you know me as a stranger

This Is How They Talk

There’s another part, always,
that doesn’t want to go,
a shape more practiced
than my humble sincerities,
my tilted resolutions.

I forget to relax my knees,
That I should soften my jaw,
take lessons from the glass,
from the sidelong blurs,
and oblong silhouettes;

take in the everyday words
That clatter around my body.
I should brush against these threads,
learn their girth and texture.

This is how they move,
in great thrusts, driven
by asteroids and thunder.

This is how they talk,
in echos and gasps,
looking right at you.

Can you take comfort in the reliability of your regret?

I used to believe that people never change, but I was a different person then.

I will momentarily relax the furrow in my brow, while looking almost directly at you. That is how I’ll make it obvious that I welcome you.

Every time you tell me a story of your day, I wonder why you don’t give it a title, call it a poem.

Timber

Kicking rocks in a wind tunnel path

A path I never walk,

The domain of busboys with cigarettes

Of foggy file clerk windows.

Something wobbles in me.

It’s probably the heat.

I never am right for the weather.

Walking on Fifth I watched

The city buildings drifting

Over one another,

And I fell out of place,

Suddenly a child,

Pulled into the red and black boxes,

Shut away in the slanting light-

Having known only open fields-

To pine away for my boyhood,

Like it’s a place I can return to.

My youth is a railroad town;

I scrape my heels on a gravel road,

Shewing the droning insects,

Leap a shallow ditch

To swat aside the timber

And find a hidden pond

That maybe no one knew was there.

I’m like three people: one talking another out of ever accomplishing anything, while a third steps in too late and berates me for listening to an idiot.

Require the Mountain

It’s surreal to see my father

behaving like an elderly man.

Even now he doesn’t look the part.

The grey is only just settling

into his proudly groomed-back hair.

But he feels closer to his end

than his strong jaw conveys.

He anticipates it eagerly, prefers it

over his rusting facade of life.


He bought a pistol some years ago,

for protection he said, but I think

he had only one target in mind.

I think a part of him thrills

at the turn his body has taken.

Finally a view to the end,

a release that won’t require

the mountain of courage needed

to draw back a small crescent of steel.

They’re just thoughts. You don’t have to mean them.

Life wouldn’t be so hard if we all got together and agreed to go easy on each other.

Falls

Don’t turn your eyes

You’re here to keep me safe

From the falls and breaks

And trains and wolves

I know will come

You’re invisible to me

But don’t be so bold

I can always tell

When the breadth of sky

And weight of the sun

Are meant just for me

If not for a well-shaped skull, I would never have known the joys of mediocre love.