I am Cold
And the chair resists, scuds across the linoleum grunting and barking,
then it is silent again, cold and lonely.
I look around my apartment.
Things don’t want to move because they will only become more conscious of the cold,
I know that and yet I watch for a moment longer.
Motionless and empty.
But the coffee is black, hot and aromatic,
starting me to get back to work.
I watched the door close,
heard its soft click.
Now, my eyes sear,
I see
as the wind feels.
My friends speak to me
Using words bent,
Screwed and
Wound through
Steel forming machines.
I answer with
Doorknobs,
Tire nuts and
Spaghetti ladles;
Sounds I cannot explain.
One of us gets our drink
and the other of us drinks it.
One of us thinks our thoughts
and the other of us lives them.
One of us loves her
the other of us drinks her blood.
One of us cannot live without her
the other of us plans her death.
One of us is she
and so is the other.
And Then
Silence or maybe it isn’t silence at all, but it is
Rising in my ears like a scream,
Ready to explode.
JW was bewildered. Something was happening in his body. He ran for the car with tears swelling in his chest and spilling from his eyes.
When he hit the car door, he threw myself through the window, pulling myself in with the passenger seat.
Cold sweat ran down his right arm; he released the handbrake, started the car and started backing up, all in a motion.
Once on the road, he couldn’t stop. His body wasn’t his own, he was gripped by tides and he kept forgetting.
He just drove, pulled toward the blur of traffic signals, staying away from city streets, he kept going.
It was cold, it was raining, he peed in his pants, he cried.
Finally, he pulled to the side of the road and stopped on a dark street of freshly pruned trees. In the car, there was no sound but his breathing, and it shook with pounding of his heart.
Somehow, he kept losing track of time. He would suddenly realize that time had passed and he couldn’t account for it. He was missing things. When would the forgetting end?
JW looked out the window.
With the rain and the clouds gone, the stars were clear. He fell asleep.
When JW woke, the sun was hard on his face. He was clammy and sweating and hungrier than he had been in his whole life.
Moving to sit up straight, the skin of his hands and arms felt stiff and brittle. Clinching his fist, he felt thousands of tiny crystals bursting.
He looked at his arm and saw that it was different, longer than he remember? Cleaner? He didn’t recognize it.
There was some kind of mud; his face in the mirror shows splashes of something.
It was blood, he was covered with blood but he was not bleeding.
What had happened? What had happened that he could not remember anything?
Suddenly, he was afraid.
He had to find something to eat, fast!
He drove to a liquor store and bought a grocery bag full of small packages of chocolate donuts, Sour Patch Kids, Tootsie rolls and bread. And several bottles of whiskey.
Then he was back on the road, heading south. Back to the Bay. Back to Jennie.
Lamps spread vacant light on the empty pavement
And the cracked sidewalk where washboard weeds grow.
Trees, stolid Napoleons of darkness, silently abide.
Occasional headlights skate the streets.
Pass this cold detent pass it if you can,
To start again the day.
Eggs, butter and piercing yellow light,
A fixed cloud of gnats, tearful tulips, a red-hot ladybug and a wood bee peck at the bay-window.
Day comes, it comes.
Ministers, proselytizes, begs to differ, screams patent medicine and sells gasoline,
Opens like a flower but calls to war.
Always,
Just out of reach, up ahead,
Down the street,
around the corner.
Picture remains,
you do not.
“Have a good every day!” she sang in a melody something like English.
“Have a good every day!” she said mimicking the look of the deliveryman who used the words.
“Have a good every day!” she laughed, celebrating her new life.
怎么样吗！，她唱的象英文一样。
怎么样吗！，他说模仿快递说的。
怎么样吗！，她笑，享受她新发现的生活。
Yesterday, after a brief rain, I was standing at my bedroom window looking at
the brook that appeared when the trees shed their autumn leaves and left the
forest floor looking like a gypsy’s scarf,
When a sudden wind blew those leaves into the air.
I heard a sharp crack that I thought came from me and watched,
As a tall white speckled birch broke open near the root
And fell through the branches of the trees around out it to lie across my newfound stream.
The moon accedes
Unspooling glimmering trails of light on the rippling ocean; it is
A ballroom of luminous twisting squeaks and broken glass jangles.
The waters of the sea heave, roll and yawn,
Towering swells sink into hushed pools, tides swing like pendula,
Flaring lights and deep black water rattle like thunder
Wave tips sparkle with aluminum fire.
But in a quiet harbor, there is only the
Dream of watercolor sailing ships drifting on an ocean quiet,
Save for the purling tones of water on the pier, the boats, the shore.
And laughter among the rocks where kids make love on beach towels for all to see.
The small forest behind our home has gone from gorged green
to tipsy yellow and fiery red to a stand of naked and defiant
sweetgum and birch bearing rain, wind and cold.
Now, we can see a small stream winding through the floor of the forest
And fallen trees, recent and years past, littering the new mud
and leaves freshly fallen.
And, to our surprise, a white slate house with a gray roof, we
Did not know existed, appeared among the trees,
just a short distance from our bedroom window.