy-birdy-birdy-birdy?

Right Place, Right Time

During last Friday's beery midnight drive
up the winding escarpment road,
I heard a song by Ray Wylie Hubbard
that said something to the effect of

"Don't let your expectations
get bigger than your gratitude."

and as I drove through Bee Cave,
my eyes began combing
the plazas, malls and storefronts
for a tattoo shop.

Had one existed, I would be sitting here
in my office, on a Monday,
with a smarting palm.

Northward, in Kind

I took you for granted,
my city full of mountains I couldn't understand,
and streets, and water and lives.

Beauty takes time to settle in
too eager when it's young, too
self conscious.

I moved miles and years to find home,
a cold basement in the ghetto,
a loveless traveling
from rural to urban to southern
to wherever we go next.

A dream. A cycle. A barrier between
me and you, Seattle.
A nightmare, waiting.
A love I cannot have, and yet
there is no love without leaving,
and regret.

Alone, Southward

Two months go by-
passing fast,
life.
Lunch breaks in burning heat
rubber on the concrete
a/c running,
music playing,
a loss for words.

Note

Did I not notice

the grainy ghost-blue
through the slanted louver,
its handover, white to auburn,
and the brief blindsiding
by golden translucence
and its redeeming other-worldliness
as viewed from: the front door,
the river-rock driveway,
the rutted dirt-road,
the winding skyway,
the farm-to-market road,
and the descent into/ascent from
the upper Barton Creek watershed?

If I did not notice,
please perform
resuscitation.

Damn the Office Window

Another one, given
to a succession of interruptions
and the usual absences.
Lesser devotions,
barely materialized
and strung together
with good intention.

Subtitles. Submenus.
Subtitles of subtitles
and submenus of submenus.
Subselves of subselves.
Attentions halved and quartered,
diced and minced.
Parenthetical, variable,
an algebraic snarl.

Outside, the mottled sky.
The sway of Plateau Live Oak.
The Lesser Goldfinch fumbling
over dandelion bloom.
Don't look. It will distract
from distractions and sub-distractions,
from the succession of interruptions.

Weathering

I hold my body in a single, tense position for 6-8 hours per day in 60-90 minute stretches. Periodically, I wet my lips with lukewarm water, then back to the tap tap clicking, copying and pasting what I've found to be emailed or shared at our weekly check-in. And this is my dream job. Was my dream job.
I'm living my dreams.
At night, we sometimes walk. Humid, summer air. My insides tingle from what happens to insides when they sit all day. I talk too much. You tire of my company.
At home, I rotate between reading, cleaning and typing. Searching for friendship in research or email. Sometimes I play piano. I blog. I queue things up. I Facebook and Myspace.
Scrabulous. WordTwist.
Update my status:
She is procrastinating,
Wishing for old friends,
Too busy to be on here,
Tired, at the library,
At home, hungry,
Lost, missing things that are no more,
Always thinking of the future or the past.
We've made some friends. We drink wine and watch youtube. We wonder why we swell. Why the malaise, the yellowed skin, the loss of interest in
things we once found so interesting.
At night, I employ ergonomics to comfort muscle spasms and carpel tunnel syndrome.
We give up meat, dairy, gluten, alcohol.
We search for meaning.
We read about nutrition. Food blogs. Youtubes of juice fasting.
It is a foreign language:
NPR, NYT, Democracy Now, global warming, internet porn, Youtube, Blogspot, Netflix, Facebook, Gmail, Webmail, Myspace, Bandcamp,
Wii.
we
get carried away with typing.
Modernity.

Disperse In Reverse

Nostalgic for the present-time.
Strangely, this very moment,
washed-out color,
light and dark, blare and eclipse
beyond recognition,
symptomatic of neglect.
It is a remnant self
in remnant surroundings,
the rest having taken flight
or succumbed to the tug
and allure of place-names
that seem greater than my own,
or to the tectonic grind
between agoraphobic spaces
and claustrophobic confines.

Retrieve the scatter, call it home.

Keene

Hurry, you may miss

the train.

You hate to wait

among passengers

and be reminded you

are one, must yet be.

You toss your smoke to the street.

You forgot to gather up the things

that fill suitcases on this platform

on every platform—

I dig from your jeans

a lighter, a slim wallet, not even a receipt

Of the shadows you reconcile against the real things—

bourbon, bottles, the secrets of your genes

tossed to the laundry with the boxers you wore,

called clean.

Your life is an unseen to you

as mine is to me—

I held you just the same.

I know that

from moving

windows for miles

you steel yourself to

solace, steal

a fleeting peace

to pour on your

parched, restless lips,

to summon the night

and your distant dreams.

Untitled, November 2011