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

Whispered thoughts and curled fists

June 12, 2010

Whispered thoughts and curled fists

Somewhere in the past, lightning

tears silently at the sky

until a sort of insatiable thunder rings out

and tumbles down.

You heard it.

I saw you, flinching like a jack-in-the-box,

you and your wet

artichoke heart.

Charisma, you spat.

That’s all we have.

You began to throw at my feet

every compromise you ever made,

and crushed them under your toe

until they resembled the residue of that marrow bone

your dog chewed for hours

yesterday on the hardwood floor. 

You imagined any possible

tetrahedral, stained-glass afterthoughts

we might have had,

and threw the biggest rocks you could find

until it was all just a heap of shattered stars

in our heads.

But let’s face it:

we both did.

After all,

we dreamed up such big futures for ourselves,

much too grand for the lives we led,

and for the overwhelming reality

of the way we are.

Way before us,

a thin rain starts to fall.

I needed a good storm.

It's 1 AM and there are ghosts in my head

May 31, 2012

It’s 1 AM and there are ghosts in my head

My ears echo – scattered

laughter and other sounds that belong

to sitcom reruns – faint

whispers above the soft rushing

of the ceiling fan. 

Under my eyelids crawl

harmless bits of movie trailers, dissolving

into the smooth darkness that surrounds everything. 

This darkness, this

secret place under my skin,

behind my bones,

where I imagine

the shining yet-to-be,

the bright-blinding

firework future:

white feathers, white

petals, white gown,

white fading

into everything, everything

fading into white. 

But perhaps these are only advertisements

and job descriptions,

magazine clippings

and music videos replaying and

playing and playing

as if they comprised the quiet

inner-workings of my brain.

Maybe,

I think as I drift off to sleep. 

Maybe tonight I’ll have dreams of my own.  

paper dreams

March 4, 2011

paper dreams

when I think of what might become of us later, my mouth takes on the ashtray taste of probability, a dark coffee that sweetens slightly at the thought of you, staining and becoming the gold rings that sometimes appear in your blue eyes, as bright as the sun that shone above us ages ago when we laid on our stomachs in soft grass, with friends, laughing, not knowing what was in store for us in the future, just like

I don’t know now.

my words, they live in the palaces I built for them in the rich deserts of my imagination, with the air stirring around them filled with the scents of spices; in skyscrapers I constructed among the vivid city streets of my past, all thronged with pigeons and raw beauty; on midnight lakes under the golden august moons of my memory, the seagulls nesting quietly on the shore; but my words, the poor orphans, will never know

who their author is. 

we are swept inexorably onward by some dark, ancient wind, caught at the moment in the slow death throes of snow and ice; as this bitter breeze bites at my back and at my heels, I begin to shiver from damp and cold, from longing and regret, but then, as always, you, with your isinglass gaze and lion’s heart, remind me of cherry stems and seashells and pennies face-up.  you hold me close and reassure me,

summer will change that, too.

pen and paper

March 19, 2011

pen and paper

the meaning of life escapes us

in dreams lost to the morning,

conversations never remembered,

and the discarded peels

of tangerines. 

tears

July 13, 2010

tears

if you lay your arm across my ribcage, you can feel these desiccated birdbones; perhaps you will wonder, like me, why they were just never light enough to fly.

maybe we were only chasing dragons, but if we keep trying, i think we can still catch one.  

i want you to look past these tears in my clothing and touch the skin of who i was, who i could be, and who i really am, but sometimes i become so pale that even i don’t know what part of me could be this cold.

if i asked you to, would you pinch me to make sure i’m not dreaming? 

these enigmatic eyes that i try so hard to hide are mostly filled with juggling clubs and picture frames, but maybe you’re the one who will understand what i mean when i think about how my life would be different if my irises were brown instead of blue. 

if you write your lyrics on my heart with indelible ink, i promise i’ll never forget the song.

maybe these stitches that were holding me together so nicely need to come out until i’m as tattered as queen-anne’s lace, and as pieces of me fall away like some beautiful anorexia, maybe, when it’s all done, you’re the one that i should ask to look inside me and see if there’s enough left to repair.

these yellow dandelions are my bouquet of white-elephant memories. 

this is me hoping that you don’t think they’re weeds. 

love

July 1, 2010

love

one day we sat and watched a patient parade full of people with nowhere to go.  you waved a flag and those thoroughbred thoughts you were always so proud of and said, these are the kind of people who never leave this place.

the only reason i knew there was loathing hidden behind your eyes is because i had already learned how to read your voice. 

you leaned back to watch your dreams tessellate into such lovely patterns in the air: i’m not going to be like that.  your eyes drifted and decided to focus on the sky, and then you were watching the clouds as if scrying for the future. 

i wondered what you saw up there, but i was too afraid to ask.

i could never handle bad news. 

amidst all the others with rigid, black-tie-formal faces, your two eyes were like matchboxes and your smile was like the fire: beautiful and rogue and dangerous only to those who came too close to putting it out. 

i tried a vanishing act, but you laughed at me because, as usual, it didn’t work. 

i want this to last forever, you lied. 

there was never actually a place for me in your starry sky, anyway; i suppose i would have held you back, like gravity. 

goodbye, you said.

“goodbye,” i said.

the parade was still passing as you left. 

with a sad smile, i watched you fade away, watched what was left of the people who kept walking and walking but had nowhere to go, and tried in vain to differentiate myself from the rest of that faceless crowd. 

dandelion sun - a tribute to my bad memory

May 26, 2010

dandelion sun – a tribute to my bad memory

the halogen lights act like lightning

and shock me. 

I caught that tiger

by its tail,

but then someone forgot

that we're not to slam the doors

and I lost it. 

catch-as-catch-can, I suppose.

oh, and please don’t touch that,

yes,

that right

there,

the poem

next

to my

fingers.

but you go ahead,

and I’ll let you,

because I’m too content to lose

this papercut war. 

my innate sycophancy

manifests itself

in the shape of

sphinxes and

stained-glass and

other daydreams,

and maybe someday I’ll remember the way my

metaphors didn’t used to fall apart.

the blue that I saw today

was blinding, like a full moon,

and as deep as thunder,

and as far as I know,

we’ll hit the ground only running. 

I noticed something:

you look even skinnier without your smile.

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.

what I can see from here

October 4, 2009

what I can see from here

it’s a familiar domain,

this expansive view,

with a similar terrain

to what I once knew.

I think that I thought

that it seemed I was home.

so what is this now,

this strange new land,

that I somehow know

like the back of my hand?

the sky, diamond hard;

night gleams with the stars.

the trees are dark, empty,

but with soft summer air;

an october breeze sifts

through my fingers, through my hair.

what a changeling dream,

but what does this mean?

where am I now?

I’ve been lost here so long.

but can I find myself

before I’m too far gone?

dream

March 9, 2008

dream

pale hair,
pale skin,

invisible in
the pale snow,

nearly blinding
under the moon,

a glint of silver,
a flicked fish's tail

in a deep blue where
the cold never fades,

and the night-water
crushes against

my bare emptiness