third version / polaroid vision

NuuroSofter Things

you are an extended metaphor, your fingers
stretched out like bathing-suit elastics. the
sun lines on our 11-year-old skin make me
feel warm and golden while the world clicks
past like a cold japanese monorail. you are
an extended metaphor; the skipping records
and tangled cassette tapes i give you in a basket,
which are very interesting and they have that
distinctive taste of dust and your parents. you
are an extended metaphor; powdering drywall,
cracked mortar and one drink collecting rain on
it's pale liquid sides. you're not alone. i know
we're not alone in this. collect me, then. gather
me up in a dented emerald tin you used to use
to hold guitar picks. hum and hmmm where are
we now? you are an extended metaphor and i
am all wrapped up in gold ribbon and pink gum
crispy pink paper that says i love you like mayflies.

victor composes a wishful thought

the tragic emissions of deteriorating atoms
lurch into a heap at the end of your bed:
catch us! they cry. o catch us and push
us back to our usual form. and you sit where
the mattress slopes and where the video-game beeps
and faded cotton sheets crumple off into space,
and you write your teething capitals in a black notebook.

her name eludes you, now, but you can remember
the sticky-rain nights last august when it meant
tiger parades and interstudious life forces. the
betwixt-and-between of warm green tidal reds and
the neat texts you meant to kindle for her. her name
emitted from a restless atom-heap makes you wonder
"what other planet features this?" and you should go
exploring them to find out. i promise to miss you.

bygone decades, homemade bread

ina, manuel, i give out names on badges
circular sewing around the edges of your
face and eyes and we play perched on old
sofas and smell the deferential perfume of
an old woman who may have died since i
last remembered to visit her. my dues have
long since been paid to this present decade;
i have vigils and appointments to keep with
bygone decades. albert allard scrawled his name
on the back of a picture-postcard, told me to
"look me up if you're ever in 1986." bruce kensall
watches me from up on the rocky hill, and i
wave at him because i like to greet his beard and
his camera. grizzly bears and fishing birds greet
his lens and i wait under the peeling striped
wallpaper for the smell of spinning wheels and
yellow film. everyday he grows more conscience-
stricken and upset; i kiss him under the statue
of a spanish lover; he stands by the tombstone
with an umbrella, silhouetted against a glaring
sunset and i tell him, "there are no clouds, love;
i made this world and this is no time for it to rain."

on the tea and sugar train the days go by slow; my
newest friend is drying sugar cane in the sun on the
toy mud. robert nininger threw his green jacket up
on the hood of the van and we talked for an hour of
weathered board and gilt frames; the demise of the
monarchy and the lift you feel in a boat on waves. a
child kissed another child and i feel like that, sometimes.
you kiss me and i shiver like a foolish child, and smile.

every day you grow more conscience-stricken and upset,
so i put my hair up and watch you from the window of
a blue train. i play accordion music and flash my teeth
like the flash of a camera in your direction; "i promise,
love, i made this world and this is no time for it to rain."

ages of you/green grow the rushes

i wrote you an underwater note
hand signs and ponderous escaping bubbles
and made faces at you across the pool
while your hair swam on it's own like
wayward green wheat.

he was your half-brother,
smoking cigarettes and
killing himself too young in
several other ways, and he
liked to see your hands move
a little desperately; and he liked
to laugh short laughs at your expense/
concern. now he's half-genuine; new
leather strips tugging their lazy weights
down to the bottom of the pool.

it's hard when he suggest you jump off the cliff
together, and offers to kiss you in midair
and you can already taste the blood
on your lips and feel yourself falling
and the smack of the water.

so i write you a note, obtrusive
feminine hand-signals across the
murky eye of water and i say you
can wake up and i'll be glad to hold
your hand or his or both and take
all the blame.

little spinnerets of interest

"life," i said, beginning a list
of things i would be better
off inventing lies about less.
"life, you as a china cabinet,"
"a quiet francophone lover."

