Archive for Poetry

Based on pg 44 from “Vorkosigan’s Game” – Lois McMaster Bujold (Sci-fi)

Culvert

Yanked out by the heavy legs
with dread of not knowing
what the other end would look like
Half a man?
No head?

Nothing so dramatic-
soggy parka and big prune face
eyes still wide, searching mine-
was this a suicide?
Was he trying to hide?

He was a private from supply
a man child in over his rank
playing in murky head water
just clogging up the pipes-
contents of pockets unspectacular.

It was the culvert that revealed
the reason for his end.
The siren of his mother’s
pastries dropped into the opening,
singing their song of home.

It takes a rake to scratch
that itch in the throat
you put there when
you first laid waste-
down feathers, your
pigeon toes, your crooked
teeth and every little
moment captured on my

retina, upside down and
reversed photo shop
mess – some image hungry
mosaic of cork board
collage and everything ever
done wrong, book-ended by

you and that itch that
can’t seem to get hold
and here we go again with
the Santa Ana winds in blown
churn of time, attacking with
wisteria, sage, blooming like
a weed accused of being

a flower. You just
linger on and on like the
smell of the recent
rain; linger on and on with what

you forgot that came
before and reminding that you’ll
be back again and it’s just
useless to fight the lingering
smell you dust the city with as
the heat become prickles and
I drift away on the wind.

I regret this rain I gave you and certainly don’t want it back. I need my floor space, my advice and the attention I bled to mingle in the water of your dissatisfaction. I mean, I need my things back, I need my card board peace of mind and for fuck’s rotten sake, let me let myself go.

Using pots to catch rain water here is long term? Isn’t that lazy? Tellingly uninterested? I think you like this drip of water, like to think you know what’s best for you and have the ability to time travel to keep me forever confused about appearances. Most of the time you’re translucent. I can’t stand all this list making.

You make me sit on the blanket way too long thinking I’m there as long as I’m nearby. But it doesn’t work like that, I need my things around me as much as I need you to stop this time shifting, these appearances, the smell of a summer shower at the beach…

I’m finished spilling these many pots. No more water, no more time traveling, no more blurry intentions. I want you standing next to me, elbow cocked and feet pointed like a duck. It is time. I need to dry.

I’m waking up again, over and over, to the slow slog of passion. This pit of communication knows no time frame, no ending date and there’s no expiration like milk or eggs. I’m not hurrying this time; not obsessing on your rooftop or watching through trees, instead I wait in the kitchen for the sound of the keys jangling and the door opening.

I’m breathing air finally and can smell your confusion and dissatisfaction – that blame we get for the apocalypse, the faint sweet of your pain. I know I left you there with those groceries, with that trunk full of paper bags…I have no excuse.

These are the only emotions that evoke expression through depression; the only time I write to you. If I could connect to these emotions more regular, you’d be sick of my baggage, my adage – these are the times of our lives, year after year of unrequited- oh, who am I kidding? Engaging you is just more of my violence.

You’ve proven that my assertion of asexuality untrue, shown my isolation a ruse. You’ve talked me into confidence finally after all, I thought it was all pressure and undue measure. I’m reluctant to retreat into my coma and lies and have now begun to face my empty fridge once again.

There’s no ghosts, no peripheral shadows, no shapes – the sky is not burnt orange and the landscape not scorched and dead. I realize I made it all up and created our armageddon to keep from having to tell you that I was scared of what I would become with or without you.

Everything you carry is so heavy and I didn’t do a damn thing to help you did I? No wonder you feel so hard and have bought so many groceries. Your kitchen is stacked, your counter overflowing with the rest of our lives and I can’t stop thinking about how long I could survive in your presence.

Go ahead, bring up the groceries, I’ll get the door for you this time, I promise.

That fucking box fan’s shrill spinning
fat mama jokes at high speed and she’s stomping
again to the heartbeat of my paranoid fantasies.

She got that late night dust bunny dream sickness
on spotless floors and what’s more is that someone
needs a hug and I’m blamed for a world of emotions I cannot control.

Christ, did I create all this in a noise cancelling
headphone of evening disenchantment? I don’t
remember plugging that cord when I set to rotating

my mania with the outside world. Yes,
on high, on low, on semi-permeable membrane of dust –
in fur, in breeze, in yonder to semi-please I scream

at the sky for relief in these times.

Knock one time for absolution, twice
for restitution then set those fans to spinning to keep
the outside world at bay.

That fucking box fan’s shrill spinning, still winning
as drones bone down into my marrow to cover
the fear that despite all the hell fire and smoke

she might ask me for something.

I let you catch me, you sullen bitch,
I’m half the fish I once was, wrinkled, tired,
resting on the bottom next to that old shoe and broken
bottles of pirate rum, whiskey and ipecac.

Call me Molidae little man, new tiny friend, my family
of molas are too big to fit in the family sedan so we
came to the shore on current by way of California like
everyone looking for riches, a better life; that one big

strike to leave it all behind and find true happiness
outside ourselves – the kind of happiness that comes from
flesh bereft of skin parasites and the hapless, pick-a-pocket
worms that make the life of the less fortunate a real

wretch and feckless romp. On ward expansion, farther west,
to the land of gold, to a world of rapture to capture a destiny
of mud and vertebrae evolved to a tail and guttural bump-

This is the American dream you rotten scum, you hoisted a tired
old fish to his death on shore. Be happy now you little angler,
you moldy sailor, you half pint in the rip tide of life. Bring on
your mallet, your gig and your pole to show me who is man.

I am the fucking Sun Fish whose body comes to and end too
soon, the missing vertebrae a testament to an evolution of the American dream.

The barking carpenter picked a house at random
He tore up the carpet, tore down the wallpaper
He ripped off the roof, filled the structure with water,
dug out the lawn, filled it with stickers, stood on the
furniture and floated through room to room…

The baby was first, it went out with the water through
side window. Mom was next, stuffed in a bobbing oven.
Dad was last, he’s wedged in the trunk of the family
sedan now rolling into the painted desert. Onward,
westward expansion, the golden hills, the oil stained

apartment complexes, the purple mountain majesty…
Onward past nationalities, past teepees, in through
the missing hospitals, the sagging bridges, down ruined
boulevards and yellowed billboards; into the mushroom
shaped cigarette smoke of the mighty Marlboro man – tough

guys on horseback; lovers on rodent mounts for boogeymen.

The Carpenter moves on, through house, through
hovel, out of the suburbs, into cities, tearing down
scrapers and libraries, making way for the new world
full of grateful subjects, bowing to their destroying boy
and filled with the hallow majesty of pop music.

I’m older than the rocks and my flesh
peels off at the slightest hint
of spring- this rotten colored blanket
on horseback of mold, of bloated wet underbelly-

I’m as tired as the wind that the flesh peels
off the tips of buttes; off Montana, off the Dakotas
Into the pristine waters I float through Minnesota the
home to the Mall of the Americas and the water

park to end all water parks – this is sluicing, this is
sloughing, I am a creek-er, a shaker, a translucent
image maker that makes these shimmering pictures of a
Rock Creek hillbilly, a New York Jew, a California surfer girl.

I am old and sliding, slipping that which the flesh
peels off, a skeleton man in high mountain swift – tearing
endometrium, menstruation, a dog that shakes the fleas
from its coat.

I will outlive you all.