Poet to Anne Sexton

When the poet discovered Anne,
he had a razor blade
draped delicately over the blue
rivers running back to his heart
in steady
P ul se s.

Anne is not just words,
but perspicacious ideas
thoughts he thought were his, the details
sketched in
early morning dreams that
he believed were singular and unique.

He sits with her in the dark
just a glimmer of steel and those whispers
of déjà vu.
He thinks perhaps she is
his sister.

Cast away

he spoke to himself
with a soft slur like sand in the mouth.
his eyes rolled around in his head
like waves lapping the shore.

he tries to remember, but her face becomes the rings
around the hot island moon predicting the rains.
he pictures her lost on the horizon.
he punches the palm tree till his hands start to bleed.

for years alone, he knows only the coconut rum.
it stains his lips brown as his skin tans to leather.

he passes out
in the hot island sun. he snores
while dreaming of nothing.

her reflection

written in college~ sometimes things aren’t what they appear. Sometimes you find that people are more complicated than you could ever hope to realize.

her reflection

the glass cracks invisibly
and distorts a girl –
slinking down on dirty tiles,
panting out of breath
and buzzed.

her bones dig in the floor.
she watches the burning walls-
they whisper her secrets
with the heady intensity of
a grade-school gossiper.

she screams with all the
cells in her wasted frame
to go go go go go away.

she screams till she’s shaking and water
is squeezed from her eyes
and her fingernails have cut
holes in her hands.

Becoming Alexander Supertramp

From the lower 48,
(like me)
from a bustling city
of crime and hustle
and modern wants
it seems that Alaska
has an allure like
cold mercury, it
seeps into the blood
and changes you physically.
Mentally you’re a mess–
you think of nothing else
you want nothing more
than one more hit of
sky, mountain, water,
clean expanse of land
hard living that involves
back breaking work
a daily struggle to survive and
when you walk off, you go alone
one small pack, sturdy boots,
and only the Lights
for companionship. Then
when the night falls hard
and you realize what you’ve done
you will remember
that charm city, that
charmed life and find it gone.
Your mortal self crying, your
new self finding solace
only in the sky.

untitled (future sunny days)

future sunny days
will remember
now as the season of rain,
the never-ending crying of the sky,
the flooding of the streets,
the swallowing of beach, bank, body
now as the time of disbelief
the desperate want and need for things
we just can’t have
the feel of warm
the feel of orange melting into the
sultry velvet summer night
the feel of skin tingling tan
instead of white
now as the overwhelming overtaking green
lawns like jungles where kids would swing
if the rains would end
but the windows now are streaked
still dripping wet and slippery
so hoping to end the
waiting.

to you in Bulgaria

Thinking more about paths that I might have taken…. One was a writing trip to Bulgaria. I didn’t go~ for a variety of reasons. That’s the thing about paths not taken. There is always a complex variety of reasons for choosing one over the other (yet we still talk of destiny and fate, how does that fit in?). A million synapses that add up to say, let’s go this way instead….

[It’s like those “choose your own adventure books” although in those I always cheated and left my hand in place to quickly rescind any poor decision].

To you in Bulgaria

Write for me,
oh you in the land of roses
across the great ocean and in the sun.

Write for me,
oh you sedulous student of words,

Write for me,
who stands in high heels dug in
by a bricolage of complex inhibitions—

But wait,

maybe there is next year
in London! A revenant carrying roses,
I come back to you.

I see us then
under the great wheel,
drunk on the ale of white space and
cheering the accomplishments of
26 characters speaking in accents.

Ursula (in Fells Point)

In Fells,
her hair in short braids and
shaved sides
popular on boys in the 80s,
she stands
in the humidity that wraps
around her baggy shorts,
rolled socks, under a street lamp
that drenches her tie dye Dead shirt—

She is singing
“will it go round in circles”
guitars follow “will it fly high like
a bird up in the sky”
and the drums inside
remind me of the late hour.

She looks pleased on the cobblestones.
Her Robert Johnson voice
sings this valedictory song
to no one in particular.