The Watchman's Son

Above the plain the watchman walked,

the night aflame with torchlight.

I, a lonely traveler, stalked

across the plain, my home across

my back. The tower's gate in sight,

I hailed the man and found his son

who wandered through the night.

I asked for shelter and he told me

that in the kingdom's name

he would give me leave

to remain on the border

between dark and light

as long as I never again

fell in love with the night.

"It was a year better spent elsewhere,"

I said. "In the air, the ground,

in some hole of a cave

retreating from the world.

The night is merely a wanderer

without a home to find."

Mirrors

I built a wall of mirrors
shining outward,
reflecting the world back at itself,
and thought it meant something about me.

You drank the first cup of wine
you found dripping on a forest path.

Together we shattered the glass
encasing our little world
were pulled flailing into the void of space.

I can breathe. Can you?

Dream Country

The girl's finger's were like ropes,
lashing the boy to her as with iron hoops.
The girl couldn't help it: had been used,
had been abandoned, so was not responsible
when her words made themselves manipulations,

When the sun rises high, I'll tell you a mystery.

The boy remembered a night spent sleeping
in front of a fire, the flame burning down
as the moon rose, all his friends
off in the woods smoking pungent grass.
He had vowed never to be alone again.

One night they slept together, innocently,
legs and breath entangled in a bag
in the woods, muted stars peering at them
through tree limbs. They whispered promises
in each other's ears, and each promise they broke.

When the moon burns low, I'll tell you a mystery.

Why are the sun and the moon opposites,

asked the girl. Screw dualism.

The boy had fallen asleep, and his dreams

were loud, a great dark void

swallowing all he had ever known.

When the light of the sun and the dark of the moon

meet in the morning's fresh gloaming,

I'll tell you a mystery.

The girl stood and looked at the boy,

his mouth open with a fine line of spittle

tracing his cheek. No disgust, but pity.

She walked the forest as if she had never known fear,

as if the waving limbs of pine trees were never monsters.

Tears traced down her sleeping face:

her dreams were of worlds colliding,

the sun's face going dark, 

the moon falling from the sky,

the boy become a man, sliding out of her control.

When the sun burns the dew off the grass, now, I'll tell you a mystery:

We none of us know any other person, nor do we know ourselves,

but true love is possible.

Wisdom

The boy's manly hair, his set chip of a jaw,
his burnished skin, his arms ropy with muscles
were all set to inspire confidence. But in his eyes
burned a void, for where once he had a soul
now merely a collection of catch-phrases:
believe in yourself, be respectful, don't take
any shit, dish out better than you take,
neither borrow nor lend. I found
less to respect in him and his motivational wind
than in the old man I met as a child,
sitting on his porch drinking the dust of the county
highway, pot-bellied, suspenders stretched
nearly to breaking, beard long and frazzled.

The Circus Between Dawn and Sunrise

1. The Barker

Step up, step forward, through the gloaming gates
into the place between: between your fear and your hope,
between life and birth,
between freedom and flight,
between death and sleep. Get your souls read,
your palms fed, get your love solved,
trap your spirit behind a wall. Don't
be afraid, little child, your blonde curls
will be safe from snarlers, jackanapes and churls.

Step right up, ladies, gentlemen, spirits and shades;
children, vampires, forests and glades.
Women, your men will be safe;
no flashing lights here, no titillation,
no irrigation of the eyes and sighs.
Men, fear not, your women will endure no attack,
there are no men with drug-laced rags lurking
in the shadows here, no slaver of any kind.
Children, you may escape your parents
into a realm of confectioner's delight.
Candy! Candy! Candy!

Step right up, all you who are weary and heavy-laden,
for the rest we give is that rest which blackens the soul,
pours it through a fiery furnace, reconstitutes it as precious gold.
Ignore the winged creatures pouring from the shadows
for they are mere lights, smoke, and mirrors.
See the magician with bats pouring from his eye sockets;
see the lady who spits an infinite stream of beer from her mouth;
see the child born with snakes instead of hair.
Ladies, gentlemen, toilers, fools and all others:
step right up and see the greatest show on earth!


2. The Bearded Lady

If you could have seen me when I was young,
oh what a pretty thing I was.
Sun dresses lit up my legs, my arms, my face
like Persephone's glowing limbs, yet was I kidnapped
and brought to this hole in the ground,
made to grow crops to attract customers,
made to shear sheep and grow their skin from my face.

