Draft(s) Week 13

** Here are two revisions of the same poem. The first one's going in the anthology, yet I feel more "needs doing" before the final portfolio. Thus, the second. I'd love to hear what you all think. I know many of you have commented before that you feel the draft begs for more detail surrounding the "you." Well, don't know if that's happening--any suggestions on how to circumvent that?**

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South Street

From the kitchen window, a car and a tree
together, an invective against physics,
all hiss and autumn foliage. You lie in bed,
victim to a merciless sleep, your hair awash
in the blue-tinted sound of sirens.

How they didn’t wake you is a mystery
large as the moon, which installed itself
over South Street in this noir version.
For we’ve known each other too long,
swallowing each other like mirrors,
to believe in some fateful union.

Opening another beer, I advocated
for a detached calm—an accurate want,
a vision of myself somewhere in that marriage
of shattered oak and metal. While the moon,
still hanging there like a dead clock, refused
to offer South Street any premise of color.



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A Car Hits A Tree On South Street

From my kitchen window, the brutal embrace
of a car and a tree is an invective against physics.
You're in bed, surrendered to a merciless sleep,
and the blue-tinted sound of sirens stains our walls.

How they didn't wake you is a mystery
the size of the moon, which, like a dead clock,
hung over South Street. We've known each other too long
and I've swallowed my image of you like a mirror.

Opening my last beer, the total grandeur
of the space between us washes against me
like the sea into a pier. Gazing out the kitchen window,
I want to be that machine crushed to the trunk of you.

Draft 3 Week 13

Plague

The year was long and summer
imposed itself on us like an obligation,
I remember the whole town seemed to sink under the weight of it.

July brought with it a recombinant, orange haze
that swarmed the streets in the afternoon, and even the platoons
of teenagers had conceded their parking-lot jurisdiction
to the indoors.

That summer you were like a factory, and
I was your column of smoke: the pollution
of your machine.

At night, I walk up the road to the abandoned industrial park,
past the mounds of twisted rubble and old conduits
strung-out along the embankments of the company lake.

This town will wear you down.

Draft 3 week 12

On South Street There Was An Accident

I remember seeing it through the kitchen window:
someone's car and a tree, clenched together
in an invective against physics, all hissing
and weird.
That night, the moon installed itself over South Street
and everything was a black & white version of itself.
Dinner was on the stove. It too, hissing
and weird.

Fueled by a beery logic, I advocated for a detatched
responsibility--an accurate want, like a vision of
myself out there in that marriage of shattered oak
and lonely metal.
The moon still up there like a dead clock.
South Street still refusing the premise of color.

You lie in bed, once again victim to a merciless
form of sleep, your blackish hair inhaling the blue-tinted
sounds of sirens.
I wonder, did they ever wake you?

We've known each other too long,
swallowing each other like mirrors on
a dazed planet.

Draft. Week 11

The Foreigners

The year was long,

and the summer hung

over us like your father’s shotgun.

When July reared its drowsy head

our minds were flooded with irreducible patterns.

We interpreted phrases and made connections,

orchestrating a painfully complicated theory

about rivers.

You were a factory: and I

was your column of smoke,

tumbling, full and dark,

like blackstrap into the noontime haze.  

I realize, now, that I have misspent too much time

closely examining the controlled melancholy

of a ticking wristwatch. 

 

Draft 1 Week 10

**I'm still at work on this one. The last stanza needs work**

Adventures Close To Home

Here in the reluctant hills of Five A.M.

the skies are always that same indeterminate pallor—

a gray glaze injected into the morning’s undying geography…

Like you, the night must now retrace its steps,

regather overlooked information, discard old hulls,

and unravel those tangled versions of itself.

And so, you stumble toward home, unauthorized,

feeling like some displaced poacher—a corrupt official

with the all the wrong documents, forgetting what side he’s on…

The filtered halflight starts again its ancient brickwork,

spreading across Dawn’s bearded foothills like a rumor.

Haven’t you been here before?

Right there’s the house you grew up in,

can’t you hear father’s old shortwave radio?

Can’t you smell your high school now?

And Kathleen’s nightgown…

Draft. Week 10.

Here in the reluctant hills of five a.m.

the skies are always that same colorless hue—

an indeterminate pallor, a gray glaze injected 

into morning’s undying geography.

Like you, the night must now retrace its steps,

regather overlooked information, discard old hulls,

and unravel those tangled versions of itself.

Yes, these are the same agonizing foothills

of the forgotten things on earth. An old briefcase  

and the smell of high school. Kathleen’s nightgown

lies blurred beside your first beer. Welcome back.  

Junkyard Quotes Week 9

"Life is integrated" - Don Van Vliet

"You gone need somebody on your bond" - Blind Willie Johnson


"I ain't got no use for your red rocking chair"- Doc Boggs