Five Poems

One of the Ones

uproar in a hula skirt you sung

 
 
the sandbox brave and strong

 
 
I should try harder to really breathe

 
 
out the skunk of day

 
 
the storm I call a home a worm

 
 
my brain is a kind of tv

 
 
when the search for junk

 
 
is on I know you know

 
 
you are stapling a monster

 
 
sound to my ear the air

 
 
it eggplants down with dusk

 
 
I said I would be here stung

The Movie We Were

who wouldn’t want the women in their fancy shoes
 
dancing on tables
 
thrown napkins falling like locusts
 
our heads tilted back to stare
 
down the ceiling-sky
 
who wouldn’t want to shine just a little better
 
than yesterday
 
when the streets lied and said
 
they didn’t know who we were
 
had never seen us
 
and though we had seen ourselves
 
on bathroom walls we didn’t know
 
who we were either
 
we were something else
 
we were drumming the world with our feet
 
because we wanted to see the anchored
 
look on everybody’s faces
 
the lights were out
 
and the strobe slowed our bodies down
 
who wouldn’t try to wreck the movement
 
who but the music to know us anyway

Seriously Nothing Ever

Me masquerade about
here pretty damn

well. I be aglow
each morning

beating the heads
of little

forgettable birds.
They sing nothing

like my name.
A moat

snoozes around
the kingdom

of my mouth
but I can draw

you a bridge.
Here is a hornet.

There, a toy
trumpet. I play

and play until
the noise

is something I want
to surrender.

House Next to Houses

I baited my hook with a dollar,
glued some coins to the sidewalk.
Eventually, a woman couldn’t

believe her eyes. A dog barked
in Spanish about the island
he was from, and on the powerline

a parade of parakeets rode mini
unicycles. The neighbors were busy
tossing their horseshoes. They told me

I could laugh all I wanted, that their feet
were more delicate than their hearts,
that, one day, I would learn.

BONE WONDER PARABLE

I.

Please
allow me
to introduce
my wreckage
in the form of what
some may call pretend
or
moon
sung
low
canoe

II.

Half of me dances this awe

the other half says you

you the river in my mouth

like a thousand

tiny helicopters going down

in my lungs

I returned to the time I rusted

through a forest

full of TVs plugged

into the mud the rain

made me

III.

Here’s the thing the thing says
     here’s the world up in arms.

The pressure of underwater quiet,
     like a tunnel through a mountain:

I hear the nothing I have
     always wanted to hear.

Then the canoe singing
     low beneath the bridge. Then

theaters of murky shadows where
     the film about my hands is on repeat.

I clap sparks and gritty glitter for
     you my tongue is kind of on fire.

IV.

Please
is this
the right night
for this
moth
winging
its way
in search
of moonwater
our
footsteps
leaving behind
a giant
shard
of dreamlight
and this weathervane
neither here
nor there
we can become
unspun

V.

And yet the bloom is all bought,
     and grinning like a canoe.

I took my hands out of the sky
     for a minute and I was worsened.

Everyone forgot to jumble the seasons.
     The weather gave us something

to think about, but we spoke in cement.
     Can we shed yesterday’s carapace?

Can we anchor our glow to a stone?
     If the bridge abandons its duty,

I will extend my body from this roof
     to the city in the corner of your eye.

VI.

The house left its mouth open

and we mocked its stupid hunger

for light

down the street

we saw a puddle-mirage

where fools were

harbored

dancing on their hands

screaming like foghorns

if only you could move

further away

the closer I got

VII.

I was lit up
for good
and my morning
began
with a sameness
I ate a piece
of sidewalk
the lines
I’d crossed
the breaking
I believed
I was responsible
for one
or two
of my many
imitated monuments
the fear
of becoming
nothing
other than
a blunt arrow