Not a Fish is Not a Bird

when we first crawled from the sea
and looked towards the mountains
all our dreams were there
among the clouds.

we wanted wings
but grew these legs;
wanted to fly but walked
away from the cradle of the sea
towards a sky that seemed
always out of reach.

not a fish
is not a bird.

our friends were swimming
while our feet grew sore.
when our dreams were frozen
the sea was still warm.
we just moved our feet
and broke the ice;
walked through pain
towards paradise.

not a fish
is not a bird:
we have fur, not feathers
but that's alright.

i love the way you walk,
the way you want to fly.
i love how you refuse
to drift inside the tide.
not a fish is not a bird,
but that's alright.
you and i sleep here
between the cradle and the sky
we have feet, not wings to move us;
fur, not feathers to keep us warm at night.

Who Are You Now?

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Not much time to write; not even much time to think about writing. But every once in a while lightning strikes the top of my head and I don't have to think about writing. I just have to write. Today was one of those days. I like those days--days when the words write me for a change.


Who Are You Now?


you're not the girl i fell in love with
all those years ago
you have the same eyes
and the same crooked smile
but you know so many things
that she could never know

i'm not the guy you fell in love with
either, you know.
i can tell all his stories
and wear all his clothes
but my feet, in his shoes,
have learned a whole new way to move.

so who are you now,
and who am i?
are we still lovers,
or just getting by?

every day i discover you
asleep in my bed
and it's warm under the covers
where the past and the future collide in my head
all i remember
and all i desire
gathers together in the loops of your hair
i'm here, and you're here
and that's all that matters.

so who are you now?
and who am i?
we are lovers like forests
reborn every day
from the ashes of dreams.
we are reaching our arms 
towards the sky.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R37zkizucPU

Spicy Bulgarian Tomato Dumpling Soup

This basis for this recipe can be found in the cookbook "Sundays at the Moosewood Restaurant." I've modified it a little. It's not technically poetry, but it tastes like it, so here it is on my poetry blog. Enjoy!

Soup (start 45 minutes before you want to serve dinner!)

1 large onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp. olive oil
3 jars strained tomatoes
4 tsp. hot chili powder
1/4 tsp. cayenne
2 tbsp. white flour
4 c. vegetable stock

In large soup pot, saute onions and garlic until onions soften but have not yet browned.
Add all other ingredients. Using a hand processor, blend coarsely (break down the onions).
Bring to a boil then cover, reduce heat and simmer 30 min. If need be, you can then turn the pot off and leave it covered and waiting; bring it back to a low boil when you start the dumplings.

Dumplings (let soup simmer 15 minutes before starting dumplings!)

2 tbsp. butter
2 eggs, separated
1/4 c. couscous
3/4 c. white flour
2 tbsp. finely chopped fresh dill
1/3 c. milk

Steam the couscous in a small bowl by adding 1/4 boiling water; cover, let stand 5 min.
Separate the eggs--yolks in a large bowl, whites wherever you plan to beat them.
Cream the butter with the egg yolks until smooth.
Add steamed couscous, flour, dill, and milk, and blend well.
Beat egg whites until stiff, then fold into the dumpling mixture.
Return soup to a low boil. Drop dumpling mixture into soup one rounded tablespoon at a time.
Cook, covered, 15 minutes, stirring gently once.
Serve immediately, topped with fresh parsley and grated Keshkeval cheese (also commonly known by its Italian name, Cacciocavallo).

Ten Points (Atheist)

one: there is no god.

so two: there is no joy in the world

except for what we make in it ourselves.

also three: when i die

i will cease to exist;

so four: the joy i make,

i must make now.

five: i am afraid to die.

i suppose that everyone is.

but six: in spite of that,

i am not afraid to live.

seven: the world will continue

for others when i am gone.

so eight: i must maintain this world

for those who carry on.

nine: my capacity for love

is stopped only by failing to try.

so ten: i must open my eyes

i must open my mind

i must open my heart

i must open my arms

i must throw wide the windows

and shout out hello

to the world as it is,

and not as i wish it could be.

start / stop dilemma

Lately I find myself starting poems, only to find that I have nothing left to say after 4, 6, maybe 8 lines. 

I cannot yet decide if this is writer's block--an inability or unwillingness to develop an idea--or an instinctive, reflexive movement towards shorter forms. 

