Poetry

She lived things I could only imagine; we were mad
about each other, mad in lust, mad angry. Mad. Period.
We made love in her car, wrecked mine, made out at
funerals, fucked against a bathroom wall in The Cove.
Never wanted anyone else and couldn’t live without
blowing it up; told her I’m a man without purpose
baby, a boy looking for a chance encounter; forever
confusing honesty with cruelty.
We played Russian Roulette with her father’s gun,
a former cop, ex-marine. I said sackcloth and ashes
would flatter her figure and she’d make a beautiful
train wreck for someone.
Last time we talked she said I’ll never let you go,
I knew it wasn’t true. She’s a liar, a sometime witch,
a damaged goods collector. Everything has its sell
-by-date; we cling to faith, pretend it will be enough.

heads of stone face the waves that rush / clapping against the body of the island
shallow lip of white / against the rising of earth / flowering in sharp green trunks of life
parabolic line of erosion / eruption etched into the rock / crags smoothed and jutting
upright before the deep blue / warm under a thundercloud / full-sail drifting
like a slow oncoming storm towards a nameless place, where people and gulls pass
wondering, staring, waiting as the land fades into sea and the sea into sky / all-beginning
forests drink up the alchemies of water and air / from the root of the wide Aegean shore

speaking of life in color / the palate of textures rough and dry under unforgiving sunlight
falling over spectrums of earth where the blue sea becomes green shore / whitened
crests lapping at the feet of dark brown stone / the few and far secluded beaches
until the stone of the nude island mount is shown / white rising in points and crumbling
the soil where trees grow softens under floorings / tufts of immaculate greenery
low atop its height / cut against the lightest blue / wisps of off-white clouds beyond
seen behind sail masts stretching out in the slight breeze / momentums to parallel coasts

waving from water to stone to air / eye level / the boat and a forest / above the sail
toward the sky / the land moves up for a tree / seeds flown in by the migrating birds
it descends with the erosion of roots / weather returning / from light to the deep
from blue to blue / the earth around plunges like an island submerged by silence
stilled to the following of the few who laugh and sing / read and see
listening for the ways of the land between sea and sky / feeling for the depths and heights
of blue, sea to sky / wandering without a hint of a map / not asking where or why
lost between blues and floating over the sea, by air / and on through the moveable forests

an island of earth indistinguishable from the continental drift / split by slow sea currents 
turquoise shallows / translucent blues shimmering / sparkled glints 
glimmering
light stardust touching over the seascapes churning / swelling / the peopled coast 
backdrop of heights / cliffs of textured mountain stone / bold mineral 
pigments 
diagonal swirls of rock vertical latitudes of visible Eurasian plates / opposing itself 
mega-rifts of warring earth clashing like the gods of our primal arboreal 
fears 
among the trees we built on stone / to pray / that they notice us in their 
power 
mightier we made them into symbols / for all that is seen / by an eye / hand or breath 

on either side of the watery course that makes inlets / coves and bays shine
with our earthly greed the dark wet stone dies against weather-beaten walls
made by the involuntary exhales of Poseidon / blue god of the West
rushing into the coastal rock like the moving sea / the verdant greens 
lone trees sprout to welcome worshippers of contemporary re-creation 
us who sacrifice ourselves to the bodies of fish and vegetables 

water itself on altars of wood cut and finished / floating and bobbing / over beatific depths  
coastline to mainland / tall trunks thin / stand alone behind a beach of washed red sand 
leafy tops adorning the horizon / where the mountains of Anatolia spring to 
life 
along the Aegean high / of orchards and vineyards / olives and grapes 
dotted brown earth surrounded / forests to the tree line / trampled by 
footsteps of Asia 
down over Europe, fumbling / only to reach the seaside shade / taste fruits 
of the West 

play in the shadows of the white-winged gulls / the black crows who steer
through the air from shore to shore / focusing through into the clear coastal seas 
lucid dreaming to the bottom / all for a starfish / an eel / a weed / a 
sponge 

Through the Chevy rumble of a borrowed car,
we waited for her baby to be born,
our nights sliding under the tires like a Chagall
painting of the wedding couple floating above town.
The beautiful breasts of my girlfriend
like frosting on a wedding cake. She steered me
blindly across the road with one hand,
avoiding a levitating fiddler, Chagall himself
standing on the side of the road, showing us
he had seven fingers to paint faster.
My girlfriend was pregnant and she taught me
how to drive, her cheekbones pressed against my shoulder.
When I strayed out of my lane, she said to keep left,
pretending the faded white line was a child.
I hadn’t fathered the road or the baby inside her.
Nor would we ever float loose above wooden fences,
pass through a window into Paris.
She didn’t want to birth her baby alone:
her belly barely fit behind the steering wheel.
I drove thirty miles per hour, slowing down
for peasants who were dancing in the road,
thinking they must be from Belarus, where
Chagall first painted on stained glass:
these ghosts from his past now stared at us.
We were headed for the beach in our borrowed Chevy.
The trees waited for us to find them human,
as they stood one after another, with their arms raised.
I counted them along the road until one bent in heartache,
and this was where we turned off for the shore.

I want to know
when the snow will stop
because my senses
tell me it’s never going to
for that sky seems
full and gray and permanent
and the white, flaky downpour
feels enduring,
setting in like arthritis
or gloom,
and I know how it gets
more difficult to grin
in those brutally exposed times
of pain and bitterness
and I figure worlds too
must, at some point,
find the effort not worth it,
the clear sky,
creamy yellow sun,
a deft balancing act
that gets tougher and tougher
to hold together
with each passing year
so I call a friend
on this dark winter night,
not to confirm
what it’s doing outside
or in here or anywhere
been or to come,
but to hear that
maybe somewhere, somehow,
in the glimmer of words,
in the tone of a voice,
it doesn’t have to be
about the weather.

I finally understood Tom Petty
laying atop the art building
as college cop lights
dashed across canvas under
streetlights and stars.
The roof was wet and
the winds were cold
but fireball kept us warm
since we hadn’t graduated
to those harder proofs.
This was enough evidence
tonight was the dawn while
six more semesters sat
chilling in the dorms.
I walked back for refills
with just the dirt on
my clothes only to scale
the walls again and see
her breath chug across
the other side of campus.
She left the bottle with
a swig and I finished it
yet didn’t feel empty.
Even the losers get lucky
sometimes and this loser
found out sometimes
wasn’t tonight, but Tom knew
that sometime could be soon.