metonymy4u

Not even the ice

bitten
rain that drips
insistently
from a rose’s
thorn
can stop us
from talking.

But words are a crime
in weather like this,

stealing warmth
from where it is needed
around alveoli,
blood, and nail
beds.

Your love
inflected,
tells me I am more, made

of opiates,
or a paper cut
of disgust.

Blanket
teacher
over a wet wounded fire,

be gone:

The night born
and shards of yellow honey
made
me forget
and drool again.

Now I know what others know.

Now I can truly feel.

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Abrasion evaded

turned out to be the cancer that swept away my life last year
and the summer that never returned. I do remember evenings
at the pond, the pond that reminded me of the book
about the pond. The mosquitos seemed to infect you
with their anger. It was a summer out of a photograph
and lit our way home or some semblance of it. Just when
I started to think I’d understood my life charlatans took the evening’s
best dance. Oh do you remember how glorious they were?
Now that unbroken dusk sustains me wrapped in hospital cotton.
I’m a self made morgue and feel like somebody’s deft and simple hand
has eased away my wrinkles. Trap a salmon and smoke it in the yard for me
this spring or treat a child to a smile and I promise

you’ll never regret again.

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to write a poem just uncode your mind
put the words there

in your fingers

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My amnesia is not yet
                       your gift.
Burned tongues are generally
not anyone’s permission
for slander. Icing
only occasionally
decorates true cakes.
And classification
often goes awry.
Give something to
hold in secret?
Are you kidding?
What do people
most love sharing?
Map only what you love
I think.

Share only
what

you already gave away.

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                        Girls enslaved by Afghan poppy drivers found rose petals
                        in the valley one afternoon and thought let’s swallow the thorns
                        and be free.

At breakfast we are discussing toxic habits
and those who love them.
I fumble with my apology. You fasten
on what Moses said.
Words which could be my balm instead just
eat wind and die. It’s because I’m done
in by single silly details, isn’t it?—
Mortar on bricks,
sweat on downy hair, a watch
from old times?

We’re finally a word unwritten.

And a voice god never heard spoke
in a far away voice.

            You will feel our yesterdays one by one dragged
            over the heads of your sisters and mothers,
            strangled in darkness and in terror.

            Why were you not there to protect them?

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From one risk to another fire set me running

like an old hill cat,
and I’m feeling trapped in a line of city cars.

I’d spent one night alone in my mountain home.
One day fire free until a friend spotted the smoke.
After that I did not feel so free in those mountains of mine.

Is it my imagination or do trains go slower
in summer’s oven? I’m thinking that in this light
the wheels might wrap themselves more tightly
about the rails.

Their parallelism must make the conductors insane.

The cars inch along as one after another someone
anticipates the signal. We seem to be entertainment

for the pedestrians outside,
our engines probably making them
hotter by the minute. One on the corner

is death, spitting over and over to see
if he can hit an empty can twice in a row
and set himself free. There’s

another man clapping to make the cars move faster
and one with his dog who has just spent money
that he can’t afford on something he doesn’t yet know
he wants. Another’s face

shows the debt of too many deferred mistakes. He
drew a picture once and he thought he liked it but
the smooth shaved back of his father’s neck said
never again son never again.

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To become dust first overturn the spring,

make

it broker distress and taste the portent
we worked our whole lives for,

succulent,
like the dawn drawn
tall as a birthday candle and
made indelible ink

in honorable fire.

Now I can collect words which
otherwise might have been lost to tide and desire.
I can sound them to their depths
and examine the branch to the root—
bees in a state of alarm,

Bartok dead a penniless wreck.

You frustrated
the image I’ve always had of myself.

How quickly dust creeps into us.
A darling romance.
Smoke within smoke.

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Tell me about clinging and I’ll speak to awareness—
we will try to not have precious things together.
Or unpack a tendency to associate which is none other
than the void excited over its own discoveries. Eventually

you can live more of the poetry that surprised you. So break
more hearts my teacher be there in now fly with birds don’t sit with the
world. Throw fear back to the gap and lash
it to the mainmast. Once more upon an evening tide.

Prophet do we need you?

Upon the open ocean they turn away no one .
And though you gave me a semblance of continuity,
leave me out of your cipher-lies. I was your parent child.
Your god sent beyond the moon. On deck tonight I heard a woman
speak all her words at once.

The place I came from was where she longed to be.

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