September Falls in Mount Pleasant, Michigan (another revisioning)

The days lit orange, draining
westward behind horizons.
Leaves burn so gold they sting
my eye, September cut and spilled
already when I wasn't watching.
I didn't notice green had bled
again, the soil: cellar damp.

The summer fled centuries
ago – ages steeped and gone
underground. My feet
press on paper-thin graves.

A maple sheds away the dead,
while these veins are tied to bone,
these cells wither dry within.
For this you will outlive me.

As a reprieve, you drop a leaf
to my cheek where it falls
to kiss me and bless me before I die.

A Funny Logic (Rough Draft)

This is a poem that started last night as free-association writing, a.k.a. stream-of-consciousness, whatever-pops-in-your-head-first writing. October 2 a.m. is a productive time to be thinking about summer. So what else can I say about this poem? It's a rough draft and I can credit the repetition to inspiration from someone in my poetry class. I like how it ended in a strange kind of love poem.
I've been using the image of birds a lot since I saw this very large flock pick up and fly off a branch somewhere near St. John's, MI, when I was in my car. I probably should have been watching the road instead of the world around me. But that's what poets do, Officer.

A Funny Logic

Summer made you drip
like a leaf on a tree
like a leaf on a tree
Your body has to run inside these colors.
It has to exhale
flocks of sparrows
from a bough
that ripples

Sand in my hands
cupped like the bowl
of your hips.
You chose me.
You chose me
to jump with
and hold your breath
like a leaf on a tree.

I've Dreamt of This Day Since I Was Twelve

“You gave me your finger?”
I asked you.

“It’s a gift,” you told me.
“You can keep it.”

I thought of Van Gogh and that
infamous earlobe he
gave an unimpressed whore.
What was her name again?

I looked at your bloody bandage
where the left pointer used to join your hand.
The tiny box in my palm, the finger felt
heavy and surprisingly solid
like a piece of cold lead pipe.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” I asked.

“Well,” you replied, “you could eat it. Love is like that.”

I wondered if Van Gogh was ever called a starving artist.

Spinning Plates

Spinning Plates
After Michael Ferris Jr.’s “Nora”

Nora, your hair grown
long, gilding your hip
with gold and rose quartz.
You plait it around your head
like a crown to helmet the
coiled scrolls
radiating from your skull.

Nora, your body streams graffiti,
skin white and blue and green.
The sea
rolling and rippling –
live like wires.

Nora, your skin bottle glass greens,
targets circle your cheek
as if rippling the grass waves
of vibrating,
windblown
Stonehenge –
A hexagon, a halo
held within such a familiar geometry.

Nora, your face possesses
a symmetry
supported by a line-drawn
scaffold as if you alone can build the sky.
From left to right, Nora,
you follow the sun
revolving around you
like a dizzy, dizzy spell.

The Code of Hammurabi

The Code of Hammurabi
“If a builder build a house for someone and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.” –Law 229

My father roofed houses one summer.
Under the sun I baked mud pies in and warmed
washtubs for makeshift swimming pools,
his arms and neck bubbled and burned
deep brown, as dark as the cracked shingles
he pried loose and flipped to the ground,
his hands toughening to the grain
of the new bundles of sixteen hogtied rectangles.

I visited him once that summer with my mom.
He was working on top of a new house with no people in it yet,
crawling on hands and knees, an apron ripe with tinkling nails
hugging his hips. The sun came from behind
him so I squinted at the light flashing through his hair,
still thick and brown, the same brown
as mine, beaming red-gold in the sun, glowing like a halo,
like a reminder that autumn is coming.

I circled a sapling tree while my parents talked,
my mother blocking the sun with her hand.
This day my dad wears a mustache,
the final hot weeks before he shaves it for good,
like a costume in my memories
of watching Bobby’s World together on the brown living room carpet
in that cigarette-burned floral comforter
and playing Skyshark on the Nintendo.
“Watch how it’s done,” he’d say, my brothers and I
leaning forward.

That summer my dad became a volunteer firefighter,
which meant a muttering radio and Dad putting on jeans
in the kitchen at bedtime, looking for his keys
while we jittered in pajamas like fawns.
It also meant the Fourth of July ended
summer. It ended in an ambulance racing
past fields of yellow knee-high corn
and a trip to the Green Bay hospital
where I drank gritty, vending machine hot chocolate
and I told my dad I loved him the only
time I remember.

A week later he came home
and could not stand without tipping,
strange angles working under his feet.
He sat in the blue living room chair,
his brown skin fading and the sun burning above our roof untended.
I would creep up to his bad side and stare,
cropping my breath and hanging it,
my eyes dry and exhausted before I left, knowing
he couldn’t see me.
I was tempting the gods.

Now, I’m thinking of Hammurabi’s Code,
laws thousands of years old.
The same sun browning the builder’s sweating skin
and baking his clay bricks,
the same joints and sockets
that eventually will collapse and crumble,
the same blind justice.

