Where Dead Voices Gather

If songs can never tear down

his cardboard coffin's white walls

or split plastic seams and spill

his gray ashes and bleached grains

into a man's living shape,

then let words brighten the black,

fill the mouth, and stir his tongue.

If I listen to him speak

and again hear his timber

like a new buzzsaw purring

or drill bits sinking in wood,

its sound will drown out echoes

from the absence of his face.

He will answer for his death

and give a complete account

of heavens and hellfires

his spirit cannot enter

because if I keep talking

he will never be silent.

My father's running blindly

across black peony fields,

his hair blowing off his skull

like the thinning, tangled wake

from a tailspinning rocket.

He wants me to let him die,

but if he cannot return

and my words can never join

ashes like jigsaw pieces

and solve this puzzling grief,

I will keep talking and run

where the dead voices gather.

Jonah Complex

I am alive inside a monster,
The stomach of a dreaming whale
Whose body of earth and sky
Swallows the world and digests my days.

I can never die here, only dissolve.
Sinking deep into the beast's skin
I bleed from the grave and strean
Through a billion blossoming limbs.

My heels will kick and stomp the skin
Until I hear the beast's bones break.
I will slice at its starry span
And crawl out any open wound.

I will not be consumed like this,
These words ulcer the dirt and air
With light no darkness can submerge
And a mouth forever singing.

Climbing The Walls

My grandma climbed walls welted with thorns

Without seeing or reaching the ceiling

And fumbled her way up each sharp step

Into the darkness above.

She heard voices calling out her name

Through the tall planes of plaster and wood,

But when she opened her mouth to answer,

Thorns pricked her tongue and fog spilled out

That filled her lungs and clouded her ascent.

I watched her limp body slow with each pull,

Thorns plunged deeper into her slumping head,

And I prayed she would fall.

Smoke Smothers

Smoke smothers my mother

With pillows of fog

Spewing from tar-choked tumors

Wheezing in her breast.

Narrow ridges of smoke like

Silent scythes held aloft

Are splitting apart her lungs

And spilling out her air.

Smoke smothers my mother

And spools above her head

In rings like cloudy crowns

Vanishing with every cough.

Evolution

We wrestle with a bright, shining night
Chafing the milky curve of the moon
And speak to stem the starlit tide
Blinding our tongues, whiting out our words
Under a glowing talcum cover of linen snow.

We are grappling with ourselves alone,
Embracing the empty, glaring moon
And holding back the living starlight
We curse instead as glittering chains
That pale, trembling hands are pulling taut
In our callow and cowering hearts.

Soft, clutching hands squeeze the night from me
Freeing me to ride the sweep of the moon
And inhale those waves of starlight
Falling on her fingers, pooling in her palms.

Trusting The Light

So many colored days,
When sun-bleached skies are like oceans
And plumes and pillows of clouds
Are like islands and peninsulas drifting
Beyond the reach of storms.
When green bellies of bushes bulge,
And silver summer heat sparkles
Like glittering mist lingering in the air.
So many colored days, so long ago.

Once I could turn the world upside down
And dangling from green limbs of grass
Shake loose sunlight from graying skies.
I could fly between the thick brown trunks,
Wooden pillars of stalagtite trees
Reaching to the skies below.
All things were ascending, enlarging,
New, equal, and within my grasp,
But even dreams can fall to the earth,
And even the brightest colors lose luster
And bleed with time.

Time turns the world in the other direction,
Hemming sunlight in fading fabrics,
Its white shine dulling to autumn brown
Like oak leaves after fall's first blue chill.
Clutching colors still swirling within,
Words like purple sparks fall from my fingers
And burn apart the strangling black knots
That leave me gasping for grace to grow.
I will mold new shades from my soul,
Streaming blue shafts of light will pierce silence
And surround each touch of my hand
With a glow, illuminating what I did not see.
I cannot turn the world upside down now
And will never trust sunlight again.

