How we held hands and cried below a window

filled with light, branches bending the wind.

You wore your blue soul, just the way I like it,

the one with the open back, folds above the hips,

a litle string to pull and find God.

You spent the morning in the Egyptian room,

touching the black sarcophagus , flirting

with the docents, as you remained unnoticed

and passed gas among those

so long dead. So long dead.

Why did you write it this way?

There are better words.

No. These words. This soul. This exhibit. This dress.

And light. A poem without light

is like skinny dipping in the toilet:

indecent, obscene, just the way you like it.

The only way they want it.

oscillating bars of steel and concrete.

Each back is purple from beatings,

untouchable flesh.

They begin the whistles and clicks

of the insane–without tongues,

there remains a bird-like alveolar pop

in their mouths, the sound

like a playing card  tapping the spokes

of a bike wheel. They press fingers

to each throat, feeling for a buzz,

much as honeybees circle augurs

in the warehouses of the damned.

Most are sent for assimilation:

they learn to write long poems

on what they think about while mating.

The keepers know when they are in heat:

they purr in soft z, the skin shimmers

hieroglyphically, their tails point

toward the smoke trails of Icarus.

One of them, a young one,

continues to have memories

of the time before the great passage:

a ballerina on a thin cobweb spun by god.

She remembers the gardens

behind the eyes of each soul:

she is sent away for genital mutilation.

Soon, she will reappear at Wal-Mart

to dust fake plants with a small broom

made in China.

I might be taken down by a sniffle,

or a strong hand could do the job, a kiss

from the wind of creation. It’s my soul.

A stranger before birth. It is morning

on the starry banks of eternity–

we undress in the first room we made love.

You undress. I am dead. I am not born

for a long time. You are empty, vanquished,

heading home. There are excuses. I know.

We are made for them, but today let us

hold hands and pray. Forgiveness — the only

miracle we need, is on down the bend,

on the other side. Come on, let’s rub hands–

spark again, later we will learn to sin.

Your movements are watched:

They have already found you.

This is the only certainty,

and will remain the reason for poetry.

Prophets Alone in Hell, Book IV, 21-3.

All the back rubbing is over, and the poet’s hands

turn ethereal – their eyes begin to water the land

and run off  into white space. They travel down

the Colorado, staring at its banks

for hours, hoping for stanza breaks that never unveil.

Their despair nearly complete: their condition –

terminal. The movement of water is sufficient for now,

its reflections the last place on earth

they can touch and find themselves

completely blameless. Lights appear as they float

near Las Vegas. At night and they huddle down

for warmth and secrecy. They intertwine like pieces

of polished driftwood, their flesh blemished and lined

with the tattoos of passages they must touch

to remember. The leader, the weakest one,

encourages silence, meditation, and the slow cadence

of the heartbeat to soothe. The latest attempt at religion –

a failure. Absent a god, they have no reason to praise.

When they stare into the water, they see nothing

but clouds that spell and ripple themselves to sleep.

Depression and loneliness begin to gnaw the strong

into silence — the lame accept death with smiles

and slow nods of agreement. The dead are pushed

off the rafts without words, the echoes

of each splash ripple up the canyon walls

and outward to space. In the vague recesses

of what is left for cognition, they want to be taken.

They lie down to fossilize and fixate on the sky,

hoping for a  last glimpse of the shadows that circle

and descend to them, the only gods that deliver

anything close to salvation – a temporary presence

of physical comfort, a moment of cool air –

an absence that cannot be named.

She wore well

coming on slowly

until she allowed you

to journey her.

She wore her beauty

like a hidden treasure,

all natural and fresh.

She rarely spoke

but her eyes

held hidden messages

waiting to be revealed.

She revealed

if you took the time

to unwrap and notice.

She moved gracefully

like a loose ribbon

in a dance.

She was shy

unless you were lucky

enough

to be her love.

She was fluid

like a silk tunic.

She wore the world

like a loose garment

knowing

she would remove it

when it was time.

scribbled within her  body.

He wanted to dig down,

examine their origin,

curious to know why her race

marked her for this fate

on this world of ink and blood.