A Love Poem for Everyone (Sestina)

As the raindrops fell between us
like sand grains in an hourglass' waist
when it catches and stops, just right,
I thought I saw the first light
ever burned from the sun
that laid all the gears in motion.

Birds flocked in a commotion
like smoke above us,
our eyes turning on the sun,
our clothes hanging from our waists
like drapes. I felt the birds' breath lightly
stir the branches on my right.

When the black cloud was right
over our heads, their rolling motion
blocking the sun's light,
I whispered: it has chosen us.
Nothing is wasted
under the machine of our sun.

If forever rose with tomorrow's sun,
I would have no right
to tie down my waist
or dig my heels against the motion.
But it would be too soon for us.
I would be Dylan and rage against the dying of the light.

Time is too firm when I've lightly
walked and hardly touched the sun
on my skin and rain falling between us,
It isn't right.
We cannot stall its motion,
but I am buried, buried to the waist

in lists. Things to do. I say: grab my waist.
We are losing daylight.
We are drowning in commotion.
With our breath rising to the sun,
I saw the birds fly on my right.
I saw the earth turn for us.

Raindrops fell between us as you cupped my waist.
You held my hand when the light
of the sun fell for the first time through the oldest, blackest motion.

September Falls in Mount Pleasant, Michigan (Revised)

The days lit orange, falling westward
across horizons, city streets
they never counted on passing by.
The leaves burnt so gold it stings
the eye, September cut and spilled
already when I wasn't watching.
I didn't notice green had bled
again, the soil cellar damp.

The summer fled millennia
ago – ages steeped and gone
in minutes, hours, underground.
My feet press on tiny graves.

A maple sheds away the dead,
while my veins are tied to bone.
For this you will outlive me.

As a reprieve, you drop a leaf
to my cheek where it falls
to kiss me and bless me before I die.

September Falls in Mount Pleasant, Michigan

The days are orange, falling westward

behind horizons we created

and never counted on meeting soon.

The leaves are burnt, so gold it stings

the eye, foliage Septembering

already when I wasn't watching

close enough to notice their youth

had fled. Like every year, again.

Last year's disappeared ages

ago – ages buried and gone.

I didn't attend the funeral.

I didn't know their names.

My seasons are lifetimes longer.

My leaves don't crash and decompose.

You cast the dead away

And for this you will outlive me.

As a reprieve, you drop a leaf

to my cheek. It descended

to kiss me and bless me before I die.

Untitled

His mother bought the boy a rootbeer cat
but the mouth only produced a low
buzzing sound that hurt his ears and scared
him. His mom apologized like she had just
sold the family farm for a tractor.
He thought the cat's motor was
broken so he threw it in the trash can
where its guts fizzled out of its
mouth in a pool of syrupy madness,
buzzing, even though his mother told him
not to put liquids in the garbage.
Because he didn't have the rootbeer cat,
the boy demanded he get a noodle dog
from the vending machine.
His mother ran out the door with her
purse and a raincoat in case the sky cried
shallows like an overbearing sentimental
grandmother. She pinched a coin and ordered
a noodle dog. It was happy to see someone -
finally! It's stringy tail flapping all the way home.
But when the boy saw the dog,
he cried because its eyes
followed him across the room and were made
of green olives. And he hates olives. And Italian.
The dog is too noodley for him to want to
hug, so he puts it in the
trash can with the rootbeer cat
where it marinates in the liquid
like a cruel, sweet sauce.

The Grecian Sense

In the Grecian Sense,
you tell me with charcoal
stain fingers

No lack of shoulder
No lack of muscle
No lack of hip

I could support the sky.

You understand the light
on my knees
and the shadow
on my nose,
but I’m here to
remind you that Sappho
was true,
but men also wear bodies.

Light Switch

If my brain
turns on
at four in the morning,
who am I to shut it off?

I’ve got engines
revving
with the traffic lights
broken

and who cares?
when it’s a joyride
I don’t have to
be rhythmic

That's Not What I Meant

We were on the wrong side of town.
And by /wrongside/ I mean the side we were on was not the side
we wanted to be on.
Our map skills were faulty
and he says /how did we get here?/
and she says /how did we get here?/
and the other he says /how did we get here?/
and I say /I think it was the big bang/

Genome, a pantoum I wrote to describe my feelings towards discovering I was a poet

I wish I had language then
the way I have language now –
slanted, shuffled together
and seamed, like bulging sacks of rocks

The way I have language now –
I have a crusted gem forming inside dirt
and seamed, like bulging sacks of rocks
that split at the first tectonic plate shifting

I have a crusted gem forming inside dirt
and dust activated by a few billion years
that split at the first tectonic plate shifting
like an engine spinning upon itself

And dust activated by a few billion years
converting grain into bread and bread into Hamlet
like an engine spinning upon itself,
rocking like the positions of creation, that cataclysmic maneuver

Converting grain into bread and bread into Hamlet,
requiring a skill that turns on expiration dates,
rocking like the positions of creation, that cataclysmic maneuver,
resting on the bed of its own certainty to mold.

