Category: English

Happy birthday, You. Congratulations
On a new year of needless fretting and trepidation,
On twelve new months brimming over
With conflicting desires and gratuitous agitation,
On three hundred sixty-five days
Of industrious navel-gazing and faulty penetration,
And eight thousand seven hundred sixty hours of continuous brooding
And those recurrent fits of quasi-revelations.

You will never grow up, never ever. Happy birthday, Me. Congratulations.

I am a honeycomb and, too, a time machine:
I’m rows of chambers mired in an earlier age,		
Where every single chamber opens to a stage,
And every single stage depicts a unique scene.
You’ll often find me drifting, wandering niche to niche.
You’ll often see me journeying back and forth in time.		
And if I, on occasion, delve in grief and grime,		
I’ll sooner soak in rivers rich in lambent fish.		
Had someone known how fecund life can be,
She might have told me, earlier in the day,
That every moment lived hands you the key
To yet another niche along the way.

You speak of time and of the wounds it allegedly heals.
You speak of grief as something that in time shall fade.
But isn’t time rather a rascal that reveals
the marks once etched by a savage blade
on tender skin? On your eye’s very membrane?
Isn’t time the tautening of a scar, thus urging you against motion,
the rent in the eye that drives you insane,
despair that fattens from pond to creek, to river, to ocean?

Time’s job is not to ease, but aggravate.
Time’s job is not to efface, but accentuate.
Time’s job is to create that perfect monster wave
that will flatten you against the sand.
So don’t you be deceived by that insidious knave: to him
We’re mere sheets of parchment to stab at with a vicious hand.

When the night is well underway,
And the silent, silvery moon's risen high in the sky,
Watery creatures, slender arms and scales shimmering, will say:
“Listen to the whisper of the little ones in the underbrush;
And listen to that cunning old owl—pretending he's a gargoyle and not a fowl.”
“Indeed. And listen to the muttering of the souls of those who drowned,
Their breath prompting the foliage into pointless flight. But let us be still now, so we can hear
The moon,
And bask in her light.”

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
The underbrush is fermenting, belying
the apparent solitude of the scene.

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
Shrill chant soaring, a fervent prayer—
and a warning.

Wet-my-lips
Beware!
Wet-my-lips
Hide!

The graphite clouds are about to burst.
The world goes deaf in the stagnant air.
All is portent. All is expectation.
All is taking place elsewhere.

Then bullets rivet the watery mirror,
and a blast of wind is born by the void.
The covey huddles, and the hunter darts
for shelter under a crumbled priory vault.

Drops ricochet off limestone blocks,
piercing, blinding. The gusts bend
the path of the rain, lashing, soaking—shaking
the man’s resolve.

Stiffly he rises; wavering
he stands, buffeted by the wind.
He pulls his coat tighter around him, and,
shotgun in the crook of his arm, he leaves.

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
The underbrush is seething
with flurried alacrity.

Wet-my-lips, wet-my-lips
downy forms scampering, squeaking
in utter frivolity.

What is joy, and why has it left me?
Did it begrudge braving the waves at my side,
Biding its time until it was time to flee? 

Once, the winds, fair and gentle, added frosting to the sea.
And peacefully we moored, ever leeward, at eventide.
What is joy, and why has it left me?

Once, it was there, in the screeching of seabirds on their fishing spree,
In dying rosy the horizon and pushing cruel clouds aside, 
Biding its time until it was time to flee.

Summer rain was drops of pearls come to rest upon the lea.
Back aboard, the suite unfurls, and the ketch starts to glide.
What is joy, and why has it left me?

Sustained by winds and lush with light, at dusk I reach the quay.
The morrow will bring another feast, if I am to believe my guide,
Biding its time until it was time to flee.

That cruel clouds indeed were gathering I couldn’t, wouldn’t, see,
Or that under glittering azure ripples cutting shoals do hide.
What is joy, and why has it left me? All the while
Biding its time until it was time to flee.

I want a place by the sea, and not just a kitchenette.
But an airy, ample space where I can breathe
And then occasionally, only occasionally,
Smoke a cigarette.

I want a place where I can indulge in old dreams,
And taste the freedom that as yet is but a dream.
And in that ample, ample space, I’ll at last unfurl my wings.
I want a place by the sea, and not just a kitchenette.

I want to feel the salty tang lying heavy on every down.
I also want the sound of waves, a song that sings my fate and ways.
Alone and free, with wings unfurled in that vast and private space,
The sound of waves, the very anthem of my days.

You needn’t bring me the stones
To build myself a cell,
You needn’t forge the iron bars for its door,
Or give me the rope to hang myself
I can do all of that and more—truth to tell,
I can do all of that and more, and do it rather well.

You are everywhere and nowhere,
dauntless and cowardly,
unassuming and brutal. You brandish your stinger
like a sword, you flaunt it like a banner.
Proud, so proud—and witless, you, my friend,
are nothing more than a glorified cockroach
that I can crush underfoot.

She hovers,
held in her mother’s arms.
Airborne; dainty little bird.
Not yet terrestrial and no longer marine.
Not yet realized and no longer a vision.
She is future promise and obscure past,
fading memories and keen sensations, she is
billowing shadows from a submarine world.

She is here now, real now. Now
she is a creature of light and air and sound.
But for the remainder of her life she will dream
of silvery fishes,
of algae and slime,
of the dusky silence
whence she’s emerged.

Come hither love; give me your hand,
let’s wipe those tears off your cheek.
Let’s scold the ground for being rough,
then do something about your knee.

Do not give up your play for fear
of falling down or getting hurt.
For life is all about the leap,
and being familiar with the dirt.

There now, my love, your knee is clean,
soon it will heal and be like new.
We grow and change, we break and mend,
and thrive so long as we brave the bend.

I saw your name in blazing letters on a hillside.
And there I stood, stupefied,
watching your name. And then—well,
then it started to rain.

At first I thought, “These are tears
on my cheek.” As smoke began to rise
I was forced to realize: Either go,
or stay and get soaked.

Either go, or stay and get soaked. Go,
or stay and be blinded
by the acrid smoke
that was once your name.

In my sweat, the animals scent
the smell of my acrid disquiet.
In my head they hear the traffic of frenzied questions
running over and maiming all of my good intentions.
They sense the chaos that prevails
in this monstrous and frenetic piazza
that is my soul.

The animals know
when I am on the verge of a new apocalypse.
They know of my tumbling down from one hope to the other
along the precipice that is raised inside of me each day.
They know by heart the miraculous rescue staged
after every daily devastation.
The animals aren’t impressed anymore.

I know a name, a supple leaf all vein
and sap, a sacred map that is your face,
a chart to port. I know a place by which
to berth by night, to anchor by. The way
a zealous tree will spread its roots about
the earth, so too I grasp, so that I might
enfold your sea. Or so I try, albeit in vain.
And when the light of day returns—
when the light of day returns I drift
away and let you go, for, see? I know
your name, I know your face; I have a map.

Under lock and key,
In a murky chamber and away from prying eyes:
That which ought not be acknowledged,
That which ought not be avowed,
That which might or might not exist—a country, a continent,
The hidden side of me.

Let’s just be.
Let’s just love, without asking why,
Without asking if and when and how.
We needn’t understand, explain or justify.
Just be you, and I will love you
Like I love you now. And if I be me,
Either you will love me, or I.