Some Distant Past

She puts me out like a cigarette

then flicks me to the curb.

One last puff of smoke and I'm gone,

careening out the window at ninety-five--

thirty over, that's not so bad.

But you could count the ticks on the speedometer

like the lives that disappeared

from the wreckage and the swerves--a finger

or a mash fisted honk. It's all the same,

just another figure in the rearview.

And a figure could be anything--a white

laced lie or some homeless bum

she gave a dollar to. Maybe in the carnage

there was beauty, not so much that I could see--

I saw faces melting together,

forging a river into a distant past.

Some left behind forgotten world

that existed only in my mind.

"I think I'll join the Peace Corps," she rambles.

Instead she moved to Australia

and learned some foreign language no one

would understand. Came back with an accent

and a hiccup in her step,

but her eyes were still the same

across a game of beer pong and store bought

rotisserie chicken.

I played a song on a mix tape from another time;

she said she loved it--

but she never kissed that album

and whispered, "Thanks for making this."

Tucked in a Flap

You were there when I first learned
how to kiss - tongue twisted
in the closet, one hand on your hip.

You said, "Wait,"
so we waited.
We talked of things--tried to analyze

our dreams--massage oils,
and favorite places
to press our lips.

Before too long we were tangled up
in ways only a gymnast would understand.
Later that night it was my room:

bottom bunk. You said your favorite moment
was when the candle flickered
in my brown burnished eyes.

Then summer came and you were gone;
home driving Rusty to your favorite spot -
that waterfall, your secret oubliette.

It was never the same after that,
you're two-thousand miles long gone,
tucked away in a flap
of someone elses back pocket.

Another Tool in the Shed

"You're tryin' to kill the ball" he yelps;

a child, I tuck my head not knowing the difference

between a swing and some forethought terminology.

He walks along the edge of the wood searching

for white dimpled balls that the minister's of this game

had lost but never found as I stumble sideways,

left and right again winding a zealous path to victory.

That day ended like many before it and I came home,

to his home, where I would take his favorite four wood out

to the pasture and try to forge my baseball swing

into something more to his liking.

Eventually the head from that club busted loose;

it probably went further than the ball did,

but he uses it as his walking cane now so I guess he never minded.

Maybe he just wanted to show me

that I was there with him all those lonely nights where Grandma

would be sleeping in my bed instead of his.

It's just another tool in the shed now, I tell myself.

Like the snow blower or rototiller--why you need one

when you have a tractor the size of a truck

and blades once wielded by horses was beyond me.

He takes his bottom teeth out as I sit on his lap,

watching half naked men wrestle around in a roped ring.

"When will I be able to do that", I giggle.

Older now, I mow his lawn and weed the garden--

he's got a zipper scar down the center of his chest

and sits in that same chair nodding in and out of sleep mostly.

My room has changed--no more childish games,

instead there are books to study and dreams that seem within reach.

During the summer we'd split wood in the side yard

for the coming snowfall--"Take a break,"

he'd say and hand me a glass of water.

Wood splitter - another tool in the shed, like the hand axe

and wedge that came before it. There's always something

that precedes something, always a lapse in time from the here

and now. I understand I may never be able to take my teeth out

like he did that day; but I also understand just like

that snow blower or hand axe and wedge, I had become

just another tool in the shed.

Honey Trails

You're pretty and I'm less
beautiful day by day wondering
what it would be like to kiss
the creases in your lips.

The salt drips from my mouth
aggravating--aggravating the sweet
scent of honey I sense from your presence
not here nor there but somewhere.

A trail on the beach from your honey wand
leaves me walking in circles, chasing
stray ghosts in the sand as they wash
away in the supple underbelly

of crescent moons
crashing against the shore--

Under the Covers

There's a blanket over my eyes and I peek
catching the stare that seductively shivers my knees.
Bare and empty it seems,
lonely and longing for dreams.
So I cry and I weep,
reaching and pushing the blanket from me.
"Go away!" my voice softly screams.
But the blanket just laughs and tightens its squeeze
leaving just enough room to let in the sweet breeze.
But the stare it remains, pure and affectionately,
petrifying and constantly beckoning me.
And I freeze as the shivers still rattle my knees,
longing and praying for bitter release.
But my heart is not strong enough to stand up and leave.
So I fight and I struggle to try and break free,
while the blanket continues to grapple at me.

Tabula Rasa

She reads me like an open book -
a story not quite finished.
Her pen makes scratching noises
as she writes; quill on parchment -
chisel to stone. What will she write?
How will I unravel or,
how will her story go?

"Remember when you zipped me up
in a duffle bag and locked me in the bathroom?"
Yeah, I remembered; sort of.
"Will you add songs to my IPod,
PLEASE - we'll go see a movie; I'll pay!"
"Yeah sure," I droned.
I loaded up her music machine,
but movie day never came.

She was on a plane by then -
plastic speakers in her ear
from music – or a movie.
Cell phones troubled attentive stewards, so –
no texting aloud.
I wish I’d gotten her that journal.

I stumble into her room -
she's there of course, only in pictures:
cheerleading, tennis, her high school diploma –
a wooden sign carved
"Step-On-Me" from shop class
centered above her television set.
I didn’t even give her that name – my stupid friend did.

Her Dad spends more time around these days;
a casino jockey - life savings lost on
Lucky - a horse that made fourth place.
Diamond Jim’s is what he calls it –
an arcade for the elderly and addicted
to be more accurate.
His bright red Corvette parked in front
sticks out like an apple in a basket of bananas.

I wonder if she’ll write about him,
while I twist the green suede journal around in my hands –
no need for wrapping,
it was beautiful the way it was.
My fingers trace the ancient symbols
stitched on the front flap
Wabi-Sabi
as I turn it over to reveal the blank pages.

The Prodigal Son

But he answered his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!”
“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” --Luke 15:29

Horizon

The knife of a painter
stuck with charcoal black and a tinge of white
the horizon meets my view - a
black hole, with nothing left but emptiness.
One tilt of my head would reveal every
star for miles, but the line holds my concentration--
comforting and calm at ease with itself and the world.
To disappear into his darkness would bring serenity, erasing
the days tribulations - the thought of a mind's impasse--
the headlights from oncoming traffic
suck me back down to the center of my world, where
unanswered resumes and broken family ties
are the stars in my back seat and the
road ahead is the tunnel to my elusion.

Sculpting with the Gods

A leaky faucet.
I wrap my hands around it.
The moment seeps out
through my suspicions.
I clench my fists and
try to contain it.
It still drips.

A flush of rose - a shade of ivy,
entangle to form a gray.
Concrete gray.
A conglomerate sludge, flowing
like half-hardened lava - turning black.

Too thick to pass through
the holes in the
drain, it collects.

With the impending eruption
beneath my palms, I feel Apollo
forming around my left pinky.
I glance down to find Daphne's bark hardening
like basalt in the sun's reflection. He quickly
brushes the leaves from her breast
to feel her warm heart
still beating underneath--

sculpting a miniature Bernini.
My own rigid entanglement
to divine upon, until times end.

Suffocate

I felt the heat from the flannel pillow below as I came to.
The sweat gathering on my neck sent
a shrill chill crawling down the rest of my body.
My eyelids part in a squint
for fear of what I might see.
The shadows still swirling on the slanted ceiling
jostle me back into my slumber.

I have full vision now - I watch as
they scrape away from the stucco.
With free reign on uncanny repose,
faceless figures silently claw their way down to the center,
grasping at something much too delicate.

I close my eyes and whip my neck back.
My head pitches from side to side trying to escape
the lucid departure.
Finally, my eyes spring open,
and the ceiling is bare--