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Poetry / Writings-  
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Poems from The Composer Steps into the Fire
excavation He materializes in the morning after a night of canyon excavations where all of the stars descend like attainable dreams to the core of the Earth. He is learning to navigate the tunnels beneath the surface as if learning to breathe with his whole body. Every night he finds all new hollows inside himself waiting for cave paintings, remnants of warm fires, jewelry made of elephant tusks. Here, down in the bowels of his essence, reside the stars, tablatures, and all the artifacts she buries within him. (to top) in the trees The wind isn't innocent anymore – she uses it as an instrument. The sky outside this window darkens as she composes unwelcome nocturnes. In the vacancies between days she plays instruments with broken strings in a winter orchestra only I can hear. Her bones are strung up in the empty trees around my house. She gives tone, rhythm to the wind as she taps against the branches and the trunks of the trees all night and all day – a minstrel who has nowhere else to go. winter flowers My mouth is full of winter. Spring surrounds me like hungry flies. I offer flowers at the end of my fingers. I would speak but my lips have blisters. Like any infection, my words need sterilized. My mouth is full of winter. When we embrace we only leave splinters. Every injury, I have memorized. I offer flowers at the end of my fingers. Every year, every season slips by faster. I measure distance with my heart – not my eyes. My mouth is full of winter. This hemisphere of mistakes will be perfect after everything has been revised. I offer flowers at the end of my fingers. No one stays in this season – they're all visitors. They drop from my hands like suicides. My mouth is full of winter. I offer flowers at the end of my fingers. ready were the almanacs God constructed a valley for reaching. The mountains were cool and always evening. I will find you in this place. I won't find all of you. The wake of her walk was wide and dementing. I caressed the sweetness of her undertow. This improbable dawn yields blossoms shocked into open mouths. O please be more than gilded grist, my sweet. I wagered my wrists on your sincerity. Between our lips there is a fragile silence stirring. The waiting for something greater than us. Ready were the almanacs to display how lost I was. In the cooling evenings the sky came alive with lights. We trapped them. We swung our jars through the air harvesting stars to take home. We watched those jars shine as if we had captured God’s tears. Those lights never lasted long in jars with no slits at the tops. We never suspected those tiny deaths were our doing. The cinders that resided in the air burnt out or went away or perhaps we caught them all. Now, the air is thin with what is here and thick with what is missing. (to top) you're all over the floor Every corner of this house has the deposits you’ve left behind. You are woven into my couch. You clog the drain in my bathroom sink. Flakes of your skin and hair wander around in the stale sunlight like lost tourists. I inhale your exhaust. The dust I’m leaving behind will intertwine with your dust. Our bodies will dance without us being in the room. When the dancing settles down we will hide in corners, under tables, like children hiding from strangers. Eventually, we will be discovered. We will be swept up and forgotten – then we will be one like we always should have been. (to top) striking matches under water Her walking out the door was the wind being knocked out of my lungs, the air being sucked out of this room. Matches would not burn when she was gone. When she was gone flames were a viable answer to this shattered equation but I could not get a strangled match to spark. I lacked the ability to live or die. Empty lungs sucking on hollow air sound like tires squealing on blacktop. After three breathless days, just as I was losing my ability to do math, she came back. She came back like Christ but more like rain to a scorched prairie. My lungs in need of saving, in need of oxygen, which doesn’t just linger in the air, were born again. Tonight, she is in this room like I need oxygen to be in this room. The breaths I’ve taken in tonight have not been just filtered and processed, but I’ve lived each one of them. Tonight she is in this room – she allows matches the opportunity to burn but I choose to strike them underwater. (to top) drowning the ocean Their marching is hushed like whispers or rumors. The synchronized stomping of feet sounds like thousands of clocks ticking toward a moment of silence. The soldiers are pawns in a war much like watches can’t run backwards. Ordered to march, so the soldiers march until they are told to halt but that order never comes. They march all the way to ocean cliffs where they drop off like seconds lost in sleep. All they have been told is the ocean is a problem long unresolved. Even before they take that first step in unison their uniforms are empty. Armed hollow shells of soldiers marching toward the sea like days are powerless to not follow each other toward the apocalypse. No heads sprouting from the collars, no fists clinched at the end of sleeves means no hands to shake, no faces to remember. Point them in the direction of those cliffs, wait for the sound of the waves to dissipate as the soldiers fill the ocean. Wait until this solution is no longer the desired variable but the new constant that needs solved. Wait until you can’t tell who is winning – when you can’t discern quiet marching from waves breaking against rocks – when they are the same thing. |
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