I The First Hour is hardest to handle A new neighborhood, overlooking a basin Of tightened and brightly colored boxes Naked against fresh coffee In newly painted kitchen air You expect at any moment With your brains to be hanged With opportunity to make a killing. As you leave for class Three steps off the sidewalk Ringing Earth like Saturn Ask your zodiac for a light (She is Aquarius. It will begin to rain. The Horoscope Section killed The romance & mysteries of the universe, The Five-Day forecast the weather.) She won’t mention the weather, Neither should you.
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II At the University Center I browsed The message board & announcements, Yellow ads for the new & the used. Metronomes, electric amplifiers, Musicology 101, New lonely singles available and looking— Congrats to so and so on their recent engagement. One day there was an upright piano, 80 keys, price recently reduced. The next day it was gone & The new girl played Moonlight No. 14 Down the hall, missing whole tones. Same ones you skipped glancing at the charts. The fall I felt C-sharp minor missing a thick gauze Of fog settled over the rehearsal hall, a dissonance. Roof top obstructed by the ghost haze, I couldn’t say for sure which floor— The music diffusing you into the smoky blanket. You gathered like static in the hair on my neck. She is the only one who loved that sonata more than you, When she filled the holes with exact time, silence. I wanted your hands to feel it. I wanted you to know it by heart, Play it in the black deluge of night for me. So I made ashes of your recital notes And when it was done you said it was over, The last I heard Beethoven through the fog. I blamed your silence on her, deferred all regret And planned my reckoning. I wanted to take her Sheet music and tape it to your door. SIDEWALKS & PAPER 2
I wanted to steal 8 keys from you for her— Then all would settle, conjuring us into A simple return to perfect pitch before the fog: She’d write her own charts from memory, You’d have a reason to skip chords in Moonlight, And me— I’d put a new message on the board, And come spring when the sky clears Take up Bach, or American Blues.
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III we wore our favorite shirts, sliding opaque the afternoon fog, our faces stapled on pale smoke, human eyes compressed atmospheres, iridescence proving us in bodies frail against that arrangement. Pre-cosmic marriage by candle light we drip the foundation a new gait like rain, strangely in cracks of old cement
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IV * Delicate, aluminum angels Decorating street corner wreaths, My usual café seat by the window Overlooking the glow, an ambient world Where there is no moon— Only the flitter of winter coats And the smoke-like sound of week-old snow. * Through dirty glass of the café I hover a bowl of chowder, watching Used humans await the auction In straight lines on the sidewalk A curious species, Shamless Under the marquee ghosts, Holding for a… grand cue Someone to tell them of wine And the finer things in the lobby And in starring, I never realized The hot chowder I had spilled Down the buttons of our favorite shirt
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V I keep remaking your face Three minutes past the hour, My blade slips to see you. I make you perfect corneas Like some private fashion trend, Your collection of boutique eyes. And though, unlike me, You never cut yourself shaving, Some winter mornings I wish you had‌ So that you might ask of me from the tub For a band-aide and a cigarette
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VI I found winter My trench coat pocket Three dimes, one torn Ticket stub of last year’s circus: We made smoke rings Hung them mid air— Burnt orange halos, Lamp posts Lit our footsteps on Sidewalks we danced Humming ringmaster tunes Beneath us In the curb packed white blankets Our prints captured Like leaves in fresh cement.
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VII Moving through those midnights I find linen-wrenched and gripping For room in a homesick home… The new master-bed makes me sweat The smell, bourbon and camels The plaid shirt tussled damp, the floor Felt cold against my back, my chest Warm against the room between us With fire in the radiator You say something about love. You hear church bells sleeping— Say nothing but listen, I hear salt trucks on the street, I guess that says it all…
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VIII That was bomb flesh that bit your face The evening at war (the page always litters itself) In pieces of television screen Broken on the concrete floor, You should already know Those channels stole your entrails And taught you the volume button When your spleen is missing (I’d lend you mine) But I’ll be in the library all night Dancing to the rhythm Of my liver and lungs. I, of myself— whole, Am willing to forget All I have learned In those tiny pieces Of television screen, Where everything is sharp And farther away…
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IX perhaps then we will come to the end of a thing worth ending and return our borrowed dish set to its owners. perhaps then the colors in our skin will have leaked and vaporized collected on the atmospheres and the coated windows of old homes. they will be individually numbered no longer ours, something more than skin tones when the new owners arrive at our former houses old décor will be thrown away, thin films of gray will be dusted from the windowsills, and replaced with a newer glaze. when it rains they will seep like us into the watershed a permanent blue settling into the pitted skin of earth and bedrock, their occasional pieces our bodies, our old smells in someone’s hair.
