I came to on a slab of hard rock
my eyes adjusting to the soft blue light
peering through a thin crack in the cave roof
Seasoked clothes clung to my skin
as I rolled my sore body to the side
working slow to stand before gazing around
You were there next to a gentle pool
there was a glow about your bedclothes
and a gentle brightness in your smile
We stood in the cool of our breathing
until you stepped forward to touch my shoulder;
I couldn’t say a word
I made tracks through the sandy beach
closing on the vast blue sea
which calmed and quieted with each step
There was only a yard between us
when the sea became stock still,
the air a perfect chill, and silent
I stopped a moment, hearing only my heart,
the quiet breaking as the sea exploded,
thundering upward in a great pillar
The watery monolith roiled as it blocked the sun
“Hello, old friend,” I whispered in its shadow;
it shuddered once, then crashed down to consume me
I made my way through sand-set grasses
beneath the heat of the high noon sun
falling forward with each soft step
The salt-air harassed my hair and clothes
The rumble of the unstoppable growing louder
I found myself on a short dune-cliff
The sea stretched out immeasurable
rolling softly beneath a nearly cloudless sky
its vista unmarred by passing ships or seabirds
“As cold as it ever was,” I murmured
as I dropped my pack in the yellow stand
climbing down to the beach below
My body rose first the next morning
awoken in part by the rattling cold
I stood watching the sun a horizon away
The tin kettle was near the top of my kit
the black grounds in the bottom were thick
“Just a taste sometimes,” I muttered, stoking smoking coals
When I descended toward the water
it was full on oats and coffee
and with steps unsure as they were careful
By the time the sunrise had ceased
I was half-way down the mountain
with only the great blue sea in my sights
It must have been twelve hours
Though the dark laid useless my pocket watch,
I could have counted clacks
As the car slowed beneath my flour-bag perch
I pushed the slide-door wide
leaping to beat the bulls
I rolled to and stopped in a pile
my eyes finally finding me on a mountaintop
overlooking a great wide sea
The dusk set in as the freighter set out
“Mountain’s cold as scorn,” I mumbled gathering fuel;
I found no serpents under fallen brush
In the afternoon sun
I could have heard my fits of coughing
but for the freight train’s clatter
you were somewhere near the ocean
“I’m sure of it now.” I said from my knees;
My feet found ground beneath me
My pack lay heavy on my shoulders
the blood nearly reddening my cheeks
my tracks leading to the freighter-line’s
the clatter had ceased by then
and it was just a short climb inside
to the long ride up the mountains
In the autumn dark
between silence and sleep
I’d thought you could be found
I fumbled with my switchblade
When I heard the racket
Just beyond the edge of the clearing
there was a rustling then
a whisper to the din that had come before
and the viper slid up my leg as carelessly
“What did you do with her?” I asked unanswered
while the fangs found my deepest reddest vein;
I was dead by morning
What do you say to me?
you asked me on night by telephone,
when I call you you crying,
how do you calm me down?
I tell you that I love you,
I replied from atop my car hood
behind No Fun House,
and that things will get better.
You always kept that sugar
in the back of your throat,
and it fooled folks in to thinking
that you felt better than great
Four years is a decent stretch
for two friends to fail to connect
but I guess it makes good sense
that we failed the way we did
When you called me at 1am
three winters ago, I wish I would
have spent more time telling you
that I love you like I always had
When you called me at 1am
three winters ago, I wish I would
have taken just a moment to say
that things were going to be OK.
I guess I would have been a liar
but I love you still – it’s still easy to love
And I’m sorry things never got better
Even though I always said they would
All the money in your pocket
for a brand new ’79 Ford truck
with custom ordered everything
with a radio that wails
nearly as loud as the gasoline motor
burning rubber beneath a Carolina moon
You’ve been drinking a little
and so has the man to your left
but you get home safe regardless
and didn’t hurt that truck of yours
as it sits rusting in the driveway
just like it has
For decades
It’s 2017
and you haven’t seen your oldest son in 4 years
Billy lost his thirties
To hard drugs and cheap booze
And a wife that didn’t love him
He lost his money because
He couldn’t stop himself
When the crack-pipe came around
And besides, the boys on Cork street
Always treated him right
Billy lost his stride to gas station food
And he lost swagger to head trauma
He even lost his luck on pawn
And now he’ll lose his forties
To the tumor that’s growing
In the roof of his mouth
But he’ll never lose that look in his eye,
not that horrible broken one.
Not til the day he dies.
I would knock you over
before your new soft skin
ever touched the fire
I would let you slide
when you needed to
even if I hated it
Instead of snapping back
or head-butting
I would take more hits
more stoically,
I would take your lashing
with much more grace
But later when your skin was tough
I’d let you take your scrapes head-on
without an unsolicited word,
with all the fury of a desert storm
Fury there would be
And I would hope and wish and dream
that when a cold-front came in
you would thrash beyond it’s milding
You would burn bright forever
and sometimes I would light my torch with yours
If I could make time travel backwards
and make you whole and even
I’d give you everything I could.
