....From The Tree Of........................Isolation & Thought
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_______________________________________________________ On The Block Antiques Road Show- in they come trailing dust, palms slick with greed. Old turn of the century iron banks, dolls with creepy human hair. Eyes that won't stop watching, worth fifteen hundred. An urn from 500 BC taps the till at eight. It doesn't seem possible- something that was old when Christ was born should sell so low. I'm fifty now. Offi cially antique, how would I stack up if someone dragged me in, inspected, and then tagged me? It's all about the market, isn't it? Tsunamic Dreams are wishes made of water- mad tsunami rising like a shelf, like half a whole night sky come down to roll the city flat and in my dream I am a city rat: red eyed, mad itself and full of terrible spite- this place was never home to me. Close To Thirst God Is Oklahoma desert dry baked tumbleweed where shimmered heat takes time and only rattlesnakes move air, Mt. Scott rises up like Sinai. Strike this rock face: water, moss bed under trees, drink, sleep awhile. Hard sun hunts at noon to yield a godless dust. Turns paper tongue to sand that even now can only- in it's thirst for wetness, God, or wetness, clack and clack. Shadowland Seven seamless hours, fallen out of the hopper, allowed to disappear to somewhere else: where do we go with sleep? This backache suggests it's someplace strenous. Eyes are glued: perhaps, a secret rite I'm not supposed to see. Have I been sacrificing calves to other gods? Is that why I wake blood on my mind, a sense of the battle come and only scryed liver to protect me; hands, face smeared with dispensation I'm to take now into traffic, phones- the only charm to see me through, a memory of throat pulled back, a glint of knife, and faith from that other place inside me? Walk Across Graves Day of mists, day when the world drops off at the pines and there is nothing that exists beyond the treeline. A sudden caw from fog, cry so despondent, must be a soul in beak is being snatched to God, who alone knows where the world ends. The Dare Take only the leanest meanest truth from darkest crack, where goblins are. Scrape what's stuck in heart's old offbeats; turn flesh to paper diaries of our direst parts, not squirm from the single most repetitive thwuck on throat, the choker truth. Let's write that once then burn it, bathe- sleep deeper than we've ever slept before now that we've named it, who touched what and when, and how outrageously the mystery helps the churning at the edge and the delicious fall. Without it, how bereft of thrilling blackness we would be, how we would never make it right- even if we could: it is the firepin. No Direction But One Wrote a poem that started out with scallions, the sharp taste and pearly white tips which became a poem about crows, their contrast against snow and blurred through fog, but ended being a poem about me, who no longer looks sharp at all but blurs, in the way the middle of too-long movies do; whose pearly whites are tipped in silver or blackened, pulled out of rot like trees trunks sunk in fog go gray, gone missing at the edge of memory in the stop watch tick of time. Forecast Heat seeps into molecules of air that stuff each pore; burn the edges, coax the sweat till a day like today is 'trickle happy'. Suit sticks to skin like a Republican sticks to money, honey. Ain't no lie we're about to die- not of heat, he's not the one, but humidity: The greasy twin with no humor. Not Mondrian How simple, clear the primary color, gridded works of Mondrian. Life looked that way, after he had studied it- distilled it to its purest. Royal blue, scarlet, gold boxed with bold black lines on whitest fields, in perfect order from his disciplined brush. I don't know how he saw the things he did... Frank Lloyd Wright, with every stripped down, functional couch and nook accounted for, gives me room to spare; my chest- each breath, fills half of what is there. I would clutter it with what I need to keep me safe: this purse. This house, this heart that has four chambers crowded with the sweet old clumps of what I've stuffed inside. Let's say that if we met, I might at first see eyes like agates. Find them pleasing gray in squarish face but knowing me, before too long I'd see a two year old in there. Find broken veins and promises, untidy semi-circles at the edges of your mouth, the biting tension of your jaw moved far from planes and plane geometry, we'd probably fall in love- and oh my goodness, now what messy business that would be. Fever I am a sparrow falling here. Throat has too much flesh inside, tucked and folded squeezed off sound- my breathing labored. What is pinching off my nostrils? Who has air to give me? Why are wings so heavy? Who took all the stars and forced each sharpened edge inside my eyes as chills roll down my arms creating, re-creating in new folds? I'm not a child, I am too old to see these shimmered chimeras. On To Page 23 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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