the sieve and the sand

For Tara

In first grade
Everyone drew the sun
as a big yellow cookie with
orange triangle arms.
I picked so many fights
over how incorrect that was.
But I have the same problem
when trying to describe love

My love
wears the face of worry
Which manifests as
I hear your voice around
every corner
and see your face
in places I know you are not
My butterflies are cannonballs
playing hopscotch in my stomach
I swallow rocks
sometimes
to keep all this emotion
down.
And how
many pages were torn
for me to get this book tongued
for me to get this binding spine
This is a true story
of a young man who loved
so hard
he could quote Shakespeare at you
and mean it.

There comes a time
when my words are not enough.
Some days I lick newspaper
and eat sentences right out
of my close friends’ mouths
just
to make use
and make language
like paint
I mix words
just to make sense. You
send my senses
to the base of my stomach. You
are the penny in my dryer.
I would have to
swallow rocks
if I ever thought
I wanted quiet.
If I ever wanted to quell the riot
you’ve got going
in my body. I’m
not blinking so much
to shut
you out
That’s my eyes
fighting to give you a
standing ovation.
If I turn sideways
I’m not looking at anyone else
that’s my ears trying to hear you
loud enough
That when you’ve gone away
I can still hit replay
But I’ve got to be careful of
what my mouth does. Listen
you should know this
I have spoken love
so hard
I might have broken love
before
This is a warning:
I am typewriter fingered
and I talk
a lot
I know you know this.
If you notice
that I repeat myself
I apologize
in advance
Sometimes my heart beats quicker
than my mouth can move
So when I run out of ways to say “love”
please
don’t think that means anything about you

I’m trying to teach myself silence
I’m not great at it
I know you know that too.
If I ever get it right
it’s just practice
I still have the world to say to you.
And when I get it wrong,
on the days
that you want
to tell me
to shut up
and I keep name-dropping “love”
That’s because
I stopped eating those rocks.
I want to feel this.

In first grade
I was asked to describe the sun.
So I stared directly at it
And when my teacher asked what it looked like
I said ouch
It’s really bright
I can’t see anything right now
Talking about love
or you
is the same thing
Blinding in all your bright
I still don’t ever miss the night

Some pictures are valueless
some less or more than average
and the adage only makes the rule
for one picture, anyway

Some pictures can cost you dear
and leave you broke and homeless
or alone in the world, at least

Some pictures are worth it
just to stretch with silly-putty
and laugh at on a rainy day

some pictures are priceless,
though,
and maybe those few on your pinboard
need not be appraised just
yet.

nothing of note
just a few thoughts
you shared i wrote
down because of their
poetic nature.
your speech was beautiful.
your main points?
not so much.

yea this old thing?
this napkin from the diner
where we sat to discuss
life but really you just ranted
against your friends,
politics, and everyone else
you blame.

just a napkin with some
scribbles.
nothing of note.
just a few thoughts
you shared and their
poetic nature.

If and when
i die I hope i’m laughing,
god knows i’ve seen my share of sadness.
i say if and when, because
i’m not really certain.
it’s all confusing to me,
how things work and why they do,
so i don’t really know what’s going on.
i just try to laugh, but lately,
lately that laughter doesn’t come,
and that’s not me, no not me.
i would hold a candle in vigil,
vigil for me,
but where am i?
i’m still looking, hey! still looking.
hide and seek with my soul.
all i know,
is that i’ll find me where the laughter is.
in the future, or
in the past.
i can’t die, not until then.

For Tara

Beauty exists
under blankets. This
moment
is punctuated
by bare skin.

The sun peaked in
this morning
and found us
still talking
about
our childhoods.

Every word
actually meant

love.

And when
I actually said
“love,”
that meant
“You are the reason the sun rises each day.”

Dozens of minutes
millions of miles of cable
half that in free-air
bit by bit
and yet
you elude
like the tiniest mouse
in the largest game of Mousetrap
(and the cage never falls right
anyway)

a brief interlude
(a break if you will)
will now be taken
to give the actors
a break for a few moments
as they re-adjust to
life outside of their
character.
to kiss their girlfriends
instead of their in-play
wives.
to use the bathroom facilities
because opera with the
tension of diarrhea is less
than enjoyable for the singer.
thus the interlude.
we apologize for the break.

