(( BOOK 1.5: A Year of July)) -- Part 2

“Color”

      – 27 January 2011

In the life of winter – that is white life, cold life –

watching clouds glow, I thought back on a carrot.

The combination became like summer. Like

cold Tang in a hot hand. Common-but-surreal

was once daily being; nothing beyond.

Once, in the life of winter,

dreams had no reason

to think of anything

but orange: I once

prayed to, and

not over,

what

I ate:

Once

In the

Crack on

The side of

A dry carrot, I

Found a small dark

Dirt stowed away.

Its darkness made it great, and

Stayed my mouth for that instant.

Had the carrot legs, she might have wired

In the ground again. But now she is in the sky.

“Girls as Roommates”

      – 12 September 2011

Girls as roommates will de-claw you,

Dramatize your world and never

Realize your silence is not judging them

(For women speak with their silences, men).

Women laugh to prove communion;

Cook, then sing, then sigh in union;

Speak their minds like running drains;

Glom like black ants under rain.

They dream of boys, then laugh at men

All hungry-eyed (yet dress for them).

They love, as do they mourn, for years.

They use each others' eyes as mirrors.

They talk about the absentees:

As long as she's away, that breeze

Blows hard and honest – but stalls apace

When heels forecall her coming face.

Of course, they love each other, too.

And eat, sleep, breathe as brothers do.

But beware, their heft's like wind, not stone (

You may not be struck, but you will be blown).

“I Used to Think that Way”

     – 26 September 2011

“I used to think that way,”

           I hear an old man say

           while his boys prepare for bed,

           water hissing from the shower head

           and dogs (relegated to a dirt porch) moaning.

           He slides unfilled boxes

                      (now renting, through owning)

           for the sake of those boys

                      (their friends a town over)

           and the sake of his time

                      (daily distance to cover),

           his mother's pastels on the walls

                      (her brain fading)

           and sketches unframed in the halls

                      (boys' creating)

           and black-and-white photos

                      (from a life he'd had prior

                                 of climbing through switchbacks

                                 with lenses, on a choir

                                 of felled cones, with pine needles

                                            skimming his face—

                                 his eyes sharp for beauty

                                            {drinking light, framing space}

                                 and Ansel's panning thumbs

                                 {whose he knew} saying 'here'—

                                            as he dropped down the wood legs

                                                       while clouds thinned and cleared

                                                                                        {Kl-ch*}).

I'd said, “Life is my currency: consciousness, time –

I spend it; I live. Only presence is mine.”

“My Terminable Will”

(“'In The Waste Land, I wasn't even bothering whether I understood what I was saying,' Eliot told an interviewer.” NEW YORKER, 19 September.)

      – 2 October 2011

Some day all the words in my head will stop:

there will be no more snow on the mountain.

The last flake will add to the last rolling drop:

so will end the white head of that fountain.

As the last trickle rolls down habitual ruts

(which seem quizzically pointless when dry),

Moss cedes to grass in the shade of those cuts,

drinking air from a never-mine sky.

And the shore edge will round out – the vale, fill

with brush (where lips once called currents to be).

And elsewhere, the water will continue to rush,

indistinguishable from the sea.

“Theory”

     – 11 November 2011

Someday I will kiss you

With absolute calm,

And it will feel like

peppermint oil:

clearing and guiltless,

almost too fresh

for my lungs.

      Someday I will miss you

      When you’ve come and gone,

      And it will smart like

      barbecue coals:

      weary and stilted,

      warm still in death,

      raising palms.

                  Someday I will wish you

                  Had known we were wrong-

                  paired, served a hard spike

                  back at my soul (

                  bleary with stillness; it

                  longs for your breath).

                  won’t you come?

{click here for melody}

"Dreamgirl" (song)

     – December 2011

I’m going to find my dream girl.

I’m searching all around:

           I looked through my apartment, but

My hand was all I found.

I’m going to find my dream girl:

They say she’s you’re best friend,

So I said, “Hey man, are you a lady?”

But he started to berate me; he said,

“Dude, this has got to end.”

There’re just so many women:

I met one at a bar:

She let me see inside her,

Then she opened up much wider

           {vomit gurgle} –

I’m still cleaning out my car.

