Steven Wilbur

Citizen's Arrest

2009-09-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

His soles played the broken glass settling in her

screamless back alley like wind-chimes,

leg halfway over the first fence

before my feet could part their lips.

I’ve only ever caught three thieves.

The first was an Italian gypsy,

but the second wears all my same clothes;

so when I saw this one, I knew People only run like ghosts

to finish what they shouldn’t have time to do,

I followed stallion, galloping, forty yards, thirty yards,

leaving a wake of scattered trash cans, shadows, and bad advice.

By this time, the dogs had robed into fire alarm chorus.

I wondered if anyone had been surprised enough to call the police.

He didn’t look like he was slowing down, and I was gasping,

legs drunk on adrenaline, blurring into their own confession of love, until,

he turned at the trail through the park you can beat taking 15th,

And I got him.

As he pushed against my jail bars, I told him I might let go

if he emptied his jacket’s elephant skin first.

From his pocket he pulled a vagina,

barked “she gave it to me, OK?”

I yelled “Where’s the rest of her?”

His eyes crumbling beach fires, sirens singing in the distance,

shards of innocence biting his tongue, he coughed

“Listen, that’s it, she promised.”

the mountain

2009-09-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

I wonder at the busyness of man.
We crawl like fire ants beneath the god of flame,
handing our blood to the masses like it was the very mist
off our punctuated words. The deflated tunnels within drape
themselves over our bones as if for a nap,
but they stay, and I forget.

Their slumber settles into a glaze over our eyes,
and before long, appear to be hammocks.

I am slow to wake. For years have not looked twice
at the pillow for my weary back, whose ghost is given up,
the slung up boa constrictor, these rolled fishing nets,
this comfort I take in lack.

A doctor evaluates his patient not unlike a mechanic.
If I need a new engine, will I save money going to a mechanic?
Would he order me a new caffeine pill? Perhaps a day planner?
or would he sell me for parts?

The west was won on the backs of respect.
Must we all deathbed altar to the god of progress
after an oxen’s life, siphoning our oil,
the world on our shoulders?
How to wield this extra pair of legs?

lake washington

2009-09-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

Lately, lust is a drought in my skin.

The way the ground buckles in the dry
forms the kind of Sahara cracks that

wedding rings roll down to pawnshop shelves.

In summer, the heat is a closet monster that keeps me outside.
My neck hits adolescence, growing wiser than his scarves by the day,
living out of the bag that’s been packed and in the trunk since Winter
looked like he was moving in with mom, and I am marooned by my desire.

If there’s one thing I learned in school,

it’s summer is the season for forgetting.

Swimming, I forgot desks,

traveling, I forgot home,
and this vacation still makes me forget my history,
especially on the beach, where a sturdy handrail and plaque
would almost make a good zoo.
My neck spends all his money on gas to get here,
because here, I want to do and not remember,
and it is summer.

This time of year, in the Sahara, herds live leaving.
I imagine I might have a rhinoceros on each arm, and a pack

of giraffes on my back. The gazelles’ migration impresses wings

into my legs: all of them swirling,
beating out their basest angst for survival,

for fear of the lions resting in the shade of my mouth,

always a sentence away

from preying on the weak.

How can my neck be so naïve,

that girls in summer have faces,
that my voice box is slave to his bedridden angst,
that I speak with the tongues of lions?

How did I forget my face,

become so hopelessly reckless,
when beneath the ground,

I am an empty wallet.
I am backpack of dirty clothes.

23/289

2009-07-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

It's been one week since the storm
near New Zealand pounded its fists in the Pacific,
and here, on a Washington coast, the ocean finds
final resolution from the bloodrush.

My eyes tell me I am currently the only one
on this beach to congratulate the ocean.
This is not true, for here, the ocean and I lay
down our guns for an audience of One.

What is it about skin that makes us forget
our first loves?

Jesus, the sand must be your punctuation.
I hear your words in the echo.
So, here, like a sea of turbulence, I crash.
Here, I give you my storms, as my body pulls
back to the landless coasts it still calls home.

22/289

2009-06-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

To the right of my bathroom mirror,
quiet as a painting, a moth.

Moths are misunderstood.

To the left of my bathroom mirror,
raised as a gavel, a switch.

Moths are martyrs for light.

A well-nested reflex in my arm,
a thought about clothes, a towel.

To the right of a moth,
wide as morning, a window.

Under a failed parachute, a moth
flaps one wing, pushes with half legs.

In the eyes my bathroom mirror,
guilty as truth, a thief.

He won’t last the day.

God, please forgive
me of my waste.

21/289

2009-06-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

In a restaurant, the word, corner, is the waiter's
only protection against cacophony.

Without it, the dotted lines flowing from his
and hers orders intersect in explosion of beer

and what's left of plants and animals whose whole
existence has centered around people mouths.

Even still a young man, I have done a lot of waiting.
I have rounded many corners walking too fast

to hear any voice of reason protecting the food,
already paid for, in their hands.

The restaurant has been too busy to service any question
or regret with the detail my smile claims. But I try. Really.

