metonymy4u

                        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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Angels tended by professors in large books
bound to calculations, corsets and calendars spent on
control – these the rambling
divisions whose very
end is night,

when words enter your unguarded ear. Come
with me and leave guesswork behind.
I told you already to approach

intensity from the lee side, redraw the map,
jump your chance to be a seller in the market.
Or climb a slide and leave

your karyotype behind.

Where is the midsummer moon tonight? Is it one under which
pressed lips might together sing about? Mountains might be won?
No matter how busy I get,

or clever I become, I must learn that the essence of practice
turns on a key of continuous narrative, a question mark riven right
between the sea and the questioniers,
forgotten by the sand they walked on,
moved by the tears they dried.

How everyone should change their name once slowly
and fall in love before they die.

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                                    a consensus of brief poems (interrogated,
                                    as to their commonalities)

if we write our history as a tribe of endless funerals
the nails in coffins melted together adding
up to one large memorial statue on the lawns
of nameless cities

burial within burial must end somewhere

if you wish to send me back my voice use your
own address – copy it over lovingly letter for letter
and garnish what space the open page reserves
for poetry

                        don’t trash the little ones for being different
                        time made them what they are and
                        morals are no more than lazy words
                        for things we don’t see immediately

tired of all their letters by last light
the man and his daughter rhymed a bit
and laid

their guitar to bed

                               they will see truth upon truth heaped up by ages
                               alimony paid for unwed couples laden with many
                               memories of children and will
                               not want for joy

                               resting in plato’s cave

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In time you can live more
of the poetry that surprised you.

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You’re
a very still creature; and
I want this to write itself
already.

Events are not just lived
as they arise,

one
thought can stand in our way
like repetition.

And safety is an oddity that I
don’t pretend to know myself.

Don’t fact check your life.
Where is the perfect you.
Where are you broken.

In some other part of your mind that was a friend?
Exception to the rule noticed my hiding place.

What young joy are you living through that I never had? What
was stolen from me.

Let me see with love the thief once again.
One might hate these poetries yet

the point is to live not die,
and come home hand in hand.
You asked for an undeniable protection, and that
no one could refuse.

Who is the unknown?
How does she live like that?

Do I know the in between.
Do I detest the hidden.
Am I worthy

of the moment my love gave me back to myself.

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