Each of these short poems seem to be complete. But part of my brain keeps saying "This is not what you set out to write--it's too small to be of any substance; say more! Say more!" 

Here are two. You decide--are they done? Or are they abandoned and incomplete?I'd love a little feedback on this one...

I Do Not Love You

i do not love you
for your smile but
for how it glows and fades
and glows again, a soft parade
of private joys that change
with the seasons, with the light of day.



Sunrise Again

funny how the world
continues to turn. for all
our struggles and sorrows
imagined and real
we have not stopped it yet.

the sun rises; the sun sets.
we each experience it in our own way
but it is the same sun every time.

Snowplow Central Station (A Canadian Love Song)

My wonderful band has just recorded this song as our contribution to the 2011 Design Hope project. If you like the lyrics, you're going to love the music! I'll keep you posted on the release date--as soon as I know, you'll know, too...

Snowplow Central Station

winter erases this city 

one streetlight at a time

replaces the grey of everyday

with a palace of purest white

            me: driving aimless through this wilderness

            of straight lines

            searching for a curve to serve

            as model for my lost smile

the music of a hundred aimless

radios in our fingertips;

the static of a falling sky

melting on our tongues and lips

            you: working dispatch           

            for roadside assistance

            beating swords to snow plows

            for the Broken Heart Resistance Front

all the roads home

lose focus and fade

blue lights map the night        

invent us a city phrase by phrase

carving love letters—

black lines on this empty page   

        

            a map for every wanderer

            clearing the way back home…

these days

curled catlike in corners i
close my eyes against
this time travel x-ray vision,
this gift and curse of my condition:
to see the bones
beneath the lovely skin
to watch the dance
of architecture slip and fail.
the frame of things disjoints
and falls away.

i cannot build on these days
cannot love on these days
because i see, on these days
that nothing good can last.

if love is looking for me
tell love it will find me here
eyes closed and waiting
for my vision to clear.
if love wants to help me
love needs only hold my hand
and wait beside me.
love needs only whisper
'the bones are strong,
the blood is clear,
the world is young enough
and we are here together.'

still life with desk, lamp, and blackout curtain

4:30 a.m. in another hotel room
me, up and writing at the green marblette desk.

there's something about the familiarity
of these strange places that makes me philosophical
when i'd rather be asleep.

every hotel room is a single cell
dividing and redividing to cover the land.
we have let our lives fall into predictable patterns;
we are each of us guilty of the easy love of habit.

we fear the unknown
seek to avoid struggle
want to stay home, at least
take home with us when we go.

we drive to new cities but see nothing new:
the same beef and cheese restaurants;
this sterile gas station;
that strip mall cut from the unending cloth of suburbia;

and this room, with this table,
this lamp, this framed print
of an urn full of flowers that maybe lived once
but were captured in a pastel drawing,
died, and were discarded
leaving behind a stain on a wall
in a thousand identical hotel rooms.
multiplied to infinity, a mirror on a mirror
on the elevator wall.

we sleepless victims of the worst kind of art
can only turn our tired eyes towards the window
and hope for a sunrise unlike any other.

the clouds, at least,
still come and go as they please.

Sea of Sound

Preface: My band (trio arjento--check us out! we're awesome!) does a song called Sea of Sound (you could check that out too, if you like--it's also pretty awesome!). One day Marcy, the singer, asked for clarification about the lyrics. I, surprised, said "Well, it's, you know, the story of Ulysses--the Odyssey." I may have added "Obviously," but I hope not. I can be kind of jerky sometimes.

Marcy said something affectionately along the lines of "Not everybody knows the story of the Odyssey, smarty-pants--please elaborate?" So I did. And when I was done storytelling that afternoon, we all agreed that the song needs a preface whenever we perform it. The lyrics make perfect sense if you know the story, but they're otherwise pretty oblique.

This, then, is my first foray into spoken-word storytelling poetry. I had three goals: find rhythm and rhyme to match the push and pull of the sea; find pauses and swells and musical language to match the drama of the greatest story ever told; and fit it all on a single typed page. I don't pretend this is on a par with Homer's original, but I think it turned out pretty well. And I didn't even have to be blind to write it!

…when he turned away, the fires continued to burn behind him;

beautiful—like every deadly thing.

His ship surrendered to the soft pulse of the sea.