I went to church on Sunday

To see if she’d be there,

But the only one without a ring on

           Was a choir girl cling-on singing,

“Heatheeen, not a prayer!”

                              ...Where are you, dreamgirl?

I took a class in yoga

To bear my chakra yesterday,

           But only one woman would talk to me:

Her name was “Namaste.”

So I went to an open-mic

To dance with swooning girls.

           But all their songs went, “Men! Are! Pigs!”

And they weren’t casting pearls.

I rode the public bus downtown

And smiled disarmingly,

           But all the girls just watched their shoes:

Avoiding gum – and me.

I got off at a dancing club.

All the ladies jived like bees:

I’d buy them shots of pollen,

           But their hives would come a-callin,’

So they’d shake their bum-bles and leave.

                              ...Where are you, dreamgirl?

I’m going to find my dream girl.

I've checked the bathroom stalls;

I wink if they’re good-looking,

           But the ladies all start booking

And they don’t turn when I call.

I hope my dream girl likes me.

The boys in jail all do:

They complement my eyes and

           They sing me lullabies, like,

“Some daaay, your dreeeams –

Will come truuue…

uuu…uuu…

uue!”

Dreamgirl!!

(( BOOK 1.5: A Year of July)) -- Part 1

So, it seems that between books 1 (Ancient Fetus) and 2 (Virgins Are Meant to Die) I left a lacuna of about 2 and 3/12 years unaccounted for. So I'm doing a quick volume in between, before I finish binding book 2 and start posting here for book 3 (Your Reflection is Twice as Far as the Mirror).

As I finish each of A Year of July's 3 chapters, I'll give teasers of them here.
So here's from part 1 ...

“Ions at the Crest”

            – 9 May 2010

My eyes are filled so high with hope that it’s dangerous to drive,

And perilous to speak at all, and wild to be alive;

I am a crash-in-waiting, I am a coil unwound,

I am the crackling runner-bolt that rises from the ground.

I do not know what “lightning” is. I only know you/me—

Like a silver magnet’s drawing power without its gravity.

I’m rising and I’m rising up (I know this means a fall—

But at this peak, the world is air: I can’t retract or stall).

You dwell up there, cool and covered in a static droplet brine.

I draw in from the edges here, working toward your current line.

You are the crackling cloud-dome, love; I am the field below

Who breaks for you so many times you’ll never even know.

 

“Books Versus Heartaches”

            – 31 August, 2010

My books are dead, I see;

Only those yet to die can yearn.

Like—I asked and she said “Don’t”;

In books, you cannot will the won’t.

So my books live in harmony.

They speak high heat, but when I read slow

Then their labored pages pause

And their stilted drama thins, withdraws.

So I’m hungry, and that's good:

We’re only hungry when we know

What we want. Otherwise

We’re just red-lidded, with distant eyes.

 

The First Piano Lesson

            – 2 December 2010

The cat is almost in the floor, softer than

The carpet, luke-warm, golden-gray – Wednesday mist.

Almost just a draft, I come through the door,

Lighter than a child. I lose my fists

Inside, where pined air slows, where the cat’s curr calms.

She comes in – slight and tissue-skinned – then glides

Across piano keys in string-hammer psalms.

I tip-toe a scale, my lids low; she slides in,

Rum-smooth on fingertips, spit in her tone:

“Ta-tee, ta-tee…” – Should I dance like her, then?

Pressing wavelike through keys, cracking white/black bones

Into sound? Strange new notes can make babes of men.

She guides my arm: what work such grace demands.

I think of you (a child once) – these hands that touched your hands.

 

“The Vortex” (a man unplugged)

            – 4 May 2010

Forget nothing: no thing is nothing.

Absence is massive; a lack is still something:

These comma-baled zeroes, a cash architecture;

That one-time event, a memorial specter;

These losses, this failure, some space for ascension;

That God unperceived, still a sentient intention;

My blindness in sleeping, a primal distilling;

Our ended discussion, some shift in my willing;

That hollow fluorescence, a small charge extended;

Your comatose mind, just a wheel suspended;

Her gnawed candy necklace, a cord for collection;

This choice without option, more fuel that direction;

That space in the outlet, a free maiden waiting;

That flat-lined oscilloscope, rests procreating.

This 'nothing' – a concept that persists all on credit –

Should be weightless to carry (remember: forget it).