“Write about taking the subway.”
Back and forth it collects me.
ancient metal sea
The train holds a current:
heaving the world
hole to hole.
Trickling time in between the stops.
It takes us home again.
Buzzing with bruises,
bleeding with groans.
it strides with burst after bulge
with secret navigation,
tumbling the world on a preset track
until it crawls upward
and the sky breaks free.
“Write about the future when the past was bad, but today was good.”
Yesterday was the oldest day I ever had.
it swam and buried the sky in a wet year
the moments were patches of passing
unlifted was the day so burned,
it shriveled with no passion in the oven,
tasteless and runny, chalky and crude.
Today sits up and breathes away the holes
it moves infinite and speedy like love,
packing neatly into minutes so fresh.
Controlled and clear, today bundles my mind.
Today, the harvest is freckled with red kisses.
So, I raise a glass to the tomorrow,
It preps the table
holding all strings
all presents wrapped frozen
for sweet and shy it may melt,
sizzling and drumming it may fold
and we may only trickle through,
casting the black aside and white in,
all for the undone days.
“Write about an unrequited love that keeps me awake.”
She walks without slack
loose with wine and sand
roaming by the waves
scratching with the seaweed
she is a hymn from the tumbling tides
The warm and friendly sun hums along.
Once the sands push for the moon
and the sea curls for more sea
and the clapping wet world comes closer
the sun belly flops – bright to dim
she unhooks her hands
I search with my steps unkempt
losing the sandy path
I struggle to see her now
through my moonlight,
my hands cold
and I find only a foggy whisper filling my head.
Under my crooked helm I pull
like rain, I draw the echo down
scattering in white splash noise
needling my best heartbeats
like a masterpiece wrapping myself
away from control, sinking in the delta.
Growing and shedding all growls I peel
freshly as a raspberry picked messy
flowing and drumming
blindly red as a baby born
thrown together in the lush.
Back to the start, I crave better
sunshine for our mistakes
fondly, I lie with our eyes
closed with smiles wide
weighing memory by the glimmering distraction
boxing all Pandora black.
“I want a poem about a bad date with a smoker.”
She dates with a subway stare
passing through the appetizers
like a soldier wading through a swamp
pushing reeds aside for the wine.
More and more the people nudging
clutching at her sleeves like ghosts
trying to push her smile out
haunting her with obscene jokes.
A Saturday date inside, but
she smokes with a Sunday fervor outside
forging a private atmosphere
with every grey breath she forms
so she climbs into her cigarette cloud
both hands digging down, like a hazelnut
burrowing past all colors
through the skull of the Earth
through the edge of her drowsy wine
into her heart- still warm on the plate,
for all that want to bite the black.
“Write a poem about an angel turning human.”
Hello heaven,
can you feel my gravestone
linger like the one day cold?
You made a tumbling world move
pushed every curve into herds
pushed every pound into pines
in one thousand ways, this rock alive.
Yet, here I browse in the subway-
watching rats in the dark
shuffles in the cracks.
God’s gravity has grown so stale,
once overfilling and now just drizzling
like the graffiti I feel on my own skin
lighter with the memories.
Disengaged from the wind- I ache,
waiting for my wings to froth and fro
with me old temperature that fought the ground
until the clouds showed me rain
and I pelted and pelted with the water down
and mud and snow and the grey
and then I am the wild shadow called human
skimming through the blinking universe
bridging the cold and the hot
searching for a breakthrough,
breaking everything for a handhold in the sky
where one day I will return,
and the winds with take my home.
“I want a poem about a cold city.”
They say the sky churns
the calm and soft exhale
but it never yawns in my city mechanical.
The somber groan from puddles grey,
effortless past the blurs I heave.
We walk faster now-
feeling red lights feathering
our silent leather coats
bumping faded eyes by the subway.
This darling snarl-
of my hanging winter-
new needles made of chills
for the streetscape blue.
Onward the metal,
over and under forgether,
our flocks splashing,
for every moment
the silent sliding without yearning.
“I can’t afford to lose valuable energy on things that aren’t as important.”
My day is sculpted until I whisper
my night’s budding dance
warm like children’s song.
On my pillows I miss the minutes,
but I smile inside
because this day is mine.
Always, I push my skies until hell,
but my grins overflow <
greener than Saturday blooming.
But, my eyes feel –
every urging minute
trampling all fumbling questions –
until the only answer is later,
and the snows melt the promises away.
“Write a poem about your toenails.”
On the stone floor, patterns
of toes once pattered,
like dough unrolled I was a boy,
and my little toes grew up
into something I rarely feel,
and the nails grew hard
and rigid, with fringing dirt.
“I’ve seen it all.”
Not every life is spent on the airy breeze,
looking for the holes of a tree to perch inside.
But the walls we draw around ourselves,
make us hide from the roads that wander
and our patched kisses like grassy slumber
waiting for the soft toes of a child.
Photographs pull us into towers,
and the true affections peer at us
from the night, as we draw curtains,
and our world shifts closed.
If you see it all, but never know
the heart beating from the oaks
or the tides bearing salty breath
or the snaking rivers gently woven,
then you will only know the stones
that stub your toes and make it rain
on the sharp world you flicker.
“A poem about free will and convention in an arboreal setting.”
If I were the wind,
I would whip the clouds away,
until the trees asked for water
to unwind the skies
and let the rain roar down.
If I was a worm,
I would curl in a secret hole,
explore the brown deep,
and itch my back on the spine
of the rocky earth.
If I were the trees,
I would praise the clouds,
chat with the worms and birds,
and hope the humans
never want to break the root.
for the root is all,
for a tree that is.
Because the plans of a tree
do not exist, unlike
our plans for trees.
but a tree may still hope,
because a will is not hooked
to an intelligent brain,
but it is an automatic flair for life
to live and live more.
So before you dismiss the natural
tendencies of unbroken will,
please be wise to the design of words
like will, freedom, and life,
so all that lives has the will to be awake.