Thursday, August 30, 2012

making my escape


the opening of the day is golden
crimson burning through and i
taste private metered segments of
it collected through previous hours
and on the remembered texture of a
new tongue in brooklyn
i'm the bottom bit of the last beer of the night
spun in my mouth before
licking handwriting into you and
down your neck
or not
maybe didn't happen

hours of the day colored and
repurposed by disintegrating spurs
of the moment meet me here
along the long dark street where i
once lived and rarely visit
always recalled in nighttime as if
daylight never weighed it down as
now it hovers heavy and sacred
always in bronze twilight
always hollowed out and wet with
summer air
always the same bar

with the same space in the back
i'm late to find you and your one
drink grin mellifluous and easy
when i sit down we are away from
those next to us
later on i am thinking that we are
farther away
we waver stray

abandoning laconic clues to me
where the fabric is softer and
warmer underneath it your
voice raspy and leading

farther away i don't meet you
or never have
or have
or never thought to come
not really looking for anything
nothing really found or surrendered beyond
roundabout glances and the feel of
old streets pivoting near
hair pushes away softly and
gives
walking through the shameless
laughter of late night basketball skirmish
pausing and giving ourselves to
calm
until the breeze is too close to you
as now it hovers heavy
i could walk endlessly like this
dreaming and not sure and
next to you and afar
the proximity of you and the old
neighborhood and my own
footsteps cascade reassuring
echoes as the season dies slow

headlight eyes scurry and scare the
shadows down the avenue
i find myself in step with them and
join their
road
to
leave

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

graffiti and old cars

every thing alive and dead becomes
due for the next life
we wear them in colored hair
in gym minutes
in long draws on a craft beer
momentary lapses of reasons are
countries under flaked wheels
destroyed by this illusion this
destroys and leaves all pieces real and
handled by those arrived
before we arrived to destroy

it could be any stolen morning
destroy destroy
laughter heard through
headphones jockeys for space and
attention to
take the requisite steps to
approach her (though longing
for new nighttimes she inhales
through her nose fiercely and
repurposes my weaponry almost
absentmindedly as a car
almost devastatingly in her
refusal to speak even once destroys and
it could be any lost conversation with
her until
gutted eternity) though longing though
only occurring in the friction of
strangled time and never
approaching her only
in this destroy
destroy destroy

speaking with an old friend though
longing she
knows what i loved of her
most definitively is the same strength she
nimbly produces in my idiotic wake
and the silence is more articulate
than my jagged aching destroys
me though longing like

the old faded paint of the
neighborhood's names hallucinate their
former colors and summon themselves
to form in the sunlight
remembering their own radiance when
the nighttime still encounters them
peeled of splendor though longing

i could be that hungry image
finding her elements in the cast
shadows of cars destroys
i        run           around         the           neighborhood
painting and signifying the recollected
variations as much as i
speak to her or reach
conclusions built of parts fresh
from the factory and
unknown by any touch

everything is new and
nothing
repairs my
machinery image in the
darkened
glass
sways

Sunday, August 12, 2012

river

it is that rare night which finds me
limber-smiled
brokentooth bold
distracted hands open to the sincere
wordbuzzed and calmhearted

encounters at the other end of friday
unspooling smalltalk and bon mots at strangers
at the bartop a gorgeous blonde in formfitting fabric
positions
her hand up for a hifive and i meet it with no
small grace
she chitterchatters
we muse mockingly on the bartender as another is tapping my
shoulder with a nervous joke i gratefully
consume with my first sip of beer when

my drink arrives i am not lingering with them but
returning to my table and other faces
her tattooed arms are young but somewhat masculine
wearing bakery years on her small rocknroll frame with
virginia hair pushed back and sunburned and

in her eyes maybe a cool river of forgiveness that isn't really hers
and
as if gathered on the shores of interlocked strangers
where the essences of decommissioned loves circle in the salted wind it
pours forth unhindered by the self-conscious airs i employ

and at times the bar becomes isolated in its noise
and we find pockets in it which are
like blooms
or intimate theaters and

i find that i am less conversing with her than
with other lost women
i wonder if i always do that

i am speaking with a distant love
with an envelope of braided hair and photographs
touching the freckled cream of her hip when i am touching her hip when
i am touching her soft
echoes of movement that duplicate and expand in response
to the noise and airconditioning

we steal the food off of somebody's abandoned plate
conspire and tease
drunk and pleasant
bewitched and summoned by these semi-transparent yearnings

in aforementioned virginia hair which smells of cornstalk and handrolled
cigarettes yet
other women manifest and fold their fingers and unfold and
repair me
medicinal ghosts of this burial ground where we
all connect if only to add commentary to our roadmaps made
precious by lost time

she stays with me too long i surmise
i leave her with the newly materialized guy she doesn't want

the one she was supposed to know