by James Welsh
clay bark of the tree that once arched
like architecture over the forest,
the forest under which the deer
and beers once marched – the march
where the winter receded, a change
that was bureaucratically needed –
and so spring sprang forth in hearts.
That desk’s writing surface is far from
perfect. True. It shows off all those
deep, subconscious intentions, all because
I write with a stony fist and press down
too hard with a pen. And that is my fault –
I press down with my poetry, all because
I want to impress my words in your
your mind so that you can fall in love.
I will only write it if you will only like it.
Nature’s far from perfect, so much
so that it’s hugging the true. Still, I’m
glad my desk is bearing its scars in
those record grooves and scratches,
because if you sleep your eyes and graze
this desk with your fingers – it’s like
you’re running against the tree in which
all those ravens and bluebirds nested.
It’s a static shock that will always linger.
So even though it’s now just a desk – no longer a tree –
it will always be deeply rooted inside me.
Dream Weave
She looms up our dreams into patterns
we love to understand.
Yet, with two underhands,
she breaks the rudder,
steering us in
a direction we’re not
looking for. She said
it was the wind’s fault,
knowing how she’ll reap the windfall
she seeded and irrigated
with waterfalls just to make sure
her lies thrive, growing into roses, the
thorns cutting our skin like knives,
letting corrupt air in and blood out
in transactions only the thorn determines
when the time comes. And still we rush
away with your answers, never
bothering to question answers
for we’re only too gladden to happen
upon an answer to think to question
the stranger who hands out the
solution like dollars to the poor on the
coldest Christmas Eve
since records started being kept
in 1864 when our nation
wasn’t even sure to keep the word
“united” in USA anymore since
we were at war with ourselves
and the only thing the North
and South had in common
was that their armies were built on the
backs of the poor who could
not afford to bribe themselves
off those battlefields where
the soldiers wield bayonets
and cavalry horses neighed their death
and dying soldiers called out
for their mothers and their lovers
and prayed beneath their final breath.
Dreaming Muddy Cappuccinos
All you could dream of were
muddy cappuccinos and she
smiled at the thought of bone
marbled homes just south
of paradise and he got lost
in the thoughts of sports cars
spitting poison as they lapped
up the californian highways
and he daydreamed a thousand
loves with a thousand girls and
paying for it all with a newspaper
coupon and she imagined
foamy champagne and he
wondered how much air
you can cut with speedboat
and you dreamed of mixing
up the dinners you need with
the logos you want.
Drenched in Windchimes
For too many years, I’ve gathered moss
here, drenched in dry windchimes,
which crumble into dust at the mere
whisper of a gust –
but though I could not
have caused myself, I could still
pause and draw myself into a new
painting for the gallery –
but how can I erase the awful
and redraw the good shine into
my body when even my own
paints are humbled by
the troubles of these ages?
Driving By An Amish Couple
We drive past their buggy
so quickly, it is hard to
see them – their colors blend
in so easily with the bales
of hay, the Lancaster timber,
the cattle with their
firsthand leather jackets.
He sits in his wooden seat
like a man who’s spent a life
in the fields, a man who’s
been built by sunbeams
of steel. But if he’s stamped
with iron, then what does
he wear for his armor? He
could wear his Bible as a
breastplate, but that wouldn’t
work. True, his God may
have written it, but his God,
for some reason, chose to write
the important things down
on flammable paper.
The lady wears her hair
as plain as the sunlight creeping
through the morning clouds.
She’s so pale and thin, it’s like
looking through a window at
something else: perhaps
what we used to be, perhaps
what we might become.
August 25, 2011
Drowning Lessons
I’m at the trough, my head
down in prayer like the others,
forcing down the pints –
my medicine – my bloody lips
tasting the murk before
my tongue ever does.
Man next to me takes a
moment to stop drowning –
he comes up for air,
he tells me, “Who would
have thought a rough
night could taste so smooth?”
I agree – I can drown to that.
I mean, if his Jesus turned
the water to wine, who says
that we can’t learn to swim
in the bottles? I think I’ll
save that question, though,
for when I have the answer.
November 6, 2011
Dry Rain
Rain's the static greying the
hairs in the painted window –
until all's lightwhite like a
mattress resting on the floor.
Old man gone. I close the
blinds with a cold hand,
my fingers wet with the
chill of August's rain. The rust
strains, the house's
strutting lames into a shuffle,
the rain ruffling the
palm tree leaves like feathers.
The eaves are all streams,
greening the cream paint.
I already forget what the sunshine
looks like, although it's been ten
minutes since it stopped raining.
August 5, 2010
East River Mythology
I – Brooklyn Bridge
In these torn calendar pages since August,
we’ve watched that shuffle of suns parading
into the East, splashing into the
unforgiven murk. All of those dives
of orange live longer than the darkness
does, throttling the river’s dusky
currents against the mercurial rust
Only against rock can waves grow taller.
Sometimes – when we look through
your kitchen window at just the right
moment – we can see flickers of that
citric electricity branching through
the thickwick water – it’s a fine
live death. Who would’ve ever
thought that the hydrologist would
have made gold before
the alchemist ever did?
And still more and more raw
temper nuzzles against
the steel, dredging a firebed
from the bottom – a mattress
that becomes brighter than
Manhattan as if by magic.
It’s one of those warm beds
in the winter months that –
as soon as you hit it – you
crush into a crater, stitched
into the fabric.
The only time we ever –
even vaguely – wish we’re forgotten.
II – Manhattan Bridge
All the planets – all of those wandering stars –
hang like swollen grapes, suspended. Each
a globe at its edges, nectar in its stomach.
Suspended until they’re ripened, splashing
and swirling invisible with this horizon,
mixing with the currents until the taste
remains only in our urgent imagination.
