Tenth Movement

These are moments when I remember you the most,

when the sunrise reminds me of a rose;

my darling demons haunt me as if my past had many ghosts.;

there is a certain sharpness to the air;

the vines begin to look like hair.

 

Even asphalt turns to shades of green and gold,

reminiscent of your eyes—

right before the coating of the cold.

 

Remember me when you are old.

 

I hold you softly in my youth,

and loft whispers of partial truths

into the wind that moves in your direction.

 

Forgive my imperfections and anchor me

 

within the folds

                of your wrinkles as you age.

                With every Fall, anchor deeper.

 

Rooted in your mind or heart or neither,

I will always be your keeper.

Ninth Movement

"Madman" carved on air conditioner grates, this mad house.
Steeples of old churches idle against the graying of a Minnesotan sky,
as God eludes us nightly–but humbly.

 

This is aging.
And is madness,
a treatise of sadness.

All the faces have gone,
and with them are remnants of smiles.

Perhaps they have found themselves ingrained

on the decaying silver screens of the former Guthrie.

There may have been a smile still haunting the floors of the Foshay,

 looking down as if on the sidewalk stood a Gatsby

looking up.

Near them are
the topless mermaids guarding Thresher Square
singing as sirens on the first
Wednesday of every month

but are never heard.

Elongated seconds, the distance of thousands

of half-effort smiles,
madden our hardened souls
to the quickening of life

as they were seen disappearing beneath the blue lit bridge.

The people falling
into the river saw a haze of blue instead of white,

foreshadowing the end of their long tunnel
as a river bed with a halo the color of cold.

 

They may have heard the sirens as the

drones of metal cases and concrete
fell down and followed their ferries–
that this time
actually took them to the afterlife.

Having no token, they themselves drove

and were charged but with lungs full of river.

 

And  here there are dozens,

looking down.

Eighth Movement

We captured each other,

but in the process of caging almost

lost each other.

 

Tell me all that has gone

while we’ve focused on the strength

of our bars.

 

Whisper it softly

like a silent river

and I will float on your current.

 

I find it hard to move on,

a fallen tree between rocks.

                Loosen me with your voice,

                into pieces, into driftwood.

                Go on.                    

 

Do not rock, but ease.

In the roll and rip of your lapping

round the edges with peace.

 

Form  to me by wrapping

and take me along.

Remember, we’re free now.

Go on, tell me all that has gone.

Seventh Movement

You are the someone I have been looking for,

and the reason why it rains, nine times out of ten,

while I’m sleeping.

 

If I wept,

I know that your sleeves would keep me

from weeping;

 

if I dreamt,

I know that your rain

would keep me sleeping.

 

I awake weaving

an apology for our love.

You are everything I have ever looked for in love.

 

You are the blanket that never falls off me

in a cold night,

like a sweet voice in song

or prayers sung.

 

Keep it from moving

from me, keep it on.

 

I am weaving these dreams to dance on water

like the rain dances on sidewalks.

 

They are prayers that keep us strong

in our love,

keep me strong.

 

I wake,

but in this night hold me right

with your song.

Instead of a Letter

Sixth Movement

Where is it I’ve gone over this bridge?

 

To which moment will it bring me kneeling before?

 

Words repeated, from a breath before my time:

“All things move toward their own beginning.”

And in that course, things may venture off the path

as it flows from the source, but the end will never move

from its point.

 

At the 854^th river mile,

I look for what there is left in me to move

closer to or farther from a path

for which I’ve yet to find a beginning.

 

There is water in me

from before I knew you were a part of me.                                               

                       Remove these cables, and let me fall beneath the bridge

 

into my fortune.

It is in you that I am to find my word.

The one I equate with “be” and the one I once saw

 

on your banks—crawling from the bottom that holds you.

Let me fall that I may hold you.

 

I began with vibrations,

and I hear that moment in your rush.

 

Let me be your movement,

and the silent hush of the distance you wind toward.

 

Sway me forward with your power,

it belongs to both you and me

as my soul is indebted to you

for the maintenance of its body.

                               Remove me from my body, and let me fall beneath this bridge

 

into you.

