#10

say that with affection, ok?



a witchy circle, a rolling expanse.



coming over, being floored, looking across and in.

Someday

You will escape it
like a tidal wave

you will crash.

We are always running they say
from here to there
running to escape
the cards life handed us as each one
is flipped over to create an experience.

But you.
YOU are like a wave
pouring over that which is escaped
and covering it.

Never leaving
running
but pouring fast over the wound.

when i was a tween

she called one night yelling at my mom
for talking to a doctor, an imaginary psychiatrist
she thought they were plotting against her
this happened once before when they lived in Richmond

my grandfather woke once in the middle of the night
my grandmother had just gone for a late night drive
it was nothing to worry about
this was before i was born

my grandfather woke in the middle of the night
at 2am he went out to the garage and found my grandmother
sitting inside the car
it was running
my mother didn't understand why he hadn't looked for her sooner

i remember the first time i saw my grandfather cry.

one year earlier my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary
my dad went ice fishing with my dog, Buddy
that day Buddy fell through the ice and my dad jumped in after him
two men pulled them out

when my dad got home late my mom asked what had happened to him
she asked why he would risk his own life jumping in after the dog
my dad told her he did it for us, my brother and me

i remember the first time i saw my dad cry.

it's a 6 to 9 hour time difference here

so while I take my zumo and cafe
un pincho de tortilla y pan
and when the internet tosses me a bone
I punch in a few poems
I know
that an ocean away
all you poets are tucked under blankets
turning a cheek into a pillow
or cuddling one between your knees
maybe warmly pressed against your lover's back
or keeping him at arm's length on the other side

except for one or two of you
whose face is still lit up by the screen
scanning facebook
looking at old photos of that girl you loved in 3rd grade
the one with the hair ties that looked like little pencils
and who is now a hottie cheerleader for the Washington Wizards
Go to bed already!
You have to work in the morning, for god's sake!

But if you are staring out the window
watching a sliver of moon slip out from behind a cloud
go ahead
stay up all night
a moon like that
will keep you warm for days.

Pulling a Sherwood

My friend tells me

"I hate wind"
"all kinds"

I think that's a bold statement

Does he really?

Or is he Pulling a Sherwood?

If I asked him to clarify, would he brush me off and transcend all logic to save his mind from ruin?

He's young but:

There's some truth to it, sure. Sher. Look. You have to understand

My father's middle name is Sherwood. That's a key thing to understand.

My father's name is Sherwood and
grandma's too-long life has broken her brain.
And Grandma was "Pulling a Sherwood" again.

"How did this name come to peek 'twixt first and last,
dear old withering mother, dear?"

"why son, my darling son"
(In my absence, there can only be dramatic re-enactments)
"dear sweet son of mine, 'twas Sherwood was thy dear old father's
sweetest
loveliest
rosy-cheekiest
childhood friend:

twas many a golden eve
they swung above the stream
attempting to believe
their doomed and boyish dreams"

(really, this is the secret cadence of grandma/everyone, I know what you guys are like when I'm not around, you can't hide, you can't pretend!!)

and father, eyes shining:

"But mother dear, if memory serves me, 'twas the name of Sherwood in old father's own, God rest his soul.
Was it he
who named
his own
sad self
to echo darling Sher,
sweet childhood's light, as well as me?"

"How can that be?"

"Oh well Marty" Grandma's tough, you know, worked all her life, welded in the war, raised deep in the snow during the Depression, history buff with an eighth grade education, drove cross country twice with two small boys hot on the heels of the no-good man she loved, though she'd never admit it, married him twice, he who later retreated to a desert trailer, sober, to make turquoise jewelry and pick sage, once even with me, ending with a shot to the head in the flatbed of a truck, hidden to spare the grandkids the horror, respectably, reasonably, and finally misremembered as a sweet and responsible husband, though whatever happened to the old fool, I mean "who really knows" and what was I saying, oh: "I don't remember, your father named you, I wasn't really involved"

Oh hell long-life dear broken-brain
my grandmother's Pulling a Sherwood again.

bibliophilia

in the library
this afternoon,
i run my fingers
along the plastic wrapped spines
of novels
and wonder, silently,
whatever happened to
untouched
leather bindings.

