A Difficult Cadence to Maintain

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Limbo of Infants

November is forever falling leaves
As long as I can remember
The scattered piles of the day’s labor
Undone by the icy wind
Whispering words of childhood names:
Rover, Polo, Oxen free.
Of all the seasons I prefer the autumn,
Her sacrifice
For beauty, nature will pluck the limbs of trees
Sending her children forth,
Each one a wish,
A lifetime.
These curled corpses of spring
End up on the embers of a distant fire.

Limbus Patrum

Each of us will one day remember
That feeling of having misplaced a glove
In winter's first snowfall,
Or of losing a loved one to a hard-fought battle
With cancer or to some other question
We cannot answer.

Let of us each remember,
So we don’t need reminding
By another one lying on the cold table,
Tomorrow excised with a scalpel,
Or turned back into yesterday with pharmaceuticals
Whose real names we’d struggle to pronounce.

On the side of the street I am reminded
That a man in his seventies is out of work,
With sick children at home to care for.
Who cares for him at the end of his days?
Does he go to a home that’s out of the rain?

Let each of us know what this man thinks
Every night he enters this place,
Out of time, out of mind.

Heiligenschein (or The Glory of Halos)

On a clear morning with dew on the grass,
Nearly spherical dew drops,
Focused and reflected back toward the sun
Along almost the same path that it took originally,
Retroreflected like memory.
But light doesn’t travel an exact path;
Spreads out just enough to be seen as bright white light
About your head on a damp lawn.

Sunlight enters the small water droplet,
Along its edge
Is refracted, then reflected
off the backside of the droplet.
If I could only remember her face,
                                                        her figure.

Light skims along the surface of the droplet,
A surface wave for a short distance.
Diffraction drops in off the edges of meniscus,
Blows the ring of light recast as glory and the brocken bow.
That split crescent descended to the floor,
Tipped an arrow into the dark, off-target.
Collecting my wits with a quiver,
I cast my spectre to the headlight of the moon.

the sketch (version two)

a shaded line
can be illuminating
by adding layers
of surrounding shadow,
echoing history, passing
hollow notes of a harpsichord
permeating the evening air.
peaks of poles
at five o’clock attention,
the masts rendered
with single strokes
of pencil.
drawn in this light,
the shadows fall out of frame
and out on to the floor
that once was a harbor.

Dogs in the morning light

Dogs in the morning light,
Paws marking the floor,
Tongues lapping at the door,
Live lives in tiger’s eyes.
Dogs in the morning dew,
Streaks the window pane,
Streaks cross the fertile plain,
I cannot name but a few.

Should I unlatch the gate
Closed since two thousand one?
Should I go unleash the beast
That calls to me to run?

Beyond this homely hound
Of jaw-hawking dusk,
The nose-diving husks
And pockets of teeth
Scattered in the pink light
Of cloud-infested sky,
The mockery of shyness
Diaphanous as the night.

Would it please you to wait
For eternal permission?
Would it likely endanger
Your personal mission?

A cat in the midnight light,
Beyond hearing, beyond sight.

One the eve of hope

I carved a pumpkin
To show support for my candidate.
Though it may seem immature
To introduce politics
Into annual office events,

Isn’t every breath political,
Arguing life over death?

Next week Capmetro will strike
Because they’re not getting their way,
And my way to work
Will be paved with my wife’s worries
That I’ll be hit
If forced to cross the highway.

I tell her that with a name like Braker,
the road I walk is already a highway,
So what’s changed?
We can only hope the long-term
Future plans of the next round of officials
Fix this commuting problem,
That they have learned
Highways kill communities.

Isn’t every job political,
Arguing work over pay?

Election day,
Four days early,
And the people
Snake through the stripmalls
With slithering sneers
Of pro prop 2 supporters,
And those who can’t decide
End up the difference.

That’s why I’m political,
Arguing overtime.

The Bard of Swansea

The bard of Swansea,
Steeped in old lore,
Drank himself to death
When he was two score

He’d break the Welsh bread
Past the angels in his head
And write himself a book
Of lyrics and verse instead.

The man they called Dylan
But not Robert Zimmerman,
The man they called Thomas
Brought tea for the sea.

The mad bard of Swansea
Went on New York tour,
He drank too much whiskey
And then drank some more.

The day he was born
They threw out the verse,
The day he was young
He made up a universe

The man they called Dylan
But not Robert Zimmerman,
The man they called Thomas
Brought me to Swansea.

