Poetry

An inch of snow fell yesterday,
illumined the branches of trees,
erased curbstones, and covered the trash

that blows through the park. Tonight
has lost its edges and joined
a thousand years of nights. A scent

composed of leather and sweat
rises when I shoulder a door,

wanting in, or maybe wanting out
of rain and wind, out of a vacancy
I’ve learned to inhabit. Voices leak

down the hall from a half-lit kitchen
where someone is frying onions. Maybe
also a bit of beef and something sweet.

I slip out of wet shoes and enter
a dream past which is not

only mine. The tale’s more
than one family’s wars, trials,
and steerage berths. This frozen night

joins with other nights, the haunts
of a billion ragged dreamers,
selves adrift in a moving world.

After “Nature Boy”

For lousy pay, I drove a van
between Detroit and Wapakoneta, Ohio,
spinning it once in a white-out storm
and sliding up the Luna Pier exit

to stamp and thaw among lost souls
in the moon’s damp firehouse. Later,
I shot weddings, shingled roofs, herded

children and was called, in each job,
by a different name. Adrift. While
he wrote about love, eden abhez

and his family camped out below
the Hollywood sign in forties L.A.
Today, they’d be jailed. Picture his wife
braving the wind on dry nights.

Maybe she was the visionary.
What do I know? I’m tone deaf,
sipping coffee and reading wikis
amid the tremors of another time.

Only that he moved west and changed
his name and slipped a hit to Nat Cole.
That they had to track him down
to sign the record contract. That we want

to unravel love, to get it or save it,
though everything leads to return,
love evaporating and falling like rain,

like snow, while we turn wheels
into swerves and utter strange
bird cries, waiting for a crunch.

The dream of snow is a relief
In it’s own
These burning fall leaves
Are far too harsh compared to ice
There are too many of them
Too much

Snow is a secret
Blanket to cover the crunching
Brown leaves like dirt
Soggy and frail
In the ongoing autumn rains
Melting them into the earth

The music of the sun’s rays
Crisp the air
Beat the people
Sweat spilling from their foreheads
As they dance in the light
Dreaming of snow to cool
Their tired burning bodies

Where does it hurt when I lie?
Is it in the piercing pain of thorns weaved
around your forehead with red truth sliding down

Is it the acidic taste of flame
raging in the dissolved vinegar eating
thousands of bumps on your tongue

Is it in the open slit of your side
where a sea of blood and water
spilled like the downward stream of a waterfall

Is it in the holes in your
hands and feet formed by rusted
iron pushed and twisted into cedar wood?

Savior, what does the sting of sin
feel like? Where does it hurt most? And
where are halos found among martyred men?

One light out of 86 flickers
Like it’s trying to tell me a secret
Listen
Words echo around
I count the lights
The windows
31, if you include the stained glass
That reflects on the speaker
Listen
The chandelier has one light out
Two of the light covers don’t match
Listen
14 people sit in front of me
Tapping feet
Tip
                tap
tip
                tap
Leaning in to whisper
Listen

The stranger across the street
Asks me if I want to die, and I say
Only if it is a happy death
If I were to die now

I’m not worried about
missing out on my first drink
being able to rent cars
owning my first house
or waiting to turn 65
for the chance to retire

Yes, my heart yearns
for the day it stops beating
It is indeed a burning
Choice out of desire
but I am not running
towards death. It must come to me

And when that day
is near arrival
Do not ask me to keep
fighting. I am taking the
passageway that leads to

my ancestors,
answers how
the Egyptians built
the Pyramids, and crafts a
body that knows no Illness

If you want to know how are we so
Compatible with death
The secret lies in           the syntax
Written in the code of
life: God’s program for humanity.