Concentration Camp (I dont know why it's called this, it just came to me...an overpresiding feeling?)

Like a stifled sneeze, I feel uninhabited

at times--waking from dreams

in which I have been blinded by chemicals

and pitted against stranger-adversaries,

and while a faceless bloodied, ravenous

onslaught powers toward me

a sudden wave rushes through my body

pushing it all back--waking dizzy--

waking later than I wanted to--

slugging my hands through the day--

a miracle is tea and lemon, a miracle

is ginger and quiet noises of fires

and the shifting plaid and flannel

of autumn, to walk and see reddened

oaks, then to fall away from the world

at night. And in this am I ever awake?

St. Patrick Duck

Now is when I climb trees,

cerulean sky and oaks and others

of red ochre (once love was

red ochre). Shaded underneath

these feet like roots

are timely footprints meshed into cement--

these are names these are rowboats

twisting around lakes

in Maine and Manitoba

where I am eating chuck steak

repeating again and again solitude,

solitude, solitude, fire, duck

and then am happy in certain

moments of spring.

Curtal Sonnet

My eyes closed and my shoulder hunched
like bejeweled solitude,
a pen run out of ink and the cold slip of a missed-placed s,

hard as lust, a violin tremolo,

a clicking wound round my ear the massive growl
tight against my jaw--how the undead

measure God stackable as glass

how room for both whisper and hiss

a clicking, wound--this terrible lust

to know what it is to crave, to roam

searching.

This glass is alone underneath

my table, my checkerboard where

once or many times I played with

my great-uncle that never was old

until he died. Whether it is heat

or something else that forms it,

an immensely chip-able object,

had I strength and a towel

I would think, later, to break it
as if the hand were street and glass an echo,

clink of song bringing itself back

hard bits and pieces, immense sleepless sound.

As I Have Said Over and Over Again, Love is an Ocher-Red Leaf

Let me remind you of my hands, which have not felt love

in so long they ache of tendinitis

that strengthening will not help

whose ligaments are not dancing

little finger that once spliced over

a body that moved in time Tell me

time, track backwards an old

twist of words--what is motion,
something foolish, a wrist

so half-heartedly broken

and sprained in five places
while ash bristles the side of the chimney.

Love, I am underneath you, I am

as if blessed by you. Tell me
time, what roundness must
I feel in order to be like

water, clear and settled in the glass, how

tenderly it wobbles and nuzzles

toward the edge, tipping, undulating

being shaped by the hard edges

of a terribly breakable thing.

no title just yet, and a very rough draft...inspired by a line by Major Jackson

Look, I don't want the lions ripped

apart. The mere thought of harshness

garnered from what faces receive

me through the doors and hallways

is old, unused milk I can't open or

throw away just yet. Milk was

once something I loved, it rhapsodied

the four solid eyes of each hour

of the afternoon, it piled, it was snow.

I can't tell now if milk means, moon
or enough; if careful means,

Come and ride bicycles with me, share

my hand as we walk. It is uncertainty

like a claw in the face of much more than that.

Teshuva (brace yrself, it's a long one)

1.

What we've never had is a song

and what we've had is a song.

2.

When I was biking down 16th street,

thinking how to run a half-baked workshop

about forgiveness, I was more wrapped

in thoughts of reproach--blaming myself for

the misdeed of not thinking about this workshop

not putting the time into it, not reading enough,

providing contemporary examples. In the meantime

friends at my apartment drowned in cookie bliss

and, though the wind was thick and pleasant--

a warm towel thrown repeatedly by my face

and bare hands--there was very little calm.

We came to talking about forgiveness,

at the end, at the workshop, lasting and lingering on each one person's

tongue, a salted, unwondrous lick.

3.

Pencils sharpened, I am in

front of everyone

this feels as if a sail wrapped around

I have just tripped on a banana

peel backward falling

feeling and the floating

moment before ripping up the

silence of a silent moment

with an awkward guffaw

as if seeing someone slip

on his own words. Then we

begin to think about forgiveness.

4.

Teshuva, from what I understand, means turning, and not repentance. To repent seems too Christian and overwhelming and doesn't do justice, I feel, to the feelings we feel when we examine ourselves and the mistakes we have made so that we may finally ask for forgiveness. Turning, on the other hand, in which way, into which wind, into whose arms, into what broad field, into whose alliance, into what hand, into which direction. To turn, perhaps, as a wheel, or a chair or table, as a pencil or piece of fruit in the milken sun. Apples dipped in honey, apples dipped and honey, then we wait and turn to forgiveness.

5.

Tell that old man

on Rosh Hashanah to tremble

only on the inside.

Everyone is waiting

for them to matter

though isn't this our day to do it.

He cried while leading--

who by fire, who by water.

I have been singing this

all day long--for what?

A call, forgiveness.

6.

It is difficult to pinpoint

the song in a city

I am familiar with and love--

surprised as I am by these buildings on Porter Street

that were finished

and all that space

like blown glass--I am in love

with the fire set inside a glassblower's

I don't know what it's called, rod,

so incessantly orange

what glows like that on this earth,

not even dark or amber honey has that

distinct glow--

it sings as if it never had a song

to sing. Yet. At this point of the new year,

I am only hoping to be like glass--

there is always an ember

in it, it is still, lit--

just look at its stars

and speckles as it glows.