Before he grew old
And his songs of words waned,
He laid down and died –
The rules had all changed.

One sip in a Swansea hall,
One step down this wave-swept path
“Bewilder ‘em” is all
that’s left on his epitaph.

the sketch

a shaded line
can be illuminating
by adding layers
of surrounding shadow,
notes of a harpsichord
permeating the evening air
peaks of poles at attention,
the masts rendered
with single strokes
of pencil.
drawn in this light,
the shadows fall out of frame
and out on to the floor
that once was a harbor.

Sinisteria II

You want to be noticed?
Walk down Braker Lane at 6pm
and see the yawning maws
in the drive-by manslaughter,
inspire the fumes of auto locomotion
curling the hairs on your arms and throat.

Even the name sounds down-and-out.
Walk the hundred degree mile,
while the seats of passing comfort
trickle change between the cushions
from drive-thru coffee spots,
lending more all the rage to the road.

You want to know why I walk,
now in my mid-thirties, down a dusty path
reserved for the city's transients,
along sidewalks that go nowhere,
islands of development on a stint
considered a no man's land by so many.

Before I answer your nonchalant question
with left-handed verse, teetering on a rant
with gnashed teeth and ill-chosen phrases,
I'd ask each of the drivers passing by
if they'd ever stop if even for a moment
to watch a bee orbit a bluebonnet.

Sinisteria IV

"Hey, you forgot your smokes,"
an elderly man said
pointing at a pack of Winstons
and a lighter,
to the kid who'd gotten
up from his seat
as if he'd forgotten them,
as if this older generation
wanted youth to catch up.
"They're not mine,"
he replied looking slightly
embarrassed at the thought
of smoking.
He left the bus
as the elderly man
changed his seats,
drawn in by habit,
by the lure,
another reminder
of his own youth.
He picked them up
and slid them in his pocket
like so many memories.

On how insects clock a quantum

An earwig runs circles
around a chunk of asphalt,
twitching antennae
like an outerspace robot
who has lost his direction
and gone on the fritz.
This dance goes on round 15 minutes,
spanning the distance of a foot.
It maps this circuit
in fits of sprints
and returns to the spot
where it set off
an eternity ago.

Waypoints (2nd draft)

In those autumn evenings when the sun dripped dry
we slept in the harbor, swam in our clothes.
We picked up the drunk at the liquor store,
and from the bed of your truck, he asked us
for a ride home from AA,
and then for some beer.
We left him on the corner of Wilkens and Fulton
and he popped some pills, ducked into a stoop
and out of our lives.
We never went back.

Left on Rolling Road, we pulled into U.M.B.C.
(You Made a Bad Choice we'd joke),
threw such lofty fits in the the dorms,
pushing each other into and out of new -isms
and your finger slammed like an apple
in the basement door, its skin
dangling from the bloody core,
and we rushed you to St. Agnes in our pajamas,
sat out front with the addicts for hours
throwing bottle caps in the birdbath.
Those sirens were little lobotomies.

No wonder we were so lost then.
Past the rowhomes we ran downtown,
the city’s charms rising in Bromoseltzer hues
and were we falling to the sidewalks like beetles
drawn in by neon letters, places with names like "BAR."
Did we want to die like Poe,
right there in the gutter?
or to pass through the Blues like those other
kids bitching about their mothers?

We rode through the streets and out to the diners,
the Double TT on Rt. 40, smoked cigarettes,
drank coffee until dawn, our books left in their bags,
wrote poems one line at a time, sharing the rhyme,
the paper accordioned with doubt.
It’s odd how in these habits,
you blink and you miss it.
We paid the bill and out in the street,
the sun etched our impressions onto the bay.

In those days we looked forward to so much more,
but time has no direction or memory,
like the Chesapeake, only buoys light the way.

Leaving the Parish late one autumn night

It was ten before we'd arrived,
But they had been on for a half an hour.
They only played another thirty minutes,
Long enough for just one beer,
Not even time to shake out the rust
To consider dancing.
Maybe it was the fifty people,
Maybe it was the smoking ban,
But we couldn’t help but wonder
How a once British supergroup
Could end their show before eleven,
Even on a school night.
Is this what happens when we comb over the spots in the past?
His long hair couldn't hide how tired he sounded.
I'm glad I gave that shit up.

Sinisteria III

Showered with a rain of golden nouns,
passages of a midsummer harangue,
I found myself on the defensive.
Daring not respond, I bit my tongue
and held it tight against my lower lip
like a child with a lisp
at the first sound of thought.

