The Poem Closet

Bad Things Could Happen (Rev. 3)

2008-05-19T15:11:00.006-06:00

After the flood a dead smell comes into the house.
It rises like a mist from below the floor.
From where the water pooled.

For three nights I dream a dead body,
the body of a man under the house,
drowned he while waited to kill me.

On the morning drive, my joy for life fills the car like tears.
It spills into the streets and runs through the city,
a trail of joy spread open
like blood for vultures.

From the 5th Floor Window - Revised

2007-02-08T08:26:00.000-07:00

A sea of birds washes across the reflection
in the glass of a picture frame.
It will catch you off guard and your eyes will tear.
Don't turn around to see
the reality of birds
is unimportant.
This is
the most beautiful thing you will do today.

Bad Things Could Happen (Revised 2)

2006-07-22T13:23:00.000-06:00

After the flood,
a dead smell comes into the house from beneath the floor.
It puts a fog on our lives like breath on cold windows;
a dark water condenses along the surface of existence.

For three nights I dream dreams.
I dream the drowned bodies of the men who wait to kill me,
dead under the house with their knives and fangs.

In the mornings, when I drive through the streets ,
my joy for life fills the car like tears.
It spills out
into the mouth of the city.

A trail of joy has spread out behind me.
It's like blood for vultures.

Trying to Believe in God

2006-07-22T13:16:00.000-06:00

I can't touch my toes.
A yoga instructor once told me
it's
because
I
won't
submit.
So I bent my will to the task
without success,
concluding
I just don't bend
that
way.

Years later, I realize
these things are one in the same.

2006-06-21T21:34:00.000-06:00

I was happy for a while,
but it didn't turn out.
It was made of plain things
and I wanted to be beautiful.

I hoped for a while,
but it didn't stick.
It burned out through my pores like a sun spot in a photo.
Hope doesn't have limits like a body does.

And every morning, the world unfolds from beneath my pillow
like a crumpled raft inflating.
In the evening, my dreams escape like hot breath beneath the pressure of my head.

Staring Out the Window at Trees

2006-04-07T15:26:00.000-06:00

At another time
the green leaves blowing rhythmically against the grey sky
might be melancholy.

They are the memories of a silence,
an autumn lake after a draught
when the water recedes to reveal familiar things blurred over with rust and grime
and made quiet with disuse.

A white crane beats soundless wings across the sky,
his neck folded back on itself
like the drain pipe beneath a sink.

But today, the leaves are just there like I am just here.
Waiting to be somewhere else.

Bad Things Could Happen (Revised)

2006-03-31T12:43:00.000-07:00

After the flood
a dead smell comes into the house from beneath the floorboards.
It puts a fog on our lives like breath on cold windows.
Water condenses along the surface of consciousness.

For three nights I dream the drowned body of the man who waited to kill me.
Dead under the house with his knife and fangs.

When I leave in the mornings,
my joy for life fills the car like tears,
spilling out into the streets of the city.

A trail of joy has spread out behind me
like blood for vultures.

Bad Things Could Happen

2006-03-29T08:59:00.000-07:00

After the flood,
a dead smell came into the house from beneath the floor.
For three nights I imagine it is the dead body of a man
who waited beneath the house to kill me.

In the mornings,
my joy for life fills the car like tears.
It spills out into the streets and runs through the city.

A trail of joy has spread out
like blood for vultures.

2006-01-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

The birds on the wire perch like commas,
dictating a breath between sky and earth.

The sentence of the city stretches out to the horizon
meticulously diagramed in streets and buildings,
we punctuation, walking about
changing meanings.

The universe meant one finite thing
until we moved our ellipses around.

One bird on a wire indicates that this was merely a pause,
not an ending

Surface Tension

2005-12-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

Three black birds drink the water from a street-side puddle
moving behind our lives
with perfect rhythm,
a trio of back-up singers.

Millions of dew-drops halo the tall grass on the lingering edges
of sunrise.
They stand on edge like soldiers
and men awaiting a hanging. They glow like hot metal
on the smithy's anvil.

Daylight Savings Time

2005-12-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sun comes up.
Sucks the dream from the world
like venom from a bite wound.

After

2005-11-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

After you die, my years with you
rattle like the last bits of kibble
in the tin bowl of existence.

I stand guard over them
like a starved and brutal thing,
as the most perfect self,
knowing that they, and we, and I
aren't anything but a subtle reshaping of nothing,
the curvature of light around a great mass,
a momentary allusion to color.

You, on the other hand,
were always something.

Let Me Tell You

2005-11-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
words swarming from her mouth like angry ants,
biting at everything.

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
words spooling and re-spooling,
like a printer jammed with paper.

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
words sinking into the river of air,
depressed girls with irons in the pockets of their raincoats.

