Because I could be written anywhere, 
I loved the hard surface of the blade, 
my name carved into barn doors, desktops, 
the peeled face of a shag-bark hickory.
I pressed my whole weight into it, letters

grooved deep as the empty 
field rows along Tri-Lakes where I’d seen 
my cousin Nick buried in ground so hard 
they had to heat the dirt with lamps 
before they could dig. I gutted squirrels

my grandmother fried, hanging 
skins from the window, 
and with the same knife gouged a B 
at the base of the frozen creek bank, 
the season breaking

like the rose our teacher, Miss Jane, 
dipped in nitrogen so it would shatter. 
There were more atoms, she claimed, 
in the letter O, than people in the entire state. 
I could feel God inside that letter,

the vast sky refigured, buds scrawled 
on the black limbs of trees. 
Trucks carried spring feed down 
Highway 9 as I wove through headstones, 
tracing names in the late frost,

looking for Nick’s plot 
with the wax white roses, 
his lucky fishing lure. I could sense 
him down there, satin-lined, 
curled like the six-toed cat

we’d found bloated in the creek, alive 
with lice and maggots. Sometimes 
I was sure I could hear him, restless, 
waiting for me, the Wabash 
pushing its icy waters, my tongue

humming with the fizz. It never ended, 
that stretch of road snaking back home 
like an artery through my own heart 
where an owl gripped a rat in its claw 
over I-80. I’d put my hands in my pockets

and walk, dreaming of the places I’d go, 
the things I’d do, the dump rising 
to meet me at the edge of town, 
chrome bumpers twisted as the owner 
himself, withered arm swinging a fist.

I waited for something to escape—
mouse darting from a glove box, oil 
from a cracked sump. I could stand 
on a crushed Chevy, feeling it all 
thaw inside me: asphalt

and barbed wire, cows and steaming 
pails of milk, even the graveyard 
rising, new stones nursing old griefs, 
slow bones and winter’s cherry trees 
making their long walk to leaf.

(Source: buzzyrgfwoof)

The last day of 2008 I woke 
wearing the same blue shirt I wore 
driving down through the pines 
to hear Carlos Santana, 
the hills a pale brown near Vallejo 
where Bill Graham’s helicopter crashed 
in the power lines over the marshland.

The shirt hung on a shovel near Big Sur 
smelling of almonds and sulfur 
where I sat one morning reading Chuang Tzu 
trying to understand about the Tao. 
I wore it to feed Amy’s chickens
and wrapped its loose arms 
around my wife, who was smoking 
outside by the mailbox, having swallowed 
a fragment of glass in her coffee 
the Advice Nurse said was most likely harmless, 
trusting the colon’s pulses to pass it 
moment by moment.

We drove back north through Golden Gate Park 
where an alligator once escaped 
into the pond just off Lincoln Drive 
and where Michael Bloomfield OD’d in his car 
near the hall of flowers 
and the Grateful Dead played for free.

We’d like to see them come back again, 
the way Mickey Rourke showed up 
at the Academy Awards interview 
for his role as a broken-down wrestler 
walking the two roads of grief and hilarity, 
the cat’s eye ring on his finger, 
his silver tooth, his rat-goatee 
and wraparound shades, 
weeping into his water glass 
mourning his dead Chihuahua: 
I swear I’d give him the shirt off my back.

Angels don’t come to the reservation. 
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things. 
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing—
death. And death 
eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel 
fly through this valley ever. 
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though—
he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical 
Indian. Sure he had wings, 
jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops, 
kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies. 
Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel. 
Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something—
Nazarene church holds one every December, 
organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder 
Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white. 
Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians. 
Remember what happened last time 
some white god came floating across the ocean? 
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels 
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing 
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups, 
we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and 
‘xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens. 
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be 
     marching you off to 
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.

(Source: poems.com)

I tap-smashed—by mistake?— 
our bedroom window, and rational-
ized it as a large weep-

hole that winter, for a while, at least, 
until the mist from the ends of 
the earth gathered there, and till

glass icicles slivered into our toes 
and fingers too many times 
to ignore any longer—

Do we get the new pane cut 
to be slightly larger or smaller, 
how to remove the old sharp shards

with their dangerous forget-
fulnesses, and how will we fit 
in the glaze and points? This is the kind

of thing your dad knew without thinking, 
but he’s dead now and can’t tell us a thing. 
Even worse, it’s Sunday, the one day

we have to rest as well as work, so … 
Time to wrestle with the new glass 
at long last, and I wake up early,

start to shave: with a swift, near-
knowing stroke, his old razor deftly 
measures a long crisp cut across my neck.

What will stop me now from bleeding 
clear, sharp air? How can an inch 
of trauma measure eternity, ever?

Who was this saint of glass?