And that was how I spent my summer
in a pool of pride, eyes open wide
but tongue-tied at the tip,
daunted by what I wanted to say
and how to express the duress
that presses against my palette,
a pendulum in need of a fulcrum.

The Word

There was this foreign feeling
Encountered this cool morning;
I caught myself soaking
The marrow out of the Word

Something I thought myself
Incapable of comprehending
For the many years of my youth
Which I have somehow scored

Differently than my peers,
Marking yesterday more than tomorrow.
I sit waiting, staring at a his life-sized
Statue or more precisely, toward,

And accuracy is important
Since in this pale light
With goose pimples on my arms,
From acclimation to long summers,

I see in his shadow more
Clearly than light,
More in his dying for
Than in his life.

3,000 angles on a raven

There is something significant
about a single black raven
perched upon an episcopal
steeple in the afternoon sun.

Maybe it's the heat that walks me
to and from these hallowed doorsteps
or perhaps it's the growing cold
to compensate for the global
climate getting warmer with change.

In this era of instant cause
and effect, tangos with terror,
religion must repent, relent
on its claims the world is error.

Though traditions die hard, lying,
one thing I will never forget --
crying wolf will call them, baying.
But change is a moving target,
and is flying a steel carpet.

The raven lands, still as a tower.
Always has, always will to power.

St. John's Episcopal

I walked by my local Episcopal
on a daily path that serves penance
for the ten years of driving
to wait ten minutes for the bus.

As I passed the arched windows
I stopped to contemplate the statue
of Jesus and then my receding hairline.
This is my humility.

Sending my hands wringing
through a primeval forest of anger
Why are there no bells on modern churches?
with their ringing holy recitation.

The angelic singing reminds us of vespers.
Today they are but whispers.

Sinisteria I

Never having thought
I'd know her
I never learned how to ask,
and always feeling so
left out of love,
the thought of entering her,
becoming her
was always further from my mind
than what I imagined
I would do
if I were her
and I knew me
the way she thinks
she does.

A Reminder (2nd draft)

You haven’t known humility
until you’ve had your foot run over
by a woman in a wheelchair
smoking an off-brand cigarette
She rolled off as I stood in the middle
of the crosswalk and she flicked her butt
to the pavement without a single glance

To know this humility, like knotted seaweed,
those emotions that stumble over grace,
you must sit in Veggie Heaven
on the drag in the off-peak shadows
for hours and watch the window
as the pane is passed over by hand-holding lovers
(flicking butts without a single glance)
and study your reflection as a palimpsest

In this position, you’ll notice
someone’s aging mother with arthritis
ambling on cloudy sandals
with a lone tray of leftovers
tossing rice to pigeons (in Tok Pisin
muttering a prayer for the many starving people
on the islands of Melanesia you’ll never know)
which crumbles on the parched pavement
in the shape of Indonesia

Why do you care to notice?
Because at the far table
beyond the edge of your known world
the Spanish-speaking busgirls
sit down after the lunch shift,
enjoying an energetic picnic
in the empty restaurant,
their three voiceless whispers
echoing the cadence of confidence

Sunburnt men in their seventies
with tired rage encasing their faces
creep along the sidewalk,
mumbling to pigeons as someone’s mother
hands them meals in styrofoam
(which didn’t exist in their youth)
to extend time with a smile

I am the silver man from the Dobie
(the one who sweeps the floors in a stained uniform)
charging across the street
between the #1 bus and the bicycles
shielded by a black plastic bag
with all I own – a blanket, two shirts,
and the last picture of my mother before she passed
(to bury it behind a dumpster)
Though you can’t help but wonder about my childhood,
how I always wanted to be in the movies,
know that my last job was Fear
and that you too will one day be ensnared as a metaphor
by some scared poet searching desperately for an image

So go back to your uneaten
curry bun on the table,
savor it now,
and save the humble prayer
of words
for yourself.
One day they’ll be all you have.

Monday Morning

The tiles in the kitchen
have warped and cracked,
attacked by too much expansion,
too many contractions,
too many breakfasts in flames.

Last night we laughed like jackals on wine
but in the morning you screamed
sirens and slammed the door,
the dogs baying under the table.
They weren’t waiting for scraps.

Your words were sleeping dragons
startled from a century’s slumber,
the volcanic breath expressing
this week's frustration with
me and my stone schedule.

Why couldn’t I make the time to take you to dinner?

