Ten Little, Nine Little, Eight Orphaned Images--Poem on Small Pieces of Wisdom from Visiting Authors

Ten orphaned images

wandered down the street

in a rigid line, toeing 

the concrete they could not feel; hovering

millimeters above the ground.

Transcendence was the name of the first orphan,

the first victim,

about to be spent, about to give over her 

all to the air, with lungs 

made for proclamations.

In her thoughtfulness,

in her small, delicately held essence,

(for she had only one line for her being)

she wished to be known by the world.

Though once it was out, 

she could never return to her secret

knowledge of herself.

She said with her soul on her lips

“Art can transcend the artist.”

She pronounced the final syllable

with weight so much greater

than her juvenescence,

then faded 

into the real blue sky.

Inspiration was next.

He too was little in length

but dreamy, always

with pupils aimed upwards;

a steadfast believer in

whimsical things.

He said to the leaves floating by

“Pegasus. It is the horse on 

the back of which you become a poet,”

and got caught up 

with the wind, or

maybe the idea of it.

Comtemplation meandered behind,

with the casual strut of a teenager, 

pubertal, 

more self-assured, being

a little bit longer

than his friends.

He was just a single memory

but he feigned wider.

In prophetic tone,

full of the melodrama that length inspires,

he declared

“It’s the crash and whir 

of souls too fast, 

of hurries too great. 

But from here the 520 bridge 

just looks like glowing strands 

with a few broken bulbs, 

like Christmas lights up 

a little too late.”

As he ruminated, he could almost

see those lights,

hear that crash,

feel that hurry.

But sensation is a dream

for a non-living thing.

He was just a pretty boy

image, a self-contained 

thought. This was all 

he would ever know or say.

Desperation heard and knew 

with the groaning desire 

of a boy too small for 

the football team, that

he could do better.

He was almost 

as long as Contemplation. 

Anyway,

size isn’t everything. 

He rambled

“Sky is surface,

and 747’s are great white sharks,

and I’m just a red-sweatered anemone 

waving useless arms 

in a 

forever 

arid 

tide.”

He stretched himself as 

long as he could.

There was a lull,

a silence, emanating

from the remains,

the swirling syllables, of 

Desperation's delusions

of grandeur. This was 

Humor’s chance.

“Frigid, black, odorless abyss. 

‘Is your coffee good he asks?’ 

‘No it tastes like the Underworld.’”

A short laugh pinged

and then was only echo.

Then Time turned to Past

who was silent, 

already done, 

and whispered in jest

nodding at someone

“You said ‘It’s just like the Present

to be showing up like this.’”

And Romance, always 

unrealistic

challenged “Write a sentence

that means but does not 

say I love you.”

Illustration uttered,

screwing up his lineaments,

“It takes a good story-teller

to turn ears into eyes.”

Diction pronounced,

(for he was so well-spoken)

“He used rhythm as a compass.”

Introspection was last,

solitary in the street,

and he thought:

Could man ever be as magnificent

as an idea,

flawless,

standing alone, or

beautiful as

a butterfly thought,

cocooning in the mind,

winging on the notes

and sounds of 

deliberate talk;

Meaning exactly what he means?

How magnificent!

His substance,

the pedals of his identity;

to come 

and find

the thought that he was.

It was too good.

He decided to keep it to himself. 

There Will Be Blood Tonight--Poem on the Los Angeles Holy

This is their city and they will fight. 

They are angels fallen through discipline 

and the dusky streets, the women behind their crimson shades, 

the three-legged dog running blind, 

know all there is and all there will be: 

there will be Blood tonight.

The postcard in the window, 

bent with dishonesty, 

by the emblem of it’s hazy red sun says hesitantly: 

“Welcome,” followed 

more assuredly by, “To Los Angeles.” 

Outside, the clerk, the man 

with native hands holds the back of his head 

to keep it.

The gun he knows, by the weight at his skull, 

bears its busy lead.

He thinks that the alley 

smells like apples 

while he falls two feet;

the ground he meets feels hard like concrete fate.

Now all he sees is a starry belt, 

and five pointed seconds of breathing go by,

below the silhouetted man who will take his life. 

Street light halos wander into sight; 

He hears the bark of a rabid dog and curses it for being alive. 

“There will be wine, and their will be bread, the body and blood, for all, tonight,”

Says the stiff collared preacher, miles away, 

encircled with wood, 

his cedared protection 

from nightmares in which death could feel. 

There are miles and suburbs, 

there is violet trimmed procrastination still,

between him and alley way sympathy. 

Yet, the small pink girl in the frontward pew

muddles thoughts in her head about the living and the dead, 

why she is eating the God she loves.

Before she can part her berry lips to ask, 

she drops on her knees and cool metal presses her chin.

The gold-flecked rim

Makes a hill in her rosy vision 

of a canvas waist covered in rags. 

The man in black that is tipping her head, melds within it,

wearing a painted crown of thorns.

She watches her father in his permanent pleats, his American tie, 

praying that she'll drink it the same. 

But it winds down her neck, 

Blooming red grapes on her white dress.

A terror blooms there as well, that her father 

will turn his face from the framing light, 

look down, and in gruff whispers, 

Exile her from the innards 

of this thing they called the “fruitful” life.