“Lost,” the storytellers say. But “lost” is not the word:

Ulysses always knew the way back to Ithaca. The map

was engraved on his heart. Blood flows

always out into the body; blood always returns.

Still, the fires burned. The beautiful hands of destruction

lingered over the land, beckoned him on.

There were so many more mistakes still to make.

He ate forbidden meat; he tasted forbidden lust.

He journeyed to the dark basement of human memory,

To learn that death is final, even if love is not.

He followed the call of the great destroyer,

seeking a souvenir or a skeleton, a trophy or a bone;

something, anything beautiful to take home

to make home a place where a lost heart could finally slow.

Ulysses burned: not lost, but beautiful—like every hungry thing.

Circe who turned men to docile beasts

sang him the song of a secret, the secret of a song:

poured into his ear the idea of the music of the sirens, perfect and fatal,

calling sailors towards the rocks to learn that the future

has no place for them outside the pages of books.

Consumed with longing for a home in this idea, he abandoned

Her too-easy charms and turned his ship around.

‘Lash me to the mast,’ he told his crew. ‘If I cry, if I complain,

 if I beg you set me free, do not listen. Only pull the ropes tighter.

Here is beeswax. Stop your ears.

The perfect song is not for everyone to hear.

Love is not a burden for every heart to bear.’

The ship sailed on, deafened by the hum of absent bees, into the sea of sound.

Ulysses cried an ocean of lost ships, a lifetime of wandering; wept until the song faded.

Slept, a hollow shell held up by ropes, watched by a crew of the blissful deaf,

Ignorant men, free of desires. When he awoke to the soft pulse of the sea,

he turned towards home. “Lost” is the wrong word:

he had always only been incomplete. Never full, never even properly empty, until then.

But in his old age, the music haunted him.

Cadences cracked by the ravages of memory danced the spiral of his ear.

Haunted by whispers of beauty half-remembered, Ulysses took an oar,

put it on his shoulder, and carried it inland until he found

a place where no man had ever heard of the sea.

Content at last, he built a house, and sat down, smiling, to wait for death.

silence after song

i dream this dream not every night
but intermittently:
house lights dim
stage lights pick out
chrome on my guitar.

there is an absence of sound; no coughs,
no sniffles, no murmur of conversation. wires
do not hum. i am alone, frozen,
unsure of what to play.

the wrong note is fatal; the world
waits to be created from the fabric
i will weave here this night.

i hear in my head a sound; see the map
of music. play
a single ringing chord and watch
(not as horrified as you might think)

as my hands explode--

there is no blood. no pain.
just pixie dust drifting to the hardwood floor,
sparkles under spotlights,

and me, mostly mystified,
arms useless like stumps of ancient trees
waiting for what happens next.

backstage you wave: 'come here,
come here,' your fingers say.
lost, fingerless, mute, i can only obey.

you take the guitar from my shoulders.
you lift the weight of the music away.

you, my love, have hands enough.
a world without my music
is still a world with you.

you were never waiting for me to play;
you were waiting for the silence
after song.

Unjumpers

the kid who won't jump
     (a little bit pudgy,
           big for his age)
stands at the lip of the pool

arms outstretched over elementary water
     an incomplete sketch
          of a plan for a bridge
from here to the safety of homeagainquick.

lifeguard pretends to care, counts
     backwards from three.
          and again.

bends knees and waist, cranes neck
elbows out wide ass far behind
lowers himself to lessen the
                                              drop
but never leaves the side.

meanwhile
in the observation room

i can't decide
     if i should cheer him on
          or shove him from behind.
"it's only up to your goddamn chin," i say
to the window that keeps me dry
while he struggles and shivers poolside.

but i know fear: know he's thinking--
it doesn't matter how far up it comes;
but how far
                 down
                         it
                            goes.

we are each of us alone
on a ledge somewhere sometimes
bridging out to an indifferent hand.

we are each of us weighing
the distance from here to joy
against the stiffness in our bones

every day at the breakfast table
we bend our knees,
count down from three,
prepare once more to spring
     out into life.

Grade Five Knives

We are curled up in bed--
the usual routine

when Alexander breaks my heart again--
the usual routine.

'I auditioned for the talent show," he says.
I answer, "Oh?

I didn't know..." bite my tongue, decline
to end "...you had a showy talent."

Opt instead for "...you were doing that."
"Yep," he says, "I sang."