I yell corner! on hopes they'll turn and run, to keep from breaking
things glue can't fix, to keep from wasting the purpose of their hands

on a cheap mixer of beer, confusion, and sometimes awkward glances,
like the one time a table of ten watched me total their entrees and
two desserts

like it was my job. I told them I was new. And sorry. My manager
comped the whole thing, but I'd never earn it back.

The trust of a co-worker is irreparable. As time goes on,
I can't help but notice more and more changing shifts.

In training, they don't tell you about gates, or how eyelids
can be weaved into chain link by careless steps.

Broken plates on the floor look like continents.
So I've started kneeling on the floor, I'm trying.

I'm charting a route to sail away from self-hate,
away from this man who knows failure like a paycheck.

I'm thinking if I look busy, I can stay down here. Maybe
someone will trip over me, see the dotted lines

where porcelain dust has brushed off with my finger,
and stay, to help clean this mess I've circled as many times

as a restaurant parking lot.

20/289

2009-06-28T00:21:00.000-07:00

This everyday thing is difficult. If it's worth anything, I've been working on past rough drafts and freewrites, but that's not much for the everyday. Here's a new one from today!

Harmony, a love poem

Dear harmony,

I am looking at you,

right now. Don't worry.

When you've finished reading, cloud watch a minute,
let your walls flatten into fields, forget the color blue,
and you will see me, too. I have combed my arm hair
out into wings with wishing and set my feet onto airplanes
like the stepstools they are to vacation,
in space.

Don't worry, on Sunday, I was the dissonant one.
My last words to you would be full of flowers.
If this letter is the last time you hold me,
imagine my hands around yours in the snow,

It is the only thing I could not have done, and

cannot do until my return.

The first reason I have left earth

is to test the spacial limits of eye contact.
Record the number of shooting stars between now
and when you see me next. They are
prayers mirrored on earth's eyelid.

The second is to try out the gills I've grown
chasing what everyone says is nothing.
Pray they're working. Thirdly,
the last I can think of-ly,
to see how much missing it takes to pull a body
closer than orbit. Sometimes, I admit, you look like

a manila envelope. In grade school, the word manila
by itself, was enough to make me think of retirement
homes - not the inside souls, but the place where
certainty's only friends are sterilization and death;
it's the skin color we know by comparison doesn't exist or
only has hands for privilege. To the eyes,

you look like all I know,
which is why I even mentioned retirement,
but I forget that envelopes are the perfect
mistakable-for-nothing-at-all width to hold heaven poems.
I have gone in search of these. Of the beauty

I can't see with well fed eyes.
Of remembrance.

Proper perspective.
I think the planets have always had it right,
keeping their admirers at enough distance to wear want
like an appointment. Where I'm going, there's nothing

to breathe but homesickness. Pray
my lungs grow heavy enough
to drop me back to earth before my body loses hope.

In a Glossary of Star-Strucking, orbit is a state of despair.
I guess the planets had it wrong.
They will never know the crash of being loved.
They will never know the sound of themselves
played back through a dusty speaker
pushed and pulled
by forces he did not set in motion.

19/289

2009-06-22T22:33:00.001-07:00

Between the three cups of coffee,

brie that looked like the wedge

star of The Missing Piece,

grown up grape juice birthed on a ring

of wooden benches in South France,

a yeast flower sponge to sop it up,

and an entire tomato probably-fake cheese

well greased wheel from Pizza Hut,

my intestines have a lot to talk about.

The room is less than pleasant.

They have not opened up like this in a long time.

I'm flattening into a damp kleenex,

tears dropping atop it from two clouds.

One, a sucker for conversation.

The other, a realist.

18/289

2009-06-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

that man.

that man
sitting over there
thinks he can get away
get away with that BIG BEARD.
what will his employer say!
there's a room i don't
want to fly-on-the-wall!
heh, get it out of yer system
now buddy cause its never
gonna last! beards don't say
i'm efficient
i'm productive
i'm goal-oriented
i'm proactive
i'm prodonut well i guess they might say that hah!
i'm going to push this company
i care about my image

not beards that big sure don't!
to think you might have
looked in the mirror this morning!
disaster!
move to the woods silly moss beard!

heh, to think! this is 2009!

17/289 reduces to 1/17

2009-06-18T11:50:00.000-07:00

Today a cloud candelebra knocks at my window.

I see past their blanket disguise

and draw the shades,

followed by a second more permanently in my head set

of shades, but the candle air ghost fingers pull them

like a small hungry dog.

Like a monster stretching passionate

from a blacked out open door on the

filmy pages of a movie I regret seeing, if only for how I am

burning morning cloud cover onto the same reel,

they tug relentless at my eyelash heels.

This is painful. The red marks, definitely forming.

People will surely ask what kind of abuse I've received.

What kind of live-ins are devilish enough,

have small enough hands?

They will ask. You can't let the kids mistake eyelashes

for rope swings They will say. Did your fingers

go terribly amiss while shaving?

They will shudder. To keep hyberbole out of the room,

I will have to interject. No, I will say,

the glowy clouds poked pores in my window,

said I needed to breathe,

tried to tell me I can fly today, tried

to see what a trapped universe looks like, tried

to make me talk about all the life swirling in even

one retina, tried to make me look at them

like a crown or expensive painting,

Succeeded

dragging me from the room where I dream. The room

full of paintbrushes, swingsets, and women with better names

than my hands have given them.

