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Relationships
The alarm clock drum-rolls
and each of us enters the day
seeking our uniqueness,
like Houdini in the trunk—
we shave, comb, put on a suit,
shoes, pants,
superstitions in our heart,
clacking wood chimes
hanging from an old tree’s branch,
struck more than once by lightning.
We step into the box,
and it is in failing to
free ourselves from the trunk
that we most define our humanity.
The ocean floor is littered
with hundreds of trunks,
each filled
with murdered angels.
A Moment at the Traffic Light
A sixteen year-old kid
Pulls up on a crotch rocket,
baggy pants and dark shirt,
Long hair reminds me
Of a time I too left early
From a room,
Sunday morning streets empty,
My skin smelling of a woman twice my age
Still asleep at the motel,
tired from fucking all night.
Another car packed,
Grandparents, parents, children
Jammed into a white Grand Marquis,
all coming back from church
I guess,
As happened to me
When uncles and aunts, cousins and siblings
Stuffed like gunnysacks
In a board-weathered wagon,
Going off to hear a tent evangelist,
Who would lift the burden
Of our poverty from our shoulders,
And like an accordion pulled wide,
wrinkled faces unwrinkled and they’d somehow smooth out
and seem younger.
Later on the interstate
A middle-aged solitary looking man
in a blue faded Dodge van
seems more like where I am—
no more debates,
no need to prove points anymore,
in fact I’ll give you
my right eye,
I’ll put it in your hand,
gold-nugget rough,
heavy, thoroughly compact and solid
like a church door
you open and enter
and find yourself
anytime anywhere, free as a wild dog
raising his leg
to pee anytime anywhere.
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