Everything.
It’s the cough that kills me.
‘Too warm for this.’ I think
to myself out loud as the shiver
sets deep in to my bones
– just for a moment –
as the crickets chirp
just outside my window.
This old blanket serves
just as good as new
for to swaddle me up
and keep me warm in this
65-degree-Fahrenheit night
And I lay awake wheezing
and wiping clear snot
on to the back of my hand
until it’s saturated enough
to flail to find my kerchief
– an old cotton T-shirt
that I’d already worn.
The chirping seems to swell
with the unconscious chatter
of my arms and guts – and
everything, as far as I
can tell – and it would
fade again, I’m sure,
if not for this headache.
‘Ain’t it just the way?’
I yell to the uncaring crickets,
‘Sore throat in the middle
of Goddamn June!’
It’s the cough, though,
the stupid fucking cough,
that gets me every time.
You are riding
on the top level
of a two-story bus
traveling late at night
somewhere
in South America
You are sick
to your stomach
at 4am and
through the wonders
of modern technology
I know
I wish that you
were cured
of whatever it is
making you feel awful
on a Tuesday morning
in Peru
I wish that you
were cured
of all the other
bad things,
too
I descend the steps from my front porch
into the softest of cold rains,
My only protection from the elements
a thinning button-down,
worn-out cowboy hat,
ruined pair of sneakers
– Foundry and Boot Hill and New Balance.
I am not concerned with time or
temperatures or saturation points.
The moon and stars are hidden but
I am sure that they persist.
A car speeds by every so often,
reminding of my frailties
in comparison to their metal might
Lightning whites the sky now
and now, threatening thunder
that never comes. For instants it
is as if the world is blackness
floating in a nothing more profound
than the depths of space could ever be
Two days ago the air was hardly
warm enough to breathe. Now
it whispers with impatience as it
chastises falling specks of chill wet.
If I glance past the street lamps just right,
the road looks like it’s dancing.
By three AM the skeletons shuffling
have left us with our ghosts
out in the chill night air
to stretch our legs, and make merry
our spirits, until we settle
at a point, and set
electric alarms to remind us
what we owe
the next short morning
It is in this space
that I think that I will find you,
writing your own lullabies
and sorting your own mail
and looking for something, too,
among these retching ghosts
and sleeping, lying corpses
I thought I found you once, but
it was just a trick of the eyes
I am a considerate sort,
I promise myself.
Shuffle papers quietly
ignore shouting next door
We’ve all got to be mindful
while the tough parts get sorted
I don’t want to do any sorting.
The wind blows through the old sill
near where I lay my head most nights
sometimes my nose is cold
when I wake up to use the restroom
When I come back, I just tuck deeper
in to the blanket that I keep
in spite of differences of opinion.
The rest of my home is warm, I guess,
except for 5AMs with eyes wide open
ceiling fan spinning above
a recently interrupted dream
It isn’t a very bad one
but it always makes me feel bad
anyway
I think I think the world of you.
Unpaid parking tickets resting
in a drift of melting snow.
I think I want you to get
what you think you want.
Every moment lined up
in a digital calendar
in someone else’s database.
I think I think I love you.
Analog clocks
clicking every second
overhead.
I want you to get
what you think you want.
‘Art is never completed;
only abandoned.’
I love you.
The sun comes up
six hours sooner
than it seems that it ought.
Worlds are visible
from orbit.
Pools are fine to tarry in
until the weather cools
and you are forced to drain it
half-of-the-way down
and add a mix of special chemicals
and wrap the top with a thick
taught tarp until springtime
The river becomes quite attractive
should you have a proper vessel
and though the ice won’t form
so heavily to stop your cut
the cold will be close to unbearable
at times, and there is always
the fear of rough rocks and
hard current and capsize
I think I’d like to brush up
on my sea-faring bends and shanks
The pool was perfect, after all,
for learning how to swim
It is early in the season
The leaves have slowly begun
to turn and fall and scatter
You cut a fine form in this
chill, half-covered moonlight
You don’t want to hurt anyone
(you don’t make any promises)
I mention I have toughness in spades
(you assure me I do not)
When we turn back down the trail
I am not cold or uncomfortable
(but I shake sleep from one leg)
When we return from the trail
I think we are both smiling
It is early in the season,
after all
I’ve thought about you on and off since February
sometimes in broad daylight on short walks
other times in the calm dark shadow of a ceiling fan
Once I hoped we would be good friends forever
regardless of how the hammer fell and the shoes dropped
I hoped we’d be on speaking terms, at least
Perhaps that I’d keep your photo in my phone’s directory.
I don’t hope for anything to do with you these days;
not to speak to you, not to catch your smile,
not to get your regards from a friend of a friend
I think my only hope, these days
is that you don’t think of me
at all
