Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

by James Welsh

  some are already gone by the time

  they’re seen.

  The bellows of September

  will be blowing the

  smell off the glowing water –

  it’s a scent that will tell me where

  my childhood went.

  Sometimes, not

  even memories are enough, I think.

  There will be a

  werewolf moon on my right,

  the jagged skyline on my left –

  I’m afraid that if I would spin,

  I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.

  September 13, 2011

  Apple Splinter Linger

  The green apple basket gathers dust on the top shelf

  that’s held by little, rattled chains

  against the aching wall –

  I can hear the doctor’s shuffles upstairs,

  his muffled limp from the war

  echoes dull from up there on the second floor.

  He walks down the steps, wearing his frown like a grin,

  his cigar singed, its tobacco sneaking off in the wind

  creeping in through the open window.

  He stares into the wall behind me,

  the painting on the wall caking with wear.

  I don’t want to hear the sorry buried in his muddy eyes.

  I turn to the window and see an apple tree stump

  sitting in the yard. Two sticks lay nearby.

  I can only think of drums.

  We used to laugh away

  the summer days from the branches,

  but what happened?

  Perhaps it has something to do with

  the axe you keep beneath your bed,

  a split hair away from your withered hands.

  At the End of the Hall

  Her name stood tall at the end of the hall

  and I stood like a scarecrow, breathing leaves.

  The carpet was the drowned blue of the sea,

  its ends peeling, wrapping me in its shawl.

  And as I stumbled, her

  name crept down the hall,

  whispering away – even when

  I called out for it.

  Yet, as sure as clocks spin and time flees,

  I, some scarecrow,

  row my feet through the hall.

  And so I stumbled on,

  my straw footprints

  following behind me

  as they sing hymns and played strings

  to the heartbeat of my life’s song.

  Although I’m now blind to your name,

  I’ll still make my footprints sing.

  As I shuffle on.

  Atlas

  And say my glory was I had such friends.

  -William Butler Yeats

  I.

  Sometimes it feels like

  I’m doing a hand stand,

  heaving the world

  on my shoulders while I’m

  walking across the sky.

  My shoulder blades are sharpened,

  grinding on the rock.

  Atlas, am I?

  Atlas I am –

  lifting the world like bricks

  to rebuild your civilization with.

  I’ll build it stronger than before, though –

  I’ll make sure it won’t fall again.

  However, all you ask for is a tower made

  of toothpicks for you to scrape the sky with.

  You want to poke a hole in the evening

  sky, you want to lie in the fields

  and see the sun peer through

  the midnight’s torn curtains.

  I wonder if I should birth

  your civilization again.

  II.

  I walked through barren orchards,

  wincing through the thicket.

  The prickly things are

  singing red notes for my skin.

  But I ignore them, plunging

  deeper into the orchard.

  I should torch these thorns, burning

  the horns on the vines to ash.

  But how would I catch my breath

  when I’m burning the orchard down?

  And still I hold the world up with my hands,

  the rocky shores of New England

  scarring at my thumb.

  I wonder: if I were trip and fall,

  could I catch the World

  before I drop the ball?

  Nervous at the thought, my hand

  digs a little deeper,

  clawing out new canyons

  in the Balkans.

  But the world is no

  longer itself –

  it’s now a basketball

  suffocated between my fingers

  as a younger me lingers in

  the moment, seeing

  the hoop and knowing

  he’s only hoping to make it in.

  As the ball clicks hollow against

  the rim, everyone on the court

  chuckles – all except for you.

  In that moment, the World

  shrank to the size of the

  awkward lady with taped glasses

  squeezed tight against her nose –

  she was you.

  III.

  True, this world’s grown up

  in size but not in mind –

  just a babbling man cooing,

  curled up in a crib

  that’s been too small

  for some decades now.

  But keep this vow: that

  you will trust this

  Atlas inside me.

  Because although the world

  is bigger than I am,

  my hands won’t quiver,

  even as I shiver,

  drowning in time’s

  tiny falling sands.

  These are the things

  we always know of

  but never understand.

  See, I’m no man –

  I’m a being,

  being made of strong bones

  and nerve to hold fast against

  this turning tide.

