New ones. Or since the last time.
———
In a dream I felt my father die,
Like a shimmering wind I felt him leave,
I held him up and my brothers were there,
As we departed the train to Germany.
We had returned to the Fatherland,
Out of instinct to a place we never were.
It was green, and cold, and frozen winter.
The train wept smoke as it wailed
And it was a feeling of destiny that we trailed,
The need to feel our history; just one time.
But as he faded in our arms,
I saw him not as he will be, but as he is.
He was not my grandfather then, as I often pictured him in old age.
He was the figure of boundless stamina, fortitude, and vitality.
The security of his voice and the uncruel command with which he captained us,
The anchor of our volatile, immutable, family.
I remembered a quiescent bus ride from Philadelphia,
When we spoke in soundless whispers,
I had never stayed up that late,
and he explained to me the way starlight takes many lifetimes to reach us.
I remembered the times I feared him, but he showed me love instead,
And I know it was he who feared losing me.
This dream unconcealed every cloaked memory,
It threw back the cover and revealed the perfected statue underneath,
That we crafted together, over many years.
I knew he would be leaving soon
and frozen rain drew us closer together still.
The landscape was so unfamiliar and all I wanted was to be home,
Is that not where we were?
It was not like home at all.
My eyes went dark and I became him,
glowing green energy fled from my vision.
Never before or since have I felt such emptiness,
The feeling of the end was all there was,
And we died together,
As a son must always do to be reborn in a father’s image.
He was gone and I awoke in the crevice of my bed and wall,
Freezing tears upon my face,
Like the frost upon my windowpane
Illuminated by orange streetlight.
Then I heard him speaking from downstairs,
In candid, human, ideologies,
And I knew that what I took from him,
was not a country or a college education
or a genetic code.
What he gave me was
the soul of a man,
and a chance, to be,
like him, who faces this life with dignity.
————
“Some kind of ocean ode.”
The wave-crosser comes to me at dawn,
And sits with me through the falsity of soft light evenings,
His scent is tinged with salt and brine,
And his voice breaks at the mention of home.
How he loves to talk for hours,
on the tail end of a glass of scotch.
With his departure comes the slight ship-builder,
Who snickers at the lost old sailor,
His beady eyes filled with a rodent’s mirth,
His pockets full of dead men’s coin.
The parity is astonishing, the man who sells and
the man who goes. The salt would
kill a man like this, I think.
Like a slug, he’d shrivel up and die.
Or tie an albatross around his neck -
destroying all that flies for greenpaperlust.
It is hard to remember the boundless landscapes of urbanity,
but never does one in love forget,
the taste, the odor, and shining face of his cold, green, sweetheart.
This tinder cell contains my shell,
Picked up on some distant shoreline by an excited lass,
and locked away by a curator with handcuffs.
Yet I am like that doomed old dog who can not stay away.
Still my calcium frame has some bits of soul attached
that long for her danger; her crashing voice.
And if you put your ear to me,
You will hear her eternal whisper.
————–
Parasitic thumps in the deathly grip of night,
One too many mornings come colder than before.
Washed out greys and melting ash; pure white.
It lays on the ground outside the convenience store.
Generic yellow light on the bile colored floor,
The heat inside is colder than the snow outside.
Frigid, dead, caffeinated eyes walk in and out the door,
Time and time again the weather man lies.
“It will not get warmer,” said brown eyes.
“It never has; never will,” agreed two blue counterparts,
Huddling with their smokes in hand, eating tastycake pies,
Filling themselves with the poisons of a society of minimarts.
Periodically, some intrepid raises hopeful eyes or an angry first,
Shaking themselves off and rising from television mindsleep.
Spirit on fire with creativity and passion; beautiful like the last green leaf.
Only to be told that “people like you should not exist.”
Power is only power if you hand them your fear,
Death is only death if you leave nothing behind,
Never let anyone else decide; choose your own time,
And I shall return, like an elephant, to your grave,
And mourn gladly over your bones.
————–
Grey is the color of the hour
as dive bombing sparrows gather
A bit off in the distance blinks
an esoteric radio tower.
Two figures in the cattails
Kicking rocks and drinking a bottle
Setting off on some personal matters
Up the shallow current comes a third, in the saddle.
He stole up behind them.
His holsters were empty.
His knuckles were white.
He finally caught up again.
And said goodbye again.