Poem-A-Day #303 : Aisle 3

Aisle 3

There is the idea of a person who builds a bridge - an architect of spans
but I am not sure that these crossings exist

Here is a fire starting at the base of a tower - and there is always someone dying in fires
always a fire in need of someones to die

At the grocery store the faces all look like milk cartons
I scan them for expiration dates - fine the barcodes on their irises and tick them off my list

An overwhelming sense that this is a toy unwinding - collapse in aisle three
it's devoted to cleaning products - I am rolling on my back - a dying beetle

There are picnic supplies and they are all about keeping food away from things that live outside
and there is a canyon opening and closing its mouth between one shelf and the next

Legs to the sprays - arms to the plates
allow each cart to roll over the spine - train cars going to who the fuck knows

I do not burn bridges so much as not bother to build them in the first place
this suits - ill-fitting - but it does

Poem-A-Day #287 : Some Days

Some Days

Clouds are striating
they form a road into the distance - telescoping
there is a forgotten city beyond the horizon
where everything is perfect

Some days I just don't know

The letters lay themselves across the tracks
they tie themselves down
and they wait for the train to come

This isn't about poetry - that is tired
this is about the break along the horizon
that birds peel themselves out of - a cartwheel of fire
contained in the barrel of the sky

Let's plant things there
see if the line melts if perspective will allow
the flowers to look like skyscrapers

Words cannot stand today

Or any day really

Language tries to reach - to unfathom
it calls to us from a distance unmanageable

The lines of clouds race themselves
like soap down a drain

Poem-A-Day #189 : A Prayer Or Curse It Is Hard To Tell

A Prayer Or Curse It Is Hard To Tell

I press my hand into the earth
and because my hands are dry
I can feel every grain roll over me

It's a polishing

Like pressing yourself into a tub of dried lentils
bare feet on the roundness of river stones

My hand in the sand
fingernails on roots and begin to spread out

I say something intelligible
a mumble into time and space
that echoes but never deciphers

A prayer or curse it is hard to tell

Poem-A-Day #188 : We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

I've been reading a lot of Sartre. It's ruining/rebuilding me.

We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

What to be done with a mirror that refuses reflection

It is a song that will not resolve it is the frustrating noise of refusal

A great 'no' hovering over the landscape in garish colors

We are in a country surrounded by the clicking of dolphins

And that is beautiful but disorienting to find in this landlocked space

Our faces are masks but this is too easy to say and too hard to believe

They are cages first for our eyes and the tangle of lint we call our minds

And then there are eyes let loose on the world to terrorize with their focus

The unreflection is a cataract light in your eye is just like broken silver

When we have a lack of it there is little to resolve ourselves

We are also the clicking of creatures pulled from the ocean and left to fend