Witching Hour

October 31, 2013

Witching Hour

reality seems too too

real the desk too

ingrained the apple

too tempting I hear

the rain cacauphonize

the drainpipe and want

to taste its electric cold on

my tongue its sting

on bare shoulders but

knowing fate I never will

Elegy on Sleep

December 17, 2012

Elegy on Sleep

night falls

we are still awake

in bleary gray in the dark

illuminated only by halogen lamps and sleepless

delusions the small possibilities of the past seem almost

to materialize in our hands slippery soft as candle wax

or starlight we handle them with such delicacy

as we might an impossible task and still

they melt through our fingers why

do we do this to our bodies?  

eyes heavy and caffeine-rimmed filled

with the red of memory and distance the thrall

of self-indulgent melancholy we cannot

remember the nights once studded and bright

with magic or starshine dulled and frozen

                                                          the mind slips

dreams sharp and black as scrawled ink

curling bits of volcanic stone clawing

at the soft tissue of the brain but don’t

retrace spiked cavernous thoughts don’t

let yourself why do we

do this to our bodies?

night leaves me at the feet of a dim

white dawn dissatisfied

The things you think about on clear winter nights

August 30, 2012

The things you think about on clear winter nights

A comet criss-crosses through a sky

studded with stars that shine

like city windows, like

sparks of electricity. 

Its hyperbolic trajectory traces

arcs through deep space, or maybe

it hurtles around suns

like an airplane around the earth,

like an electron around a nucleus.

You interstellar traveler,

do you ever get homesick?

I know you race on farther than the glimpse

we catch, faster than numbers race through wires,

or an electrical impulse across synapses in the brain.

Pulled on by gravity, or destiny,

blown on by solar winds,

comet:

I wonder,

do you ever long

for your cold nebula home?

If you could, would you ever return?

Or are you like us,

the planets,

the molecules,

wandering forever and yet

trapped by your routines:

your physics, your fate.

I want to wake up early with you

April 10, 2012

I want to wake up early with you and walk through the morning village

Dew like silver on the black bridge,

a silent fog on the water, a canopy

softening bare silhouettes along the canal.

The sky, blue-grey,

still sleeping in a warm bed, in a room

where the cold clings to the curtains and walls,

a house with a dark, creaking floor,

the air heavy from a long winter’s night.

Four birds in the distance,

barely separate,

move through the morning and

                                             drift away.

wake

November 29, 2009

wake

i.

there is a girl

in the dark water

in a pale dress.

she is dreaming

about me.

i surround her;

i am the water

that contains her.

her eyes are closed,

but she smiles.

ii.

they

stare upward.

their eyes are colorless

as they look upon

a sky

so full of crocodile tears.

it rains stars

and all we do

is watch

and watch.

iii.

you see a lily,

i see a rose.

which of us is right?

iv.

these are the borderlands.

i float between them.

i rock in a gentle current.

suddenly

i am the girl i dreamed of,

the one who,

in my dream,

had dreamed of me.

i’m sure

you can see this

alice-in-wonderland circle.

so can i.

but that doesn’t make me sure

that i will ever

wake.