Tracks

New music for the week:

Surfer Blood - "Astro Coast"
Surf rock, an attempt to drive the cold weather from this Michigan mind.

The Left - "Gas Mask"
Amazing Detroit hip-hop.  Old-school production, meaningful words.

Tracks

I laid down upon the railroad tracks

Shaking with the rumble, moving like

The pebbles piled around me

And stared into the sky,

Giving up my vigil to see the silver linings
And knowing for once the real clouds,
The grey mass pressing me

Into the cold steel rails on my back,
Molding me into that human machine,
Spitting me into the metallic cogs

Spinning, always spinning with no
Signs of stopping.

The rumble grew close, and it was no
Quick death, the anticipation brimming full
With the collected rips of the silent

Night sky by the wailing.

It was a hollow death, shorn from any meaning,
Mentioned briefly and blown
Into the rustling skirts of time

And lost amongst the many folds.

She once wore a white linen dress.

Now she’s a woman.
She wears a red linen dress,
Eats candlesticks to pass the time,
And spits wax into her lovers’ faces

In the moment of conjoined crisis,
Keeps the molds upon her nightstand,

Faces of momentary rapture,
Separation from the human

In the blinding white of divine.
Her dress kicks up in the breeze,
Revealing soft brown thighs,
Herself a flower standing taller

Than the other plants in the golden
Summer field.

She lights a small fire in her palm
And sticks it in her mouth,
Chewing the warmth and feeling

It spread into her stomach.

She flicks a fly from her shoulder
And it lands legs up on long cold steel.

It does not fly away.

Brahe

A friend mentioned that I seem to only write dark things.  I thought I'd prove him wrong (lightheartedly), but there wasn't anything I could find without some ounce of bleak imagery.  I think the following may be the closest thing, and it's about the end of the world.  Yikes, and I'm just now getting myself squared away?

Brahe

Silvered Nose traverse

The Milky Way spine,

Astronomical intimacy,

Purity of two bodies

In one motion,
Orbits transfixed

around a dying star.

Heat blast and dust.

Comets and her hair—
The ice trails shimmer

Black and the shine,

The light, the
Million-year-old-wink

From an exploding
Star, a tiny blue

And green planet

Robbed of light

in an 8-minute instant.

They moved together

With the fleetness

Of weightless desire,

Bodies set on
Course for collision,

A terrible orange

and white spark set

The daylight sky

to the darkness

of night and

the cold, the infinite

cold of no more

Sun—

They did not stop,

They did not notice,

Their bodies, the friction

And life-giving heat,

Her radiance, his light,

His silver nose running

Down her milky spine,

Her glimpse into the

edges of time.

Insonmia

Clumps of Brown Hair

When he makes love to the young girl

what does the middle-aged long-married

man say to himself and the girl?

- that lovers live and desk clerks perish?

Al Purdy, “Married Man's Song”

When it's late

And I remember her face,

Excited, flashing under

The come-and-go streetlights

Flaring past

At one hundred miles per hour

As I try to rush her home on time,

What am I supposed to say to her now?
A cold handshake and wish her the best?

Those kind words

Would come out layered

Thick in honey and venom,

A spit in the face wrapped

With a crinkled red bow,

An offered hand, septic.

That would be a disservice

To the years that slipped down

The drain, staring in the mirror

And cutting my hair

At one in the morning,

Trying to get each trace of

Months-old smell gone

With the buzz of a razor.

That ride to her house

I lied to her and said

That desk clerks die.

Clumps of brown hair

On white tile floor

And the clerks still

Have their wooden desks.

Unprotection

Driving

Faster than ever

A voice, scream tears

My ear, a hot breath,

Caught, frozen in a

Final spasm, released.

Driving
Slowly, morose, gray
Trees, dead leaves brown

Voiceless ride, tears

My hand touches, cold thigh

Soft sigh, wordless chill.

Heavy weight, I’ve killed,

Trickle, moment of pleasure.

Ships Sail Backwards

Reversing sands for Helen,

Who once tore down my city walls--

Running soldiers in reverse,

Priam grows younger as

Paris drops his arrows,
Takes to his mother’s breast--

The ravages of a beauty’s look,

Now nothing and the same

Only rebuilds stone titans
Guarding the city's heart

And the hardened shell lets her

In no longer.

Send her back to Sparta.

Kalamazoo comes to me
In three faces--

One is framed
By the touch
Of black hair
At midnight.

The next has grown
In wrinkles
As I have grown
In feet.

And the last
Is a silhouette
On a sunny morning
Buried in a riverbank.

copyright

Why I've removed the newer pieces

Last night I had a discussion with a friend. She and I are both interested in getting work published in small magazines, that sort of thing. When discussing briefly this blog, she expressed concerns about whether or not publishing something in a personal blog would be considered publishing by those small periodicals. After doing some (hardly any) research, the answers I found were mixed. Some people claimed that it didn't really matter and, if a publisher has a problem, the simplest solution is to remove the piece from the blog. However, some suggested, quite simply, that publishing is publishing, no matter what. Magazines are interested in things that they can claim to have had first-- if something is available for free on the internet, no matter how good, they won't be interested in it.

Now, this doesn't mean that I'll only be posting stuff from 2007 and 2008. I also found that, after publication, most publishers don't seem to mind if something ends up on a blog, so long as it's a few months after publication. So, hopefully I'll be posting newer stuff in half a year or so. Until then, old stuff. And maybe very, very rough drafts of new stuff. Maybe (but probably not).


