In The Details
You are not
a vacant lot, strewn
with crushed
candy gum
wrappers and
tumbleweeds, a lemon
Nova up on
blocks.
You’re not vacant
at all in July when
it’s hot, plenty of dust
too where devils
exist, they do — reborn
every sixteen seconds
on the level keen
of sirens.
Must have seen
the reflections in busted
green glass, silver pull tabs
limning the salty shoals. How
many minutiae, before stories
get told? You, who are
neither field, channel
spit nor savant, now
would want me
revealed?
… Very well the
arboretum, breeze blows
as respite, no judgment
on these long summer
days; shade tree, yes a
trillion points of sun among
interstices. That’s me,
and it will be
done.
Nothing can save
the self but a soul now
that is something
else. Butterflies know
this too; most wise,
they carry
nothing. The best
of Coho spawned
is but a dash
of red on
the rocks. Rivers come
to suicide at the mouth
of every sea. You’re no
harbor, either, only one skiff
among motes of sun, rigged
for the longest glide ever,
the hardest
one.
When it hurts
worst, keep finding me
in the strobe light of tree
tops. It’s mercy skirts
the vacant
lots.
Roget Between Spells
I was working in the den
when the electrical storm
crossed my heart
again. For nine
minutes or maybe
ten, I breathed
spasm, writhing
on the floor,
as the atria
banged
like shutters
in a gale, splinters
of red nerve cell
flying hard from
the nail
of fibrillation.
Hope I knew
to be a word
for feeling you can get out
of anything, whereas when
it blew
over, an antonym formed
there in my den, bordering
on post traumatic, step ladder
to an attic room where terror
is kept
hydroponic like
in a vase. I said “I’m okay
I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay
I’m okay I’m okay I’m okay,”
between gasps
I got back
up then, filed things
away, after the etymology
of malady, “I might, I might
I might I might… be” — skeleton
jaw and a key word for
Ben Franlin’s kite; it takes
guts to be a linguist with
a wonky heart
rhythm but “I am
not I’m not I’m
not certainly
not …” it changed
again how I felt about
thoughts, and
attacks… all that’s
past, and what’s left
to come back.
Not two days later:
of an early morning
another word, hung
up tantalizingly on “tip
of tongue” no less true
for being ineffable
nagging cousin of “halcyon,”
or sine wave keyed to tides,
great heaving gulps of north
coast in the lungs. Easy.
It takes a lot of faith to be
a patient: hunting a word
for a name to face any
thing… it slipped
away.
Is it true what
they say? That it always
comes back, not by
“remembering” per se,
nor out of dread,
snapped digits or
anticipation: but only
when a mind is led
elsewhere: Could come
any second
now, in the atrium,
doing deep knee bends
in my den; or in
the garden where it’s been
so quiet, for the longest
time … I’m afraid I’m afraid
when the taste
in my mouth
starts to change.
Like last time, similar
but not really
the same … these
names have been
around since before
the Christ came.