· this is how they say we don’t get old but leave our pigments where we go. some called it a moving on. some call it an unfortunate thing. but like a slender sheen of frost we will unfurl from a river and come back again, SIDEWALKS & PAPER 10
they will see us out of the corners of their eyes, unbendable sun light-us-&-them bending through the curtains in our previous rooms to that slender corridor caught between the drape threads and the panes. they will hang like souvenirs from those refractions in our window when we wake suddenly before I go, we will first repack my things to be sure, and put down my breakfast quick, rinse and re-box the cups unconcerned we couldn’t notice they never matched the set. but, then again… it was never ours to begin with
·
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X it just broke like tension on sea-grass rope no one noticed and yet the hand-brushed pieces of the portrait were everywhere, fraying like live currents away from their ground, the causes of a common house fire time for redecorating, time for light progress, time to rebuild and reduce the size, time to get a dog and a hobby, time to repaint. who knew they taught color by numbers, they say just fill it in, each section is a masterpiece and when you’re done start a new one, one with a common theme, one with a similar setting and all the numbers divisible by two, one they’ve seen before.
· imitation they say, is most sincere when we seek their flattery and refill those spaces with designated color. it’s not that, in any particular way or another perhaps, a more appropriate SIDEWALKS & PAPER 12
color couldn’t work it’s just what the booklet says to do they only want the best, and besides those colors won’t match their rugs, their curtains, and their hair will run gray from the roots when we rearrange their schemes,
· they say from the corresponding paints to their numbers no one will know how to relate or what to make of all this once we’ve finished. but if they must they’ll leave it undone and for us to decide, they half trust that we can vaguely recreate the intentions of the original, and make light of this process without their little indicators of progress and corresponding color wheels to fill these bare and numbered sections, it’s the least they can do. they owe us that; we rarely question their arrangements
· SIDEWALKS & PAPER 13
XI Nothing personal though While you were away, Someone broke in To your office And stole your Enitre Norton’s Collection I got back just in time To find them burning In that New Steel American™ dumpster Behind the justice center, We salvaged the index And a bit of glue from the spine, A small crowd had gathered But I kept them away, I thought you would have I know how much you loved them, I will say this though, “They couldn’t have burned in a finer dumpster.”
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XII A small house fire ignited a family Home east of the city in early morning hours— During sleep an eye Left on simmer caught, as it appears, the bottom Of a nylon streamer hanging from a birthday balloon. Drafts through the family Home authorities say caused The left over decorations to drift and hover the still Heated range from supper When the streamer hit the coil, Fire began to climb. Everyone Woke to the sound of helium Leaving rubber— followed by smoke Detectors, sirens, the hydrants. The ladders. A simmer. A last drip of the valve. A diesel engine fired. A light fizz Then silence. Later on the news In the family room no one is reported To have been Injured, or Missing. Remember… SIDEWALKS & PAPER 15
XIII the corner lot is something to be desired the appraisers say, opens the property to newer, more sophisticated markets buyers with responsibilities, buyers who need road frontage, at least two perfect edges of a lawn, one less intrusion of a neighbor, and the possibility of a wrap-around drive. if the property is fenced it’s a fortress, a place to breathe if the drive is pave-able it’s permanent, one less worry of run-off gravel
· how many owners make a house un-new? how many coats make a wall un-coverable? how many unfavorable comments must be made by in-laws before the art is replaced and the bedrooms rearranged? how long before a house gets old?