16/289

2009-06-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

The wake of eternity
will push a love song
across shores who prior
did not know how to
have a name.

they will be called
Empty Room, the air
thinning with each
saltwater mouthful,

as the current etches them
like a trailside tree with
the name of Jesus.

15/289

2009-06-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

I saw
a bear.

It was brown, and very large.

My friend tried to go find it for a minute, but his wife
and I stopped him with our words,
because bears,
especially big brown bears,
can kill you.

Brown bear, will you give me a hug?
Maybe we can have tea
at my house
tomorrow
at noon.
I will give
you a
fresh
fish,
and
per
ha
ps
a
haircut.

14/289

2009-06-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

Xerxes,

You would have clothed yourself with your sons
to slow enemy arrows, had the measure of your slaves
not mirrored the desert seas in your heart.
You might have looked upon each soldier,
blacksmith, cook, and prostitute like a coffin
volume enough for a sand dune, but
the thousands slain before you, in their escape,
rebelled against the ground, slit open, and
spilled out the crowning glory of your empire.
This refuse of their souls,
they did have souls,
declare you masochist.

You Icarus.
You bleeding hand.

Standing upon a mountain of dead,
did the stench remind you of gold?
Did it remind you of how your arms
splintered beneath the wealth of nations?

When you cracked like a sarcophagus,
the world and the world over
rushed to fatten their pockets.

I hope their feet kiss the dead farewell
soaring on wings of something of truth,
I hope they fall before the desert finds its way out.

13/289

2009-06-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ode to the Butterfly

Astronaut,

when you lay weightless in my hand,
wind brushes your presence hush
under my skin and draws goosebumps;
sound falls awestruck out my ears like a starcatcher out to sea.

Among the creatures of leg and leaf,
who cast our flying dreams into the air
as heavy questions for clouds, your
body decides its ship.
And you go.

Up there, way up there,
you look like stars. Your burn roar
lays captive inside the voice boxes of worlds between us,
but as you return, the atmosphere fire of reconciling
paints itself upon your fragile wings

And in the smokesignals a departed sailor
discerns your journey. For all the orbits
written into your feet, when I pull his message
from its salty green bottle, it sounds
like flowers whispering.

12/279

2009-06-07T00:15:00.000-07:00

If there is anything our history books have shown us,

it is the gap between should and is.

That there is something out that door waiting

at the curb who snuck a backdoor, asking

us to smash our mirrors into cash and coin,

rebel against our bodies,

do soul violence.

We poets stack envelopes into planks,

we're stringing them up and we're making a bridge,

from is.

Throwing paper airplanes at should.

Telling should to come closer.

I tell should, should, my arm doesn't

know how to work a pen like that.

teach me

or come closer.

but should is a distant relative of isn't,

who is 3 for 4 on doesn't,

and should doesn't.

my finger gymnasts have stretched,

felt the opposite cliff's edge breathing heavy.

I have even rested my palm upon it

like a white candle in a crowded room.
But from here, the ledge appears a court report
of slap craters, or the graves gymnasts thought into being
when their muscles were brought to knees.
Most of my poems look like that row of marks, and
How it feels to daredevil across God, stuffing an alarm clock
into my parachute bag.

I have woken up every day since birth,
with five exceptions on a short list called coma.
Every one of them my brain hissed into a liferaft
inhaling all talking room
yelling commands like a gagged
blind closet-locked officer
to dormant soldiers beyond enemy walls,
or camping across a canyon.
That circus of nervous tissue looked
hopeless on every absent face,
seeing fish wire never laced
to pull them back into the room.
No scream can pull fingers
from a trigger's bed.
All the animals and carnies remembered something
about history that first morning, perhaps it was
the fact about hands.

Perhaps they remembered their first fall,
and the concrete hard as a math book,
or maybe how Rome was truly
conquered, and many men have chased
storybooks at the bottoms of graves.
The ringleader may have imagined
their headstones to read
men should instead love
their families,
and,
one should be thankful
for the ground under
one's feet.

but when he removed his dream sized spectacles
he felt two lines singed into the folds of the tent,

bridges are eroded by history's torrent, and
gods is a four letter word.

11/279

2009-06-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

"Welcome to Washington!" I said to my friends.
The city rumbled beneath us.
"I am Seattle, how dare you call me Washington!

I am nothing like the east! or even Tacoma!"
"Oh," I replied, "welcome to Seattle, a quite

different place from the rest of Washington."

"This is my dog." I said to the woman.
She, the dog, lept, pushed her paws into my chest
like index fingers and barked,
"I am a golden retriever, canis familiaris,

how dare you rope me in with the likes of wolves!"
"Oh," I replied, "this is my canis familiaris, an altogether

friendlier and different creature than a wolf."

"That cat across the street guards its owners house like a soldier."
The cat skipped like a stone across the pavement to my feet and hissed,
"I am a felis cattus. Guard I may, but I am no savage. Watch your language."
"Oh," I replied, "I quite like your demeanor." and turned to my friend,

"excuse me, this felis cattus is dutiful, but is not like a tiger or lion

or any other more savage cat."

