Metaphors In Clouds.

He thinks she is the woman in the tomb.
I don't know the name of the tomb.
Someone brought me a newspaper and stuck it in the mailbox.
The wildflower lays broken on the sidewalk; people tiptoe through these lies.
I have ideas, they whisper in my head. Some people think they know what they don't
know, that their wives and husbands adore them. Then, changes shift forms,
things are moved to change-someone gets a job; someone loses a friend; a new one comes
into focus, comes into the picture. This is the picture I didn't know about,
I couldn't understand about that was looking back at me right from the start.

All of these people are like lawn gnomes. Things are gifts in the dark. I am not
a miracle worker, a slave, a Barbie; I am not your politician, someone to strike the dragon in the throat-
I am the one who saves the dragon, I am the shadow in the gust of wind that moves
through the trees, the apes are free, they have come to seek their revenge.

I don't know where my father puts his glass towns. I don't know where the light
is as it shines through the trees.

I know the forgiveness, in my mind. It is not in my heart. My anger is vast,
like the ocean, the night sky is flung away from me.

I look out of my window. My hair is flung back from my face. I close my eyes,
and think soft things. Sometimes, I think about what it would be like,
if the government actually fixed things, read metaphors in the clouds
and the sidewalks of the world. How large the world is. How real. It is not safe from my father, my lover, my enemy. Some people are enemies. Usually, they are small like bulbs of flowers.

Sometimes, a person jumps out from a bush to scare school children.

Life mocks everyone.

Then, the tomb is brought back out again. My mother is no longer here to take my hand. I don't remember her hand. I remember a blank wall, staring time, memories are latched to ghosts. Ghosts that I have not seen, the tomb is like a word.

I don't want people to talk about me behind my back, to fuel hunger in my veins-
these veins are red, distorted as time. Time comes back.

Don't Dwell.

A gazillion stars you said were words,
Wrapped in your arms, the flowers you picked
Strewn out into the relentless universe.
You said you would be home by noon.
You said you were not done working at Walmart’s,
Two women named Diane as cashiers.
You bought a package of cigarettes;
You spoke to the woman who spoke Spanish.
I called my mother on the telephone and she
Wrote down special names;
Specific dates and times related to Vietnam.
She said she didn’t like Vietnam War
Anymore,
Didn’t like the old ghosts living in her closet
And shooed them away.
She said it was long past their time.
She said nothing was more flushed than
The familiar face of rage,
Spilled out lonely and naked on dirt rags.
We bought a couple of washcloths at Walmart,
And everything was coming into place.
Her mind was good, and destiny was not done.
She knocked on the doors of nursing homes,
And told us we couldn’t walk,
Couldn’t talk, find things in a lily of the field.
My mind was made up.
I would work on Broadway. I would sing and act
And freshen myself up to live daily,
My mouth pursed slightly, singing
A bad song.
You said you would come to bed.
You said a lot of things.
You were working on your backswing.
You were pacing up and down the stairs.
The house was old and seemed to swallow people.
The house was old and it seemed to swallow horns.
A gazillion stars you said were words.
Broken and plucking on strings.
The stars are pinpoints of eyes.
They are of the old worlds.
The laughter that is beaten dead.
The man that could not find the time to make others
Laugh.
The calmness of it; the other side of the ice,
The earth that spoke to people who listened,
And sighed quietly as the world slept.