Passing Observations on Nourishment

This is mourning:

 

The emptiness that a night of hunger

leaves in a daylight stomach.

 

Whether it’s in a corner of a building in Cleveland

or in the camps of Dadaab,

there is no way a lunar month

could absolve these thoughts.

 

Broken hearts could never compare

to a homeless man running down Euclid with no shoes

or a woman watching her child starve

incapable of nursing.

 

If I was not fasting, I’d be cursing.

Cursing all the little things in our day

that make us forget such a thing as hunger exists.

Cursing faith, for giving me the strength to convince myself

that God has reason for this.

 

I’m giving up hurting for this.

Because there is no room for my pain

when it comes to these images.

Notice: Images are not mine.

The Wasteland

I’ve always considered myself

a shooting star across your sky;

less brilliant when I landed at your feet—

nothing but a rock.

 

I will never say that I lied,

or that I tricked you in any way

because at distance so many things may be true

but up close so many truths may be lost.

 

Now I see that I was more of a streak,

fighting to get out

but couldn’t find a way.

 

This is the story of a man who fell in love

only to find himself sleeping next to the wrong person.

The fear of hurting made him stay,

but also made him hate himself.

 

He realized that he was no Calcifer,

and could never give her the flying castle

her beautiful soul deserved.

 

And the longer he stayed

the more like Howl he became—

heartless.

 

There was always this wish where he repeated

“I should’ve never fallen,

and if given another chance I would write

‘I’m sorry, I am a false light’ across your sky with my life.”

Fifth Movement

A silence as brief as sidewalk cracks
precedes the low hum of an engine rumbling

somewhere in the distance.
For a reason vague and unknown to me
I find myself in thought of you–

but am somehow grounded in this concrete
as my qalb is lifted beyond the lamp-glow’s iridescence.

It is dark now,
it is damp
and I wish that I were perfect.

 

(I can walk from here, or wait a little longer.
Just another fifteen minutes.)

 

The segments of the sidewalk
act as if they ladder silently toward heaven

or somewhere in the distance.
These are my personal staves
and are made by thoughts

and never-thoughts which poured to harden and to stay.
I can’t help but clamber.

Calling back now,
through the thickened
voice that fears such imperfection.

 

(Distance judged by time is foolish,
and so is brief and short-lived guidance.)

 

Pace with me and feel.
Although touch

compels me to the distance.
Light upon light. Still the cracks each hold a moment
where reversion is apparent

but the null will always hold the alternate
deep in my description.

I try hard
but slowly
do I force myself to see it.

 

This is not
and I am not
the cause of this deceit.

 

Come to Summit,
here I turn
and see the door.

(Too many damn the score;
so much has damned this world;
and damn forgiveness to distant war.)

 

I will always pass through doors.

Third Movement

If the mist that hides the Mississippi on this night

was to gather at my feet,

however clouded your face, I could not forget you.

 

A haze of blocks along the West Bank, and an onset

of blindness comes to be the air by which my memory has folded you.

I dared not dream of growing old with you;

but you linger like the cadence of a song I learned long

before I heard your voice at daybreak—

 

there must be some confusion in me of a place, because you remain

the only touch of freedom I embraced.

 

What would it have changed

if the thought of you had never taken me where walking couldn’t?

If behind glass we hid from wind, or

at the dock’s edge we shuddered in each other’s arms

from fear of falling in,

why do you move away when I lean in?

 

If all were but seen by you as clear, meaning water;

if life were but known by you as a path, meaning lake;

to the empty, which is us, who wish that our dreams were a message, meaning river.

 

There are three

to the South,

yet here we are convinced that no words have been left untouched

by our mouths—but I am sure we haven’t lapped these waters

to sanctify our doubts from here in the north,

where we have furnished

what we’ve found,

to the delta,

where the waters move back toward the land,

with sound.

Forgiveness is a constant prayer murmured long after we’ve received it—

played by the strings that compose us,

and washed away by the stretch of water that consoles us.

 

What error there is with these phantom towers—

or the lamplights that, at sunrise, turn off on Grand

to give a moment where everything is darker—

is they stand more stiff when everything is frozen.

 

And I thaw out in spring, along the stretch that I have chosen.