Saturday, November 6, 2010
Transferring Poetry
The flurry of poems that came before this post are from another site that I was paying to host. I've transferred them to this one to prepare for that hosting to expire.
The Universe is Expanding: III
We’re sitting on a beach,
and I’m staring into the fire,
the heat is blistering my cheeks.
She’s leaning back and watching the sparks join the stars
as they burst from the wood in dry snaps.
Waves collapse onto the beach,
limp and weary from their journey,
and a pair of motorcycles roar to life,
their thunder tumbling down the sea wall
and dispersing into the bay.
We’re burning wood we found by the parking lot,
all salt-stained white and gnarled,
and we’re sitting in the smoke, blown on a wind off the water,
to keep the flies away.
We brought wine, but the bugs got in it,
and the low tide reeks like a corpse.
I remember the Cape is dying.
She doesn’t talk like she used to,
and I try not to interrupt her thoughts
with tidbits of quantum physics
that I’ve gleaned from my book.
She used to talk, then she used to
run her fingers through my hair
as she listened with an air of interest,
and now she just idly strokes the back of my hand
if I lay it close enough to her.
I dreamed that we were laying just inches apart
but couldn’t touch
as our bodies stretched away into light.
But we stopped telling each other our dreams,
and I believe that’s for the best
because I never have been able to lie
to her.
We don’t argue anymore, and I know
what’s happening–
I’m not stupid,
just in love
with an idea of someone.
So she watches the stars now,
and I watch her now,
taking in her curves all aglow
in the pulse of firelight.
I try to mark this moment,
try to make the smell of smoke,
the rustle of wind,
the murmur of waves,
the sight of fire reflected in her eyes
indelible to me.
But I’ve been here before,
in a thousand hours we’ve been apart,
and all I ever really recall
is the burning of my cheeks.
I could move further from the fire,
but it will just die down soon
anyway.
and I’m staring into the fire,
the heat is blistering my cheeks.
She’s leaning back and watching the sparks join the stars
as they burst from the wood in dry snaps.
Waves collapse onto the beach,
limp and weary from their journey,
and a pair of motorcycles roar to life,
their thunder tumbling down the sea wall
and dispersing into the bay.
We’re burning wood we found by the parking lot,
all salt-stained white and gnarled,
and we’re sitting in the smoke, blown on a wind off the water,
to keep the flies away.
We brought wine, but the bugs got in it,
and the low tide reeks like a corpse.
I remember the Cape is dying.
She doesn’t talk like she used to,
and I try not to interrupt her thoughts
with tidbits of quantum physics
that I’ve gleaned from my book.
She used to talk, then she used to
run her fingers through my hair
as she listened with an air of interest,
and now she just idly strokes the back of my hand
if I lay it close enough to her.
I dreamed that we were laying just inches apart
but couldn’t touch
as our bodies stretched away into light.
But we stopped telling each other our dreams,
and I believe that’s for the best
because I never have been able to lie
to her.
We don’t argue anymore, and I know
what’s happening–
I’m not stupid,
just in love
with an idea of someone.
So she watches the stars now,
and I watch her now,
taking in her curves all aglow
in the pulse of firelight.
I try to mark this moment,
try to make the smell of smoke,
the rustle of wind,
the murmur of waves,
the sight of fire reflected in her eyes
indelible to me.
But I’ve been here before,
in a thousand hours we’ve been apart,
and all I ever really recall
is the burning of my cheeks.
I could move further from the fire,
but it will just die down soon
anyway.
If We Were Gods
We stand outside time,
where every when is now.
Make pronouncements,
make love,
kill thousands
just to hurt each other,
as if we were gods.
The usual.
He tells me again we need gravity
to know where we’re going.
We are careening about the universe,
nebula to nebula
in this galaxy and the next,
all at once.
I say that makes me sad,
it makes me think of falling into something,
infinitely.
He counters that he fell into love with me,
and he doesn’t mind that he’s always plummetting,
headlong toward some singularity
where all his paths converge.
Which means, of course,
all his paths,
even the ones on which he hates me
because I cheat on him
or mock his lack of confidence in himself,
and even the ones on which
he never met me at all.
He explains all this dismissively,
a single point may be intersected
by an infinite number of
lies.
If I fall infinitely, am I falling at all?
This is despair.
I skitter off to another star,
swirling my skirt with a giggle,
and he follows.
My hair flows around me
like a comet tail
and my face is lit up by the sun.
We dance around ourselves,
we build planets,
we set them spinning.
We make life and invent an end,
something fittingly catastrophic,
before diving into a nebula
where we clutch and roll each other
in a bed of star dust.