"Oh?" I lurch inside. See, my son,
my sweetly naive son

is not so hip sometimes, and I
having been there fear the cruel

knives of grade five. "What did you sing?"
"The best song ever," he says. "Oh?"

"Baby Beluga--you
sang it to me when I was born."

He drapes a thin arm over me
And falls fast asleep.

He cannot see me crying in the dark.
He cannot see me smiling through my tears.

The Bed Poems--disambiguation

If you've read the three bed poems, you are probably thinking "wtf?" They are odd, it's true. They are also an experiment I conduct with my Writers' Craft class every semester, to try to get us in touch with the oneiric logic of dreams that so often differentiates poetry from prose.

We start by writing a descriptive paragraph about each of three beds: our earliest memory of a bed, our current bed, and our dream bed (all laws of physics, causality, economics, etc. are waived for this last paragraph). Each paragraph is then typed, double-spaced, blown up to fill a page, printed, and finally chopped into random snippets of 2 - 5 words.

Armed with an envelope full of our own words--our own memories, hopes, dreams, and realities--we then set about assembling poetry. I give the class three deliberately suggestive titles each day for three days, and we have the rest of the hour to sort our words into relevant piles, choose which poem to write, create our poems and glue them down to pieces of construction paper.

The end results are sometimes baffling, sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant or disturbing. We see our own words on the page, but they are now saying things we never would have said. We discover other voices, other patterns, lurking in the things we say every day. We converse with our own echoes, dance with our own shadows. We make ourselves strange to ourselves, and so hopefully discover ourselves and others.

If you feel inspired to try it at home, do send me a link to the finished poem!

~tom

The Disappointment (Bed Poem #3)

I slept in a bag

     It was cheap and unpleasant
          and empty no earthy green
                                 not succeeded yet

I feel like I
     was the best we are all
thin old-fashioned
     green with speed and soft
          clutter no chaos just
                    pine unvarnished

begins me again when
     my head like a mother
          memory wrapped in
               walnut veneer

                    kill me but
                         end my dreams

You Will Be the Sun (Bed Poem #2)

i am awake
     cradling a child still
          between the clouds

beginnings. my life
     might be reaching
          across our sleeping forms

cool and quiet
     safe from my parents' fear

this day:
     it is too small

          but that is part of
               the morning dance.

hell (bed poem #1)

i cannot sleep

so i dream while dancing cheerful
through my nightmares
       to chain-smoke teeth
                the snakes that haunt
                        the bent knees

red velvet blade
          to fan over our legs
windows let eyelids dark into the pores

          old
trapped in my skin
the shape of robots
from memories of amnesia

presents from my dying

retraction

peel back the landscape.
raze buildings, make unlevel
the clover leafs and straightaways. we are
excavating a country.

we made a mistake.
buried it alive.

it was still wearing a promise ring
when the dozers pushed it under, and
we have forgotten the inscription
in our haste to hide the evidence.

convert strip malls to swamp:
mosquitos swarm bloodthirsty in supermarkets.
fill in parking lots with
carolinian hardwoods.
sap drips
from telephone poles.
vines creep
along fences, consume them. borders
break down.

even the flocks of plastic bags
that rise with the wind to choke the sky
become imperceptibly snow geese,
carrier pigeons, an army of lost avian souls.

foxes run yipping through cracks in my mind.
bric-a-brac housing collapses into eskers,
anthills, patterns of grass in the dust.
we recede.

the one where the stars burn out

it was dark. et cetera. you know how it starts. then
i lit you up, and you lit me. it was
inevitable. it was gravity.

the pressure we exert
on each other drove us closer, drove us
inward seeking fuel for fire

to etch shadows
of weak and watery planets
on the walls of the universe.

we inhaled hydrogen,
sweated helium and gold.
call it love, fusion, alchemy:

call it what you like.
it's the cheapest sort of magic.
it happens all the time up here, you know.

a day comes when all that can burn
has burned away; when we find ourselves
with nothing left we'd care to say

we blow apart, brief candle cores
alone and dark in the sepulchre of sky
fading blonde through red to our natural brunette

waiting patiently for gravity
to pick up the resurrection phone. waiting
to fall back together again.

new lights will gleam in the wreckage:
the rich dust of planets
where life can resume some day.

it's the same old phoenix story:
star death, star birth.
you'd be wrong to think repetition

makes it hurt one damn bit less.

how can you hurt so much?

you are thin -- just a
blade of grass in the wind -- bending
to let this broken world
not break you as it spins.

you are dry -- just a wisp
of white in the blue bowl of sky --
but you hold all the rains
behind your eyes.

how can you hurt so much?
how can you bear the world
on such shoulders?

when i hold you
you hum like bees:
the queen gone, the hive
is too busy to grieve.

your nervous system sings
like wings about to leave.
you forget to eat.
you sometimes forget to breathe.

how can you hurt so much?
how can you wait so long for love?
how can so little serve as just enough?

what care the sparrows?

