American dreams laid out to rows
of hardy bushes dividing green chemlawns;
all the familiar dogs have died.
the school bus came around this turn pregnant with
hopeful repeating future.
he became a schoolteacher,
she from the big red house went to Nashville,
friend in the brick ranch overdosed.
I remember the priest said "o death, where is your sting"
looking at his mother and nodding promise.
he asked us to remember the seal of baptism,
a flag draped over the casket.

around where I pulled into her driveway on a motorcycle,
the pine trees where I smoked my first cigarette.
he always sped up the old subaru around this turn.
I remember the family names,
Italian and Irish syllables to the beat of my sneakers.
I remember the insecure affection, the angry fathers,
the teenagers driving way too fast down the hill.
I remember soft breasts, pressing and unfaithful.
this is a graveyard of friendships.

I do not remember the sunshine ever being this bright!
or the air as thick and pulsing.
some gardens look exactly the same
as they did twenty years ago.
only I am different,
a transient voice resurrecting shadows.

I wish to reach in myself
and draw out only courage.
split my breastplate and fall
onto my open hand by the fingertips
push slowly between the lungs
to the fragile beating core.
the muggy organs flow between fingers and
I declare to the world my envy of it.
arm-deep in
perhaps, unwilling
to hook the slick charity,
tear through the membrane;
a white swamp in my guts
by the broken milk.

last night I dreamt that I tortured a man
the anger grinding inside my bones
    like shattered iron into bedrock
I watched his will sputter and croak
clenched the comic burble
    whimpering through useless bloody lips
his dying hope my fuel of wrath

I dreampt fear, rendered into guilt
a sour fog in my lungs,
I could not fathom forgiveness.
he was bound to the chair and I to my rage,
and each blow fattened the impatient grudge.

I woke up yearning for shelter
a bed of warm earth
to break open underneath me,
a garden to sow tears.

how does the word-spackle
draw me up
like a creaking bucket from the well?
remove me from time, you words
of trickle over patched awning.
putty the swelling crack in my hope,
mother me with damp moss and raw breath,
revive the waltz of early morning,
the one two three
one two three
love you me?
you words, I know your music,
brewed from laughter and skin.
buried in you are stories, all true.
I reach to you, words.
my dreams drag as a stuffed toy
over the salted, noisy road.
bare feet on the cold asphalt,
the drowsy child rubs an eye
and smiles.

My friend Lisa posted this on her blog, and it resonated with me so strongly I want to repost it here:

Music rots when it gets too far from the dance.
Poetry atrophies when it gets too far from music.

- Ezra Pound

who I
love averse
what I love
do
for who
what is best
  what is best
is best
  is best
best

a friendship blessed fragile,
squirm in shame and toss.
its music absolutely
promised into universe
and the honesty of rocks and wood and bone.
our crooked needs-like-child
carved onto the buzzing,
subatomic gospel of everything.

I wander darkness to
words: sharp drizzle
for us
what is best
  is best
what is
  best

I want to bind a knot
around my heart
that can only be untied

what is best
what best
what is best
  is best
  what is
is best
best

slow, unmovable pressure of mercy
like comic raincloud, tears of mother;
we are entitled to nothing,
my inconsolable brother.
I am guilty, too, and not just because
I am two years older
and tempted by the pride
of failure.

the mirror grips a self-made orphan
with crumbs in his pockets
that he resents to share,
hoarded like the spoils of war.

I want us to turn into yeast
and be mixed into bread.
We can be broken and dipped
at the same table.
we can know the bond of blood,
poured into the same cup
and drunk until slurring eyes
shut and sleep forever.

I have no vision for light-bleeding stars
or moons that draw oceans like bedsheets over the shore.
I wish one grain of sand
to become two, then two to one;
I do not the know the coasts,
fleeing from sunrise to darkness
printed by thousands of crashing years.
what thrall keeps men to themselves--
my insulation!
(the devil wants my petty rhythms
and flatters me warmly;
he gives me my own key.)
the divine gift
ha!
I am not so bold to take it
or to know why.
thrust into me,
He makes homes
of the dark corners,
and my hell-spoiled life
speaks of great black expanses crossed.

I am learning to love
    muddy water,
the murky religion
under the floating dead
    leaves and in-between koi.
I eat nameless seeds,
    tart purple off the lolling branches,
and let the sun sting my eyes;
fear displaced by trust.

!watch! oh holy!
!screen! he!who!
!provides!! our!
!mostloved drug!

oh, you brittle words
shattered on my love.
each shard longs and... waits
to be picked up
and made a joy sent tumbling
for eternity.