(Source: poems.com)

Though blue at a distance, 
the surface is clear 
as gin with a tension 
that can bob you like 
an ice cube. What 
you really want, though, 
is to float below 
in chartreuse light, 
to glide through tonic bubbles 
above the swaying kelp, 
borne along on currents, while 
your heavy body, stranded 
on land, still stumbles 
and gasps. This 
is your true element, 
where predators 
ignore the pinstripe 
of the inedible. 
You’re even 
a Pisces.

Deeper and deeper 
you go, to the bottom, 
fin silt that swirls 
like bourbon in branch water 
to darken the gloom 
where things with gelatin 
wings glow blue 
as a gas flame. 
And this is where 
you want to live 
forever—to grow so 
transparent, so fragile, 
even the weight of the sea 
cannot crush you.

You will be out with friends
when the news of her existence
will be accidentally spilled all over
your bar stool. Respond calmly
as if it was only a change in weather,
a punch line you saw coming.
After your fourth shot of cheap liquor,
leave the image of him kissing another woman
in the toilet.

In the morning, her name will be
in every headline: car crash, robbery, flood.
When he calls you, ignore the hundreds of ropes
untangling themselves in your stomach.
You are the best friend again. He invites
you over for dinner and you say yes
too easily. Remind yourself this isn’t special,
it’s only dinner, everyone has to eat.
When he greets you at the door, do not think
for one second you are the reason
he wore cologne tonight.

In his kitchen, he will hand-feed you
a piece of red pepper. His laugh
will be low and warm and it will make you
feel like candlelight. Do not think this is special.
Do not count on your fingers the number
of freckles you could kiss too easily.
Try to think of pilot lights and olive oil,
not everything you have ever loved about him,
or it will suddenly feel boiling and possible
and so close. You will find her bobby pins
laying innocently on his bathroom sink.
Her bobby pins. They look like the wiry legs
of spiders, splinters of her undressing
in his bed. Do not say anything.
Think of stealing them, wearing them
home in your hair. When he hugs you goodbye,
let him kiss you on the forehead.
Settle for target practice.

At home, you will picture her across town
pressing her fingers into his back
like wet cement. You will wonder
if she looks like you, if you are two bedrooms
in the same house. Did he fall for her features
like rearranged furniture? When he kisses her,
does she taste like wet paint?

You will want to call him.
You will go as far as holding the phone
in your hand, imagine telling him
unimaginable things like you are always
ticking inside of me and I dream of you
more often than I don’t.
My body is a dead language
and you pronounce
each word perfectly.

Do not call him.
Fall asleep to the hum of the VCR.
She must make him happy.
She must be
She must be his favorite place in Minneapolis.
You are a souvenir shop, where he goes
to remember how much people miss him
when he is gone.

Sierra DeMulder, “Unrequited Love Poem”

(via among the pleiades)

(via aliszoob)

How long since you last gazed into a face 
this beautiful, since a face this beautiful 
opened its gaze for you? A full moon couldn’t 
loom any larger, rising late and low 
in hazy autumn, couldn’t fill any 
lake or pool more full than your eye is full, 
holy water rising in the holy well.

You can’t follow a third of what he’s saying, 
his lips moving slow, then fast, then slow, tilting 
his face from seduction into friendliness 
and back again, the words flying fast, birds 
surprised from hedges, the lashes raising 
and lowering their heavy wings, the hair 
a dense cloud stroking and unravelling

over the hill’s brow, the shirt washed to a 
pale soft heft. Behind him in the pub, two 
pipers, one’s lean head shaved down to a shadow, 
self-absorbed, arrogantly serious; 
one curly-haired, wind-blown, gregarious 
and gap-toothed. This one’s different, looks at you, 
at you only, your search-light. Is there danger?

There’s always danger. The pipers pack their 
sticks and bags, the guitarists click shut the doors 
of their cases, the fiddlers raise their bows 
precisely together, the lights go up 
without your seeing. So this is what they once 
called glamour: leave him so much as a ribbon, 
your world can age without you. Water rising in the well.

Outside the high windows of what was once 
our kitchen—before that, a weaver’s room—now a study—
the breeze-bent lilacs continue to wave and sway;

the weeping willow grazes buffalo grass; 
the copper roses blaze and extinguish, 
blaze and extinguish and blaze …

but the peacock that appeared one afternoon 
strutting up and down the back garden’s brick path 
hasn’t been seen again, and was not—

unlike the five tawny owlets 
perched for weeks on a beam of the kitchen portale—
digitally photographed, turned into a screen saver.

Almost everything’s been put on automatic pay 
but on some cloudless nights 
I find my doormat’s openwork rubber

enstarred with a cellophane sheen—
the moon’s monthly bill, 
still in your name.

Dorothy Parker (via libraryland)

Dorthy Parker is my spirit animal

libraryland:

He loved her and she loved him
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and Sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Or everlasting or whatever there was
Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy place
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His word were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assasin’s attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
Her glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon’s gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall
Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other’s face