                                                rainwateronasidewalk

                                                     octobersun
                          
                                         grainsandseeds

                          sufficientuntotheday;


               neithermemorynorexpectation

                        onlythismoment

                    onlythislife


              takenothingwithyou

    thereisnowheretogo

nothingtotake

New Guitar

I bought a new guitar.

I rarely get to say that.

Southpaws like me tend to find a good one and hold on to it.
They marry their guitars.
Righties, having many more opportunities, tend towards profligacy.

This one is red. It is heavy. The make and model don't matter.
It's new, but it comes with history, with scars, with distinction.
I like that.

It feels different. It makes me feel different.
It touches my chest at different points; it weighs on my shoulder strangely.
It resonates.
It leads my hands to locations they would not normally go on my other guitar.
I play differently. I sound different even if I try to play the same.

The fact that it is a new guitar does not make me a better guitarist.
But the fact that I play it with a new mind does.
These new locations, these new sensations, these new tactile maps of music, become a part of me.
I can apply them to any other guitar.
This specific guitar, being new, has taught me a new way to play all guitars.

The more music we make, the more musical we become.
Every new experience enriches us.
We need never repeat ourselves, even if we play the same songs every night.
As long as we have grown, the music grows.
As long as we share who we are today, the music is born anew each time we play it.

I think it's the same with people.
Hold someone. Feel them resonate against your chest.
Go where they take you.
Make a map of their nervous system.
Let their music become your music.

Let every new person be your teacher.
Let yourself always be new.

perfect day

wrote this last night in my head on my way to band practice. minor revisions when i sat down with pen and paper.

it's just just a thought experiment--don't worry, it's not really the last poem i intend to ever write. was just mulling over the relationship between discontent and creativity, and thinking "if i was ever totally and completely satisfied in my life, would i have anything left to write about? would i have any desire to write?"

it's a funny balancing act--the quest for happiness and peace is in some ways in direct conflict with the desire to say something important, to have something important to say. great art, as they say, is the hallmark of a soul in turmoil or a civilization in turmoil.

a worthwhile question: if complete happiness would lead you to stop expressing yourself artistically, would you choose art or happiness?

and another: do you have to choose? can you be an artist and also be completely happy?

today
is a perfect day.
everything is
just fine.
i accept the rain as
simply rain;
the sun
just shines.

my world is a bell,
unstruck
by sorrow
or longing.
this is the last poem
i will ever write;
this is the last song
i will ever sing.

why i walk

counting people again again. this time

walking through saturday’s

stillness and haze

to the bagel shop for breakfast.

lifting my right hand sternum-high

palm forward

tipping out and over: a wave for every passer-by,

eye contact, and hello.

42 people.

17 on foot

(5 with dogs)

and 25 in cars.

investing 42 hellos

brings the following returns:

walkers:

         12 smiles and/or hellos

(2 before i even spoke,

1 startled, 4 non-commital,

5 genuinely pleased to be met)

            5 ignores

            (3 with headphones to muffle the morning

            1 unaccounted

            and 1 awkward avoidance by

            the man in wellies and bathrobe

            watching empty-handed as his large and wolly dog

            squats to shit on the neighbor’s lawn)

drivers:

            24 ignores, their worlds

            moving pictures sealed behind glass.

            1 open mouthed “o” trying desperately

            to place my unfamiliar face
            before i disappear into her mirrors.

addendum: number of walkers in my sight

            who drifted their hands through the feathery tips

            of the purple fountain grass that grows

  at herkimer and locke:

            2 (of a possible 3)

            number of drivers:

            0 (of a possible 6)

Book Lungs / Multiple Literacies

I'd kind of forgotten that these two web sites were still online. I'm kind of amused that I actually created them as assignments in Teachers' College instead of writing essays. I kind of pity the poor college prof who had to look at them and decide what they had to do with the questions that were assigned. And I'm delighted to rediscover that there's actually some decent poetry hidden in the labyrinth of deliberately obtuse web design and amateur photography, too! There's now a perma-link at the top of the blog, but here are some easy links to get you started the first time...

