Category Archives: travel

Sky cannot know Ground

Pressed against a glass-paneled view
Of a city of skyscrapers
And just beyond that a lake big enough
To stretch beyond my imagination
I am

Understanding death—
Outside steel tops of buildings meet my gaze
Seated from the floor, this top floor,
And I feel the sway of the winds
That make this city famous.

My grandfather, mid-west born,
Had been to this city before. Had
Wreaked havoc down on those streets—
Filling the fountain with soap suds
And pulling trolley’s off their tracks.

I think, when I look down 45 stories,
Of gravity
Of how little we can know of the ground
From this height. In the dark,
The big city lights burn like small lighters
Meekly requesting an encore.

North Platte

I wrote this in a motel room very late (or early in the morning) after a long day of driving across Nebraska (towards the end of a cross country road trip with 3 college friends). We had arrived in North Platte in the middle of a great thunderstorm, lightning striking everywhere and tornado warnings on the radio (sadly my friends would not let me chase them). The hallways of the motel resembled a scene in The Shining, and I think all the traveling had really started affecting my brain – especially since I had left MD weeks earlier knowing that I would never see my great aunt ever again (she died of cancer just a few days into the trip). So was born the following….

North Platte

My stomach knots
and this hotel room smells familiar
and my clothes for tomorrow
will be the same as a few days ago
and my big thrill at two in the morning
will be brushing my teeth and showering.

I have the comfort of not caring—
outside the wind stops
and the moon slowly dissolves into shadows
and a mountain lion slips across an asphalt road
staring at the headlights of an intrusive car.

My friends will travel out in the morning,
but I will have slipped away,
Finding a way to grow a flower
in a littered empty coffee cup,
Kicking desert dust up under flip flops
Running towards away,
away to oblivion,
Taillights dimming around a curve
and my friends forgetting to wave goodbye.

Somehow in the dark
I can see my past clearly like my great aunt’s eyes
that stare from the coming sunbeams
and the white clouds and the dark clouds that
flash streaks of splitting lightning
and I grow older and older.

Just yesterday I was a fire ant
marching beside our tent
by the side of some Colorado river and cliffs
in some Colorado valley
where an old fashioned cowboy’s voice sang modern country
to a fading full moon
and ranch workers drunk around a bonfire
who went to sleep sometime.

My friends sleep—they breathe in and out
like the stale hotel room is alive.
But me, I am spitting up blood until dawn
till there’s no more left and I can look forward
to being the skyscrapers of bright city skylines
and the sharp cliffs of national parks.
Tomorrow you’ll hear my relief
exhale across the plains.

Remembering Spring Break 2002

South of the Border coffee
during the bleary night time morning, we
lost a bumper along 95
and sped our way like fast and furious
rebel riders. We were,
with walkie talkies, heading
to spring break.

Salty breezes
and some fat keyboardist with
fuzzy beard peppered gray
singing political satire and no one cared.
Dane, you, and I were
sitting sipping ritas in sloppy golden
honey sunshine famous in Key West.

Cool night, we
drank grain alcohol from odd angles
for prized smiles of being cool amongst
all our shiny beaded friends.
Your naked moments won us
a free frozen drink koozie
and jet ski ride we never took.

Long hours after the karaoke,
you and Sush found a credit card and brought home cold waffles at 5 am.
I sat in the trailer writing frantically, high on caffeine pills and palm tree fingers:

the blurry street lines, the charcoal miles, the hot rum, the mac and cheese, the seafood buffet, the southern girls, the scooter scars, the trailer smell, the Chicago gospel, the Hemingway cats, the frantic hunger, the ephemeral buzz….

Your car gasped for air when the week ended but there was none;
we were overheated, belly-up fish in Miami rush hour.

Sunburn behind and
and dark interstate miles ahead,
we sat on the dented hood.
Our sweaty hungry friends
waving at prudish traffic
a “honk if you’re horny” sign,
reminiscing and waiting to move on.

(r.i.p. Sekula 2003)

Skyline Relief in a Passing Train

Skyline Relief in a Passing Train

I see the New York City skyline
Drenched in early morning orange,
Etched like a relief
In the side of a passing train,
Roaring beside my own.

The light washes over buildings and smoke stacks
And that in-between land of tall weeds from city
to reflection in train.

We just left and already it seems so far, already
My memory of a fat hazy moon
On 12th west side, is a dream.
Is this possible?
The full moon brings possibilities – he seemed
(In my dreamy stroll)
To smile down on me between those buildings
With a blessing.

E. B. White speaks of New York City so compellingly—
I’m willing, when I read it,
To run for the solitude and ferment
He describes
And now and now, opportunities
And possibilities,
Bursting at the seams, yet tempered with
The heavy
Weighty sadness of leaving
Home.

Which ancestors will aid in my decision?
Is this my will or
Is it my great aunt Alice who swore she was too afraid to try?
Or my great grandmother Alice who was (from her poems)
a wife and mother first?

Or my father, who stayed in Baltimore? Although in this instance,
I need only ask, “Daddy, what should I do?”

Crossing in click-clack, the trains pass each other by,
The crossroads clearly defined.

Rio

The more I sit here (trying to “work”), the more I day-dream back to those beautiful beaches in Ipanema…. A taste for you:

Rio

We left the airport to stay another night. Pedro made the tear and
it began.

It began under my tongue and bitter.
It began with foaming waves and coconut water,
all in moving melted samba.

For unknown hours we tasted the night unfold:

Wild with eyes wide, seeing the night as cats do,
we scratched the underbelly of the city, that dog—
the main streets littered with impudent debauchery, the back streets
littered with impudent poor. We graffiti artists,
my foreign eyes like a Pollack on the skyline.

For unknown hours we were the universe and
Rio was the star matter, the dust, the space, the
alpha and omega. Then, oh,

A breeze, a walk, a bed,

and sandy feet lying hot with Pedro.
My body buzzed; my eyes darting around the lights.
Outside the moon howled low and full around the Cristo.
Inside the breathing sounded like an animal alive,
so steady it stalked, up and down.

In minutes, we were bathed in the smallest
sliver of light forcing through the blinds.
We fed our grumbling bodies with ham and cheese and coffee.

Outside the streets burst busy with the day—
the buses snorted; the waves slithered.