"Let me tell you how it feels," she said,
having given up completely
on feeling anything whatsoever.

Somewhere Else

2005-11-04T07:39:00.000-07:00

Somewhere else, a man pays a genocidal militia to shoot his wife
rather than hack her to death with a machete.

This is a small act of humanity,
like holding the door in an elevator
or starting a fresh pot of coffee when you've had the last cup.

Later that man becomes an interpreter,
translating for western journalists the words of the same terrorists.
He searches for the faces of his wife's killers,
but those faces are everywhere.

Alone at night,
that man waits to die,
just as we all do.

From the 5th Floor Window

2005-11-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

Redecorating

2005-10-19T21:45:00.000-06:00

As I started to fall from the ladder
the red curtain of red beads
clicked against the floor
the red clicks washed against the air.
I balanced on the sound
the way a dog balances on a red ball
the way a red ball balances on the nose of a seal
the way the self balances on the precipice of infinity
not because it makes sense, but because it seems like the right thing to do at the time.

2005-10-18T13:04:00.000-06:00

I feel that I have something very important to say
and I will say it here,
or here...

...here.
ok, here.

City

2005-09-27T20:14:00.000-06:00

Our prayer calls meet near the tops of buildings,
dissonant, but exactly made for being together.

In the valleys of the city the night is pooling.
It fills our places window by window.

The city flows easily through our stakes and claims,
having it's own business to attend to.

And when I am gone, I feel the city calls me.
When I am here, I feel alone.

Hallway

2005-09-27T20:12:00.000-06:00

I woke in the hall holding a loaded gun
with the safety disengaged
Later, I went back to my life
because nothing had happened.

2005-09-27T20:06:00.000-06:00

When you've loved someone for a while
it's a good idea to practice up on being alone.

Step 1: Go away for awhile. Don't say where you've been.
Come back without apology and reclaim your chair.

Step 2: Keep saying "I love you" until the words abandon meaning
the way a girl abandons virginity -
because she suspects it isn't worth it.

Step 3: Tell me the exact moment you stopped loving me.
Call it on a stopwatch - to the hundredth second.
Write it on the toe tag of my soul.

August (Revision)

2005-09-15T16:19:00.000-06:00

In the evening of the hottest day it rained.
It rained as if the day had been waiting all day to rain,
parting the heat of the city with broad strokes.
Afterwards,
rain dripped from leaves and branches
for hours.

2005-09-15T16:08:00.000-06:00

Riding in the car, left side window seat,
Texas Hill Country whizzing by,
waves of drying grass scratching along fence lines
in the hot exhaust of Autumn.
In overcast you can watch the rain’s slant,
distant and vague,
like God or the year after next year.
I think of silence
stretching across the flat plains to the horizon -
my brother beside me sleeping soundly.

I realize slowly, in a chill –
I wake up often in the same sweat –
the inconceivability of forever,
non-existence, inevitable,
like the faded grass shoulder, endlessly blurring,
humming us deathward.

The Artist's Revisions Dissected

2005-09-08T21:50:00.000-06:00

Under the painting was a better painting.
but under that was a plain canvas

August

2005-08-29T12:59:00.000-06:00

In the evening of the hottest day it rained.
It rained as if the day had been waiting all day to rain.
The sun still shone, a few small cumulus clouds
floating
It rained hard and silver,
parting the heat of the city with broad strokes.
Afterwards,
rain dripped from leaves and branches
for hours.

High Water Mark in an Old Building

2005-08-24T16:30:00.000-06:00

After the flood, they marked the height the water reached,
four inches down from the ceiling,
with a chalk line and the year,
as though marking the growth of a child:
something to be passed through on the way to
a more expansive and undefined whole.

But the water marked its own way,
curling like the lip of a dark shadow
across the knotted wood of the floor and walls.

Years later, the chalk line remains,
as if to assert that things will never be this bad,
as though the universe were not willful and cruel, like a child
before he learns that cruelty is to be served one spoonful at a time,
like a rich dessert in a fine restaurant.

But beneath that chalk line you find another line,
and another date. And beneath that, another,
marking an older flood, an older shadow
of another time we thought
things could only get better.

Home Building and Safe Keeping / Purpose and Destiny

2005-08-19T20:44:00.000-06:00

I build my days with little pieces...
waking, eating something, opening and closing a door.
Hold things together with bits of something
and bits of nothing
guard it with the dark tents of sleep.
After so many years I realized
there were many rooms but no house.

Possession: What if God gave you something precious
and you hid it in a locked box in the darkest room:
Did he really mean that you should only keep it safe?

So I wrapped my existence in plastic, like a white sofa,
to guard from spills and dust and the wear and tear of me.
You came over and sat down.
You asked, "What are you saving this for?"