· when they arrive they’ll hire an unknown to design their spaces because they know what they like SIDEWALKS & PAPER 16
and when their kids are grown they’ll do it again, and again leave their valuables in a temporary room like runways for jets of landing dust
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XIV There is no useful combat Against that bastard we call gravity Pulling us invisibly down While we wait comfortable In the windows we’ve made Never mentioning We forgot last month’s rent Or how to breathe on our own don’t forget though just for the winter
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XV some will go South they say, while supplies last. but who knows where. perhaps into some deep forgotten underworld surrounded by bones, a catacomb of sort, a forgotten monument, or maybe a resort town by the coast they will go because they are told to, they’ll go because it gets cold. they go for umbrellas in their drinks and karaoke they say if they don’t they’ll lose their precious shares of time and miss their favorite songs
· and who knows, it may be their last winter there to show the others how its done, how the trip is made most efficient, how to read the marriage of the constellations and how, if at all, to make it home. but when they arrive quick off the jet stream, quick on their brightly colored wings quick into their rented rooms, home will be the last of their worries SIDEWALKS & PAPER 19
home is where they keep their pieces and things and not themselves in archives and old bureaus. home is a limited space, a cross-base of forgotten records, an attic of dust and old decorations unusable heirlooms and lawn furniture.
· places they aren’t, places they were space that can only be occupied for the slenderest moment before the sun passes South above the equator like a steadfast conductor whose favorite song is a march or a waltz perhaps, depending on where he stops and when they leave their things inside their things inside their off-season rooms for the unbendable heels of sunlight they’ll mesh seamless into that melody like a hot karaoke night the winter before. sometimes they lose their heads, forget their favorite song— other times it’s the only one they can remember
· SIDEWALKS & PAPER 20
XVI One afternoon at the bar, Shredding labels & classified ads Into near-perfect rectangles, Rearranged (a new kind of news ) on the pine bar, Wine, no one seems to mind The cross town drive, Or more room at the trough No one would miss them, (they never do)! But on that day, Paper in pieces on the bar To everyone surprised, someone read the news The Newspaper News! “First let me say don’t Let the name fool you The band & dancers need more room But no one seems to mind The cross town drive, Or more room when they’re drinking. I guess it’s the brawn over-brain thing It finally caught on, (to the Soul’s surprise, drunk Stumbling through pints of a familiar liquid) But, Hey! I’m for whatever works, I mean for the environment of Course!” But those were only headlines In pieces on the pine bar. I just skimmed the rest… SIDEWALKS & PAPER 21
XVII To learn we are wild with memory Waking on into every moment we find sleeping. Radiation melts through bones, Melted bones in frigid veins Blood of blue stones Blackened under heat lamps, chard. Wild is the atmosphere lovely Lain heavy in weeping rain. To eat we are naked to live Reaping only the chest of stone To breathe we are woken alone Shelled for echoes to recall A shadow but no figure, Blood and bones but no shadow. No Figure. No Shadow. (just some ash and a few scraps of paper)
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XVIII Badge red of sun blood In this afternoon show By the casket I stand in poised feet, Never staining easy My collar with liquid eyes Making my teeth dance. Three suns past noon A crowd gathered Attune to the preacher’s mouth, And so I assured them, “None understand The wheat’s strain Under the advancement Of the farmer’s sickle— Or to be splayed thin By the soft light Revolvers through In mid-afternoon. Courage is the limp corpse Of a highway dog, And pride the unripe apple Teasing the early worms. I cannot say I blame him though, And neither can you. You see, it wasn’t him at all— He never handled a pistol like that.
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XIX I should have known the river’s Forehead kiss didn’t kill you. I should have known you died tempted, Empty-handed in that easy chair. You left your blood silver for me, Every last ounce to buy your field. I can’t imagine how you managed The finest betrayal to make it that far— To the bedroom, in the night stand, To the bureau, and back to that old chair. I hope it was comfortable.
