"A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far"

We held this potential contradiction
and we held each other
and the magnolias
peaked at us
through the moonlight
outside the window.

Poem Written While Walking

1. And he said, "My memory is poor."
but poignancy is not lost
in the short term of his memory.

2. And he said, "The empty lot is beautiful."
I went back to see a painting,
a wall and a treeless tree
with two long buds
like broken fists unfurling

3. Eyes full up from too much sight
concepts make eyes brim
a punctuation mark holds
a globe
or a concept
small and meaningless
small and black
ridged
unchanging

4. I do not
can not
write concepts
only images
pictures
stimulus

5. Yellow hat,
woman points west in the dog park.
Cracked pavement like rivers
telling the tale of
parking lots from the past.

Telephone wire like licorice rope
Music, bikes and garbage cans

"He went out for the paper and never came back."

After a night of heavy dreams, this poem was the first waking thought I had.

To be so sure
that nothing was right
as to walk away
and never come back.

Trite

Accusations revolve in me
like the cogs of a clock working
backwards:
You are a coward and
a liar,
a man without tact.

Where you are,
damp foliage waves accusations,
drips honey-water,
taps you on the head whispering,
"The sunrise hates you."

For the first time I
feel the thickness of my
coffee spoon,
as I swirl in cream,
watch the bubbles pop,
or become heavy and sink,
and I am sad
and it is meaningless.

Spring Poetry

On most days
to finish reading
a poem is to put the book down and
let the heavy lines
sink through your subconscious,
slip down your throat,
stumble near the heart
to be absorbed by your
spongy lungs.

But when light hits
your morning window
and air
smells of cooking blossoms
you must turn the page and
read on,
the sun awaits you.

Half-built

We climbed up in that half-built house after we fought, after I refused to go on the roof of your house. It was night and the half-built house had no door. There was an unplaced bathtub in the foyer. The steps were jagged gaps, the walls faint structures, only seen with imagination. On the second floor we walked toward the back and looked at a tree above a mound of concrete and dirt. Its branches blurred into the night sky.

We walked through windowless windows and sat on the tiny slanted roof built only as facade, or perhaps a cover for the non-existent porch below. I cried. We could view the park from where we sat, off to our left.

Then we said nice things, unspecifically remembered, and we climbed back inside. Leaning on a beam for an unformed wall we both felt a ghost and left, never speaking of its presence again.