  But mention this

  to no one though –

  rumors move fast

  like fire through dry grass.

  IV.

  I stare closer at the world,

  my eye now a lazy moon.

  But I’m looking carefully,

  not wishing to miss any

  hint of what I think

  is a sign that the human spirit

  is still alive, that its heart is still

  beating rhymes into

  the drums of our time.

  This human conscience grows heavy.

  Our sighs become more frequent,

  varying between weary and something

  defined only as very…exhausted.

  Yet still this world spins,

  driving our spirit nauseous.

  And so I knead the globe with

  my fingers, booming with

  pleas in hopes that one

  good soul still hears me.

  Yet my voice goes over their heads.

  They must be too

  short to catch the rolling

  waves of sound.

  But though you are a few inches

  shorter than most, you were still

  somehow tall enough to hear it.

  Autumn Burning

  Autumn’s burning down

  in lipstick reds and bronzer

  yellows. The pedestrians

  hurrying through with workday

  feet cream the leaves

  into mascara colors –

  some of the specks

  of spectrum even darker.

  The trees used to chuckle

  in the August gusts

  with their harvest

  greens, the bendy leaves

  rubbing against each

  other for warmth they

  didn’t need. The

&
nbsp; leaves were fabric and

  the fabric evening dresses,

  ready and waiting for

  those latenight cocktail messes.

  Now all that’s left

  is wrinkled bark, a shock

  like your morning look

  in the mirror,

  a glance that tells

  you more than what

  you need to know:

  that the hushwhite

  winter’s coming for us all.

  October 24, 2010

  Autumn Mornings Pouring Through My Window

  Laying on my side,

  I can see the moon’s reflection

  playing on the water – the moon,

  her reflection a pair of eyes

  looking down at the Earth, its daughter.

  I say let the world dream. It will only

  last the night anyway. Many days,

  all I ask for is an autumn morning

  pouring through my window – a

  river of leaves lingering as they make

  their way past the doorstep.

  And still the Earth’s asleep – the

  Sun shakes his gift to hear what’s

  beneath the seablue and icecream wrapping-paper.

  Yet, still the Earth sleeps, a flaw against

  a time that’s bending and a life

  that’s moving and a Sun that brings

  out the rainbow in the humans.

  But as night falls again and the moon

  bounces as a marble on the waves,

  the world has yet to wake –

  and the silence tore holes through

  our ear drums.

  Baptized Beneath Thunderstorms

  You were always afraid the sun would never shine again.

  I would always say calmly, “No, see? That’s just a cloud passing by.

  Don’t worry; the sun always trumpets in the end.”

  You always said, “No! The floods will come and down the wicked men.

  That is what my father says. He would never tell a lie.

  He says the floods came once for Noah and they will knock again.

  No matter what, his will will never be in vain.”

  I would then always say, “Yet you never ask him why?”

  “How dare you say father lies!” You’d always scream. “Of course these things will end!”

  “All I want is some peace, and rain puts me to sleep. All you want is pain.

  I’ll give your thoughts a nod, but I’ll only think of death after I die.

  You’re always talking my salvation and salvation. But again,

  until the last act runs, I’ll hug this life, enjoy this morning rain.”

  “You still think my father lies?” You’ll always cry.

  “I would never say that,” I would say. “But how does he know when the clock will end?”

  And always when I asked that, the cloud melts away. The sunshine reigns again.

  And I would always point this out. And still she would always scoff away my lies.

  And so I was always never surprised that – even when the storms would end –

  of everyone you alone would always still feel the rain.

  Bedlam

  I.

  When I first met her, she told me her life story. She summed it up real nicely too with a “I don’t know what I’m going to do”. She shrugged her shoulders. I felt sorry for her. And that’s how things began.

  II.

  We went to the mall because her straitjacket was getting too small. She asked the cashier why the summer-sky blue jacket was made by the trembling fingers of Chinese slave laborers. The casher said “Relax – the slaves were paid well with American jobs.”

  III.

  She has a smile she can hide behind. It’s gorgeous. She lights up a room – even when she’s not in it. She leaves rolling blackouts in her wake. Flashlights with lots of batteries are recommended.

  IV.

