Haunt

When I'm a ghost, I'll
haunt you, but delicately
a passing shadow on the page

when you're reading on the
train, a sigh behind the door
when you walk through--a breath

all warmth and longing on your
neck and when you turn, of
course, nobody there.

No chains will rattle silence
from your sleep, no sobs nor heavy tramp
of feet in attic rooms disturb

your peaceful afternoons; just finger-
tips on frosted glass, a message
indecipherable writ by

no human hands. Just the soft
occasional chill as if someone
were watching as you step

out of the shower, with water
droplets bright upon your cheek
or streaming down the river of your spine.

And when you bend to towel
your dripping legs, the unaccountable
brush of ghostly lips

curling like mist under the swell
of breasts, trailed down along the bone-
plate where your ribs meet at your heart

--you won't know I was there until you see
(much later) on your fragrant naked thigh
the pale gray outline of my grasping hand.

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Lost

Maybe out there somewhere
there lies a path
overgrown now, weed-choked, stopped
by debris--a fallen log
astir with insect life,
its loosely clinging bark
atwitch
  like skin--
where once a person might
have turned aside and found
down rootbound valleys
hidden there among
the shadow leaves (whose negatives
are sunbeams)
             something
else.

The woods hide gold that is and isn't
sunshine,
show rending claws that are and
are not bears.
Some things are food and poison, some rain
and dew and blood.

Maybe there was a way
through then, although it didn't
seem so. A poke,
a prod might have revealed--what?
Dog-run, deer-trail, some parted sea
of weeds revealing tracks
beyond my understanding,
patterns I had not the skill
to name?

And maybe after miles, after bright orbs
of white and yellow dazzled me like
swamp gas, will-o-wisps,
for who knows what the cycles,
then
    or now, or when, or
soon,
I might have turned and recognized
a flower, called its name,
rhododendron, devil's trumpet, trillium,
felt suddenly unlost and therefore safe;

or else, aswim in plants evermore
strangers to me, no path, abandoned
by taxonomy, I sprint
a barefoot madman through clasping leaves--
green twigs caught in my hair, bugs crawling through
the dirty thatch of my gray hermit's beard,
be so unmade and deliriously free, I would
to joy and to oblivion
succumb.

It could be so.

For now, as lost here in these words
as any child forsaken in the wood,
gone feral, wolf-raised out of sheer neglect,
I find just tangled thoughts, a knotted string
around my hand, so difficult to trust.
What have I snared? What is it tugs and leads
me on around the next
leaf-shaded bend? Whose hand?
Or is it my own dumb animal soul
now bound here by some hidden hunter,
Time?

So many knots, and spoken promises
once breathed, that can no longer
be revised.

Walk far enough, and nothing will make sense.

A poke.
A prod.

Maybe it lies there still.

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on July 6, 2007

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The Awful Uncertainty of the Artist

Maybe this is it:

the depression/mental illness
that will finally make my work (and life)
meaningful
   saleable
        interesting.

But,
(oh God)

             ...what if it's not?

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on June 27, 2007

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Because It's Probably True

If suddenly the room burst into flames
orange ivy climed the curtains
black clouds rolled up and out
and hair floating on waves of heat
crinkled, shrunk away

while everyone obliviously slunk
between table and chair
bedroom and bath
 beer tub snack bowl
("Nice party, what's this dip?")
while at their backs
a cataclysm
only I could (in this problem)
see--

It takes an effort of
imagination
to feel my arms go up
to see my jaw drop
to
(hypothetically)
  taste soot
        ozone
        methane
        new sweat
on my dry tongue
taking the breath with
which I'll shout:

"Hey! Fire!"

I've always been the quiet one.

Of course once if I edging toward the door
a dampened napkin pressed
 under my nose
saw that
no one
had noticed
(incredibly)
the
  blackening ceiling
  the cd player plastic bubbling
      like Yosemite mud
(I know, but just bear with me)
nothing except
     perhaps
some dizziness
and the fact that the softwhite sandwiches
suddenly
are toasted

then of course would I pop the lock
murmuring, as I stepped outside
to cool air
wet grass
green trees
that someone maybe ought to call somebody
and I've had a great time, thanks,
but by the way, some of you might think about

leaving

because it's getting late
and a work night
and the kitchen is on fire and
after all, no one wants to be an ash, hahaha--

But seriously.



I would do it.
If I had to.

But even in this dream it ends
like this:

everyone turning to stare
and smirk or frown or pucker their lips
and (even
       as their flesh
                      cooks off their bones

)

thinking

"Well. Someone
needs

attention."

Originally posted on The Sonnet Project on May 11, 2007

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