Somewhere Between a Boat and a Motel (Is a World You’ll Never Know)

The fireplace heaves light

into the room. The two ebb

and flow with covalent pneuma. The pitter

patter of fire sprites waltz each other up

and down the walls. They labor my breath,

skew my senses. The room slowly seduces.

I look to you. A waning bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon

clings to flicker.

Ebb and flow unite to ignite.

The trees of our knowledge burn with the ages

but blazes are sages and they whisper rebirth

and suddenly you are the earth, of red clay and

I am the sun. We meet in firmament. The bottle is done and

I’m floating in a sea of Iris…

Trapped in the din of your eyes, crushing wine dark hues,

trying to find the surface. Breathe! Final release, I gasp urgently between your lips.

…now Osiris,

I have begun. The bottle floats

empty, drunk off me, because giving is the one true high.

The orchid of your spine drapes itself over

the bed, unfurling its purchase into hot dark folds.

Your hips lay

encased in shaded sheets. The fire bathes

your face in light. Your eyes shout

back, irreverent to flicker monopolies.

You rise up, kiss me on the forehead

and then the neck. You whisper into my ear “Goodnight”

and let the night claim you. The rise

and fall of your breath gives a slow metronomic backbeat to the violent

improvisations of fire crackle.

I stay up and watch the flickering waves paint four walls.

Mourning

That splashing orange roar,

that which came before.

The sun slips through slits

in coffee filter curtains to

slosh through sheets of

still-life shade, that

navy sno-cone din that

eeks from corner to creak

and sinks itself to static chills

from frosted sills.

Light descends through

iced din as honey; it

pools itself in creviced

firmamental folds. The sun

scoops white-hot

ice cream novas from the

thick wine dark blankets.

She bids my lashes to shirk

sleep’s shroud and bade

my mind to draw itself up

by the roots, from

cool dirt loose dreams and

unfurl itself upon

the tightening seams, that

warm pulp of morning’s first gaze.

The room revives itself in dawn’s

scrutiny, cast in pastel light.

Impressions are seduced from

skewed-coherence

and swayed to wrench and twist

themselves into

patterned floral paintings, into stiff

double-bed skirts, and into smolder

laced logs.

That splashing orange roar,

that which came before.

Before things were cast in what they are instead of what they are not.

Before worlds enjambed borders by bedpost, right justified to the rising sun.

I sink with sighs and compel these thick dark folds. That they might reclaim me from sunburst tarnish.

That She Might Bond to Me, Covalently

I held Riley in my arms…

I flew, carving star flecked heavens

and etching wild grass to triumph underfoot.

Of the east I beckoned the rise. And

of the west I bade the set.

I gasped streams that ebbed breath

and shouted rocks that rose to fortress.

I gnarled my wrists to branches

and twisted my toes to roots. I stood erect,

a tree of knowledge,

that some might be spared,

that the stiff chutes of arteries might bear life,

that the veins then might imbibe death.

Then I ripped my childhood

into strips. I

wove them, tattered, and

adorned them, scattered,

around her neck,

that she might hold my

childhood as her own,

a world with four walls.

I held Riley in my arms as she wheezed through her breathing apparatus.

She will never heed the lessons of the circle hole and the square peg,

it’s that wisdom that eludes me now. I’m whispering triangles and cussing squares,

I will not see it.

The essence of fluorescence holds me taut, now,

a tree of false fruit. That I may be His equal. That God

may enter her lungs and do anything save choke.

She coughs on a breath, We forgot how make air small enough for her.

We shouldn’t have rested on the seventh.

The pegs just won’t fit. Suddenly I’m eight and in preschool and crying, and she never will be.

How I Read 'The Call of the Wild' by Jack London

The lamp glow settles on my father, etched

in browns and grays. He exhales, a nicotine

taint, and glances around.

He looks up, scratches his face, looks

down, closes the book. He leans back

and spills shadows up the wall, the oak

chair whining. He notices me.

I lay, PJed. Settled restless creature

under flannel. My face not quite eclipsed, I sneak

peeks back, encased in childhood.

Brendan's sprawled near, eyes shut too

tightly. A faker. He listens motionlessly. His favorite

hand-me-down bares midriff.

Mom sneaks yawns off on the couch. A dog-eared

Dean Koontz teepees her throat, rises and falls with slowing

sinking breath. Her blinks elongate

as Jay Leno fades to a dull white roar

the moment endures.

Four people, being. Static potential. A house aflame

with the intricate mundane.

Dad breaks it, stands. He leans over and

kisses me on the forehead. His beard makes me

kick out the willies, 's' sounds on sheets

cast in shade. He whispers “Goodnight” and

reaches for the lamp.

Darkness pours in with a click.

I hear him rustle his way out. Cars

whir outside. Headlights bathe his spine

as he sinks from the room.

I lay there, my thoughts enjambed,

justified around a four-walled world. House creaks

and groans coo me. They seduce roots that

ground me. Plant me at home years after the harvest.