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XX The written rules for comic strips and obits Are the first to go, they make the page first. If they see us in the funnies going mad, They say colorless or not “We consider you a friend,” they make words “We’ve never truly met” Except (“me”) in these arid panels, Between the gutters And the edges of the page. “Sure we have.” “Are you kidding me?” “No he’s crazy as hell.” These stark exchanges like power lines, Dark interlocking wires, heavy With oblong and oval conversations, Surfacing little balloons of thought. If we’ve typified so soon, Made it this far to the confines Of the daily circular— I can say I’ll do my best, Stay off the sidewalk dead, Politely return undamaged Laughing that I’ve finished Reading the funnies And what my zodiac says… “Perhaps you’d care to join me Someday when the weather is settled,” And we both make the paper. _______
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XXI Tarot with a Poker Deck, or How I Lost My Head: “Alright Stud, you’re turn, Pick a card and tell us—” I find association with the completely mad Thickening in this sink-hole suburban dance Behind the super mall I own three square acres Of the finest sky money can buy, You can have it for a ride or a plane ticket, Take me home or turn me into a blackbird. From my window, the voice of concrete cools to half vibrato Breaking serenity of an unshod train collision (Sign-less and half hidden From the bicentennial glaze Of cheap motels and designer billboards), I find the weight of the sun just beyond t he brink of sanity— He has passed languid into this world of new order And masked again the reason for breathing. I want the intersection of a hundred frontiers, or two rivers, The horse’s teeth impassable by none outside The drunk skin of this new parade— The grand jester in a shoebox of interchanging photographs. I want the reverse image of ash and everything I see. I want the restoration of moth wings to this butterfly assembly. Can you dig that? SIDEWALKS & PAPER 26
Form must reflect content, and if spades won’t follow suit We’ll cut hearts&diamonds from their postcard chests, Leave unsigned the laminated tongues of clover thieves, Hand them over to The Hierophant and The Moon “— Spare us the gambler’s lore Stud; I meant tell us what the ante is.” The last trump; My time is here. in.
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XXII Home movies from earth, sometime near the beginning of the 21st century: Since the beginning of time, Humans could only speculate About the weirdness of Humans. Then someone uploaded a video To the world wide web And the speculation quickly ended I’m glad we got that out of the way
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XXIII At Last Mother Margaret: Forgetting April 14th When I look for you in time, I condense all I know into a day. When I forget of April 14th I forget of history, New Orleans, orphans and you. I forget all life happens on a sinking ship. I saw Mr. Lincoln going down Inside the Titanic’s theater, And Mr. Booth is already on deck Fighting The Yemassee War near the bow. Scenes of colonial enslavement & Iceberg slaughter on the high seas. The steerage class flees to the outnumbered rafts Like Apalachee refugees to St. Augustine’s knees, You and Noah Webster consult two Benjamins Before adding ‘abolition’ to his new word book schemes. Early in the morning I see Stout Marshall Stoudenmire Pull twin Colt Revolvers from his sides, gun down Four vaqueros’s dreams aboard The Space Shuttle Columbia (OV-102), Having just returned to El Paso after its 37th orbit. When I look for you, Mother Margaret, it seems Horus as the first orphan, raised by sister’s womb-stream, A Sycamore Tree named Isis, You, the three killings of Osiris, The bastard pharaoh of our dead brother Set rings. On April 14th I only see through The Eye of Horus: For us I forget the 105th day in a leap year. I forget The Donner Party is just leaving Springfield. I forget The Ballad of Tom Joad plays the Zenith Short Wave, I forget I sing along in the middle of that Black Sunday Storm. I forget on April 14th, 1882, months before you died, you gave birth. I forget the boy’s name is Moritz Schlick: “Cat-gut Cord” Aran’s line! & I forget Lebensweisheit is your posthumous eulogy. SIDEWALKS & PAPER 29
I forget that day in 1860, I carried news west for The Pony Express, The St. Joseph’s Gazette carried news of birth in Butcher’s Hollow, The Coal Miner’s Daughter turned 3 and Gave her Bible to Von Daniken. I forget in ’41 that Peter Rose was born an orphan with King Leopold… And they don’t allow orphans in the halls of Cooperstown or the Congo. So I forget you nurture Zamenhoff’s childLanguage after death. I forget the Allied Forces land in Normandy. I forget Robert E. Lee resigns from the Union Army. I forget Pocahontas marries John Rolfe, plays hungry games with us. I forget Ms. Tubman starts an Underground Railroad. I forget Mr. Koresh finishes the Bhagavad Gita & agrees to surrender. I forget and I forget and I forget, I forget I see it all, so stop: It’s April 14th and we love you best On those streets in New Orleans.