Bloomington's Best Betrayal

I didn't want to be there
In the dishonest florescent glow
Of a Steak and Shake parking lot
Fanning the fires of another.
After creamy flirting over milkshakes,
Her mouth was convulsive and tart.
After kissing her again
I slid my tongue across the roof of my mouth,
Clasped our hands together and smiled.
But I swear,
I didn’t really want to be there.

I wanted to be with you,
But we even drank our coffee too.
Bloomington's Best Betrayal
Served by a slack-eyed college girl
Lacking the sparkling aplomb
Of her televised counterparts.
When I say I thought of you.
You can believe it, 'cause it's true.
Your home was a mile away
But I wondered if my scream
Could cover such space.
I would shout
Look, look at what you've made me do,
I don't want to be here.
I want to be with you and you won't let me.

I followed her home,
Driving through hazy globes of light,
My hands flexing and contracting,
My eyes stinging, my sight in misty tatters.
And in the dark, cluttered patchwork
Of a single mother's apartment
She glistened like a raven in the sun
Just before I clutched her wings.

Though I didn't want to be there,
I did not leave,
The icy threads of my lust
Tied me to her bed.
And when she thrashed greedily into me,
I hissed there would be no other
Until the icy threads uncoiled
And my slurring promise dissolved

I didn't want to be there,
I wanted to be with you
And I wept in another woman's bed,
You can believe it, 'cause it's true.
The ties binding us in betrayal
Were a stain between us
And we laid awake until dawn
Like preening penitents
Now shaking at the scope of our sin.
And since I didn't want to be there
I wouldn’t see her again.

Bring me another coffee
To thin the filth and bile
Inflaming my stomach
When I recall my guile.

This is the poem for when all else fails
To blacken your broken tears
And a paper cross you can climb
To show your love of nails.
This is the flavor of your betrayal
That you will taste when you insist
It was her who left you in the end.

Clothes Hangers

Clothes hangers fly in my father's chest

Like steel skeletal birds,

His heartbeat dangling from their looping beaks

And their wire wings flexing in his veins.

Or they are the sinking shadows of crows,

Black bodies peppering the congestion,

The gurgling pumping of their limbs

Propping up fraying walls of tissue and blood.

An albatross carries my father's heart on wings

Slowing and slumping in the blood and brine.

All birds must land and all lives must end,

But the earth can never take him from me.

Vengeance

I hope I gut you in your dreams,

Strip the icy velour that blocks my touch

And tatter your cloudy dome of sleep.

I want to wreck the moon in your window,

I want to chill its chalky glow

And steer its beams to freeze your rest.

Love only lives, it never survives,

And our perfumed mouths cannot spoil

The slow decline of your caress.

My vengeance will be this.

I will detest the chill of your kiss

And vaporize your dimming heat.

Black Umbrellas

Upturned black umbrellas float on the silent surf,
Their handles are curling claws of gold
That sinks hooks into my eyes
And latch jagged spurs into my mind.
Their crawling parade slinks across the water
And their limbs reach to stab the sky.
This is the river of despair
That bleeds through my body like a human vein.

I do not know what raises this armada against me,
These ominous ranks that wreath the world in smoke,
These vast fleets amassed against me
That bombards my days with dust and flame.
My defenses wilt in their wake.
These vessels cut open the water
And dismantle my calm.

Let me split their formations and disperse their advance,
Let me ride a wave that can swallow them completely,
Blast away their hulls or topple their sails.
They are spinning shadows that drift in the foam,
A procession of parasols that pull me under
But I will not drown.

Train Wreck

Skyrocketing train wrecks, avalanches of ash,

Boxy steel corpses sprawl across the land

And dredge up the earth with their slide.

Broken bodies stretch and simmer, gears clash,

Flowers of steam billow and expand

And the screams of the dead will not subside.

These clanging dinosaurs segment the nation,

Carve out cities from the plains

And spike the soil with their tracks.

Charging over iron arteries and past dusty stations,

The engines of America char the grain

And man is under attack.

They die with their machines and we do as well,

The flashing lights steep our brains in glitter

That sends us crashing into electric graves.

No matter how much we talk, we cannot quell

The cold shock that causes us to fret and fritter

Away our time in a nation no one can save.