I fished a ticket from my pocket
but the numbers were all wrong
agian and I guess I mean when it’s
tickets
I can never win.

It is a collection of broken fingers
scratching helplessly on locked doors
legal documents flying everywhere as
a briefcase had been thrown. It was
just your personal failures again.

The door clicks with misgivings as
it rocks in it’s frame, but gives no
ground. The bolt is fast and true.
The nob won’t help you either, no
matter how loose the latch.

Another finger breaks and falls as
helpless as it’s brothers and sisters.
It scratches, too, just like it was
taught those years ago. Keep scratching
and something might give. Except the
bolt is fast and true. And the nob
won’t help you either, latch be damned.

the pens in my room
are like dry ice
and my bed the
softest coffin

i lay down among
the velvet and
stare longingly
at my desk
and feel the cold
reach at me

and when the sun
touches the floor
it even is cold at
first,
but you brought me
lunch

your smiling face

i started to feel
the warmth again
and the velvet
went back
to cotton.

it’s that time of night
where the night before
you didn’t really sleep
worth beans
and you’re still up
because of that thing
you don’t need to do
but have no power over
yourself to keep yourself
from doing it
and you’re dreaming of
writing something long
and valuable and worthy
of your fingers hitting
the keyboard
but you know it’s too
late for coherent beautiful
words and so you settle
for something much much
less. something like a
rant where your sole
goal is a column of words
nearly uniform in size
but even that you
fail at in several
lines. but seeing your
comfort in failure you
resign yourself to bed.
and sleep comes, but much
too slowly.

But when your eyes are straining
as if to burst like tiny balloons
and every muscle taught and flexed
and your ears are bleeding because
you don’t really know why, perhaps
it’s time to step away from that
sorry excuse of a love you’ve got

And some lessons come to late but
thank goodness this one came at all
and perhaps you’ve learned because
otherwise you never will at all and
I’ll write up your will and testament
but it won’t mean much by and by
what with that succubus nibbling and
all but son I think you’ve got it
this time and hopefully it sticks
so that succubus, she doesn’t,
and we can all move on a baby step
at a time.

For Tara

We don’t have
tin cans or string

Sometimes
we don’t even
know how to speak.
Still

there is something
connecting
the two of us
Causing constant
revolutions
around each other

You speak to me
before either of us
ever know it
I’m

tied to something
that’s tied to you
and nothing
can cut through this

Even when the tin cans
are rocks. And
the string stretches for miles
Just pick up.

I am always
on the other side

it’s the early nights that kill
sometimes
wit the curtains down
long shapes on the wall
short devils out the window
and a stink permeating

Reached but did not reach
no softness beneath fingers
an icy wind and bite
though spring it be
the world is silent
sometimes

Signals sent though
no correspondence returned
the transmitter on full
the bottom can’t be reached
sometimes

I saw you standing
watching five folks push a stalled car
from one side of the street to
another and your clothes
were baggier than I remember
and I bet you haven’t eaten much
these past few years
and I never knew you well
but I guess nobody did really
and I understand
why sometimes
it’s easier to pretend
that some folks are just
dead.

For Tara

If these arms
were yarn
I would unravel them
just to wrap them around you
that much tighter

If my poems were stars
I would rearrange them nightly
Just so you
would always have something new to point to
and say
“That,
That is all mine”

I want to dedicate other people’s books to you

I want to rename time
after you
so when I wear a watch
I can say
“I’ve always got
the time”

The small of your back is the island
that my shipwrecked hands
have been swimming to find.
It’s been years
in the ocean
To be honest
I stopped believing in land
for a long time.
So I’m sorry if I
still carry
wilderness, This
body
is still a little bit bark
But you

are the artist who
I’ve been praying
would come carve poems
into me.

I’ve never been a door before
but if I were
my hinges would creak out
your name.
I’m wide open now
This key
is all yours and
The arch way is just high enough
to echo
each time you speak. To be honest,
I thought I was a wall
It turns out it isn’t that at all
I’m four
walls
With windows and doors
and I am also hardwood floor
But you
are the all important roof
that makes me
a home

There is life
in here now
The bark’s broken
right open
I am green leaves in spring
taller than Manhattan
I am
one
big nest
I am twigs from all over
But you gathered them.