Introducing a student to a new teacher,

providing some scene for the interaction,
"Max is a bright student. He likes music."
Max quickly retorted, "I like punk rock,

and classical from the 18th century,
and some dance music."
"Oh," I replied, "what I mean is, Max likes listening

to punk rock music, and only some classical,

and also some dance,

but is less inclined to listen to other kinds of music."

The shovel in my hand twisted back,

staring contested my doubt, and professed,

"You know, I am also a fantastic paperweight, and if

swung hard enough, you may even wield me as a formidable axe."

"Oh," I replied, "shovel these had not surfaced

in my mind, for you are such a fine shovel,

but I will respect your request. Forgive me,

shovel-fantastic-paperweight-but-also-formidable-axe,

when swung hard enough."

At the end of the day, I asked my friend

how he was feeling. Assuming he was tired,

I let daggers be daggers as he told me

there wasn't any way I'd understand.

So canis familiaris, felis cattus,

Max likes punk rock music only

some classical but also some dance, shovel

fantastic paperweight but also

potentially formidable axe,

and friend too different to comprehend

existed within ourselves,

oil rigs in the Atlantic,

in a city quite different from

its roots,

our mouths too full of words

to see into any one of our souls.

10/279

2009-06-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

there limps a shorn mane

between my upper lip

and nose,

a fu manchu

with a perm.

but the truth is

I cannot see it,

for lions have yet

to let their glory

be worn as a

sleeved heart.

9/279 sick day, and decidedly behind

2009-06-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

When the rooster crowed this morning,

he had a rooster in his throat.

This sick rooster felt a suffocating

humidity around his neck.

The sun lifted its baton and made that tense

fake-smiled face orchestras know to say, like we practiced.

The rooster fumbled with me just minutes

to downbeat, I didn't feel right in his hands.

I couldn't open my eyes to see his anxious fingers

much less the batons torpedoing through the blinds.

He had pulled me from the case an hour before,

alarmed at how frog I looked.

An hour of confused persuasion is hardly enough

to change me back into a bird.

Panicked, the rooster recalled a fairy tale he'd heard,

or been in once, and kissed me, but his beak tore

a day-sized hole in my ribbit so I couldn't even explain

what to tell the conductor. His ruffled feathers let any good

excuse spill out onto the floor, but after the sun had glared

a few minutes, he smiled warm and said,

take the day off,

today will go on without you, and we will try again tomorrow.

8/279 if we would speak.

2009-06-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

At the yard’s edge,
abuse’s foundry heats
a house the size of an instant,
too tedious for maps,
too elusive to trap with tongue and teeth.
Smoke of virus rises
slow slow slow rise slips
betwixt passerby nostril pores,
grows whisper voice box,
feeds any at ease nerves.
A microscope can split the soot
wolf from sheep;
the brain is too nervous
to say anything.
And so, hands take up their treason.

7/279

2009-05-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

Listening comes in a paper bird.

He floats down like manna to nest
in weary hands, facing their Weaver
agape, their question mark
confessions rising like smoke.

Gnawing the bit, my young full
of friction fingers look at him
like coal. Like gift wrapped vinegar
upon the floor of a thirsty mouth.

Sometimes I think in landfills,
packrat disdain for each bird
too delicate to bear my burdens,
and from a hollowed trailer,

shake my fist at their silence.
But a cupped palm incarnates
the cloud overhead and slow
unison moves toward the coast.
when I stop to look,

thousands, dressed in scraps,
as though with purple royalty
robe, push upward
into an able sky.

Only for exhale do I manage
thank you, and pray you be miles
west by the time I set fire,
messengers
from a purer pasture.

6/279 playground

2009-05-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

"we're going to chain you up."

the most adorable
hill of five years I
know today wafts
her face of sunflowers
my way. and yet
even with all the warmth
in her teeth, she speaks
methods of my undoing.
I laugh, but wish she
would feed these words the
beauty of her namesake.

5/279 vivace

2009-05-27T16:42:00.001-07:00

Caffe nico
machiatto with a mask on.
Cinnamon snowflakes
sift espresso song
My candid pinky,
quarter size cup wink
Three sixty canyon
close to zero coffee drink
Orange peel on my plate
Can’t quite decipher
Cut from the rind
like a twenty to lifer
Coffee fantastic
fruit takes the fruit cake
Fallin’ from twiggy hands
Hot on my mind state
Stomach swap eyes
states his preference
orange in the tube
question: what’s intelligent?
gimme that orange
free of preservatives
wanna eat it right now
tell you what its purpose is

4/279

2009-05-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

I remember when the dinosaurs appeared,

watched their bones scuttle into the leather and muscle.
Oh, how the rocks danced at their steps!

The brontosaurus tongue peeked out
to coddle saunas trapped in the air.

A mosquito inquired his rivers beneath into
volcanoes spouting out the tongue's eyes.

I remember how tyrannosaur's teeth flared
into knives at their first flirt with blood,

how to this day tyrants trace their lineage
to a survival worship mouth of cutlery,

even after the waves had pounced her into glass.

