I believe you will turn toward me in the morning,
powered by an almighty need
to confirm I am still on this earth,
that what is seen and unseen still lives between us.
This is one thing I must have
the only thing that can trigger the day
that is begotten of our agreement.
You are the sun god of us,
the truth that turns the orbit
of being loved on this earth for me.
Through this love, I feel the warm rays of a brighter
salvation from afar,
come down from heaven,
by the power of you, through you,
incarnate in your arranging the blanket so my shoulders
are made warm.
For my sake, you brushed away the debts I owe you,
you suffered, but didn’t bury the pain of all those slights and insensitivities.…
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LG 1967–2013
when I brought you into my country
everywhere I had gone became
the town or river of a child and
you renamed it to your own music
and you were singing even though I
had broken into the refrain and
would do so again on leaving the
one mild country of your tune and words
I could hear the music of the child
you used to be when we talked in June
and knew nothing would interrupt it
in your time or out not even this
– Rodney Nelson…
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these stairs are designed to murder a man
who’s had too much to drink
narrow, they wind like a medieval dungeon
to a bathroom that smells like death
upstairs where i left my wife alone
you can hear the six german men laughing
crowded around the tiny bar over their bottles of astra
and that black liquor the bartender keeps pouring out
i can still eat their cigarette smoke in the air down here
fourteen years off of those things
and i still think about cigarettes every day
think about them more than love or my own mortality
i wonder what i’m doing here clasping the sweating wall
in a german dive bar where i don’t belong
four thousand miles away from brooklyn problems
beers deep into an early hamburg afternoon
i’ve understood next to nothing that anyone has said to me today
i’ve done nothing to make myself heard
the light from the bottom of the stairs
looks like an oubliette
and i’m tired of trying to make this world my own
if i ever make it back up those steps
i think i’ll grab one of those german’s cigarettes
smoke it until i’m sweating and sick
like the first time i ever had one of those things
ask those laughing bastards
what their german word is for sadness or loss.…
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Clinging to my mother’s arm
I watched the blood orange sky
blot out the twinkling stars.
Out house burned.
Ashes of our tall, proud crops perfumed the air
Rebel soldiers, creeping dogs in the night,
shot my brother.
His crimson blood stained the river.
We were never to drink from it again.
We left that homier shore.
I did not understand
my parents whispering and furtive eyes.…
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Hand- me- overs from a learned brother,
they lay cracked and misshapen
in the bottom of the dark closet;
a symbol of some latent sadness.
It was there, but hidden from
the innocence of youth.
They spoke of a man in need of
something above and beyond the
benefits of comfortable footwear.
I can remember his facts.
He never drank milk.
He denied my sister a trip
to the shoe store in the snow.
He wouldn’t say why, couldn’t reveal
the fear, the compassion. He was
unable or unwilling to console his wife
when her anxiety surfaced late at night.
So, he would do deeds for the needy. …
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Winds cut through thick fleece,
the sky is dirty-cotton-ball gray,
but it’s two days past the vernal equinox.
You want to see the daffodil fields.
We heave the youngest dog into the back seat
but leave the older two behind,
ask the iPhone, “Where is Wye Mountain?”
Pointing the sedan toward the gold, we go.
Twelve years ago
the daffodils were blooming
in St. David’s, Wales,
for the saint’s day.
Anointed, we were honeymooning,
touring the ruins
of the Bishop’s Palace,
clambering up the split levels
of former sanctity,
wondering about the hearts of the holy
buried below.
Bickering now,
we forged out of town,
on a road we’d never traveled,
but you had cycled this way with a friend.
“There’s the turn to Houston,”
you pointed.…
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For seven long years
she was my client
I counseled her for naught
As she said, You’re just a
paid friend.
She loved nothing better
than taking medication
she thought it would fix her
a woman who could never
be fixed.
In utero, she was doused
with a diet of caviar and
booze, by a brilliant mother,
also named Julie, who won the
advertising account for
Look Magazine.…
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