i remember winters
at my grandmothers
in the formal living room,
which we only used
for cocktail parties
and christmas morning,
imagining what it would feel like
to own
the collected works of dickens
in matching green leather
with gold edged pages.

i would celebrate the
rough canvas covers to austen,
in pale blue,
shakespeare in weather
camel tones,
mark twain in soft black leather.

i would taste the sweet book scent
on my tongue
amongst the pages of thoreau and emerson,
listen to the crack of the spine of dostoevsky,
the sound of amazement
in books so old.

but i am not sure i prefer
those unread and unloved beauties
on my grandmother's white shelves.

i am not sure i don't love the
way a library favorite
has pages so worn that the
paper has pulled away from its neighbor,
the book falling open to the page
where the sheaves no longer meet.

the scent of its well loved
pages,
the memory of the hundreds
of hands who soaked
in these words
before me,
are somehow more comforting than
the books of my childhood imaginings.

i run my hands across the spines
deep in the stacks,
and think about
the words we share,

and the words we don't.

Philadelphia Freedom

I once overheard an old woman talking about 1976

She mentioned how crazy everyone was

The biCentennial Was fucking with everyones head

There were many cults

and many orgies

and a radiant buzz in the air

I wonder in what capacity that old woman was there

There Are People Who Can Help

Do you associate sex with love?

Do your romantic relationships tend to be long-term?

Is your behavior, concerning romantic relationships, a reaction against your last serious ex? 

Have you replaced your significant other with a network of close friendships?

Do you find yourself shaping your identity to sabotage the needs of your partner?

Do you prefer having sex with people who know you well, as opposed to strangers?

Do you find yourself attracted to those people who remind you of yourself?

Do you view masturbation as acceptable?

Are you a serial monogamist?

Are all of your friends single?

How much of your identity is not based on the person whom you are with?

Is your sex life a series of one night stands, supplemented by masturbation and pornography?

Do you believe in love at first sight?

Are you still doing the bar scene thing?

Do you find yourself often jealous of the attention your partner perceives that you are receiving?

Do you find that after the first sexual encounter, the person you are dating doesn't lose interest in you?

Do you find yourself pursuing lovers who bear the qualities of your father?

Do you blame your misfortune on the lack of a significant other?

Do you prefer working towards career-related achievements rather than a romantic relationship?

Have you ever cheated for unjustifiable reasons?

Do you feel that you love your partner but are no longer IN love?

Do you enjoy spending too much time on leisure activities with your partner?

Do your married friends tell you that your standards are not high enough?

Do you associate love with sex?

There are people who can help.

|x|

He did move her at least to take one step further, and from that time on she began to send him the veins of leaves dried in dictionaries, the wings of butterflies, the feathers of magic birds, and for his birthday she gave him a square centimeter of St. Peter Clavier's habit, which in those days was being sold in secret at a price far beyond the reach of a school girl her age.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

|back covered|
|eyes fixed | horizons on horizons|
|nails peel back as far as always|
|stumpy finger tracing the thread|
|to the bottom of the lake|pond|ocean|
|and underneath the muck | and burrowed animals|
|another horizon|
|a body somehow the same and bigger|
|thinking of something else|
|five|twelve|eighteen|twentythree|
|twentyeight today|
|a day too cold for floating|

You know, in high school, and also a little bit
in college, I used to do this thing where I'd shove
my headphones onto other people's heads,
like, "Here, hear what I'm hearing!"
because I thought it was important,
what I was hearing, and because I
thought it would make people understand
me and like me better than they did,
or period if they didn't before at all.

I'm not stoned tonight while I'm writing this,
by the way.

And I don't do it now, but that doesn't
mean that I've "gotten over it." I just
can't find that enthusiasm anymore.
Where did it go? Where did it go?
All this lusterless life. Even masturbating,
which is ostensively something we do
for ourselves, right? has started to feel
like a chore.

And you know, I'm trying I'm
trying I'm trying to get it back. (Why striving?)
But it's not going to come when I'm
looking for it. It's going to sneak up
on me someday. Until then, how
am I supposed to keep dancing and singing?
The plan is, I'll have to distract myself. Except
I can't distract myself if I'm thinking
about distracting myself. The plan is,
I have to forget about the plan, otherwise it won't
go forward.