One Week

I

if I am remiss, then I am
remiss; so shoot me.
there's no coincidence that you decided
to come.
the broken chair still left
in splintered shafts on the back porch,
screened in, it was never meant
to keep out the weather,
but you were never
any sort of intruder, to begin with;
I let you in.

II

each sound we share,
on interstate concrete
the rivers of conversation
and melody, I am selfish with
fills out new pockets
of the brain in the ear,
where the heartbeat drums
and dreams against that small hammer.
I just want to place deftly
within choose-y containers fitting
their small epic consequence
all our intangible unspeakable
somethings, and bury them
into a series of boxes
out back under the rose bushes.

III

in some sides of the story,
adam and eve ate wheat, it was
not a forbidden fruit at all
but the chaff that cut them like paper,
like lightning splitting a tree,
for when a man has no understanding
of love or consequence or wisdom
they often say: "that man
has never put a bread baked
of wheat (the source
of sagacious illumination)
into his mouth".

IV

To be a wordsmith, one
must be willing to put the foot
of the prose to the tongue
of the fires. to burnish
and shape, knowingly
with a skillful hand, (the same
as when you brush the hair
out of my spring colored eyes),
to mold and blow life into the forms
they make. if it has no purpose
then I shall shatter it,
I will corrupt and decimate the vessel
and start again.

V

someday I will be on the tracks
and I won't hear the train, someday
the rain will reveal its opacity;
it will swallow the slick
of oil from car motors. the poorman's
rainbows, floating
on the surface of monsoon
supermarket parking lot puddles.

VI

you once called these tender mutterings
a Prometheus blessing, but I
realize after so many years
trying to pull an Athena
out of a white rabbit hat trick,
that I am only
fully formed
when I hear my own taste
filling up your mouth.

VII

"you have stung me," he said
"in the most kind
and most brutal places."
I said: "I know.
hold me to it.
the sting of my silver quippings,
the spilled honey-milk. the heavens
I crush out of you, because
because there's no reason not to."
you agree. we spit, shake on it
with bloody palms, and sealed it
by crossing the room and standing
finally face to face.

Reviews

[Emily B]

I came back today and had a whole new adventure. What a deep and wonderful write!!!!

[LJW]

I have absolutely no idea what all that meant.

OK, maybe I do, but you and I are two different kinds of writers altogether, aren't we? :-)

Maybe my version of this (your) piece would be:

Men.
Can't live with them
Can't spray them with mustard gas
and live to tell about it.


:-)

You're a smart girl. I can't keep up!!

[Ed Hart]

what do you do? you just sit at your keyboard, and an hour later you got this? it's not fair....

[Emily B]

Someday, if I were to ever make something that read like this and carried it to the good folks at that literary journal I keep submitting to, they would accept it finally. And be glad for the wonder that it is.