metonymy4u

Against my very will I find myself for home again
trending beyond the river’s expired month and hoping, panicked,
to someday see again the ocean of my youth. Behind me
my years a dried up whisper, and you my bones in the yard.

Newly dead and with no history I lie face up
to an unwashed desert while a flight of tarnished wings,
meaning nothing to my story, line themselves across the sky
to empty the day at the end of the day. That being said, your

voice in my innocent ear was such that I slid easily
down a waterfall of lies and saw time as it walked away
from its partner of many years.

Tired work days often end like this:
my sun words dance prayer-like along a beam of light and
blinded I can barely see the mercy that sends me home
released from this life, a moment of pain
flanked on either side by silence.

switch my brain for another and I might not know the difference.
                                                and i’m still quite upset

that you thought it necessary to remind me
last night (between the closet and the door) that
the old time rockers understood passion as a bridge
between two clouds: work itself one could be proud of,

and not apologize for. i wish everything
was more sustainable than that.

but by this time tomorrow i’ll be waking alone in my bed
wondering if you were a dream.

i who can draw almost a lifetime, from one unheard
                                                               compliment.

have you ever seen a sky as beautiful as the one overhead right now?
no? then please don’t leave me tonight.

i can’t endure another thought as sad as the last.
and i’m worried about the imperfections of my body.

smuggle me once more unto your heart darling dear,
i’m a rapid anodyne diplomat of hope.
there’s no water in the trough over here.
and we are drying the rope
so recently washed of its blood.

sensory experience deprivation of the very first kind—
it was a monster head embalmed in port
after warrants dispersed by a people forsworn
and devout.

and i’m but a bald day long
languisher for your lies, a witless suitor
for your amour.

                        god, sometime in the middle of the 20th
                        century, all doubt about your
                        power and continued existence
                        left the earth forever.

she was having one of those dreams one wants to force
yourself awake to be rid of. when you wake up and your
arm won’t move and you shake it almost off trying to remember
what day it is and what you’re supposed to be doing.
i think i’m in chicago still trying to get back to california
or that i’m failing out of school because i skipped
too many classes and didn’t turn in the papers,
hoping i could cover it up later and not lose
my security clearance.

it’s an occupation that quickly saps all desire.

like the week i flew all night to shake one man’s
hand, got back on the plane and flew twice that time to see
my own bed again. they dimmed the cabin lights but peace
missed the flight. or was shredded by the engines
who knows. stale air is no reward for hard work.

my brother used to tell me stories about swimming under
the summer moon with fireflies overhead while his
sticky skin slid thoughtlessly into a dark water. he said
fish nibbled his toes. i think he was just chicken shit.
scared as one could be under our naked sky

homeless for its gods once again.

                                    Abraham wanders the desert alone at last


Game the master devil and destroy their wholesale letters,
he wrote from beyond the barrios of España
orientál. Dispense with hope and discretion.

Covenant with me again, said the rock. Wordless
dreams are the lord’s anger for lives of
no repent.

Also, he worried

if somewhere it had been written that to dare
the lost camel paths of smugglers of salt and poetry
you must steer only by the hue of the setting sun. Cheap
wine and sandy dates will be your lone support.

There were no emails to open so forget
comfort like tea forgets its leaves each night

under the earthen moon.
Tell the sky

cancel my accounts;
and say unto my widow and orphan
the face of the child I betrayed is too hard a thing

to ever forget.

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.

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.

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

in your fingers

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.

                        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?