Once my father told me I would be the beauty of the nations.
Ha.

Yet did I choose this hole in the ground,
for the sun when it shone on me
burned too bright, and when the faces of the gods
are turned toward me I get stage fright, I cower,
I turn away. I grew this outfit to hide from them,
I dug this hole to hide from them,
I buried myself in this earth to hide from them.

Oh, what a pretty thing I was.


3. The Magician

Step into my house,
this flimsy palace
made of canvas
which flaps in the breeze
like the winged slipper
of Mercury. Venus has nothing
on me for love, for brightness.
See how my face shines
like a lighthouse at night.

I'll make your mother disappear,
I'll make your father crumble,
I'll make the screams of your child
vanish into the night.
Do not fear me.

Step into my house, and I'll show you wonders.


4. The Lion Tamer

My hair is long like the manes of lions, mother
said. I once tied a weight into it and killed
the county sheriff with my lion-mane hair.

That's no proper thing for a little girl to do,
said my mother. So I killed her, too.

Then I had to run.

I ran and I ran, through the lands of the night,
across the surface of the sun,
and my feet burned but still I ran,
and I dissolved but still I ran,
and I was consumed but still I ran,

until I found a patch of earth no foot of man,
animal or god had ever trod. I collapsed, weeping,
until the lions came for me. They ate my lungs, my heart, my liver,
until I was nothing but a bare patch of earth
on which no foot had ever trod. All this is true,

yet also have I always been here,
with the lions, taming and trampling
their will under my small feet,
trapped, transfixed by their roars.

Wise Blood

He held the guitar like it was a lover,
like it was a bird,
firm and yet loose enough that it could fly away.

His fingers seemed barely to move
and the music of the spheres
filled the grey cell block of dorm room.

"I got this after my first break-up,"
he said. "She took it as a compliment,
but it was never about her."

"I knew a girl once,"
I said, "who took credit for spring
because she covered herself in snow."

"I knew a man," he said,
"who thought he had killed God
because he gouged out his own eyes."

I'll Not be Named

This to all
paragons, prophets, pundits, peddlers, pontificators
whose speech seeks sophistication but not philosophy:

You have not named me.

Oh, you've thrown glowing words
to dance and decorate my bed,
calling me friend, lover, student, trial, terror.
You've called me orator, rapist, average, genius,
ravaged, revolting, revolutionary. You've let me dance
in twisting virtue, travel treasonous trails,
rest awhile in your warm embrace.

And I admit I've given you power:
I've had my crushes, wise and foolish,
I've offered up glowing words
hot off the presses of my passion,
I've written you sonnets, novels, plays,
essays in which I've essayed
to capture some spark
of a window reflecting fire
when there's no fire to reflect.

But you have not named me.

Don't think that because I've given
flickering eye, lover's sigh,
words of subservience
that you know me, hold me, are responsible
for me. Like all the world
you wish I would end my life were it not for you.

But you will not name me.

The only word with the power to name me
is not a word,
the only hand with the power to hold me
is a hand so strong it could crush
Plato's formal fist;
and until your words can burst forth
from the bonds of life, from the dust of death,
until you have the power to speak mercy into being
or create grace in my heart,

the only name I will be named
is one that comes not in your preaching,
not in your prophesying,
not in your screeds telling me my place
and yours above me,
but in an impossible still small voice
with the power to ignite a whirlwind.

Music of the Spheres

You'll never take from me the music of the spheres,
never convince me my God is a liar,
no matter how many books and grins and leers

you throw at me, no matter how clear
your circles in the sand, your funeral pyre,
you'll never take from me the music of the spheres.

Clothe me in newsprint, hold my politics dear,
you'll never walk me through your petty fire,
no matter how many books and grins and leers

you use to savage me. You'll never make it clear
why my capitulation is so dire;
you'll never take from me the music of the spheres.

You'll never take me, bowing, even swearing merely
to want what you want, to desire what you desire,
no matter how many books and grins and leers

you pile on my head, no matter how many fears
you monger, no matter how loud your lyre.
No matter how many books and grins and leers,
you'll never take from me the music of the spheres.

Don't Tell Me to Find my Voice

Through my life I've plugged my ears
while men in three-piece suits shouted through bullhorns
that I needed to find my voice. Shall

I look 'neath rock or tree or sky to find
some mortal coil found within me?
Shall I compare my notebook's lines
to a summer's day or the wine-dark sea?