Requiring a skill that turns on expiration dates,
slanted, shuffled together,
resting on the bed of its own certainty to mold.
I wish I had language then.

On Coming Back to Where I Grew Up

I thought I would have a Wordsworth moment
where feelings welled at a reunion
with the land that birthed me.

I thought I’d say, “Sorry, baby. I missed you. I’m back now”
but instead spiders crept onto my legs and mosquitoes bit
and I was tired of dirty feet and burning garbage.

I thought I’d snap beautiful photos of nature
but my brother just tore it up with a four-wheelerand my viewfinder was stuffed with food wrappers.


Accompanying song: Roads by Portishead

Backyard

The sky hugs the ground here
close, with no exceptions.
It is open and split wide
to all corners within range of my eye.

I imagine all the times I felt
trapped here, in a glass jar
like a tarantula in a terrarium
given an allotment of the habitual nature
it is used to.

I remember the times that
combines roared in my backyard
and I shut the doors to the intruder
like it was a lion,

the times the air I breathed
smelled like cow dung and hay
and I had contempt for those who
worked their hands
and not their brains.

But the yard was a three-acre patch
where no building had ever stood.
My feet were one of the few
out of billions
to connect to the ground here,
and jump,
as if the packed soil was a springboard.

Dairy Farms Don't Make Good Neighbors

My nose itches,
aching
for the excrement and hay
assault to my nose,
tangy and sweet like that
first bite of the hard,
bittergreen apples growing on trees
more antique than the silver spoon
you found buried in the yard
or the rotted leather yoke made
of the same hide that pushed it.
The air is still here, suspended,
a Polaroid your dad took
before the camera broke in 1992,
a firefly in a jar
you caught with your brothers
one bruised July evening,
more still than the air
in corners of the basement
where the canned tomatoes are stored
glistening like preserved specimens,
except for the occasional whoosh
of a car returning from the bar
or the throaty distant bleat
of a cow in heat that makes
you think of rape victims
screaming for life
when your widow is open to the night.
Those dull meat-on-bone
sounds confuse you
but somehow have to do with
the great circle of life
and what mom plops on your dinner plate.
I entertain these quaint
fantasies, born backward by my brain.
I wish I could run in the rows of corn
ten feet from my bedroom window
when it soared for miles above my head
like it would never, never stop growing.
Like it would never, never be the hour of harvest.
But this time I promise not to hide while you call my name.
This time I won’t wrap my sides
in a blanket under my bed
to watch a dead lightning bug
and wait for my mother to come home.

Flower Children

What happened to you,
who refused to tiptoe
through the wax museum
and the rose bush fields
with burs hanging by every bud,
abandoning juice can curlers
and skirts tiered below the knee?

You destroyed the status quo
with posies and rhythms,
with careening kisses
parted by the falling flames
like velvety folds of the closing curtain,
constantly shipped off to one place
or another to die or give birth.

Did you retreat for the next wave to hit?
Or are you sitting in a
three-bedroom house in Boise,
aging backwards
amongst cracked plaster
and hammered copper wall hangings,
rewording your own epitaphs
like you have nothing left
to say until posterity?

How can you retire your own revolution?
How can you ransom your own child
and leave us with nothing
to look forward to but ugly babies
and booming reports of thunder
ricocheting off our own crumbling walls,
while we watch
with failing eyes?

Needle

no one has
asked if

the
nee
dle
in
the

haystack
is worth finding
at all. I would rather
lie in the sun on my back
and whittle a new one from bone

How to Live Forever

If research develops
a new set of tools
with which we wipe out the disease
known as aging
and dying
as easily as our mothers wipe dirt off our cheek,

There would be some people
that no one could live with that long.
Who would choose
who gets to die?

That would be prejudice.
And we could not have that
in a society where everyone
is one scheduled maintenance
away from eternity.

How to Measure the Metaphysical

No, I do not think
that my life
weighs more
than the sum of my parts.

Except perhaps
a heavy moment tethered to my wrist,
Or my words
that stick like glue on the wall,
And the strips of film
stored carefully in a box upstairs.

How many grams?
How many ounces?

Domestic

If you wanted me
to lie
and spare you pain,
I wouldn’t.

I don’t
pussy
foot
or beat
around the bush.

I’m nobody’s
picket fence.
I’m not
a warm fireplace.

This is the first poem I tried to write

Brain Waves

Behind a silent sea
as glass-green as cats’ eyes
I
tried to find

my direction in an alien world
with neither sun nor moon.

I stood between two familiar
sinuous hills, left and right.

I
tried to gauge

the depth
in the empty cavern ahead
hidden in the middle of the hollow hills

And the vein
of fondling trees
with buds and leaves

that retrieve
and perceive
and
criss- cross
the landscape

But I was a traveler
Evolved of the same nature,
Rendered and ruined by its mystery.