3/279

2009-05-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

This bull did not choose
the rope in my hand,
this road to record its journey.

Also not chosen,
the noose woven of murdered hair and
desecrated bed cloth. This adornment.

This herd did not choose
its smoke grave. Yet here,
gathered they taste the blade.

We rode to this tent on their backs,
keeping our heads above the flood's still hands.
It is in the waiting that we drown.

Hush and murmur scuttle across the hive.
Words of some devout caught a glimpse
through the curtains who mark holiness.

The high priest on Isaac's borrowed bed,
blood exposed and boiling on his skin,
His last breaths fanning the flames.

I strain my ears to see closer, blinded by
growing cacophony of entitlement, leaving,
future plans of pilgrims obstinate for atonement.

2/279 old house.

2009-05-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

(This poem was inspired by an untitled poem out of Pablo Neruda's book, The Sea and the Bells.)

Let it be said that these walls collapsed from fatigue,
that the crossbeams shook violently before unhinging.

This is not a suicide note.

Let the shingles burst
for all the sun in their veins
and the floorboards obituary report only two words:
One: Dancing. The other: starshine.
Let the ceiling be stitched of helicopters, and when
the walls cave in let them carry me away.
Let the district appraisal read Not Fit For Renovation. Let
them bulldoze a bonfire. Let the homeless gather to warm
their hands, and next to them, children clasping marshmallow tipped
sticks and next to them a GIANT graham cracker.
Let it be a graham cracker billboard
and let it crash like a window on the road
when no one is there. Let the police and ambulances come
and when the Seahawks game ends let the people leave their cars
to hurdle the barricade and hold the wreckage
like pieces of the Berlin Wall. Let them take it to the children
and see truly maybe for the first time people who don't
have an address and carry them
from the police's now obligated eyes.
This is a suicide note.

Not like a blindfold
like I have lived on this street for 23 years,
I have seen the bulldozers,
followed their tracks
to a church of black ghosts gathered to remember a shelter
who left prom in a hummer and melted it on an Iraqi mine field.
They do not speak fence.
They do not consider the market value.
This note says
I've been thinking about how the Taj Mahal is a tomb, how
you can tell cities apart by their skylines;
instead of having this taken from me I'd rather
give it away.
Rent costs us our days, and talk is cheap, but maybe
we'd have more space to breathe if we took the doors off,
and yeah, this could just be hot air, and these are just dreams,
but dreamings what I do when my eyes fall silent,
when I can't see my boundaries,
the fortress,
and in these dreams I shelf the newspaper, imagine
concrete as teachable liquid,
tell moat water to freeze,
pull constellations into chandeliers, but
even with the lights on, I hope that when I return,
I return to myself
as if to an old house.

1/279: It Begins!

2009-05-24T18:08:00.001-07:00

I've decided to continue this poem-a-day business to the best of my ability and write every day for the next 17 squared days! Here's the first. I actually should have posted it yesterday. Off to a rough start...

b&n

1.
Hallway apology guards the mens room.
She pulls backward as the sterile door closes,
wheelbarrow of child in her grasp.
From under a dust tornado chaos
a bowl of crescent moon teeth slips,

I'm sorry, it says Baby Changing Station.

onto the floor
as if to say

my husband,
such a table
he never used.

2.
Storytime.
That boy
has a furry pink leash around his tummy,
makes swimming motions across the hardwood floor,
a mop for impatient puddles
leaking like oil from his mother's good intentions.

3.
Five women each carry 20 oz of latte.
I forget the Canada branded question and remark,
that's a latte of steamed milk.

I recall,
only humans
drink milk after infancy,
and watch her elbow bend into a shelf
of photographs from a time when
everything she needed
was provided by her mother.

19/30 fibonacci series on the topography of lines

2009-04-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

Euclid
named
our boundaries
with out remorse.
death wasn't a good name.

Newton
'invented'
measurement for
our decline rate
when we sort into tables.

Copernicus
coat-tailed,
displaced us
from the center.
reformer of even the church.

Jesus
emptied
his veins.
streams of God
eroding the babels I build.

18/30 Waking Up In Springtime: An Introduction

2009-04-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Set an alarm.
You should have already been doing this.

Before you press the gumball dream crank of your snooze button,
Make yourself try a few things.

Get out of bed.
If this is too difficult at first, start talking to yourself about last night. Or
better, find faces in the ceiling bumps and tell them
about last night. You may find motivation to take up
today’s second chance in the stories reflected back at you.

Pretend you are swimming freestyle.
Don’t mind your legs looking like scissors for the moment.
You are cutting afresh into the waking life.
This will get your heart going, which you’ll need
if today is going to be anything good.

Take a shower.
Of course, this requires you to first get out of bed, which could be trouble,
but you might want a clean slate to see today’s sweat for what it is,
or to pen remember a cute phone number. <3

Blink. Quickly!
Have P Funk programmed to downbeat with your alarm.
Move coffeemaker next to bed.
Sharpie YOU ARE LATE on your ceiling.
Replace beside lamp with a strobe light.
Let your pet spider out in your room.
Or just,
look outside.

