Stranger Things.

Stranger Things

He asked me why I didn’t come.
He didn’t see me walking ahead, my eyes looking backwards.
Some people claim they don’t know what I’m talking
About; I am a stranger in the mist.

We are a lot like apes in the jungle. We are clouds
In the mist of time. Some things are better than in your eyes.
We are like the lions that roar down the mountains.

I think, therefore, I am. I am missing, I wander down the road,
And look right and left for things unheard. This is destiny,
It is not my friend. I try to be friends. No one wants to be friends.

I try to turn things around. I look up and down. The snakes
Are curled in their dens. Most animals are hibernating, now.
I am not hibernating. I am new, as stuck as glue. Some people wake up
Much too late. Some people see what they want in their dreams.

There’s a child who doesn’t understand what we see. Who aches to be someone
In his dreams. He dreams of tall buildings, and time that marches on,
Up and over waters. And still as stone.

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.

In the Doorway.

Time is in what we tell,
and it waits, floating above shadows above,
in a doorway, on wingless arms,
reaching to the still winds of grace,
the sadness of forgotten and mine.
In the wasteland, the old man toils,
and turns and mutters in his house.
The stories are forgotten in minnows;
and the places are mapped out on walls.
The seeds are for granted.
We are not what we do.
No mistaken is for the shadow,
the place beyond the grass-grown walls,
and the temple that overflows.
Ask them, and ye shall receive.
People waking and people sleep.
We wake and we dream and the dreamer's
wake,
shadows mask rinds of time,
space is continual as a drum.
A drumbeat of yours and mine,
continuous in its tomb.
We use imagination as a quarter,
and our face is veiled in the midst.
We use no forms of communication.
We drill holes in West Virginia,
and Fox Mulder pops out,
quick as a rabbit.
We have not given into ourselves.
The rest mock dangerous exits,
and swift movements are mistaken.
We go and we come.
We exit and we leave.
I am not educated. I am not the working.
I am not the dumb and the worried.
I am the heart that is the heart.
I am the door that is left unopen,
the place between sunlight and the daisies,
that rise out of the darkness of nothing,
into the midnight sun.
It is like being something and nothing.
It is like being an orphan when no one speaks.
The sadness is in the silence.
Our hearts and thoughts are quick as lightning bugs.

Change of the Season.

I mark the change of the
seasons by punching a hole in the wall, by
bringing fresh tomatoes from the garden.
I mark the change of the seasons,
As every day comes as the one before,
As the darkness that wans, the sliver of moon that bends.
The winter months fall because of bitter realizations,
I am forgotten, like a ghost, forgotten for the time
I spent doing good deeds.
I am not a soldier. I wish to be dead, to be stillborn,
To be underground with the others,
The ones who are silent when I walk,
The ones who never say anything bad about me.

Flowers in gardens. Big and little flowers,
Flowers of all kinds.
I trip over my feet as I went up the stairs,
You said you were trying to teach me a lesson,
I know you’re lying.
The bells ring in the distance.
I know what it’s like to be forgotten,
I hear the tolling of bells.
The wind moans, darkness comes,
Steadily, tramping up doors and banging on them.

I mark the change of seasons. Seasons pass, come and go,
Fill up the water hole with pits and shadows.
You scream for baked bread and peaches.
You yell at your pillow. The day has not grown old.
I hear bells ringing.

Just In Case.

Just in case I die before my time,
I leave you with three things:
A jar of clay,
A sculptured pony with a jewel in its eye,
And a blue hairbrush my grandmother
Made for me.

Just in case I die before my time,
I will tell you stories I have written
In pen,
Stories that are burned in tabletops
Somewhere out east,
Stories that tell of my grandfather’s pain.

Sarah told me you hated them,
Hated the words, hated the sounds
That rolled from my tongue,
I thought it was in English.

You said it was “Getthefuckoutofhere,
Shithead.”
Your words are pained and painted.

The jar of clay was put on the windowsill
In my grandmother’s house.
She spoke of China, Ireland, Aruba.
She spoke of letters in brown boxes.
She did not speak before she died.

Just in case I die before my time,
I will leave you the world.

Morning House, Morning Glory.

The house looks foreign in the morning.

Like a Nazi warrior grimacing over broken bones

and pots and pans, over cousins who steal

jobs from foreign workers and promises we

can’t see.

Over darkness that wans; over moonbeams

that give a glimmer a glow of something we

can’t keep to ourselves, to keep us back, 

keep

us moving forward in a time we have been convinced

isn’t real, isn’t sacred, isn’t 

England, isn’t community.

O ode to Walt Whitman, who was unreliable in

his standing; who didn’t like writing anything worth

reading, who stared at Abe Lincoln’s statue and

groaned his lover’s name, a woman who became

a teacher.

The house looks foreign in the morning, sometimes,

after a comma is hashed out, after darkness wans,

after the moon smiles at you and you can’t see

in front of you, you can’t see anything behind you.

This is what I said it is what it is.

This is what I said it isn’t.

He said, I don’t.

He said, I don’t have time for you.
The wind said, We don’t want you to be witty.
I asked him what he wanted.
He said he wanted a public space.
The sky is large with the hugeness of space.
Tears smack in the dirt.
Gardens are growing. In Jackson, Tennessee,
I see you wandering in your backyard,
holding a trowel, digging in the dirt.
You look like you’re upset.
A deer peeks in through the trees,
its eyes round and large like the moon.
He said I wished you would write poetry.
I replied that I could.
He didn’t believe me. Asked to see some proof.
I showed him the garden; my trowel;
and the doe sitting like a statue in the trees.
He said that wasn’t enough.
I told him to move,
this was not the right lesson
on flowers.
I said I liked daisies.