my walk home

flush with the recent purchase of books
waiting heavily and cool in their wrappings,
i descend into the pavement’s brightness,
down into the exhaust and sweat of traffic
and smoke from grilling at the taqueria.
every pitcher bought earns a free cinco tee,
and the al fresco crowd is getting friendly.
and then i have rounded the corner,
pushing through quiet splashings of arabic
in the alley behind al tarboush, where old men
drink tea and grow older, smoking.
and then i am jiggling the deadbolt,
throwing my hip against the sunbaked backdoor,
bursting into the kitchen in time
to turn off the oven.

transit

oh god, i do not miss the lust and fire
of my youth so much as the presence,
the shimmering immediacy of action
and the footprints of freshly piled history.
older now, i live in a lean-to constructed
of found objects, shelter against
too much absent thoughtfulness.
if you are hell-bent on calling me out
of this place, at least call me into another
as well. at least give me that impression.
i will not rest well without a place.

gratitude

the life quotidienne: rise,
stretch, shower, shave, style, dress.
perform. receive donors and critics
in the dressing room. beg weariness.
remove everything from my body
that isn’t attached. dig a tunnel
into the coldest parts of the sheets.
fill it with my self, begin to dream.

losses

my ears are ringing with
the silent spaces of november:
sounds which are not sounds
bind themselves to one another
in a chain not unlike a song.
it is almost like the song
of squirrels on the roof.
it is nearly the same as
the song of falling fruit.
it is practically no different
than the song of branches
tapping against one another,
groaning without words.
it is like the throb of my heart
when every bird is still
and i think of hibernation,
loneliness, and the coming snows.
it is like these, except the sounds
are not sounds at all but silences.
and this song is not a song,
only the echo of one i once knew.

solemnity

look before you leap,
the lesson of the cat.
leap before you look,
the lesson of the dog.
leap, leap and leap,
the lesson of the bird.
dear god, surrounded
as i am by such wisdom,
how did i ever learn
to sit so unblinkingly
like something dead
while my heart beats
and beats and beats?

kindness is a trap i set for myself.

i may hand you a parcel tomorrow,
containing a feather and a shell,
some advil, a sprig of yew.
there will also be a note written
by hand on an old envelope:
the sun will rise again,
not long from now.
i tell you because i know
you will want to open everything,
but it isn’t for you.
the parcel is for myself,
and i would like to ask you
to return it to some future me
if you see me walking alone
at night, under the moon.

off my chest

i would like to confess a few things
my secret affection for tabloids
and for music with no words

the inside of my mouth often
tastes like the flavor of sad
salty but crunchless like boiled peanuts

sometimes i avoid hugging anyone
because of sudden fear
that my elbows will no longer bend

before we get down to brass tacks
i want to tell you that it gets better
but with me sometimes it gets worse too

i sometimes imagine on either side of me
two great owls who know the future
but will not speak; this too should be known.

when i am sick

when i am sick i become very clumsy.
when i am sick i wake at night, and the sheets
are heavy with perspiration and tangled.
when i am sick, my childhood reappears in grayscale,
the grainy footage of dreams like cinema newsreels.
when i am sick my ears slowly fill with wax
and my voice spreads paper-thin; communication suffers.
when i am sick, everyone wishes i were not.
when i am sick, i become one with mankind
or else something completely foreign to them,
filled with ephemery and the beauty of death.
when i am sick, my mind wanders.
when i am sick, i go to sleep with the sun
and rise before the dawn, stumbling,
compelled by simple objectives: to blow my nose,
to make tea, to pee, to check the thermostat.
when i am sick, hot water taps refuse to cooperate,
the mail never comes, and the nurse is always going away.
when i am sick, i see rings around streetlights
and around the headlights of approaching cars.
when i am sick and the night is kind,
i drive out to the grass at the end of the runways
and see the great planes accept their heaviness,
bending, as i watch, towards the pull of the earth
where families await their passengers, or most of them.
when i am sick, i can enjoy long stretches
of silence and stillness and mental inactivity.
when i am sick and you come to meet me
in that quiet house, from beyond the older seas:
do not come with too much light,
do not come with too much healing,
but bring a little wine (and bring a little oil)
and comfort me with the song of tomorrow.

monday dawn

the week returns
again i rise small ageless
cycling through the moons