He had thought other worlds

escaped the bondage of form.

He had long ago grown weary

of people and eschatology.

As he began another incision,

careful to follow with a cloth

to absorb fluids,

he remembered the last time

he witnessed her body

sprawled on his bed. The sunlight

perfect, the afternoon

no different from centuries ago:

drifting sands, chaff and wheat,

caravans for spice and coffee,

a strip of moonlight to know

the right time to enter.

He rubbed her now,

with oils and perfumed herbs,

no longer able to distinguish

a difference between pleasure

and the poetry that shaped

her beauty:  the lines

recited until she stopped

for breath and meaning,

exactly the way he remembered

and nothing left but silence.

for Mrs. Burns

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Matthew 18: 6

If I could start over and get it right this time

I would begin by killing my kindergarten teacher,

Mrs. Burns. She was a bitch. Her gaze was hot,

and so was her hand, the one she used to spank

on the first day of school. I could not tie my shoes.

Now, just one shoelace would do. I would tie it

around her neck with a slip knot and pull it tight

till her face turned purple and her eyes popped

out of this poem, stuffed down her throat,

the apple I never gave her.

the sunny day they met

at the four-way stop

and everything changed.

The motorcycle catapulted

and flipped

above its driver, finally landing

on top of him. I could see his legs,

the way they moved

and soon,

the way they stopped.

The red convertible

slammed into a tree

and turned over on its side,

where two young

women lay on the ground.

One of them was talking,

telling the other, over and over,

how sorry she felt.

She held her hands up to her face.

Someone ran out of a house

with blankets

and covered them.

She was screaming now.

I wanted to go home,

and later I did,

driving right through it.

but after months of debate

he went forward with the notion

that  it was time to record

his most unusual observations:

Made contact with a race of aliens.

Subject was female, complained

of pain in the lower abdomen.

Diagnosed cervical cancer.

It all comes down to the cervix.

He was nearly certain of it.

He remembered his travels

after completing his last degree.

He waited for hours on the side

of Mt. Ararat for the solar eclipse,

short ring of fire, long circle of life.

In the valley below him,

he noticed a pair of goats mating

in the forced dusk of a twilight

no one else would ever believe,

his mind certain of images

no one should see.

for Ana Rina

Tonight blue light rose above us

to the fields of space itself,

to the heights where our eyes fail

and only prayers can  see.

In the spaces we live

we light candles, we make stars

come alive inside of us,

and each one, one day,

became a son, a world

we orbit now in love.

We see them now

in our dreams, for in love

our path has been written

by the hand of god.

I follow your eyes upward,

and as beauty recognizes beauty,

a peace comes over me

and through me,

the only feeling that will outlast

the night, the vision

of your full eyes and your soul,

open to nature’s glory,

always my one dream of flight,

my vision of heaven.

a strange sucking sound

like thunder. When the wind

blows  in your direction

you can see them

huddled in open fields

waiting to be taken.

Bodies caked

with dried mud,

rubbing harmonically,

they stand like stalagmites

made of decayed deposits

and layers of licked

salt. Heat lightening

in the distance

flicks across their foreheads,

where the absence of eye

lashes and hair follicles

creates tattoos of distant

skylines, where prophets

gaze upon them –

open eyes and mouths –

each tongue balanced

on the edge of poetics

meant for an unborn god,

on a frozen canvas

draped in darkness.

after Thomas Merton

As I pulled away slowly
feeling so holy
God knows I was feelin’ alive

And now the sun’s comin’ up
I’m ridin’ with Lady Luck

Tom Waits

Life is on our side.

I have one little cell inside

that I can’t track down.

I hope he is the one

that sings

when the sunlight lifts

your eyelashes

across the horizon.

I would like to see you

this way, on the tip

of my brush,

not yet on the canvas,

about to come alive

beneath breath and whisper.

But you are the one,

the one I can’t track down.

It does not matter.

I can see you

just down the road.

I can hear your voice

cut through the wind.

You are beautiful,

and life is on our side.

afraid to listen

to what I’ve become.

