The Road at Night

Just driving. Pulling over and writing under the glow of whatever streetlight is nearby. Letting the miles and the sounds and the wind speak for themselves...

There’s a lot’a Scotties out tonight,
Free-moon babies basking
Like a beached well,
Except without the whale’s anxious panic,
His startled dark eye as big as my fists
Coiled now like toy snakes
Hammering
Hammering
Beating a drum beat onto my mother’s still chest,
Blaming it on my father,
On everyone I loved,
As long as I didn’t have to blame it on myself.

A hobo’s gloves in the darkness,
The tac resting at a thousand RPMs,
A fine mist of high octane fuel
Flowing effortlessly through the venturi,
Purring
Purring
Someone’s headlight blinds me for a second,
And I am light too,
A million years before,
And a million years hence,
In everything there is God,
This engine,
These tires,
This road.

The light leaves and I a man again,
A human of flesh and bone
And sin,
Connected to the bones of Adam
Through every
Ant
Tick
Flea
And dinosaur,
A bleeding vessel prone to weakness,
And apt to die,
Where there is no one to safely bring me back.

12.2011

When You Came to the Door You Wore Only a Blanket

Be careful how you answer the door... I might make poetry out of the encounter...

When you came to the door you wore only a blanket,
Loosely wrapped around your shoulders,
Grinning and naked beneath that thin purple fabric,
Playfully arresting me with your dark eyes,
Your tiny knuckles clutching at the seams,
A periwinkle layer of cloth,
A translucent layer of girl skin,

But our lives had been rearranged by the circumstances of the heart,
A thing broken and reformed into new shape,
And where once I belonged in that blanket with you,
I no longer had any right,
Perhaps I could have taken what I wanted,
For there was an invitation on the wind,
It blew through your disheveled hair,
Disturbed the edges of your purple blanket,
I felt it on the ends of my fingertips still attached to the door knob,
And along the lost avenues of my heart,
To be the scoundrel that you loathed,
And the scoundrel that you loved,

In the end
I left you standing there,
Smiling,
Amongst everything misplaced between us,
And closed the door,
Still,
I remember how you looked…
Wrapped warmly and naked and so very close.

9.2011

Not Driving

A poem about staring too long into a computer screen, about not doing what you think you should be doing, about love, of course, and about everything else...

This is one of those nights
Meant for driving
Computer zombie with an eerie white face
And pale skin
Limp fingers
The light in spreadsheets on my wall
Filtered through cheap blinds
Where you once stood so I could take pictures of the shadows on your stomach

I should be driving
Lost in the quiet darkness of an old car
Tethered to a pair of headlights like the helpless string that must follow a balloon to Heaven
My mind a flock of black birds
Through this city and her dead children
The stars are an ugly constellation of orange street lights that do not twinkle
But vanish into my future and into my past
I never thought about love that way
Not when I was with you

An empty house
And no car to drive away in
I stand again in the window at the door
Watching an empty street
Blood at the corner of my mouth
Now dry
The smell of your yellow skin on my fingers.

11.2011