Nocturne
Day’s vermilion symphony is over.
The only evidence of red a trace
of sunset kiss smeared across sky.
Now night takes the stage, raises its baton.
Darkness brings its hands down onto silence,
plays scales of wind and stars.
The moon knows wolf songs--
can sew luminous buttons onto ordinary,
raise the dead from time-clocks,
but for this performance
she hides behind a veil of leaves,
a tree’s branched fan.
Now night unrolls a carpet of whispers.
The ship of my mind drifts on its lullaby seas
dreaming blue languages.
Epistolary Poem
Touch a match to language
and watch the sentences flame
then curl into ash.
Fire’s a different animal than water.
Its tracks glow in the dark,
bloom sparks across emptiness,
leaving a trail that will take you
straight to fear’s cave.
Does night deliver my letters?
On the other side of distance
are you still awake, keeping vigil
under sleep's inverted teacup?
Open your palms. Fragments
of light and sound spiral down--
brand your lifelines
with rubies and red boots,
bitter apples and velvet lipstick
kisses, flagrant roses.
Crimson’s bright hair
unravels from an open window,
falls all the way
to the bottom of silence.
On the other side of distance
I wrap my words in an azure sweater,
burn a forgotten calligraphy of love
onto sky's blank slate.
Inventory at the Insomniac Café
From the back seat, your heart won’t shut up--
wants to know how much longer long it will be
before you reach red’s velvet cupcake couch
but you pull off to the side of spectrum anyway.
The waitress behind the counter
is folding napkins into origami snowflakes
and the menu
has been rinsed in sealight so many times
its shell echoes a choreography of blue.
Gaze into blue’s plate and see all the way to the bottom
of feeling—Versailles’ mirrored hall of memory,
ballroom of excess papered in extravagance.
Let them eat sky. Blue swath of distance, bolts of horizon,
ghosts rising out of fallen lives, or the dragonfly
shimmer of infinity’s turntable circling
one more ride on the ferris wheel of seasons.
Blue of oceans of unread books and imagination
unlocked from ice. Blue of broken glass, of interrupted
sleep, of so many lives drowned in sadness. Blue
of unreal roses and superfluous paperweights,
socks and baseball caps, letters sent
to the wrong address. Blue of intentions
nailed to fear’s pale wall. Of neon superstores
stocked to the brim with wanting,
of untranslatable gestures
and always the question in your eyes.
Van Gogh painted blue and set madness out to dry.
El Greco washed spirit with immensity. Vermeer
wrapped its scarf around and around the face of innocence.
In a far corner, two women are picking blueberries
off an unaccompanied branch of cello.
The moon spills
waterfalls of mood over their silver pails
as the universe
opens its indigo fan.
Plotting Exercise A
Exposition:
Wind braiding invisible
through October’s red-gold hair;
awkward at the bus stop;
popularity’s candied apple.
Rising Action:
Ghosts dissolve on whiteboard.
Star-cluttered night becomes setting.
Ophelia’s floating hair
freezes under scrutiny.
Climax:
A word frees itself from a transparency,
performs luminous acrobatics
in a blind-darkened room.
Grafitti on desks rebels.
Legions of origami secrets
flutter toward blue.
Falling Action:
Escape flattens itself against glass.
The bell rings in routine.
Resolution:
Awkward in the parking lot;
payday’s candied apple;
wind braiding invisible
through October’s red-gold hair.
Arachne to Venus
I wasn’t like you. Whenever I tried to weave
love into something whole, I made a mess of it.
For years I clothed my demeanor
in brilliant, but the only shade that ever
felt right was black. Say I let him
take me to sky inside cerulean sheets.
The next morning it was always the same:
lukewarm weather, refrain of a cliche
skipping across the back of a shopping list.
On t.v., stocks always seemed to be falling
or maybe a star’s lips would shine
with lipstick made from fish scales.
Enough of that, and anybody would
start wearing red bracelets on both wrists,
braid her hair with ravens. One night
I opened my eyes and saw indelible
perched on the edge of the bed, licking its chops.
The next day I adopted all the stray looms
I could find, spent a month’s moonlight
winding skeins of images.
Across my kitchen table: raw silk of work,
amber warp, beauty’s flying shuttle.