He smiles at her 

with his chin stained dark, 

While the mouthing pulpit 

yawns the peaceful words:

“Now you have eaten of the body, and drank of the blood, tonight be filled with love”

Septimus in the Arizona Desert--Poem On a Man That Might Have Lived

He sat there in the Arizona heat 

confusing the twinklings 

of the neighbor's poorly tuned guitar

for bright fractures in the sky, 

small peelings back of blue,

for silvery portals, rising and breaking open

like heat bubbles 

in car paint on a sunny afternoon.

But that was not what he was thinking about. That was only the beautiful splintering glass that covered what he was really thinking about. No, he was thinking mainly of his gasping hands, sliding off of the white pseudo-plastic lawn chair, mainly of his wrinkled breaths. How long must he sit in his own decay, he thought, his skin stretched like fly paper snagging moments, hours, years, short lifetimes even (for those that died young, like Susy). A predator of time, he was. Today another conquest. With the tendrils of his mind he skinned his latest prey.

The book that lay beside him seemed to be dying too, from the acid of his fingers, the acid of his thoughts. He couldn't even read it, had never learned, so the words inside were useless moving things he couldn't know, like ants he had squished and collected just to look at, but never to ask their purpose or why they lived. He kept it because the words looked pretty. He kept it because the lines and curves of these letters, these particular words, 

tasted like strawberries

growing dewy in a mountain field, and 

like tree roots, twisting like human spines to heaven,

if tree roots could taste good. 

And even though he couldn't read it, he could feel knowledge squirming in his brain, trying to awaken from its cavernous sleep. Whenever this happened he could smell, 

on the eastward winds, the smell of dusty bookshelves; 

the air smelled of the deliberate neurons of

East Coast learned men. 

He leaned forward, 

stuck out his tongue to catch them, 

in the afternoon light,

orangey with 

enlightenment.

But not even such holy intellectual transubstantiation could save his brain now. It was too busy exploding nerves into a spiral of colors. He knew this would happen one day. They had told him it would, at that clinic where he had gone to get free condoms and got conned into eye tests. He didn't care now, for he was sliding in and out of reality, watching Fourth of July fireworks against the red stone plateaus on the second of May. This was the finale, this was feeling; 

he felt notes of cool music 

picking apart the nerves of his backbone,

He once wondered what death would smell like. Would it smell like 

an empty box, 

negative matter, 

like blackholes

in the cruel extremities of vast

space?

Would he come to a bitter end?

He didn't want to find out. He picked up his book, his delicious book, and set it inches from his swelling pupils. His eyes started going out like television in a storm, fucking up one small fleck at a time. The ants started coming alive now, swirling, jumping on top of each other, bending over backwards, and breaking apart at the middle. God, all he wanted was for death to taste like strawberries in that mountain field and tree roots. The ants had multiplied, mated rapidly, until they covered all of his eyes with their dark bodies. He lay back, under the blinds of his beloved, succulent words. 

The book dropped from his right hand, falling, struggling to fly in the cold winds. It turned out that death didn't taste like an 

empty box or 

negative matter or anything. 

It turned out death didn't taste. 

Or sound, or smell, or feel 

at all. 

Summer Skin Reflections on a Texas Night--Written Too Long Ago, Too Soon Ago

This place is steeped in memories.

It has been eight months since I've been home and meager as they may seem, I realize that I might as well have lived whole lifetimes in between them.

I climb up to my roof and the rough tiles feel familiar and gritty like the hardened souls of my childhood feet, caked with remnants from this cul-de-sac street. I bring up a single clove cigarette, a pack of matches, and my Ipod, then settle on an obscure crook of my house. The air is hot and wet, expected in summer, but foreign and exotic in my lungs. I can't help picturing the fragrances of Havana and fragile love stories blown about by the Caribbean wind.

It's nighttime, the most ambiguous time here. One could imagine themselves almost anywhere in the darkness, but my mind knows the place well. It is unable to forget, with the palm tree silhouettes framing the vista, and always, always the hot, wet air.

My friend and I used to lay up here because with the sun so close and only rooftops in our presence, we could pretend we were in the midst of a sea-washed California sunset. And on a cold night in December, we could almost see the bare trees as the north, almost touch the idea that the space in between them, so lyrically fogged, belonged to the distances of Connecticut woods. All those times spent dreaming and it is reality that now seems so elusive, the phantom vision in the night. All those dying days promised some joy we couldn't quite speak and now I have crossed the country and back and the world seems small to me.

In this tepid climate, I'm always reminded of Death Cab, the steady base, the stagnant voice, the humid chords and then the erratic, fiery explosion of sound--a loose spark in the heat of the night.

I light my clove, as if off of that lone loose spark. I've smoked them up north, where I tell people they taste like Christmas, but here they are spiced, aromatic with the Arabian feel of sun and sweat and exotic plants. It's funny how even a taste can change with climate and here on the rooftop, near the bamboo and Texas pines, I can't help but picture trees with orange-like fruit, as though the cloves were picked from its leaves. It must be a manipulated vision spurred by the painted sun tipping over the edge of the carton of Bali Hais I used to have up here.

The glowing org continues to crackle as the finger picking of "Bixby Canyon Bridge" enters my head, disguised as a blue-lined song when truly each lyric is a month of my past life. And with my reluctant beads of perspiration, the smell of my tanned skin wasted and unseen in the warm darkness, I begin to see it: this is where I first fell in love.

It was in this place, that felt so unlike me, that I first fell in love with lives I did not yet lead. I began a long time ago, before I fathomed rooftops and clove cigarettes and grey fabric realities I would come to claim. I began with the dreaming. I am certain now that I will end with it as well.