And I could only become
a tree
I could only believe in
an excess of life in this vessel
I’m exhaling branches

Because you are the sun

Took a ride to South Bend
last February
to see ‘em

Was a looter and a killer
most days
but a lover
some of the rest
and a fighter
every waking moment

Was a monster sometimes,
too

Got down round seven
on a Tuesday and
had an hour
to spend
inside

Never came back out again,
though

Still there,
probably

idea swapping
behind every vaulted wall
but that’s where it ends.
they all got here with lofty
goals, dreams of change.
but they stay after selling
their souls, minds, hearts,
for power, prestige, foolish
green sheets of paper which
bring them no joy. no peace.
no change.

With only Skeleton Man at my side;
I waited,
and waited and
waited,
thinking maybe, just, maybe,
you would be
there, at my ready, here
for me.

But never, of course, but only
to sit,
and wait, and
wait
some more.

So to hell with all of
those, the crummy, decrepit
sex-in-a-jar types who mere-
ly lie out, palms open,
to receive what they had
wanted. Right there
for them when they need it.

Ah fuck ‘em.

the sophistication that comes
with a pipe
will come to me
tonight

You know it’s coming around again
but
you never seem to duck
low enough

the mcdonald’s man talks to you
but he doesn’t want to be
your friend
and neither i, his
because fuck the mcdonald’s man
and every dream he’s ever had
and for that matter
fuck me too
his paycheck lies behind
handing me my plastic
and my satisfaction lies behind
this transaction going flawlessly
so i can put it in gear
and get down the road
and foreget his face
and he mine.

we’re forgettable people,
i and the mcdonald’s man

we are seen yet unseen
or relativly anonymous

we are unimportance personified
with no books or pictures
in our names
and i am uncertain
if that will ever hold any weight
at all.

His jawline
trembled

Hopefully I
reached out

He wouldn’t
or couldn’t

He stood
as stone

His jawline
trembled
just so

And I
tried

But he
was too far
gone

trees have blossomed
bursting
like daytime fireworks
pink and white
frozen, but swaying sweetly
with the wind.

Forever a child, owner of the biggest smile.

Saddled down with the same sadness,

Marked with age, acne scars and warts.

We’ve all felt it.

He feels it.

In another life

He lived with me,

In an apartment by some park.

I can feel it.

We used to sit around and smoke cigarettes

And drink, till the night returned.

“Fuck!” he’d yell and slam back another one.

Always smiling so damn big,

Would make you laugh just to see it,

Light up the whole room, calling the ships to safety.

One night, beer cans strewn, smoke saturated air,

I asked him, “what’s your fucking secret?”

“Fuck!” he yelled.

“Shit, what secret?

You wanna tip, here it’s yours keep it,

I rub one out in the shower each morning…”

Fuck…

It’s the same in this life…

you’re simple like a tree
in that every story you
tell is really about
yourself.

for that brief moment of
simple beauty in the
midst of the blinding
chaos

Oh darlin’
there’s that song again
and we missed it
the last time and
this station only comes though
every so often on
this stretch of byway
and the signal’s strong,
too, so if you could
reach over and turn it
up, I’ll slow down a bit
so the speakers keep pumpin’
and we’ll see if we can’t
at least make it to the
chorus before it

For Tara. 
Always.

I heard the ice cream truck
for the first time since October
Today.
The birds are blasting past my window
Claiming this sky
as theirs
Not mine
Little do they know I too
can sometimes fly.
Like today
when I heard the ice cream truck
for the first time.
And wondered if the wind wasn’t built
for the wind chimes
And the sun doesn’t shine
just to reflect off your eyes. You
dandelion.
I’ve been seeing you in
everything.
It’s like ice fishing
Naked
Without a pole
Diving into the freezing ocean
And gasping for breath at the hole
I thought you were all water
and I was all cold. No,
we are both
one huge expanse of ice
And isn’t it nice
to be part of something so clear
So close to glass, but
so much more alive. Like
the freezing ocean
you take my breath away

every time.

Every year, when I grow older

I draw a breath

exhale a wish,

locking it away for safe keeping.

any time I witness a star dying,

burning up as it streaks across the sky

as quick as the brief streak

my mind goes to one thing

always a secret.

but now that you’re here

I speak that secret

let it be said for the first time,

fall from my lips,

as I call for your lips.