Or maybe
my line
is overlong,
lingering
too much
on rhythm,
pictures
framed
in outmoded
wood?

Or is this voice inside me?
Should the breath of my lungs somehow

linger

or animate some undead pup
with bones in his hair,
a ring through his nose,
to be defeated by a young man who cheated
death by stealing a kiss? In short,

don't tell me to find my voice
until you've finished your own
self-surgery, opening
and tinkering
your own lungs, inflating
your own voice-box
and spattering with blood
your ugly herringbone three-piece suit.

Snow

Listen, you said, as the snow
tousled your hair with angels' feet
drew teardrops on my skin
fogged between our breath,
there's a hell of a great universe next door,
so let's go. I nodded
but when you disappeared
out of the glow of our streetlight
out of a world where the streetlamp
lit whispering snowdrops like alchemists' gold
settling on my clothes, my shoes,
my teeth, my shins,
I could not go
into that outer darkness.

Enjoy your universe, dear;
I'll stay here, calcifying beneath
a cloak of snow,
one day to burst alive, aflame,
to blaze for a moment
brighter than any streetlight's broken glow.

The Duchess Replies

Your sonnets, sir, fail to move me.
If I discern your sentiments aright,
the elements of love for you are three:
One, me to be a foil for your might;
Two, me to be compared to all those things
that only the infatuated use
(Oh, if I am another rose petal,
or if my gaze ever again sings,
or if my wine-red lips are made booze,
I shall brain myself upon your mettle);
Three, love for you means consciously to choose
briny rhymes, tortured meter, flower-petal-
laden cliches. In short, good sir, your heart
is a pauper, betrayed sadly by your art.

The Monk Comments

When I joined the monast'ry I knew not
what a brood of vipers we'd become:
far from reformed swains who heaven sought,
we were to holiness deaf, resilient and dumb.

Here father Ambrosio chased
a fair maiden into the ground;
in her sin to die and waste she's bound,
with her beauty the world's no longer graced.

And here, horror to o'ertop them all,
Father Ambrosio consorted with deviltry.
His error was not sinning by intent,
but letting his lies o'ertop his shame.

I hear Father Ambrosio cry in my dreams,
and I turn from him as from a poison'd stream.

The Ghost Laments

Many's the night I've rattled my chains,
let my hollow voice ring from the halls.
I've scared maidens, defenestrated swains,
my wide dark eyes eviscerate hell's walls.
In the wandering of my undeath, while
mortal boys meld flesh to mortal beds,
I promise my unquiet love that I'll
take revenge, burning in her stead
those who sent her into a pit of earth.

But for this young girl, asleep, her hair spread
like angel's wings, I lament the death
meant for her forebears. But my wife bled
and now I'm caught 'twixt rival destinies:
my wife or heaven: which do I please?

A Prayer for Boston

Within me, within you,
is the capacity to blacken all of time.
We own a terrible freedom,
a glorious beast,
the options of infinity.
Under cover of the moon's dark light,
we seek and secretly savor shadows
whose forms of flesh on flesh
tearing skin from bone
injecting beautiful poison into our hearts,
our bones, our skin
promises salvation but only tears
apart that which makes us human.

When we love one another
we have seen God's face.

I love you, sister,
though everything in me calls out
for me to tear you down.
I love you, brother,
though I wish my power
exceeded yours.
I love you, mother,
though I feel unreasonably
that I must triumph over you.
I love you, father,
and I love you all my fathers and mothers
and all my sisters and brothers,
though I desire your destruction.

I pray for the people of Boston,
because and although I have a fire burning in me.
I pray for the bombers, the runners, the families,
all those crying quietly in closets and burning in their beds.
I pray for those whose lives were changed in an instant,
in the twinkling of an eye.
I pray that the spirit who reveals God's face
would infect each heart.
I pray that each person would hold a candle to the darkness
in those around them.
I pray that a true rain would quench the fire
burning in our chest,
and I pray that we are all changed, in an instant,
in the twinkling of an eye.

A Full Heart

My heart is filled
with all the grace a bent reed
can fathom. The curve
of ironic lips, the blossom
of friendship opening red and gold
in my heart,
a sunset over the sea
reflected in a conch shell my grandmother sent me.