and i always mean to draw
little spinnerets of interest
from your lace-webbed hands
but i didn't expect your reply:
"forgotten postcards, insistence."

my sparring matches are quilted,
barriers built of corrugated cardboard
and chocolate, and soft introspection
pouring like sand into the hourglass
of my mouth. you say my instistence
on your insistence is a lie i made from
sweet-smelling tape songs. i tell you,
"christening mysteries, and vintage
realities; a swift swish of persian rugs
and faith as it comes out from under you."

think better of it

october i remember you cutting me out a paper crown, and
asking if i would care to be queen. we were everyone's best
eccentrics then, sitting in the backyard while the leaves got
brown and dead, humming songs and growing cold. winter
slid like a letter-opener under your skin; i must protest your
feudal annoyances! i remember accepting that paper crown.
time is dissolving in my teacup; familiarity dissipating over
the cracked china teeth. and, dear, it was getting late
even before that first ice storm to start thinking better of us.

happens to us all otherwise

the superstitions said that to stand where we stood
would be sheer madness; bad luck in the back room
and sad days under the cedars that stand so straight
by the sagging porch. the critics gave us credit for our
bravery, but mostly laughed and threw telephone-stones
at us. my feet slid nervously on the gravel but your eyes
flung escapist into the sky. the critics give us credit for
our bravery, but i'm only brave when you're beside me.

the swinging door that separated us, the battered aluminum
reminded me of the difference between our heads; it swings
like dented metal through the air between us. i don't know
what you mean and you don't know why i care and i don't
know why we bother trying this. they say it's bad luck but still--
i'm only brave when i'm beside you, and i like to hold your hand.

irwin g.

aren't your eyelids just terrible; blandishment and
underscores on the thick skin? oh, but don't worry,
i'm still your friend. isn't your jawbone just heavy
and isn't that the very first mix-tape of your toothy
grin? irwin g., i've read your poems overnight and
slipped my small fingers in between the chalky paper,
marking the pages where you left me notes:

-alexandra, your younger sister, purchased this book
on october 7th, 2005, scant hours before your birthday.
-i catch you watching me when you don't mean to be;
i catch little bits of purple glass murdering out of your
lovelorn violet-eyes. i keep them in an apocryphal jar.
-some dots and semicircles on the back pages of this
book match up perfectly with some freckles on the
back of your hand. you wonder when i had a chance
to study them, no? well, sometimes i watch you back.

irwin g., i always catch you watching me back; your gifts
and letters are a dusty black moth brushing tasteless wings
over my mouth. brush past me, alan, baby; why so jaded?

the art of lift

he is my crimson demograph. he writes
oh such chafing notes my wheatking. three
weeks of glorious catharsis in the cockpit of his triplane,
skipping over clouds and dwarf-gold like neptune in
a chariot of burlap and consonants.

the bones of my bodies are twice-struck matches,
brittle and pretty and that old-tin smell; he twists
twine around my eyes and pulls them up to the sky
he is that motor-oil smell-- rough hands and old rags
he is building and explicating the greatest machine.

some saturdays, he sings all day
spinnerets scarves and bomber jackets
adjusting the goggles on my head
admiring how they scruff up my hair.
i smile and call me his scarecrow lover.

he means to build a new machine;
we will call it the art of lift.

film noir et film noir et amoureux rouges

on this
little kitten-dark evening,
my skin pebbled with rain
i am
smarting with delight in you.
the walls are hard and horrid,
so you twist a little boat out of
my red silk scarves
and we
sail off like a cobblestone princling
and his velvetest friend.

je ne suis pas désolé!
je suis construit avec de noir joli.


oh love
such adventures!
i press into the grey of your eyes
and you paint with the red of my mouth.
oh love
such mysteries!
you are a little novel i read through
and know the end...

je suis un petit calendrier!
vous arrachez mes pages,
chaleureusement. alors,
course avec mes
chaussures
cliquant
sures.