Poem fraction, discovered today

Found in an old notebook of mine, circa 2010. (Where was I going with this?)

The twisted tooth-edged shrapnel:
We've made an art of it.

As people do, waiting through the oil
changes, for Christmases, undressing
and redressing the past.

And I've cut my hands
on the splintered days, on
the smallest shifts of your moving lips,
how memory can cripple
a morning.

Your veins so blue

I wrote this yesterday at work, mostly out of sheer boredom. I like to mess around with words.

Your veins so blue,

the course of falling leaves

we lay beneath –

I swung to you.

There is only so much gathered,

fixed, miraculous, a touch,

a sigh unsighed. “Why,

nothing can be held,” you said,

not looking in my eyes.

And yet, not just my hips,

not only spangled blood and

cheekbone planes, not just

your veins so blue,

so blue, so still, the constance

of desire.

In Arizona

In Arizona, the passing rocks are

stacked like enormous

petrified layer cakes, or

ancient flapjacks.

We’re pointing our wheels

toward the sea.

Did I know? Him, looping an arm

around me, drawing me once in –

bang, like a boat kissing a dock, then

setting me back adrift. Did I know

the first morning?

After all, what is a husband,

but the one who made you willing

when you weren’t?

After all, if this body

can be at such peace,

wedged so tightly between

the pillars of past and ever,

surely I knew, just a little.

But there is so much nothing,

so much silence to

reach across.

Is he what time and pressure

have made of my thousand other

loves? And, if not, what are they still

becoming? You think it’s buried,

but the earth gives everything

back. I am as aware

as the earth is that we are on it,

on this thin drizzle of road.

I know what the earth knows.

We are all a house alone

We are all a house alone,

clifftop, and full of silent chairs.

We wonder about the people that used

to sleep here as weather batters the rocks.

I don’t understand it, time.

I would be better as a diamond. I would be better

as a distant star. Please,

I need a laughing family to live in me forever.

Paradelle for Sebastian

A paradelle is a strict form of poetry that was invented -- sort of as a joke -- by one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins. You can read about it on Wikipedia if you want, but the basic rules are that the final lines of the first three stanzas must contain every word of the lines above it and no others, and the final stanza must contain every word of the stanzas above it and no others. It is, in short, a ridiculous form of poetry, but it's extremely fun to play with.
I wrote this last year. For my subject matter, I chose a crazy weekend that my close friend Sebastian and I spent in San Francisco and Oakland, circa December 2010. I like this poem. I like its oddness; the very ridiculousness of the form works perfectly with the subject matter -- some of the coldest and wildest days of my life.

Paradelle for Sebastian

We left LA under a sky that was corpse pale and covered in bruises.

We left LA under a sky that was corpse pale and covered in bruises.

I never blamed you for the weather.

I never blamed you for the weather.

And I never was under that corpse we blamed for bruises.

Pale in the LA weather, you left a covered sky.

Driving and splashing, I was in love.

Driving and splashing, I was in love.

With your cold world and hung over friends.

With your cold world and hung over friends.

And cold love hung over your driving world.

And I was splashing in with friends.

I think we all expected a rainbow that weekend, but no.

I think we all expected a rainbow that weekend, but no.

Why did you write so many sad songs?

Why did you write so many sad songs?

We all, that sad, write a no weekend rainbow.

But I did think you expected so many songs. Why?

We blamed a splashing weather for many love songs.

We expected that cold weekend corpse.

But why did I never think that world was sad, driving all your friends with you and I?

You write in the pale hung sky.

And was I so over under covered?

No, LA left a rainbow in the bruises.

Hibernation

Hibernation

The earth, warm, breaks beneath my body
Crumbles and clings in the creases
Of my palms.
He wakes, the dust
Like snowflakes on eyelashes.
Come out of hibernation, love
Uncoil, unfurl the flag of us
The red-rock-desert-you-and-I:
Lizards between stones.

This is an elemental morning
Of wheat and worn faces
Of sun, cold stars,
And slowly-rousing spirits.
Come out of hibernation, love
I stretch my fingers to
His glowing skin.
The earth (so warm) breaks
Beneath my body.

Aftershock

I woke in your arms like

An earthquake – two
Tectonic plates
Caught together, straining
In opposite directions
That finally
Slip – 
My room was dark
And I couldn’t feel you
Breathing. 

The complications of being two:

Today a friend asked me what my favorite literary works are. Of course, I have so many I didn't even know where to start, and I wasn't at home to simply walk over to my bookshelf and begin reading titles to her. I decided to pull up my virtual bookshelf in hopes of having some titles to share, so I opened my Goodreads account.
I haven't been to Goodreads in years. I like the site, I like what it does, how people can share what they're reading, post reviews, etc. But like most things on the interweb, I never really committed to using it; in fact, I was only really active on Goodreads during the summer of 2007, when the boy I liked was on it, too, and it was a way for me to feel connected to him.
(I'm happy to report that he and I are still connected, as firm friends.)
Anyway, in revisiting my Goodreads account today, I found several old poems I'd forgotten about. I'll post a couple of them here in the next few days. They are all, of course, about the aforementioned boy.

The complications of being two:

You called it “awkward arm” –
How, even with our legs braided tight
We could never be as close as we 
Wanted. 
The size of the bed, 
The town,
Our circles of friends who “couldn’t understand”
And the way we looked
Nothing alike.
I guess proper couples are supposed to.
Then,
An ocean, determined to swallow you
and days days days days days
apart,
their echoes overwhelming the few we had together.
But you realized, eventually,
That we could sleep just fine on the floor.  

Providing

I keep a careful crop of loves,

sowing and tending with the religion

of a priest.

Onions and peppers for friends,

beans for students.

For family, the sturdy meat of potatoes

with their many eyes.

If not perfect, I am at least

a squashy, sentimental gardener,

always looking for spoiled fruit, or a pumpkin patch

to cry in.

And by now I am used to the

hunter-gatherer you,

your mazy forests with their

elusive game. You come to me,

dripping blood. I know: this is what providing

costs you.

In winter, your arms are full of twisted, brittle sticks.

See, this is a season, we say

huddling over flint and tinder.

I will keep us fed. You keep us warm.

Some days your soul is

Some days your soul is

a small glass box I want

to fit into. Other days

you’re the house with

blue walls I’ve been living in

for years.

I want to know why sometimes

we are as close as drops

of water, sometimes untouchable

as shadows, sometimes like the

same word, softly

spoken.

I want to know what music

our bodies are moving

to. I want to know the names

of your freckle constellations.

Sometimes I think that there is no

history, only love.