My heart is filled with mourning,
with the knowledge that within me is the capacity
to break homes, bend reeds, to cause tears
to flow fast and hot. But my heart is filled with wonder,
that one day these tears will be transmuted into precious gold,
with the knowledge that each tear is a world,
unique, precious unto itself.

My heart is filled with the knowledge that beyond the great abyss
there is an undiscovered country, where sea and sky and heart
and sunset and morning and joy and pain are all one

The Problem of Infinity

When the moon's a silver claw
scything its way through the lump in my throat,
and all the world seems to weigh on my heart,
I realize the problem of infinity,
that all things are possible, but not all things are helpful.

I wish, sometimes, that I could have all this capacity for wonder,
that a red-gold sunset would blaze out at night and fill my heart with birdsong,
that at the glance of a wide-eyed girl my heart would hurt,
that the rain would pain my skin with all the breathlessness of dancing,

without the need for tears flowing fast and silent, without the need for skin
to be torn from skin,
without the words despair speaks like pebbles falling from my lips.

I wish I could leave this broken skin and already, not yet,
be a new creation.
Lord, save me from this body of death.

Freedom

Beneath a blanket of highways

the long snake lay slumbering, ready to spit up

a team of determined, hollow-legged Nazis

marching black and white from the center of the earth,

while above them spun a continent of those content

to deny their existence, content to deny existence

a great dark void

to that whole rabble of peasants suspended from the white-hot

void of stage lights, that rabble whose guitar-playing

poetry-reading ways told them the truth, that they were slaves

whether they wore 

chains or neckties or miniskirts, but

slaves are inherently

free;

in poetry and song and story

we immortalize that freedom, while the great dark void

watches,

knowing it can do nothing to stop this immortality,

knowing that one day the void will swallow up its neckties, miniskirts

bikinis and swastikas, but that freedom

will endure long after the speeches and the temples

enshrining it are dust.

Night

Night and the soul-dark beauty of stars
arching over a field
blown by a wind which chilled me to the depths of my dark soul;
night and the song we spoke to each other
out of our souls was silenced. Night in our hearts,
night in the way we watched each other,
night in the way the blanket covered you and I did not. Night
in the spirit's long fall from grace toward grace, night
in your eyes and in my grimace, night which covered
the spirit's insistent face breathed into us one night
beneath the shadow of great wings.

Night when it began, the warmth of shared breath
the lullaby of an eternal moment, night
when it ended not in tears but in silence

night when we realized life goes on, night after, after night,
after,
wings whose whispers saved us
take us, soul-spinning into the stars
show us some glimmer of a land we cannot see without being destroyed,
a land whose night's beauty sears a scar on our eyes.

In some sense we'll always be holding hands beneath the stars,
wandering a field at night;
in some sense,
in the way that time is not real, we never were.

Mall

A single shaft of sunlight
infiltrated the mall's high window, violating
the perfect sameness
of tile floors, evenly-spaced chandeliers,
copper pots with plants
whose stems sprouted seven leaves apiece. The girl wondered,

an unauthorized wonder born not from books or screens
but from the feel of an ant's tiny leg crushed one day
beneath her questing fingers, whether God

is truly a system. As the sun

broke up the air into tiny particles and paled
the mall's even light, shining glassy-faced on Mercury's Slippers,
bleaching life from the grinning face and silencing

the voice of the saxophone soloist whose idea
of rhythm was to play the same scale
more quaveringly each time, the girl's breath stirred
within her. She knew she was only a slave as long as
as long as

as long as she was a slave, and words
failed her.

Jeanne d'Arc

She dropped in feathered flight, rocklike, aflame;
her breath consumed the air, the earth, the ground.
The peasants, shiftless, arrogant and lame
gathered with murmurs, raised her a thorny crown.

No raging warrior-queen like Maeve was she;
no friend had she upon the haunted earth.
A prince's heart she won, murmuring quietly,
and won for a beleaguered nation a rebirth.

In the dark depths of night, of heart, of stone
her faith's flick'ring candle nearly snuffed,
she thought that she was frozen and alone,
she thought she knew her death was not enough.

Though flames ate her body she became
eyes for the blind, flight for the lame.

I Will Remember

Later, when the breath of your eyes has faded
and the blue seas of my heart have stilled,

I will remember what made us:
worlds refracted through grassy dewdrops,

winding switchback dirt paths
under frowning thunderheads,

lakes made in a backyard sandpit
and battles of frozen plastic fought on the shore.