2007, I guess. Read on a bridge once into a bottle of whiskey, surrounded by friends.

A Porch, Summer Night

I've seen all seasons
Press the wood of this deck‒
First the fall,
With fading dead leaves
Swirling through the rails‒
The winter with its white piles
Coming, melting, coming again‒
Then spring with the terrible violence
Of reawakening storms
Second-hand through above‒
The summer with hotness and air
And oppressive water wall.
I've known the place
Through one full cycle‒
I'm transplanted here,
The age sloughed off
And left layered, dead skin
On the once-living boards,
An imprint, thumb-print, shadow of self.

An obscured view of city night,
Orange glow haze,
And the day-time-all-time-no-break brightness
Of parking structure,
People working on my shift.
Sleepless night.
Big building windows lit,
Arrow pointing towards
The last lingering lost,
Fellow travelers on concrete
Long past bar crowd‒
Those fake patrons of moon,
Regularly scheduled broadcasts of interaction,
Auto-pilot motion, Polo shirts and beer
And girls in skirts
Displaying all of their virtue at skin level
For weighing and consideration over bar stools,
A drunk squeeze test for ripeness.

They don't know the sky
Stays creamy like orange milk
As perfume fades from the sidewalks,
Or the true night people
Who squeeze sentences from empty footsteps,
Suck down the late night cigarettes
Held in fingers alone,
Listen to the unmanned hum of nocturnal machinery‒
The crickets, the power plants, the neon lights.

A city too bright for stars,
Constellations born from still-lit windows
In towering apartments,
Trace the shape
Of the lone hunter‒
Two lights and a line,
A belt and a bow,
The wind a star-lit quarry,
Kissing each summer leaf in its evasion.

the detailed devil

going back to 2007 again, i found another one. a long one, at least compared to what i seem to be writing now. i opened this because something i was writing today reminded me of it. it's interesting to me to look at the differences.

EDITED

now, the very long one (deep breath):

Walking Winter City Streets

Wandering the city soulless,
The titans drifted to home towns
And snow gently perching on
The paths, reclaiming the
Heated shuffle of the day
To layer white upon concrete uncontested.
Late night journey into the subtle
Emptiness.

I trudged a trail well knowing
Snow conquest would have
Her buried in moments of night.
I stole looks at pairings left
In quiet city, sitting on
Couches in their homes.
Their paths not yet buried,
Tiny prints and large,
First walking side by side
Then sliding, enjoying
The frictionless sidewalks
While thinking of friction in
Warm-sheeted beds.

I wished then that beside
Me on the winter nocturnal
That some starry-eyed reciprocator
Cast with delicate features
In night-light moon-binding
Would match my stride and,
In a moment of nostalgic
Love of childhood fun just
Slide.

But such gems of lovers
Vanished at the thought that
I was not lonely in my
Solitary wanderings.
The snowfall beauty was my
Mistress– Seeing her dancing
To settle was enough.
Her shadow cast as falling,
Black dim flakes rising from
The ground.

I imagined wandering in the woods
Of my home.
No longer afraid of the vicious
Fangs of darkness, having
Become so much a part of
The silent proceedings.
Etched upon my face the
Marks of many journeys through
Those different streets.
I could walk with the coyotes
Of my home, not waking
Them from slow talk pondering
Under the awnings of the brick
Churches.
I carried that hopeless musk
Of unfit yearning.
I was no longer an intruder
In their darkness, rituals of
Survival– an outsider, but
Knowing slightly, enough.

The target of the trip,
Laced with neon signs
Singing of “Lotto, Slush, Phone Cards” –
A quick stop masked by
The gravity of walking, a
Moment forgotten staring into
The mirror of concrete snowfall contemplation–
A root to reality.

My path burned with fragmented
Verse, pace quickened at the thought
Of scribbling down so madly, to
Capture the mind’s ejaculation.
To describe the beauty of those
Slide marks and the imagined
Lovely words and smiles on
The lips of that sweet, small-footed
Girl.
The snow had not masked her from me.
I cherished her–
Bent on distilling her minute in the snow
Into words, to bestow upon her love
She’ll never know.

Only the empty doors, opened into the
Metal shining elevator, know,
And maybe the bums hidden under
That brick church awning–
They are the silent watchers
Of the unreal night world,
Marking the paths and siphoning
Thoughts of the displaced day-time
Travelers.
Let them know of my love,
And note that I was not
Cold in that frozen world,
White under fresh fall.

what an unabashed romantic i was back then. that was written over spring break in ann arbor. everyone was gone. the laundry room had burned down. i had nothing to do. it was amazing.

different tastes

i was going to follow my rules and post an old something. looking back to 2007, i decided to open up the first poem i wrote for my first michigan creative writing course. i remember writing it vividly, having just left the first day of workshop in the course. one of my classmates had read a poem that, i believed, was pure spectacle. so i decided to write a poem about sex, too. a word of warning: it's not very good. it received initial praise from my teacher, but i believe he may have understood my intent and felt the same way despite it being a less-than-stellar effort.

Different Tastes

I was once asked to write a poem
About sex.

And so I wrote:

I swam across a mile-wide river
And drowned mid-way through

My patron was not amused.

“I want grunts!
And groans!
And flapping flesh!”
He said.

He wanted explosions,
Grand finale fireworks show,
But I gave him a pop,
Soft silky report,
He wanted more,
And so I told him:
“Write your own damn poem!”

My patron was not amused.