Work in Progress

Her fingers rested for minutes on home row while she closed her eyes, trying to imagine what she might write. Too many objects cluttered her desk: a mug of cold coffee, a glass of day-old water, mail piled up throughout the week, the Oxford Dictionary of Current English. One articulate line and she could finally move her fingers, but her mind wandered, and every thought was fragmented by the interruption of others. Her body remained still, too still, she thought. She opened her eyes, stood up, reached her small hands above her head to stretch her fingers, her wrists, her shoulders, arching her back, feeling the tension in her muscles loosen. When she heard the buzz from the dryer in the basement, one floor below her, she said, "Thank God," happily taken away from the glaring computer screen to a more physical task.

Rough Drafts

Slowly these pages break into a draft
I must edit for quality.
There are unclear lines
and here, an imbroglio,
a direct proposal to pack
each page with ambiguous symbols.
Were my words ready for the public,
were grace upon my pen and an echo
reaching back to me from the future
of my finished work,
I would not so struggle to perfect
these very beginnings.

Animate

     He leans against the small, white porcelain pedestal sink, his palms pressed into the rounded corners. The reflection of his deep, brown eyes staring straight back at him, his hair a mess of dark, straight strands criss-crossed on the top of his head, thick chunks falling at a slant across his forehead, just touching the top of his eyebrows. Thick stubble beginning to form the shadow of a beard along his jaw line and chin and connecting to the dark hairs along his upper lip. He looks closely at every detail, focusing again on his eyes, trying to see something in them, a soul, perhaps, something more the his human self. Perhaps a god. But the more he stares the less he sees of anything, the less soul, the less human. His eyes become only an object of his being. There is color. No, there is not even color, but light. Light reflecting back to his vision what he perceives as color. Nothing real, only reflection, only deception, only the way his brain is wired to see such things as he sees them. “Fuck,” he says, his voice deep, dry, with a slight rasp. He has leaned too long, his back and shoulder blades stiff from holding the pose.
     Breakfast is a dark piece of toast with a thick spread of creamy Jiff over the top. This kitchen is a dim, morning blue. He can see through the thin slits between each closed slat of the forest green blinds over the window above the kitchen sink that it is a sunny summer day. Even without pulling down the string to lift the blinds up, he can tell that there is not one cloud in that bright blue sky. It is eleven o’clock in the morning, but he is still only in his boxer shorts, an old pair with a small hole torn along the seam of the crotch. It is the end of June, but he is still thinking about his final paper for Philosophy in Literature. He ended it all wrong. He should have made the conclusion clearer. It was an A paper, but the end was all wrong. Cliché, even. Typical, at least. He bites into the soft peanut butter and the crunchy toast. Perfectly contrasted complements.

Working Outlets

Whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette.
Green. Yellow. Red. Wheels rolling to Stop. Or.
What some call miracles. I can only see good. Naivety.
I can only see in fractions, fractured glass, empty spaces.

We call it a waterfall, but waters fall. That sheet of rushing white
is not whole. Even the sky, blue, broken up by cloud. Sun. Moon.
Gasses. Heat. Turmoil of the solar system. Turmoil of the Sol.

Whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette.
Or. The repetition and incorrect use of punctuation to identify
experiment. I can only see the red heart of that paper-rolled tobacco.
Pulse. A breathing body. Miracle. I can only see so far inside.

Then the car becomes a top, spinning. And my head whirls.
There are colors in the empty spaces, broken up by cloud.
Someone had the correct spelling for the word I was thinking, but

whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette.
I identified the object flying through space. Rim. Headlight. Mirror.
An enactment of the self looking upon the self as the self objectifies.
The tip of a finger inside a splinter of reflective glass.

Wonder is not the same as wander, but there are times I wander when wondering.
Turmoil of the soul. Traffic light. Lamppost. We call it The Fall, but
falls give rise to differences. That of the difference between word & object.

Whether it be the spiraling of smoke drifting up from a cigarette
and up to where God can breath earth into his ever expanding lungs. Or.
What we call a miracle. God. Breathing. Life. Into. The man on
the fourth floor of the nearest hospital whose life depends on working outlets.

I still see wonder in the unfinished piece of piano music. One
minor chord in the chorus. The moment before. Yellow.
Pulse. The movement forward, into... Unidentified space.

Cabin

Sometimes I take the three and a half hour drive to my cabin up north, lie outside on the overgrown grass, look up watching the sky move, close my eyes, and imagine disappearing into the earth. One, maybe two days on the weekend I have time to dream of existing elsewhere. On a Friday, I leave right from work at 4:59pm. I don’t even stop to eat. I wake up ten minutes early that morning to fill the tank. When I arrive, the sky is dark and clear. The stars are many and bright. I lie there on the cool grass, still in my $400 Armani, and watch the stars blink. One falls. One shoots across the sky. But finally, for the first time this week I am not in motion. I am still, and if I wanted to I could lie here until earth began to turn toward the sun, until light began to press into my eyelids, until my body began to feel the heat of those glorious rays.

Work Schedule

The schedule said I was to be into work by
the time written beside my name
but my name was mispelled so I wasn't

sure if I was me or if I was the same person
listed who was to be
in at the time written beside the name
that wasn't mine, but might have been.

The Story of the Distance Between Two Falling Objects: Backdrop for What's Really Going On in the Mind of the Writer

There is more poetry than prose

here.
I

wonder why. I sigh
and I wonder

why.