Day’s vermilion symphony is over.
The only evidence of red a trace
of sunset kiss smeared across sky.
Now night takes the stage, raises its baton.
Darkness brings its hands down onto silence,
plays scales of wind and stars.
The moon knows wolf songs--
can sew luminous buttons onto ordinary,
raise the dead from time-clocks,
but for this performance
she hides behind a veil of leaves,
a tree’s branched fan.
Now night unrolls a carpet of whispers.
The ship of my mind drifts on its lullaby seas
dreaming blue languages.
Epistolary Poem
Touch a match to language
and watch the sentences flame
then curl into ash.
Fire’s a different animal than water.
Its tracks glow in the dark,
bloom sparks across emptiness,
leaving a trail that will take you
straight to fear’s cave.
Does night deliver my letters?
On the other side of distance
are you still awake, keeping vigil
under sleep's inverted teacup?
Open your palms. Fragments
of light and sound spiral down--
brand your lifelines
with rubies and red boots,
bitter apples and velvet lipstick
kisses, flagrant roses.
Crimson’s bright hair
unravels from an open window,
falls all the way
to the bottom of silence.
On the other side of distance
I wrap my words in an azure sweater,
burn a forgotten calligraphy of love
onto sky's blank slate.
Inventory at the Insomniac Café
From the back seat, your heart won’t shut up--
wants to know how much longer long it will be
before you reach red’s velvet cupcake couch
but you pull off to the side of spectrum anyway.
The waitress behind the counter
is folding napkins into origami snowflakes
and the menu
has been rinsed in sealight so many times
its shell echoes a choreography of blue.
Gaze into blue’s plate and see all the way to the bottom
of feeling—Versailles’ mirrored hall of memory,
ballroom of excess papered in extravagance.
Let them eat sky. Blue swath of distance, bolts of horizon,
ghosts rising out of fallen lives, or the dragonfly
shimmer of infinity’s turntable circling
one more ride on the ferris wheel of seasons.
Blue of oceans of unread books and imagination
unlocked from ice. Blue of broken glass, of interrupted
sleep, of so many lives drowned in sadness. Blue
of unreal roses and superfluous paperweights,
socks and baseball caps, letters sent
to the wrong address. Blue of intentions
nailed to fear’s pale wall. Of neon superstores
stocked to the brim with wanting,
of untranslatable gestures
and always the question in your eyes.
Van Gogh painted blue and set madness out to dry.
El Greco washed spirit with immensity. Vermeer
wrapped its scarf around and around the face of innocence.
In a far corner, two women are picking blueberries
off an unaccompanied branch of cello.
The moon spills
waterfalls of mood over their silver pails
as the universe
opens its indigo fan.
Plotting Exercise A
Exposition:
Wind braiding invisible
through October’s red-gold hair;
awkward at the bus stop;
popularity’s candied apple.
Rising Action:
Ghosts dissolve on whiteboard.
Star-cluttered night becomes setting.
Ophelia’s floating hair
freezes under scrutiny.
Climax:
A word frees itself from a transparency,
performs luminous acrobatics
in a blind-darkened room.
Grafitti on desks rebels.
Legions of origami secrets
flutter toward blue.
Falling Action:
Escape flattens itself against glass.
The bell rings in routine.
Resolution:
Awkward in the parking lot;
payday’s candied apple;
wind braiding invisible
through October’s red-gold hair.
Arachne to Venus
I wasn’t like you. Whenever I tried to weave
love into something whole, I made a mess of it.
For years I clothed my demeanor
in brilliant, but the only shade that ever
felt right was black. Say I let him
take me to sky inside cerulean sheets.
The next morning it was always the same:
lukewarm weather, refrain of a cliche
skipping across the back of a shopping list.
On t.v., stocks always seemed to be falling
or maybe a star’s lips would shine
with lipstick made from fish scales.
Enough of that, and anybody would
start wearing red bracelets on both wrists,
braid her hair with ravens. One night
I opened my eyes and saw indelible
perched on the edge of the bed, licking its chops.
The next day I adopted all the stray looms
I could find, spent a month’s moonlight
winding skeins of images.
Across my kitchen table: raw silk of work,
amber warp, beauty’s flying shuttle.