At this point, extra sleep only rots holes
in otherwise waterproof days. Outside your door,
morning bird voices and people and flowers have all
hung up their coats in closets not to be opened until the sky
shawls itself again. This blue green yellow blue is a gentle hand
to sit inside, a gesture signing us hope with the passing of seasons.

17/30 horses.

2009-04-17T16:22:00.001-07:00

Horses are monuments to a people
who used to live off the land.

Before we roped hundreds at a time
under the hoods of our cars.

I rode here on a horse walking
the tightrope of my ancestors.

Some would say God made horses to
show us paths from doubt, others to bring us home.

This is only big as a wagon with roads to learn.
Have you heard them run?

Their gallops sound like four carpenters hitting
four well-placed nails in unison

Each step to mount browning pictures of old glory
for us to remember. When whole herds migrate, it sounds like revolution.

So we keep them between fences mainly.
Places where we can sit on top of them.

When a saddle is cut, does a tree fall in the rainforest?
Does anyone hear it? Does it sound like rodeo yells?

Horse, I stable you under the hood of elegance,
a vehicle we are still learning to see.

16/30 a psuedo-fibonacci poem to the red-haired gardener who slept here last night

2009-04-17T13:41:00.001-07:00

walking back from my 8am

I wondered where you had planted the bombs.

we both knew it wouldn't last the day.
or maybe that was just me.

last night's movie reminded me of
the way we all have headstones
and how clocks look like fuses.

in between the two thoughts
my mouth went flytrap i grew
pirate leaves sparks flying up my neck
morning kissed your delicate starving face. i'm sorry
while you were sleeping i hid the bomb in my throat.

15/30 in the kitchen

2009-04-17T13:40:00.001-07:00

I scooped up the snake and worm babies with my basket,
Took them to a safe place.
Look I see another one!
Let’s scoop it up before Maxxon eats it.
Maxxon, your religion can’t spread here.
These are our babies.
Stop eating all the babies

Stop eating all our babies

Stop eating all our babies.

14/30 europe jumps first.

2009-04-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

Summer lies like a deflated hot air balloon over the grey stairs to Europe’s apartment door. Every Saturday he reaches up with a clever idea and rings the doorbell. Europe sets Nietzsche down next to the adolescent wine, struts to the fish eye in her door and looks through annoyed to see Summer’s white sailor’s cap and rumpled yellow tie.

I do not want you anymore, she mutters to her faded red door.

Summer cannot distinguish whispers through all the traveling he’s done to arrive here. He chooses to hear that she just needs to tidy up a few things. He remembers in these minutes all the flowers and airplanes he’s given her. He remembers the way her hair shined like brunette certainty when she let it down and how she would lay stately on the beach in a shade of purple he had never seen.

She returns to the kitchen, slits her wrist over a sparkling crystal glass and sighs,

If I let you in, I let in everything I hate about the world.

After some months, he turns the handle to find the door is unlocked. He pulls himself in slow, lies with her limp body on the blue tile floor for a moment, then raises a glass filled up half way on the kitchen counter to his lips. The mouths between cameras and sunglasses in his basket smile widely, asserting with shaky fingers that they have found the truth. He congratulates them from a voice deep as time, recommending through his teeth that they secure accommodations for next year.

13/30 late. (late is the title of the poem, though I understand I'm posting it a day late)

2009-04-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

You sit there with that someone
and it's so late you start asking stupid questions
you don't even care to know the answer to like the Guinness
Book of World Records rolling off your tongue wearing
a cover that leans in quiet, whispers "I just want you to stay."
in italics like white noise conversation,
inside of a seashell washed ashore by first kisses ocean,
and you say with your eyes,

I heard this is exactly how it should sound.

So boring. We're stubborn as schoolchildren tempting the wallclocks
in our gaze for the bell
when we'll run out so reckless
that our backpacks of still-trying-to-forget
are slung off on the playground
and our lips grow into hands scraping
the bottoms of our pockets for
offerings to the ice cream truck.

We'll read a line or three
from the other's printing press,
journalist curious.
My fingers dance on typewriter keys daily,
I'll unlearn the moves they've taught pages so every word
rides back up to the source before we humans knew how
to write this stuff down.
Sometimes our ears don't read more than shuffling pages,
but for the moment ,
it's everything we've been wanting to hear.

But before lips fingers trace
printed playground geography,
we have to pull them out of
our seashell lungs.
So I'm sorry if my questions
sound stupid. It's just that
I want you to stay.

12/30 john speaks. happy easter!

2009-04-12T00:27:00.002-07:00

The only thing between Mary’s tears writing
“gone” on her face and his tomb
were the craters we’d make in the dust chasing him.
I admit, neither of us knew the gravity of that morning,
but I know when you’ve heard the eternity in a man’s chest,
seen him order father-son to an open mouthed tempest,
heard him call you friend, seen him raise a man from the dead,
then watched him wrapped up and planted in a garden,
if you hear he’s not where he said he’d be, you run.

Peter kept three paces behind me, not for ability so much.
I heard once, every denial is a step back, like stepping out of people
you were, leaving their ghosts like buffers in the space between.
and I don’t want to get touchy subject but it’s never
the one running faster who has something to hide.