I hear the same tune,

the same one that echoes

when I am alone.

Do not answer this song.

I want the notes to bleed

for me, just once,

I want my thick sense to tell me

all of their names.

Let this be chamber music,

let this be the soul,

but what I hear cannot be sung ,

what I need cannot be written,

and the soul remains undone.

They move quickly out of Manhattan

via the Holland Tunnel

into the desolation of eastern New Jersey:

abandoned factories, railroad tracks,

dying towns—stop to rest

where the light enters broken

windows.

They find Gealie’s still open for bad coffee,

unfiltered Lucky Strikes, stale donuts.

They move at night,

and by day huddle in dark

hollows and rub each other’s backs.

When in doubt, they follow

alpha markers: poets know they can rut

out of season and still exchange

syllables. Words are born along the way

and held in their arms

to be unraveled later,

if they find time.

They cross the Ohio on stolen barges,

and move into the lower hills

to find cover with the deer. They understand

the dangers involved: to cross fields

unseen. Occasionally a poet dies—

they leave a line or two in the soil

to mark time and place:

language and landscape blur

under the bleating sky,

and another stanza is left

in the unnameable spaces of language.

Later, they are seen herding west

out of western Arkansas into the lower

grasslands of Oklahoma.

From our helicopters, they look like

crawling Chinese letters—their black tags

give them away. We take them down

with dart guns. They breathe close

to the ground, like puddles

of moonlight: the skin

over their ribs stretches and glistens

rabidly.

Our task is easy: clip thumbs

tongues, index fingers. Some schools

of thought say we should

take their feet as well,

for they could scrawl the earth

with heels and toes.

Maybe it is pointless:

with six fingers left

they could still press thoughts

into flesh. Maybe

the wind and rain

will wash away what we call

rutting, but for now,

the only language left

will be our own.

by railroad, highway, and foot bridge.

Cliffs swagger above the gorge,

moss patches smutting the granite.

A filmmaker plans a drama here.

He has entitled it River Sad.

I’m to star as the bad guy,

an elderly doper who kidnaps

a brassy young couple, drugs them,

ties the handsome blond hero

to the railroad while he ravishes

the woman in primary colors.

The man frees himself and rushes

to the cabin where the doper leers,

but a flood crushes down the gorge

and flushes everyone out to sea,

where unless we spout  fins and gills

we drown in wide-screen glory.

Silly plot, but the filmmaker pays

in cash. I knot the drugged young man

to the railroad, then drag the woman

to the cabin. As we pretend

to destabilize our bodies

before the groaning camera

a diesel horn toots. Surely

the director warned the railroad

to stop all trains for the day.

We dash to the bridge and discover

only certain parts of the actor

we left writhing in his bonds.

I peer down the length of the gorge

and detect a rumble of train

retreating, satisfied, and notice

that where the river dips underground

a rope-pull ferryboat crosses

and some grinning fellow waves.

]]> http://www.unseenwhispers.com/2009/11/01/river-sad/feed/ 0 http://www.unseenwhispers.com/2009/10/30/coffeehouse/ http://www.unseenwhispers.com/2009/10/30/coffeehouse/#comments Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:11:04 +0000 Anne Heraghty http://www.unseenwhispers.com/?p=1637 I find myself ordering today’s feature:
Peanut Butter Mocha,
the Pina Colada of coffees.
I place it on the table
alongside my plain, black spiral
and sharp number twos.
It feels awkward, diamonds on cardboard.

Hemingway would scoff, a steaming mug
of Big Buck in his weathered hand
to carry him through paragraphs.
Bishop would lean on Sumatra’s
rich and earthy flavors.  Yeats might
choose Black and Tan out of spite.
Collins, Four Seasons-he was
just listening to Vivaldi
this morning while shaving.
Everyone avoids Jamaican Me Crazy,
its Hallmark name
the kiss of death.

I take one draw, through fluffy whipped cream
and leave it alone.
I think ahead to lunch,
the notebook again on the table,
and the prospect of its simple cover
perfectly complimented by the yin-yang
of a Co-jack grilled cheese.