Rhetoric

Sometimes your movements are too practiced
_and hence I cannot heed your words
_the precise snaking out of the wrist
__to emphasize a point
To my eye
_the motion appears in time lag
_with the words
_ as happens when the audio track
_does not match the visual track
I am disconcerted
_ already uncomfortable
__in rehearsal
_before we donned
__blue robes
_before we marched down
_the slanted aisle
For the last
________dreaded
performance
______of our high school careers

Repetiton without respite

beautiful boy,

I mislead myself down the aisle of my mind,
blaming you for the silence
but not the empty
golden light is a nourishment

and a nostalgia.
faded glory and uns(c)ene plays
regrettably
defended.

Could I defend my (in)action,
tell myself that all is done,
and done for all
time, relativity,

and peace....

Sometimes the I wish for freedom,
for I tire of these games.
It is like reincarnation,
repetition without respite

Cinnamon air
and playing for keeps.

Poets

Have you wondered why we are poets,

blessed and damned to wander

the streets of these cities,

countries,

lands,

until we findlose/losefind ourselves in them

and epiphanize and eulogize

the future that has passed?

instrument

your hollow body makes a home for me
as my fingers stumble strangley over you
and get caught in that which is still unknown
but I will break my hands to get to know you better
See, even now it hurt to type these words,
but you resonate with power
and I think of the time you consume,
and the hearts and hands you break,
daunted? maybe
sly smiles lead to better plays

Goodbye

Goodbye: we're leaving now.
break the champagne on the bow,
pack our bags and go away,
and as we pass each other say:
Goodbye, we're leaving now,
though in truth I am unsure how
all this time has come to pass
and just what makes a class a class.
footsteps echo in the empty hall
and as we pass each other, call:
goodbye. We're leaving
Now, I do not when I shall see you all again
as you become another face
woven into to time and space
This makes me hesitate to say
"goodbye, now. I'm going away."

to be here

Weeks now i have watched you froth into the asphalt as i try to decipher
the words and symbols painted on your concrete
and inked into your skin
you are a blood blister
hot and ready to pop
straining against your ropes
and sweat clouding your eyes
I have difficulty distinguishing your edges on the horizon
the sunlight highlighting sharp corners
and casting darker shadows
but i have been here all my life
and i know you as such.
your confluence straining
merging currents
a myriad of one million places
people
lives crammed together under a smogged dome
are your streets my veins, my hideaways?
my scars, your pain and failure?
You are a mosquito bite and i can't stop
tearing away at the skin of you
unearthing secrets
cobbled streets and an overturned ants' nest
of twisted streets and bloodied lanes
what makes you bristle in the mid afternoon heat?
curse and swear the days away
but you ring out until
nawd fo egde eth
draws you backwards over schedules,
make work projects
and congestion filling your air
is this what it means to be "city"
?
to be 'place'
?
to be here?

July 4

There is a haze and it feels like a ghost town
with empty streets and the merest hint of trickles of cars escaping the net of your holiday weekend
with trips and stops and hours in the car
all the people glow in the early light and the faint echoes of their footsteps meld with church bells at a distance
bouncing off of brick roads and houses
This is nine a.m.
Fourth of July Weekend
Sunday
and as the bells end their knell
Sirens pick up,
somewhere further in the city