16.10.14

Why You Fly

i heard elvis costello singing ‘alison’ today
steel guitar and a mandolin
behind him on the stage, 
his voice finally finely crumpled
by the million collisions of encroaching old age.

he leaned back from the mic
to sing ‘the bartender turns the juke box
way 
down 
low’
and his voice filled the room
with the strength of his convictions
instead of the strength of microphones.

all the amplifiers in the world
can’t bring a mouth that close to an ear.

all the powers of this electrified world
can’t bring my fingers any closer to you
than when they brush the strings
of this guitar.

i wanted to sing
straight into your heart
but i let the machinery keep up apart,
conquered by fear that my faltering voice
wasn’t power enough.
‘i know this world is killing you,’ he sang,
‘but my aim is true.’

i turn off the lights, unplug the sky,
recede to human size, and
say for once what i mean 
which is simply
‘i love you.’ 

that’s my only song.
I’m sometimes confused,
words come out wrong
and my fingers are stupid—
they grope for chords
i’ve known since childhood:
i lose sight of the truth of a minor and c,
i lose sight of love
and find complexity—and with it always
soft sorrow and tension, 
high harmonic structures,
upper dimensions, 
paths curved in time,
time curved in possibility.

my life takes the form
of a series of lines intersecting connecting 
the silk of the sky 
to the dust of the coal mines;
the smiles of lovers 
to the handlesof coffins; 
the math of the seasons
to the men taking off 
in their amplified rockets
bound for the heavens
and lost to the earth,
humming songs from childhood
to shield their human ears 
from the thunder of engines
those machines that compel us
to rise from our beds
pay homage to power
and leave all that matters for darkness, vacuum,
pinpricks of starlight perfected.

they hang there, weightless, these lost men,
observing the empty heart of the sky
while all they love--
the smoky rooms
the steel guitars
the fragile courage of the human voice
the futile optimism of the always-open ear--
all these wonders spin away beneath them.

they hum to themselves their childish tunes,
prayers unheard beneath the roar
of engines firing, turning them finally earthward.
‘my aim is true,’ elvis was singing; ‘my aim is true.’

when i come down and the roaring stops,
i will touch this silent soil
strum that long-lost simple chord
place my lips close beside your perfect, optimistic,
ever-forgiving ear, and say
‘i love you.’

‘i know,’ you will answer.
‘that’s why you fly.

and that’s why you return. 
i know.’

3.3.14

Overpass (cut and paste)

i see you on the overpass:

invisible, i might tree the breeze.

invisible, lovers reveal the wind.
i could fly i could...
     love sees beneath the cold

look down. you'll see all the rain in me
just ghosts, just everything
every car
bitter black sorrow
all ink running together

without you beside me i'm tangled
by line by rain and leaf and wind
and invisible ink. just
the black beneath bridges,
secure inside.

i could be spring
but even then you wouldn't see.

birds learn to disappear into the world.
notebooks pour paint
like a high into the night.
overpass spills ink
to purple the blue fingertips
of these low places.