The clock on the kitchen wall – its hour
hand is a sharp karate, reaping the sky
down because even those stars can
be blown out.
My watch – the one that’s
always breaking – is the breath that
blasts them down. Breath is breeze
and breeze is whatever tomorrow is
supposed to mean.
I mean, I dream
that we’re not the sacrificial herd
but we’re instead the contract tapped
out with invisible ink. Ink that –
when it dribbles – gives us swift
sprints of inspiration. A contract
held together with a morse rhythm –
a rhythm heard by the blind men
and felt by the deaf women.
The whole march down to earth
from heaven is nothing but a meeting
for us, and the stretched hours are our minutes.
Our vows are our constants, leading
us to the end of some run-on,
fragmented sentence.
III – Williamsburg Bridge
But the river is our sea and our sea is our
peace. It’s all a deep beckon, all of those
waves waving us on with their curves
of hand, a sleigh to some, to others a
sleight that’s sprayed and
slain the weaker men.
It’s pitch – it pitches
and crescendos
in more shades of black
than they taught us in art
class in grade school.
It’s a crest – a crust of some
infinite loaf, darker than
buttered pumpernickel.
The water’s stiller than mirrors although
the boats can never see themselves in
their wakes. And the tide’s malnourished,
rolling more like the lines on a seashell –
and the piers all along the shores
are their collectors. Hobbyists trading
with all of the wharfs in Portugal and Maine,
in Honolulu and Sydney, until all
gets lost and confused and you don’t
know whose baseball cards are whose.
Everything’s a variable then in those
churned moments – all you can hope
for is an expanse of unknowns, but
all you really get is a sea of shellfish
clenching onto the night
tighter than scallops.
IV – Queensboro Bridge
The Earth’s curves make for the
straightest lines sometimes. On
the dryer nights, that is. Even in
darkness, you can hear the rubber
fog being stretched bulimic, bursting
like pipes of fireworks. But the
4ths of July just make day of the
nights – the green days, the red
ones, the orange and too many others
for me to mention.
But here, here is where
the fog bursts into the
word mirage. The dictionary has
its definition, but no one believes
it – everyone just makes their own.
You say you can only see
the foglights of Manhattan, but
all I can see is Eden, the sprigs
swigging drunkenly off the ground,
sighing hotwhite seedlings that
may dance flagrant but
smell ohso fragrant, enough
to turn you into a sneeze. These
fields are all sparrow, seedeaters
down to their last sunlit veneration.
The tornado of laces tightens on all
of us trapped in the corset, closing
us in as we gasp more from the thrill
and less from the reflex. We’re all
hourglass figures, numbers as infinite
as the times you flip us like a page. Yes,
we might be as black and white as
justice, but we’re all swans beneath the
dabs of pigment.
Still, we’re cygnets
on the water when
we want to be that foam,
gliding as if puffed,
glowing as if smoked.
V – Triborough Bridge
We’re swimming now like dolphin
fins, homing for all of the homes
we’ve never been, hearths that are
vanished – never vanquished – into
the distance like a cheshire grin.
The tide is a thick one, bouncing us back
and forth between Manhattan and
Astoria – we’re embers tossed
like a good game of ball between
the flames. There is nothing fair to
nature’s blind justice – there is
a tyrant working late nights
at the democracy – rustling up
good newspapers for some and a
funeral shoulder for others.
Can’t you see the
rosy cheeks in the
skyline?
Ashen but healthy,
vibrant?
Whether those flowers taste like
medicine or perfume, it’s all
good luck to me and I burn
for it, all of that
juniper steam that teaches
me how to swim a stroke harder,
a breath faster. I can hear
immortality in our children’s
giggles, laughter that’s too
diamond for even the sharpest
harvest moon to cut through.
But all I real
ly want from you
is to get lost until no one
can hear me cry mayday.
April 23, 2011
Easter White Pages
She hasn’t believed in gravity for years –
so now she’s good and stretched out
like gum baptized inside the bored mouth.
She wants to hold her head tall for her God
although she could have found Him
in all the faces she walked past on the street –
all of them are mirrors with even clearer eyes.
She’s afraid to touch me when I say I’m illiterate
with a Bible. Afraid to touch me like I’m already lava.
She doesn’t let me finish – she doesn’t let me say
I read the good book – the phone book.
I’ve already read through B and I will keep on reading,
until there’s no longer a stranger in this city,
until I laugh with millions for family.
February 4, 2011
Encyclopedia Sounds
You and your wine freckles
spill out on the bedsheets of
milk cream, and here I thought
I wasn’t supposed to feel
anything inside of dreams like these.
You’re a gorgeous persuasion,
you know, dragging me in with your
siren moan, tiring my bones
from the inside-out, driving
my feet down to bald tires.
The covers crackle
through the solstice
night like dried timber –
it’s a cold fire.
The rustling guzzles
in all the days we forgot.
And now we’re back on the road,
and love’s the engine
and nothing more.
September 18, 2010
Englyns
I limp and melt like wax, every flame
wears my name down to flat
puddles – cold of love – which tax
the world slower than clock ticks…
This dirt shoveled on my wings, I feel these
feathers freeze up like wind –
but as I breathe dirt, I sing
for the world that buries me…
I dropped my heart down the stairs,
watched it break as shards to share
with a world picked clean of fair-eyed muses –
shouldn’t have had that pear…
I once slept in a bed of dusty stars.
Sure, we all dream such love –
we just cannot grab such doves.
But I have falconer’s gloves…
You wore Sunday eyes for me
and though you think they’re lovely,
I know with those you can’t see…
I dreamt worlds onto paper,
and saved them all for later
when my world’s up in vapors.
Essay on Argument
We’re running on these sentences, feet swaying on the words.