Why, when for so long I bathed page after page in phrase after phrase, paragraphs streching across the plane, do I now find myself breaking

off
words here and there
letting
them
fall vertically, like
something you watch
slipping off the edge of a building

or

a cliff?
A body, perhaps, or

a leaf.

I once wrote a single word in pencil on a papery brown leaf. And that word became more beautiful to me than any other word I've ever written or read.

One.

Word.

Only mathematicians and scientists can truly appreciate a poem for its challenging angles and meter. Measuring it's shape and depth with special tools that have names I can write but not pronounce.

What happened to the story I was telling about my love affair with poetry? What will prose say when she finds out that all long my love for her was preparing me for my love for the other? Him? Her tears will be made of the wind that pushes down power lines and trees. Leaves falling everywhere, and sparks spitting off wires in a crisp, orange glow. Have I yet, successfully, measured meaning and expressed it to you clearly in chart-- a graph, a diagram? Why do you return to me, here, you ask, within the framework of a poetic form? "You had no where else to go from falling, being too far from the building to reach out to a ledge or rail. Your body lands here," I say. Here, where I will bleed to death. There will be red on your pages now. "You are wrong about me. I would never let you die, not in the story I tell. In my story you are a hero with wings that, until just now, you didn't know you had." I am your fallen-- "No, not fallen, falling. You are my falling--" Angel. 

From one angle
it seems

from another
it is

Not many can tell the difference

anymore.

Not even the engineers with their unpronounceable tools.

What tool makes the shape of this

less

awkward?

The word: window.

Through which I watched you wonder at each word, your fingers hesitating to strike a key. You could never decide between SPACE or ENTER. 

Yes, I remember you there, hovering in the space between the sill and the pane, but even when I whispered your name, sending soft words out onto the wind, you would never

ENTER. 

I'm Not Real

     Listening to music while walking, life becomes a movie. The street, the set. The wind, fans spinning at high speeds behind me, messing my hair. The people I pass, characters, extras to set the scene while the credits roll. The leaves fluttering like butterfly wings can't be real, nor I. My glossy lips closed, the calm look on my face, the quick pace to my step, the corners of my mouth turning up just slightly to smile, acknowledge the presence of a man and a woman in business suits a few feet down from the entrance to The City Center, each cupping a hand around the end of a cigarette. I don't hear the click of the lighter, but I see the flame appear, rising just above their C-shaped hand, and the definition in their cheekbones as they take in the drag. And every movement of every extra, every swing of my arms and step forward, every line of cars that pass seemingly so silently become filled with meaning interpreted by the music moving through tiny speakers and into my mind.
     I begin to think of myself as a character walking in and out of people's lives as I pass. What does the wind look like pushing my short hair forward, up, sideways, a few strands in my face?

Letter

I have not yet opened the letter
you gave me.

It sits on my desk beside the keyboard
I am typing a letter to you upon.

I know what you will say, what
you have said already, what

you want me to know, but
there are many pages there, and

before I read your words, before
I am influenced by your lines

I must sit and type this to you,
ma cherie amour.

I lift the pages you have sent me,
4 small pieces of paper folded  in 3.

A light, but felt weight in lifting.
A word I catch in the middle of a paragraph:

"Forever"

Another:

"Never"

And the phrase:

"What did you imagine we'd become?"

You see, I need not read more. I need
only finish my letter to you, fold it in three,

place the single page in an evelope,

and toss it into the fire place,

let the flames lick the seal,

burn through each word,

and turn to cool ash your pages

and mine.

More Reasons for More Woods

More words make more woods.
More trees. More leaves. More branches
reaching toward sun, sky, and one
another.

More words make more mistakes.
More wounds. More angry silences,
walking through more woods with more
thoughts

on reasons why one misplaced syllable makes
so strange the sound of a word.

What were the words again
that hurt me so that I slammed the door
hard to emphasize the sound
of my anger

and went walking
barefoot in the grass, bending
to touch water trickling over
large, moss-covered stones,

gathering dry sticks for kindling
and thick logs?

Returning, I say: Here are the limbs
and logs I gathered
to re-kindle the fire that surely
must by now be nearly going
out.

Letters to Penelope

     I had plans for this morning. A bicycle chain to replace. Leaves to burn. A letter to write to Penelope. Plans to work with my hands, lifting, re-attaching, opening and closing. I wanted to write the letter last, as a reward for all of my hard work, to relax. But the telephone rang while I was drinking coffee and reading the local paper. The telephone rang just as I finished the sentence: ...told authorities that writing the suicide note was her way of coping with "the tragic event."
    

Elementary Mathematics and Language Arts & Crafts

Opening and closing my hand
I feel words forming in them

The last bright star at the end
of the day goes down, down, down.
Now the entire town is orange and
on fire

Each letter melts like an M&M
I am the S to my M, and U
is between them, not "them"

"Them" sandwiches E.

He could have said anything
and I would have opened and closed my mouth
over his.

The clock blinks midnight in red.
It's a new machine, not yet set.

I have a word in my hand for you
and some numbers, too.
Will you, will you recieve them now, or me?

I am in the service of M,
but U is before, and I am S

Some of us crouch down to pick up
a torn piece of notebook paper from blacktop or
concrete sidewalks, then read the words.

I cut out and count each letter as they fall.
I keep a small pair of children's scissors in my back pocket
and a pocket notebook tucked between
my arm and side.

I rearrange the letters, dismantling their orignal meaning
to mean something new, something else, something
other than what they meant once.

And once the recreation's complete
I read them aloud to people crossing streets
at intersections, or counting down the blinking
red hand and numbers.