Multiple Literacies

Book Lungs: The Heart of Textuality

Trio Arjento meets Out With Dad

Exciting news! One of Trio Arjento's songs has been placed in the webTV show "Out With Dad"! Thanks to Jason Leaver and the rest of the talented team that make this wonderful series. We're honored to be a part of the series for a second time.  (For trivia buffs, we were the music playing on the patio at the bar during season 1, episode 5).

 The song used is "Every Word I've Written"--you can think of this as a sneak preview of our upcoming album, since this is the first time and place anyone outside the band will have heard this track. To pre-order your copy of the album, click HERE. To hear a couple more tracks for free before buying, click HERE.

 Here's a link to this week's episode--enjoy! (We're in the background in the bar during Angela's phone conversation with Nathan.)

Lights Across Lakes

it is no darker here than there

but lights across lakes

are perfect points of fire

abstract idea of light

while here we only

smudge the features of the night.

the moon is everywhere at once

but lights across lakes

are one place at a time:

over your table, in your tent

your meals and your dreams

doubled by the water

that doubles the sky.

it is no darker here than there

these lights across lakes

are the same campfires, porch lights

tragic blue tv screens

dreaming for those who cannot sleep

the lake gives back

all the light

that we give away.

modalities

counting people again. i find it
comforting--math
makes sense.

coffee shop this morning has
25 patrons total.

subsets (non-exclusive):

16 laptops
8 with paper and pen
4 in conversation (2 and 2)
3 just sitting (1 and 1 and 1)

and over by the window
a young woman
numberless
with a slice of morning glory loaf
a mug of tea
and a book.

the poet, taking requests

this is not the first time
this has happened to me.

you're a poet? someone says.
well. you should write a poem about
     - zombies
     - the unclassifiable life of slime molds
     - immortal jellyfish
     - my mother, who is wise
     - the birthing process as metaphor
     - texting while driving

amongst others, of course.

each time i nod gravely. i know that
if they have given me this gift, it is because
they suspect a truth lurks there--
fleet metaphor dancing
just beyond their peripheral vision--
and they hope that i
with my broken lines
and sidelong diction
will find the words to make it clear for them.

and i solemnly swear to all you givers of gifts
that every time, i try.
i really do. i have filled a page with words
beneath the title: Immortal Jellyfish

but any poet will tell you: all they ever find
is the sound of their own voice
leaking imperfectly from a pen.

i'm sorry, i have lately learned to say:
you'll have to write that one yourself.

Petroglyphs

(Gibraltar series, probably eventually #6)

some shapes are sacred:

your eyes, your lips,

etched into the canvas

of this granite cliff--

a gift to a future

destined to be

denied your glance,

deprived of your kiss.

my clumsy hands

inscribe you on the world

so love may go on living

when the rest of us is dust.

to live 
just once 
with you

is not enough.

art insists at least

on this: that beauty

not slip past us

unhindered, into the mists.

some shapes are sacred:

your eyes, your lips.

old man on coffeeshop bench

i will be old like you
one day (not too too soon i hope)
and let my beard
hide my sinking cheeks
sprout lumps and  growths
body rebelling--like
a second puberty:

without the sex.

slump forward to sip my coffee
fall back to stretch my legs
beg the sunshine light the fire
my bones have let go out.

my veins like yours will glow
rivers of blue beneath my skin
and my breath
will come in packages
shaped like coffins.

i know you. i have
already guessed your name.



(Pretty self-explanatory, I guess. Just the view through the open window this Tuesday afternoon...)

definite articles

the rain fell
the way curtains fall:
obscuring the stage
erasing the dust
easing the thirst
the ground accumulates.

traffic--the city pulsing--
slowed, stopped:
abated, you say.
the air smiled.
everyone breathed.

love the world
the way the world wants love.

learn the shapes
(learn the names
learn the language)
learn the way
the world whispers words.