The truth about someone can be so much harder
when you love them. And maybe that’s why I stopped
short. Maybe, it’s why Peter stepped down first.
feeling the pull weight of conditions in his commitment.
Maybe I should have felt mine.
Jesus called himself a stream of living water.
Maybe I envied Peter's dry throat. Maybe I was scared
to see Him still lying there.
I’ve wondered if decaying corpses and open graves break
rivers of poison in our noses because our bodies aren’t
ready to be there yet. But this morning, there was no odor.
Only a pile of linens, their emptiness denying death’s hold
on an Only who didn’t deserve it. A pile of linens who played
the holes in His hands like trumpets making thunder so earth
shattering we felt it rolling stones in our chests.
He’d always said he was spinning himself a cocoon,
and when the silk fell away a new temple would spread wings.
More real than a lightning strike, gentle as a dove,
He tabernacled the room, saying “Peace be with you.”
Like we’re all slow runners and
those three days were three paces toward us.
Stepping through the ghosts of our past.
See. Hear. Forgiven.

We locked ourselves in contemplation for fear of the Jews.
But inside that house, a man called God spoke
“Peace be with you,” to ten men,
breathed His spirit into us,
like a wax seal of ownership,
like fire falling in raindrops.

We left a narrow path hotter than the blood of stars,
every footprint a crater of white clouds declaring,
“Peace be with you, Jesus is Risen. “

11/30 beet.

2009-04-12T00:27:00.001-07:00

Beet.
My favorite purple vegetable.
When I set you on a measured table.
You are taller than my feet.
Beet.
You could be a spike on a porcupine
Which I’ve never had in skin that’s mine
Pointier than Cream of Wheat.
Beet.

10/30 sleep child.

2009-04-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

And when you finally slip into the warm delicate dark,
do not wait to throw applesauce fireworks on the walls.
Paint orchards of wallflowers, pick them gently.
Tell them they have branches to hold.
Let your elbows straighten out.
That mean boy on the playground is not allowed
here. He covets the wonder of frail hands.

Hold rhinoceros feet, tell him he can trust.
Behind his tusks he is learning how to read.
Plan a play date with tiger cub.
Her mother pours warm milk,
dips her stripes in to make it chocolate.
Join your friends dancing on a moon cloud.
Don't let the adults in the hall tell you
the moon is walled in by pervasive nothing.
Watch M birds you drew lift off the page,
flap their arches slow and huge majestic as they
fly up to your cloud nest to feather brush your face lightly.
You are inside a pink velvet soft sun, hugging you, drying your eyes,
restoring to your face the warmth
it needs to glow.

9/30 recede.

2009-04-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

Recede.

The settled sand storms
you tip-toe will rise again.
Once they have dried the fluid and moving part of you,
saved only the salt, they will rise up again, for they do not settle,
have not forfeited their sting.
Sleeping dragons side by side look like horizon,
one you dance upon in pursuit of new warmth.
But your legs are boomerangs, steps self-addressed,
they come back swinging with the same inferno teeth
that past perforated your heart.
Dragons are all in our heads, you don’t get to watch them die
in this lifetime, so recede back west.
Recede. Into the Pacific.
Pacific sounds like specifics, and before you crawl
confident over beaches you need to figure some of those out
and see not all of them are out at sea. Some are landlocked,
only found when we throw enough self into the shoreline
to come out rivers learning topography after kindled dragons
return to sleep, settling the typhoons in our restless spirit.

8/30 *

2009-04-08T19:27:00.001-07:00

you were born an asterisk.
a thought causing second thought
a snowflake singeing the skin
a target too hopeless for arrows
from quivering lips
a star incessant on my pages
as if there's more to say

7/30 greenlake.

2009-04-07T17:18:00.000-07:00

Springtime is like a fortune cookie.
Every day another word
sliding slowly through its barely eyelid
like sun through window blinds.
Our wonderstruck eyes search prodigal skies
for eggs hatching romance, some new
purpose, nourishment.
We play decorated in shorts
and sleeveless shirts
or less
to soak up the day's intent.
Baby birds, beaks open to
our returned familiar mother.
But there are others.

Others whose skin holds safe to darker suits
and pitch dresses and we ask if they are tasting
the same thing. They sit comfortable between
walls made of counterfeit forests.
They watch calendar squares fall
like names of acquaintances,
doubtful any of it is true.

6/30. anastasia.

2009-04-06T19:03:00.000-07:00

I miss my mom.
No because I have
to stay after school.
She is stuck in bed.
She has no voice.
How? I don’t know how
to make tea?
My dad? I don’t have
a dad anymore.
He wanted to be a girl.
I don’t know.
Her name is Sarah now.
She seems happy.
Now I guess I have two moms
and kind of a dad.
He’s my mom’s boyfriend.
My mom’s boyfriend and I have
the same birthday and we both
live with her so she has to make two cakes!

Let’s play a game.
Here’s the rules. You can’t step
on shadows. It’s like tag, but if you
step on a shadow – you’re it.
But also if I tag you, you’re it.
And if you hold a cold metal pole
you’re safe. Yeah, I guess we can
watch four square for a little while.
It’s just I mainly play by myself.