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XXIV Wanderlust, or Slouching into Babylon: One sensible piece of ground Water like crossing an ocean A sort of orb, swelling and receding Vapor if it’s lucky, a weightless State of matter Facts of Crossing North America: Small bodies pluck, hairs remove Dirt under fingernails replace Dirt under fingernails and remove Exoskeletons glued to windshield glass— Rinse and remove every hundred miles with hunger. Love and eat that hunger Eat and overflow, move on, Eat and bloat but don’t parlay this offer. This ascent delays like A balloon hanging At the cross of a power line— It may say something Distinctly American like Happy f**cking birthday _______ Leave it, leave them, and leave those. Where’d they come from And why should they go? SIDEWALKS & PAPER 31
Think of the stories told, think Of what they’ll tell when we settle, small things— Three flickers and the streetlamp buzzes winter with One two three and it’s gone. One and it’s just half-glow We know that, it’s just that way, the other Probably a malfunction, a short, A human error, improperly installed, A mix-up. that’s all The world, a life, half presumes A mix-up (a misunderstanding here). Precede us in little cars, go! Along the Hwy. one by one (any number). Out of state plates, leave them They don’t serve Our purposes here, They won’t pay our toll _______ Flat as rain Flat hiss of cloud, Flat hum of asphalt Flat ochre Side pastor Goldenrod, hay fever (a mid-season disease) Left by the Hwy I recall General Jackson Gunning a man down Similar to that field In daylight, hot Tennessee He took one in the ribs, SIDEWALKS & PAPER 32
It never left him. And there was conspiracy In that frontier Like melting the wax Together of two worlds, A re-spawn, new resolutions Lit snuffed and left to smolder Over the continental divide _______ A memorial perhaps, But what it means We’re light as helium And twice combustible as rock I want to say it’s from the Classics Period, Maybe the Bronze Age, but If you think its he (or she) to blame You may think of seeing the optometrist, New spectacles and a patch Of multi-vitamins for the trip Think a new going, new sight, thank The wayfarer, the vagrant Near-sighted (half-drunk And hitchhiking the lost continent.) Now think Mt. Rushmore In the fall of the year Kneel to the first father, Wager the cowboy, wager The pioneer, salute the freeing man Cover their ears, or
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See pg.12 of the brochure For more details On the wildlife This time of year. Now think of that balloon. _______ At night Stomach a bird, a flutter Of bird, a throat of bird Let the bird in, Let him stay. Make him your symbol, He’ll return the favor. ______ Pick flat crisp memorials (for a friend) People will admire The diligence of sewing Your initials in The under-collar tags Of a marble grave marker, Whatever that means For touring the ei9ht wonders Of the New World Whatever it means to live Above or outside, over-girthed and out-glittered. It’s our nature to stake our claim, Make things bigger & hard as mountains _______ The canyon so big You can’t see it, chipping SIDEWALKS & PAPER 34
Paint from the hot iron Guard rails, a border For a border, a tax On the levy, “hold back the water And you shall have your lights” (rations from the levee) Cool rain And perfect lawns Glass bottles and souvenir Foam on the avenues, (the Slow glaze of a billboard), a key chain, Fifty thousand miles of phone wire, Badges and heavy starched uniforms: Regalia for the seasonal Draining of the locks. _______ Hot mirage, hot Low lady (finite) Pulsing in the radiation Lady liberty, orphan girl (oh blistered girl) on the job Her city is eastward, Separation makes her nervous In her chest, crow wings Mutual feathers, a belated birthday gift From a step-brother Twice replaced “I am the lady of the little sung, The seraphim clown of wounded water. There are no feathers mother To speak of Sister moth wings, SIDEWALKS & PAPER 35
I am rusting. Darkened valley ironed Pitted lipstick fields Eye bags racing To the peninsula Of my chin, no place Like home, no promise Like bone but marrow. The ferries dock They come ashore, Punch tickets, and Grope me (I don’t mind, The view is ocean The rent is cheap. And the gift shop Never closes) Why would it?” _______ Disease is the topic, A history of Small Pox and the Plague, Three manholes is a homerun Down Pennsylvania Ave. Bradford Pears And Red Buds in half bloom (back home) Must be the season of the dog (a panting vibration of rubber tubing) Hum the steel-belted radials A sling of hot mist on the Potomac So thick Who couldn’t skip a silver dollar SIDEWALKS & PAPER 36
To the reeds on the other side, The banks of what must be From that length Guests of a different river. Not for lack of nostalgia We half tried, fluttering Our coins like feathers Into the silt, like slivers On a heap of massive fortunes We happened to sneak in On so rare an occasion In this life to see Clearly America for free‌
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