(By way of explanation: Brian told me it was impossible to write a poem using only nouns, verbs, and the word "the." I'm not a big fan of the word "impossible." But I love the definite article, that singular and specific "the." Take that, Brian!)

swim

I write a lot of poems about swimming, it occurs to me. In fact, I'd say I write poems about swimming more often than I actually swim, these days. I read this one tonight as part of Behind the Kiln #8, an improv music and dance night at the delightful Artword Artbar, where Jennifer Lockman and I had the privilege of accompanying legendary Canadian artists and improv pioneers Nobuo Kubota and Eugene Martynec. So if you'll pardon the brag, I thought I should post about it. What a great night!

Oh--and if you like this poem, it's available, along with many many more, in my most recent book, Closer to the Sky.

swim

we swim
and the sand drops away beneath us
we trust that water will do what water does:
will hold us up
rock us
wash us clean
and finally remind us
we are water, each ourselves.

arm over arm over wave
over shipwrecked grave
where the faithless
and the leaden equally lie
sunk to the bottom
those unfortunate fortunate
dragged to the depths
by pockets full of gold.

our treasures are always
our torments.

our secrets are always
just unfulfilled hopes.

our dissatisfied pockets
are always lined with gold.

we swim
and the sky is an ocean of dreams
smiling down on us every one
waiting for us to learn
to put our faith in the wind.

when we finally line our pockets
with a joyful nothing at all
we will swim
(like birds,
waving empty hands)
up into the ocean of dreams.

worry, if you must

don't worry, sensei said,
about preparing to become a black belt.
worry--if you must
worry at all--about what
you
are doing
right now.


do that well, 
day after day.


when the time comes,
the black belt
will have already
taken care 
of itself.

simple sky (let's swim)

simple sky tonight

glows bluegreenpinkandgold

a shallow coral ocean blooms

above the complicated rooftops

of this almost-dreaming town.

turn off this common gravity, my love:

let us draw a breath together

and dive into the gloaming.

we’ll bring back treasures

scavenged from the rags and ruins

of sunken airships, aluminum ghosts

wrecked amongst the constellations:

ophiuchus and saggitarius—

the healer and the teacher;

aquilus and cygnus—

the eagle and the swan:

all our great birds

all our great magicians

all the hollow bones of flight

waiting to be carved into song.

the wind tucks our clothes

tight against the contours of our bodies,

half-closes our eyes

like we’re all just waiting—

          every sleeping soul 

          in this west-facing town—

waiting to be kissed awake

from centuries of sleep

by this optimistic sunset

on the edge of an ocean of sky.

Logic of Real Arguments

By way of explanation, I should note that this poem is very old to me--it was written on a camping trip in 1995, after finishing a dreadfully dry philosophy course with a textbook entitled "The Logic of Real Arguments." And then, at a campground in upstate New York, I watched a drunken couple argue. Needless to say, they didn't use the techniques outlined in the book.

The Logic of Real Arguments

A puts a hand out like a crossing guard--he wants it all to stop.

B says “You never talk--who are these ghosts that haunt your tongue?”

The books are closed on this game; we are taking no more bets

Good blood has incurred bad debts before this.

I had a textbook, read it cover to cover.

I was so prepared--I knew the rules--

I thought--and I was wrong--

That I knew you.

B has thought this all through--each conclusion follows premise

Like a wind-up toy.  A can only shout, but that will do.

Throw out your guidebook—it’s the same in every language,

Kind words strangled in your throat before these.

I had a textbook, told me

“Cut through words to structures,

Dispel needless emotions,

Think clearly now.”  But...

I shout and you crumple.          

I learn to fight dirty and win.

My record speaks for itself,

It has learned to shout for itself.

echoes #3: manifestations

i trace your face with this pencil tip

and every time i miss your lips:

the line of your jaw as you set your mind

on an ideal that you could never find

in a house as once upon a time

as mine. i trace your face;

i get it wrong. i look for you

and find sad songs amongst

my shoes, in my garage,

behind the cans that line the cupboard

mass-produced and stained incarnadine. i find

quotations in the oddest places:

snapshots of strangers writing books

that slow-dissolve at the opening line.

i erase my mind but still

the blank tape signifies, a simple hiss of absence

a white noise kiss that never lands

like hands that tilt

towards a face they cannot touch

so only trace in faulty lines

a set of signs that point towards the house

of once-upon-a-time,

the for sale sign, the windows hollow

like my tired eyes.