I will remember you and her lying beneath the footbridge
one September day, your cigarettes twin towers

spelling the end of my childhood. I will remember
why you could not forgive yourself,

one night beneath the blue of the stars and the rush
of headlights. I will remember why you left,
and remember why you're wrong, and hope you will return.

A Prayer

Lord have mercy on the small walks I've taken late at night,
when stars pricked my skin like rain,
when I prayed with the breath of the wind,
when somehow I knew that I was nothing and everything,
living, moving, having my being here, in this wind, suspended.

Lord have mercy on the small people who created me:
my grandfather's canyon-cragged face,
my grandmother's shock of white
and the way her breath spun golden worlds at my bedside,
my father's tears, my mother's sigh, my brother's clenched fist.

Lord have mercy on all those who mourn,
on all those whose tears flow fast and silent:
comfort them with the breath of your wind
sighing at the edges of their souls,
just beyond touch, just beyond reach.
Wrap us, Lord. Make us whole.

After We Killed Her (haibun)

After we killed her, buried her body in the dried creek-bed, and you all drove off in your pick-up trucks, I lay on the soft earth on top of her grave and sleep came over me. In my dream I saw her, drowned in a crystal-pure river, her hair floating out in the water like angel's wings. She spoke to me. You have not killed me, she said, you've killed yourselves. Then the river burst into flame, and she rose on fiery wings into the sky and disappeared. I woke, picked up my shotgun from its place half-buried in the grave. I knew what I had to do. Boys, I'm coming for you.

After death's earth-drowned 
burial, a girl's flame hums
life into the air.

Childhood

Gasping for starlight,
hungry for a cold blast
of mountain air,

wishing for that bright day
when we knew the comet
would incinerate everything,

knowing as they lowered
us into the ground
that we were merely seeds.

You're the Fire

You’re not the martyr, you’re the fire;

On burning flame you waste your breath,

Yet you rail at me for calling you a liar.

Advent-candle kindling inspired

You to be a martyr to your health;

You’re not the martyr, you’re the fire.

You tie yourself to stakes and then inquire,

Innocently, why the world plotted for your death,

Yet you rail at me when I call you a liar.

You run from your home’s flaming spire

That you lit, making kindling of your wealth;

You’re not the martyr, you’re the fire.

You claim forked lightning, living mire,

You claim inevitable doom, like MacBeth,

Yet you rail at me for calling you a liar.

Stars danced and I sang you grace’s choir;

You stood, tall, proud, and gouged yourself deaf.

You’re not the martyr, you’re the fire,

Yet you rail at me for calling you a liar.

The Inevitability of Radishes

Look. Mom. Mom, look. I hate them. I hate them so much. Well, because they make me go all junkety. Yes, Mom, you do too know what junkety means, I told you before... Don't tell me junkety is not a word just because you don't like what I mean by it, I told you before... Yes, it's like when the clouds all seize up and won't turn any color except gray, and it's like they're frowning down at you except they don't actually care because they're apathetic and lazy. And I was eating radishes the day Erika broke up with me; I was eating radishes the day Mr. Scruffles lost his battle with the truck's wheel; I was eating radishes the day you told me I was going to have a younger sibling, and isn't that a lot of radish-associated trauma for a twelve-year-old?

Yes, Mom, I understand that eating radishes does all kinds of good things and will save me from disease and obesity and the inevitable darkness waiting at the end of each brief flickering life. But I'm twelve, Mom, so pronouncements of inevitable doom don't really disturb me so much as when my video games fail. I'll worry about that stuff after Erika comes back and I'm happy again. Radishes only remind me I don't understand mortality. And I really hate that. So no radishes. No, Mom. Just. No.

Time is not Real

When the sun's face is hidden
and the silence falls at noon,
I understand (through the flickering
glance of blue eyes
which became progressively bloodshot
as I stood by and spouted platitudes)
that time does not pass, it lingers.

A single flickering glance
can cast a shadow over a life,
but one day I was shown (on my knees
in a place that smelled of mold
and wilted flowers) that a single,

cross-shaped shadow, cast from a little hill
in a backwater province
of the world's greatest empire,
is somehow the breath
which will wash away my death
so that after I am dust, my flesh will see wonders.