Now let’s play the opposite.
Shadows are safe, but it’s tag still
so you try to catch me and if you’re
running in the daylight you melt,
then someone else who’s running
has to step from their shadow.
And tag you to unmelt you.

I didn’t really want to play either,
it’s just how I feel most times.
Will you hold my hand?

5/30 last night

2009-04-05T22:54:00.001-07:00

Beside me in the bed lays a mob car,
black as a box absorbing every color my chameleon
skin has envied, and slick as its impersonal leather chairs.
Every boy I've been is pressed, eyelids pulled back,
against my cornea like a floor to ceiling window,
breathing heavy in my ears,
Drive.

I tell them,
blood boils hot regardless.
I've shoveled coal into of plenty of fist-shaped furnaces,
but in hindsight I was just signing my name on someone
else's poem they didn't don't know to write yet and tonight, kids,
I'm disinterested even in the bleaker spaces evicted you for immaturity,
so let's let our feet sleep grown up tonight. Tomorrow's a long day.

Kids don't lie down easy.
I feel sneaker foot steps inside; younger cleaner hands
clasping my optic nerves like rudders to turn the sails
surrounding two colored headlamps. I see
On a coat rack above me hang books
made of bird wings white as daydreams
before you speak them.
I feel their anxious confused breathing against the glass,
and I tell them,

I put those on to get here, but they have retired until morning.
Please, I have work tomorrow, let me do the same.

4/30 slow dancing

2009-04-05T00:18:00.001-07:00

Tell me something.
When you grabbed my wrist, my hand,
Leaning into the hammock strung from my
shoulder to clavicle, smiling face pressed to leave
an impression, turning lights on behind my eyelids,
making sleep impossible,
were you just fish out of water shipwrecked for these nets?
I've been swimming a long time, but now baby,

I'm up here.
And I'm not winter migration
when things are cold elsewhere.
Some places are too familiar to visit,
even when I'm starving.

Heart flutter echoes through your delicate
flippers, gentle pats tapping an endless sway of ballroom
floor with your search for home. And all I'm asking is
you grow feet. Kick out the driftwood in your spirit,
like practicing to walk stable ground, 'cause

baby, I want to dance with you, to Pull you up
out of that ocean and hold in my hand
a hand.
to feel the waves we've both broken on birth
some tender swing in our steps you can't tell apart.
But I need you to tell me
you're ready
to rest.

3/30 every time a clock is built

2009-04-03T18:21:00.000-07:00

Behind every cloud, the sky is always the same.
The sun is always out, so space dust vacations
inside caves on comets, with darkness a most
sought after souvenir. By now so much has been
brought back that stars have to push their light
through space with sewing needles, weaving
a blanket to keep us warm.

Hearing what our sun is saying takes longer now.
We sunburn because the sun only sees our oceans’ obedience
after almost ten minutes of orders and feels it best
to discipline us like children.

Behind every cloud there are air molecules starving for attention.
The oceans feel the suns thread and in response weave a second
layer of themselves, reminding us
they too are made of string. But the air of our breath is a jealous
lover and never misses a chance to tell any new concubine like fabric,
especially one as opaque and doleful as cloud, that gravity
has its way with all in time.
And we feel their ambitious hearts unraveling in our gutters,

Because below every cloud, there is a cell: a city,
a household, a skin suit.
And the inside of every membrane
is always the same. Some cog
of a greater machine believing in billboards
for advance from servitude, unknowing
that even the sun is housekeeper
for a body less automatic.

30/30 Poem 2

2009-04-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

Behind the veil of your memory the distance between
Here and Leaving
felt my hands closing around its neck.

You looked at me like an empty paint bucket
removing its own lid, like a credit card declined on third dates,
couldn’t finish the monochromatic mural colored momentum I’d spilled.
But even if I had anything more to give, it would have been the color
of no surprises and momentum without a body to ride its waves crumbles
like last breaths into movie credits. A dark theater lit only by the names
behind a mask, and Here in my movie, they all spell Leaving.

A film canister holds only an hour or so
of images, which is more time than it takes
to cover walls with my thoughts when I’m careless enough.

I’m sorry for the way the room looked like a road sign going somewhere.
I will scrape out whatever drops are worth saving, put them in a can
looks like a poem. Recycle me dear, hold these tears like promises
to paint something you can stand on. I might just return
something clean, something happy to hold your reflection.

30/30 Poem 1

2009-04-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

This blog was created to post poems for the 30/30 challenge, to write and post a rough draft of a poem every day for the month of April, National Poetry Month. The first post (below) will be yesterday's poem as I was a day late starting a blog... and then we'll continue from here! Enjoy!

To Chairman Mao

I am the grass.
I have let myself down into the resistance to say "stay."
I will play to your posters sizes of buildings.
I will bow to your limo as it kicks dust
on the feet of your prisoner lovers
but I have laid myself so virus
that even after you have
heard radio talk of my
underground you
will never dig
out my last
riot.
I will be the sore spot in your eye,
the moon in your sky as you wish
to paint yourself with stars
I am the laughter at your funeral, the gravity
as you leap for pantheon
I am the humans buried in the Great Wall of China,
I am the bee stinging your fist and I am
never letting go.