Archive for February, 2008

Admiring my thick black tresses in the mirror again
Upon reflection it made me sick
Didn’t I have anything better to dream
But there you are
Take the relief to heart and
Back to the salt mines
I wanted to bring in some things to liven the place up
But it’s like sardine city on the train
Lucky if there’s room to open a paperback

Backyard scene at the homestead
Even more entertaining than usual

A temporary art museum has been erected on the site of the abandoned elementary, complete with imposing limestone beaux arts façade. Deployed on the grass are screens draped in Christmas lights displaying newspaper clippings about wild animal stampedes around the globe. I skulked around looking for a quiet place to smoke until the Old Man spilled his drink on the roasting pig and the whole flimsy edifice collapsed like a lean-to of cards.

Kids rode by on bikes and
Gave me a pink vinyl 45 that
I slid into my shoe. Pop
Music, as always, saves the day.

Minutes before midnight, New Year’s Eve
Yet light as lunchtime as he serenely reclines
In the pool outside the clubhouse
The clock on the wall ticks off the year
He apologizes for his careful drawing
How he left out the detail
The ligature between limb and leaf

He drapes her in layer upon layer of sheer silk
Shallow glass bowls of water, gold dust, tiny silver shells

Soup, beautiful soup, delicate and delicious
Flower garlands in thick profusion
Drape high white walls
Inside a giant cardboard box
Which begins to bend in the rain

His suffering is a special trial
A big teacher whom he must satisfy
He hurts too much to believe otherwise

In your mom’s house you pull a broken cell phone from the clothes dryer. The keypad is gone but the power is on. Fragments of old messages flicker across what’s left of the screen, a wrinkled white fabric that comes alive with video projected under the highway overpass on concrete walls. An old woman’s scrubby garden is strewn with debris. Clean it up and next thing you know it’s covered with stuff again, castoff clothes and dust from beneath the furniture.

Follow an agent down winding school stairways
Deep into secret sub-basements
Climb three steps into a tiny media station
And watch archives of orchestras
Until you can’t breathe

Nighttime distance runners cross the bottom of the frozen lake
Light from below casts their shadows on the underside of the ice