  She tells me she hates everything. I ask her if she hates hate as well. She doesn’t know. She’s mad that I confused her. She’ll get over it – she hates holding grudges.

  V.

  She asks me to put bells on my shoes. I think she wants to keep tabs on me. She agrees. At least my shoes will have a job as being bellhops as I skip to the hotel where she waits for me.

  Benediction for the Outside

  I trust these hands shall never rust

  through a flurry of April dust. As

  an obscure writing hand once said,

  April is indeed the cruelest month,

  sadistic with its teeth, waking the

  world up from a slumber numbered

  in dreams – the only way we

  should count things. Our hearts

  once murmured that count without

  a murmur to its beats.

  I trust we will march through the

  April, that we will still be those thumps

  knocking into the dawn for summer.

  I trust there will be big fish in the pond –

  I’ve been meaning to learn how to walk

  for ages. I trust that since the weak

  learn to speak with kick and fist,

  I will learn to talk.

  I trust I’ll never be what I saw in the morning mirror.

  I can never be the push against my pull –

  the timid madness would rip me down

  the center – antiseptic clean – an equator

  pulled out of shape by the poles.

  And I trust these watches, these clocks,

  these seasons, these calendars, these

  times will change as long as we can

  change them at the registers.

  Bevo

  “I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.”

  -Sylvia Plath

  Bevo, bevi,

  beva…be vamos,

  be light, be

  truth even though

  the old rocky hearts

  won’t budge

  anytime soon –

  fray the shoelace’s gordian

  knot against the stone

  eons in the making.

  Be the dream sequence

  meant for the sleeping –

  against the sun’s rising,

  against the clock’s chiming,

  ringing in the afternoon –

  be whatever you’re meant

  to be, and I’ll be that too –

  I’ll be you. Even if I don’t want to.

  Birds Among the Leaves

  Even in an autumn like

  this one, the leaves never

  really leave the trees.

  Even if the night sticks

  to the trees, a night darker

  and colder than blackberries,

  the face in the trunk

  cracking from the leper frost,

  the leaves still sit, perched

  like birds on the worms

  of branches. The leaves

  even chirp, bouncing

  on their legs of wires, their

  electricity mistaken

  in some cultures for magic.

  But those leaves are

  magic, buzzing and

  crackling, showing the

  rest of the world

  how to stay warm, even during

  the human winter months.

  October 6, 2011

  Black Bile

  My spleen bleeds dirt that autumns

  down and muds about my feet,

  dreaming sleep into

  me, the satisfaction of finish

  so deep not even you

  walking past me could be

  my unravel. The rise thrives

  around me like leeches,

  soaking me down into the

  heart’s far reaches.

  Ah, so this is what sleep is,

  the black fizzing at my eye
s,

  a long sigh drying at my lips.

  A smile teaches the bile

  how to leave, flooding

  like the Nile through

  the barren grasses

  and littered leaves that

  should belong to some

  lone lumberjack’s dreams…

  and it’s so beautiful, it’s

  hard to remember that

  too much black bile lost

  becomes a sleep that’s

  hard for me to wake from.

  Blueberry Magnet

  You’re a blueberry magnet

  tangled in the branches, drawing the

  world in like a portrait while you’re

  bursting like a planet in the orchard.

  Your stomach never goes full on the

  empty air – it fills you like a balloon.

  All your hot air makes you rise so

  now you’re a moon. Now you see the

  stars and you’re hissing them in until you

  light like the sun and sink because you’re

  as heavy as one.

  Exit stage left, the scene’s all done.

  February 18, 2010

  Bo

  One by one, they lost their voices;

  each a record shattered across

  the floor, never to play their

  history lessons again. Stranded

  in the Andaman Islands, they

  starved their numbers into

  a dwindle, time rubbing sand

  into their glassy throats,

  scratching the windows

  until no song could

  look through.

  And although I’m sure their

  language is saved to a book,

  I’m also sure there will

  be no one at the bookstore

  wanting to pick it up.

  Books We Forgot to Write Down

  You could take this book to the funeral

  pyre, melting the papyrus down into

  a liquid which can make the enflamed

  waves leap higher. Yet, when the fire settles,

  I can still pick up a stick and scribble a story

  out of those colding ashes.