Grandpa, you saved a million dollars
but still fixed your cheap sneakers with duct tape
then spray-painted them white

you did so many tours of duty,
safely piloting back and forth the paraphernalia of war,
flying our boys home or to...
I imagine them saluting "Captain Bob"
and you minding over them
as a grinning shepherd with
big black muffs over your ears.

you loved your morning Metamucil
and drank the most awful beer.
the coffee you made was like rusty water,
but you were a master of evenly buttered toast.

you married a defiant poet from North Carolina.
I think she is in my blood more than you
because I am not like a long distance runner
or a dusty cottage by the sea.

you shopped often, but only
at the East Hampton town dump.
how many free oars did you really need?
I remember the catacomb of old lamps.

you told me the same jokes
every time I visited you.
they were all so, so bad.
like the one about an Indian and a V8,
which I can only tell to people
who will truly appreciate it...
they were the kind of jokes
a captain makes to humble himself.

Grandpa, the medals are so trivial
compared to your
duct taped spray-painted sneakers.
we need to learn how to wear
shoes like yours.

what language cannot give me now
I let go
into the vast blue.

the fizzing swarm,
the endlessly shifting green blades, and
the impatiently courting sparrows
decorate the howl of technology
in the garden
like missing children
wandering a lightless sinking cloud
of corpulent, hopeless god.

and the Blood runs
over every star
to puddles at our feet,
its awkward warmness
we kneel to lap as dogs.

my pride, the curtain
of gravity and tar,
torn.
please, please
torn.

home is the place
where the Atlantic is bitter cold
(I wade in wincing)
in spring and the wind sends
sidearmed oyster shells planing like gulls.

home is the place
where Mom hoots for our Red Sox,
provoking her favorite players by nickname,
and Dad doesn't know the difference
between shortstop and second base.
(he graciously
buys the beer anyway.)

home is the place
where my little brothers and I
still bicker over wiffle ball
and family history;
we try to impress each other
with second-hand understandings.

home is the place
where Dad walks around out of the bathroom naked
and no one says anything, because
what is there to say?

home is the place
where nobody compliments Andy
on his ability to roll cigarettes
even though he's gotten quite good at it.
(he needs to
brush his teeth more.)

home is the place
where gifts are clever
and Mom cries to family sweetness.

home is the place
where the New England swamp grows
bold, bloodsucking bugs
and proud, far-seeing trees

home is the place
where the crisp scent of sheets
and familiar cross-stitch on the walls
speak to my olding heart

singing the blues,
I want to be found
a rusty scrap
that speaks in unison heart
so she will place me in her voice,
and with sunburnt smile say,
you make a charming sound
when children knock you.

I conceal war with sympathy.
I do not want to gallop across
the muddy November field
to a trembling Guinevere.
I would soothe her
with unheeded melody--
(ambition is song
to fool the mockingbird.)

the fog, solitude
prods look! where! ...but
I am not alone when I wake--
the pigeons living in my chimney
warble to me of God.
it first annoys me,
then I remember the old women across the street
who hobble out of the subsidized tower
to mother us with stale bread.

dogwood!
scatter your white petals
and will I bush up against your branches
with explicit carelessness
(like I brush up against
a woman
whose skin I desire.
I love nature
as I love woman,
so full of rain
and vast, yearning beauty...
I fear nature
as I fear woman,
that a snapping twig
invokes claws.)
the dafodils are now!

my sudden heart
is physical presence.
I smell the rain;
I trust the insistent and cold
lake air breathing in
through the classroom windows.
the great black pianos sleep.
the faces of my colleges
are weary with empty devotion,
and I hold the silence
like an unwanted prize.

who am I?
I belong nowhere.
there is nothing
in my former cities
for me to envy.
it makes me laugh
to know
this is the way of God.
yet I listen
religiously
to the persistent melody
of a fool's dream.

The Desolate Field
by William Carlos Williams

Vast and grey, the sky
is a simulacrum
to all but him whose days
are vast and grey and --
In the tall, dried grasses
a goat stirs
with nozzle searching the ground.
My head is in the air
but who am I . . . ?
-- and my heart stops amazed
at the thought of love
vast and grey
yearning silently over me.

when I was a child,
I played with legos.
I would search my pile
(for hours even!)
for a single lego
the exact size
and shape
and color.
I am stubborn;
my ideas make demands of me.

sometimes I searched
(for days!)
aimlessly,
waiting for the
shiny plastic pieces
to speak to me.
the best ideas
were accicents,
two mismatched legos
clinging to each other
like needy lovers.

I have not changed much.
only now I search
the frets of a guitar
and the words of my native tongue.
I still nurture doomed cities
and build radical star-ships
full of cocky and gifted crewmen.

I know to fight for the words
and answer the demands of music.
I am stubborn;
I believe that the right piece
is somewhere in the pile,
and—dammit—I will find it!
but
the jumbled collection
also has a will
and its providence
is my voice.