In due course he rips out my heart
and hurls it into space,
out of sight for a moment
until it blossoms as a supernova,
all blood-red and radiance.
We smile and our fingertips touch,
tentative, as we share our first kiss again
and an evening mist settles on the grass,
soon to be morning dew.
We are careless in our age,
and this is jubilance.
where every when is now.
Make pronouncements,
make love,
kill thousands
just to hurt each other,
as if we were gods.
The usual.
He tells me again we need gravity
to know where we’re going.
We are careening about the universe,
nebula to nebula
in this galaxy and the next,
all at once.
I say that makes me sad,
it makes me think of falling into something,
infinitely.
He counters that he fell into love with me,
and he doesn’t mind that he’s always plummetting,
headlong toward some singularity
where all his paths converge.
Which means, of course,
all his paths,
even the ones on which he hates me
because I cheat on him
or mock his lack of confidence in himself,
and even the ones on which
he never met me at all.
He explains all this dismissively,
a single point may be intersected
by an infinite number of
lies.
If I fall infinitely, am I falling at all?
This is despair.
I skitter off to another star,
swirling my skirt with a giggle,
and he follows.
My hair flows around me
like a comet tail
and my face is lit up by the sun.
We dance around ourselves,
we build planets,
we set them spinning.
We make life and invent an end,
something fittingly catastrophic,
before diving into a nebula
where we clutch and roll each other
in a bed of star dust.
In due course he rips out my heart
and hurls it into space,
out of sight for a moment
until it blossoms as a supernova,
all blood-red and radiance.
We smile and our fingertips touch,
tentative, as we share our first kiss again
and an evening mist settles on the grass,
soon to be morning dew.
We are careless in our age,
and this is jubilance.
The View from the Edge of Time
stare at the candle
unblinking
the flame unwavering
weezer somewhere on the speakers
electric memory
a faded whiskey burn
the walls fallen away
the moon through the blinds
reflected on passing windshields
clouds spread into air
tree shadows raking leaves
collecting lost things
what ends
what ends
a breath
a thin trail of smoke
unwavering
the tip of the wick glows
pinpoint
unblinking
the flame unwavering
weezer somewhere on the speakers
electric memory
a faded whiskey burn
the walls fallen away
the moon through the blinds
reflected on passing windshields
clouds spread into air
tree shadows raking leaves
collecting lost things
what ends
what ends
a breath
a thin trail of smoke
unwavering
the tip of the wick glows
pinpoint
The Promise that You Made
One night, after we finished,
and we lay entwined the way I love,
he told me, “No matter what happens,
no matter what we do,
someday the world will end.”
I think he says these things
to startle me,
so then I’ll feel his body against mine
like it’s his promise to me.
What promise, I don’t know.
I think if I asked,
he would tell me, “That I’m here,
this is now,
and it may be the last here,
the last now,
that you and I, or you or I,
will ever have.”
I think he would mean it
in a good way.
But these promises fill me up,
they build inside me
the way thunderheads bloom in silence
on a humid summer day.
And I can smell it, that copper in the air
that surrounds a storm, that rises
off the asphalt as a mist into the sky.
That smell
is all around me, in my sheets,
in my paychecks, in my car
and in his shirts.
This is not
the thing I dreamed of.
It’s as if with every promise he breaks
my heart
because I know no matter what happens,
no matter what we do,
someday I’ll have to break his too.
I think he says all these things
to startle me,
but I don’t think he realizes
just how they do.
and we lay entwined the way I love,
he told me, “No matter what happens,
no matter what we do,
someday the world will end.”
I think he says these things
to startle me,
so then I’ll feel his body against mine
like it’s his promise to me.
What promise, I don’t know.
I think if I asked,
he would tell me, “That I’m here,
this is now,
and it may be the last here,
the last now,
that you and I, or you or I,
will ever have.”
I think he would mean it
in a good way.
But these promises fill me up,
they build inside me
the way thunderheads bloom in silence
on a humid summer day.
And I can smell it, that copper in the air
that surrounds a storm, that rises
off the asphalt as a mist into the sky.
That smell
is all around me, in my sheets,
in my paychecks, in my car
and in his shirts.
This is not
the thing I dreamed of.
It’s as if with every promise he breaks
my heart
because I know no matter what happens,
no matter what we do,
someday I’ll have to break his too.
I think he says all these things
to startle me,
but I don’t think he realizes
just how they do.
The Universe is Expanding: II
One night, we will look up, and there will be no stars. We will wonder why we have to be alone. We will realize that, at last, the universe has expanded beyond our sight. We will see no longer the forlorn gazes of the stars. They have put the lights out on us, we will think, just when we were getting started.
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