I found an old
pocket-sized notebook
from my New York years.
I was not scared to
read the intimate thoughts.
first, a diatribe
of self-hatred
and desperate lyrics.
then, your name,
written in your cursive,
and how I could contact you.
the rest of the pages
were blank.

I carried the notebook
with me to a play this evening.
I wrote in it what
an Iraqi woman told me from the stage,
"the war is inside you."
I saw the smoke of the towers
from my backyard in Brooklyn.
I remember drinking screwdrivers
and feeling guilty.
the Iraqi woman meant
the war I haven't seen:
the one with smart bombs.
my smart bombs.
I wrote what she said,
"I love like I cannot breathe."

I will leave
the rest of the pages blank.

God:
show me what is true.
place in the hold
of my timid fingers
the cut feather

I wish to sign
with my own blood,
and have been trying!

but I cannot bleed enough;
I am always a letter short.

the flesh of Christ
cured and braided into rope,
is noosed
gently around my neck.
I believe my soul
will sling out through my feet
the moment my neck
splits.

I see my reflection peering up at me
from the pool at the foot of the gallows.
I look the same,
not like a man about to die.
perhaps the vulgar red of the pool
overwhelms the joy
and terror in my eyes.

if you are a christian, you are on welfare.
you live in the subsidized ghetto earth
you pursue your selfish desires, believing they are not selfish
you judge other people for being on welfare
then you accept the welfare check of grace
believing that you did something
to earn it.

"Living a life of faith means never knowing where you are being led. But it does mean loving and knowing the One who is leading. It is literally a life of faith, not of understanding and reason—a life of knowing Him who calls us to go. Faith is rooted in the knowledge of a Person, and one of the biggest traps we fall into is the belief that if we have faith, God will surely lead us to success in the world." --Oswald Chambers

oh God, where is your power?
prayer does not make a warrior
and there is little sense in love.
brokenness is the way of life
for the kingdom of blessed men.
should failure be an embrace?
the questions jump and pop from
fickle believing hearts
like sparks from a campfire.
the wood is stacked high
and there are plenty of trees to cut down.
but even vast landscapes of campfires
cannot light the sky,
and we can discern no smoke
through the darkness.
looking down from heaven,
angels name constellations of the
yellow and orange specks.
I am part of the constellation that has
for centuries been attempting letters.
we wish to spell a reminder:
at the core of embers is coal.
but we too are jinxed by
the cult of success and stability;
how we prefer
its sensible lies.

"We cannot attain to a vision, we must live in the inspiration of it until it accomplishes itself." --Oswald Chambers

many leaks in my spirit:
the impatience of passion
breeding superficial hope.
the darkness knows me.
it is a well of uncountable
beating lies

the commercialism of my abandonment
to a life of vision:
what I want is so consuming!
what strength do I have
to recall with tenacity
the vision of redemption?

oh, to be there!
in that moment of repentance
to draw up an unfeigned cry
that fearlessly sings
among the dead.
I sense His call,
a misunderstood tickling
like a tiny point of light
holding back the fusion of a billion stars.
the laughing suspicion of my heart,
it is from the great deep
but from it I can take no esteem
if it is the Spirit
that claims me

the white figure!
calm, poised at his center.
the patrons around her
are draped in shadows, disfigured.
they have scraps of indulgence
to leave for her.
she is a ghost
carved of smoke to flatter the gods.
she is wonder,
a jealousy of the painter's heart.
she serves the pride of wine,
and a fierce sorrow
frames her beauty.
the awning offers no protection,
it is on fire!
but the flames cannot illuminate the faces
of the bourgeois
can they burn like coals?
they do not see
her,
holy sister of
the deep French night

link to the painting

the warriors of God
    have paint
    under their fingernails
the warriors of God
    carry mandolins

the armory is filled with pitches and color
whispers of the deep Spirit haunt
    brushstrokes and penstrokes and lips
the cavalry are dancers
    twirling their bodies into the streets of war

sweet music!
the impending fiddles
    (a toll of bombs in the distance)
the scrawling impetuous poet
    (a roar of machine gun)
the characters of the play
rising to sacrifice and truth
    (a city, burning to the ground)
the actors cast their broken hearts
    like bread to us poor,
the unruly screams of hope
    cue the raising dead

the warriors of God
    lose sleep perfecting a single word
the warriors of God
    contort their spines
    for an epiphany of gesture

dreamers and excessive lovers of joy!
the Spirit of the deep groans
those orphaned for reckless wonder
    are called pilgrims of light
    and eternal children

everytime I enter this city
there's a sticky anticipation in my gut
the train pushes into her hollowing belly
and I feel the world shake