There were too many starts of fights
and ends of loaves of bread,
compliments cut
short
by loathsome crusts
burnt
by your anger
crumbled to dust and crumbs,
falling







apart like weekends
that rush by like menus
said all in one breath.

Waypoints

In those autumn evenings when the sun dripped dry
we slept in the harbor, swam in our clothes.
We picked up the drunk at the liquor store,
and from the bed of your truck, he asked us
for a ride home from AA,
and then for some beer.
We left him on the corner of Wilkens and Fulton
and he popped some pills, ducked into a stoop
and out of our lives.
We never went back.

Left on Rolling Road, we pulled into U.M.B.C.
(You Made a Bad Choice we’d joke),
threw such lofty fits in the the dorms,
pushing each other into and out of new -isms
and your finger slammed like an apple
in the basement door, its skin
dangling from the bloody core,
and we rushed you to St. Agnes in our pajamas,
sat out front with the addicts for hours
throwing bottle caps in the birdbath.
Those ambulance sirens were little lobotomies.

Why were we so lost then?
Past the rowhomes we ran downtown,
Charm City rising in Bromoseltzer hues
And were we falling to the sidewalks like beetles
drawn in by neon letters, places with names like “BAR?”
Did we want a death like Poe,
worthy of the gutter?
Or to pass through the Blues like those other
assholes bitching about their mothers?

We rode through the streets and out to the diners,
the Double TT on Rt. 40, smoked cigarettes,
drank coffee until dawn, our books left in their bags,
wrote poems one line at a time, sharing the rhyme,
the accordion paper stained with doubt.
It’s odd how in these habits,
you blink and you miss it.
We paid the bill and out in the street,
the sun etched its impression onto the bay.

In those days we were looking for so much more.
but memory has no direction or logic,
like the Chesapeake, only buoys light the way.

Soufrière, St. Lucia, December 2005 (2nd draft)

Under déz Pitons, the cinders sing with charcoal springs,
rocks ruddied with sulfur cascading down Diamond Falls –
the bearded men with carved baubles and beads,
You on vacation mahn, no pressure, no problem –
mahogany straddles the stilted houses in the hills,
River Doree cool and deadly as a lady
snakes through narrow streets, pastel faded façades,
past the Church of the Assumption and central square,
childhood home of Napoleon’s Empress Josephine de Beauharnais.
The ever-windward waves,
catamarans anchor tourists just-offshore as the wake exerts its will
on rows of canoes and buoys, beckons like beacons to divers,
muscled men blowing conches over cruise ship horns,
parade their tuna-colored shells,
and soté boys from the jump-up in Gros Islet dive from docks,
dreadlocks as golden as the crests of hummingbirds,
mister, madam, coin, coin! plead tourists
to throw cent, five cent, ten cent, dollar
into the deep water, shoving each other,
nosediving after the coins,
bodies dancing upside-down, the feet flit
like minnows, racing for the specie,
specks of silver sinking under the sea,
flipping end-over-end like the island’s history –
which side you on? no pressure, no problem,
then surface and shout for more, raison d'état,
their voices a soca chantey, a chorus of gulls.

12 years

Guilt is such a pathetic word
that nobody knows where it came from.
I had been meaning for years to talk to you,
but like a fish that’s a prize from a county fair,
all I could do was sit there, gills gasping
for water, my mouth for air that’s way too human
for forgiveness.
You had never approached me about it;
we always went to different schools,
and avoided each other after,
but this was our one shared cell,
a detention that would never let out.
We went to dad at Walter Reed,
watched him wither under cherry blossoms.
Why not now, when our worlds are changing?
There was a silent moment in the parking lot
between the visit
                          and the ride home –
I chose then to confront my own illness.
You said that it was fine, but we’re all affected
by what’s said, what’s not, and what can’t be forgotten.
Damn I felt so rotten, eyes clouded with tears,
like a fish left out for a week or for years.

Soufrière, St. Lucia, December 2005

Under déz Pitons, the cinders sing with charcoal springs,
rocks ruddied with sulfur cascading down Diamond Falls –
the bearded men with carved baubles and beads,
You on vacation mahn, no pressure, no problem –
mahogany straddles the stilted houses in the hills,
River Doree runs cool and deadly as a snake
through narrow streets, ill pastel faded façades,
past the Church of the Assumption and central square,
childhood home of Napoleon’s Empress Josephine de Beauharnais.
The ever-windward waves never still,
catamarans usher tourists ashore as the wake exerts its will
on rows of canoes and buoys, beckons like beacons to divers,
men blowing conches over cruise ship horns,
parade tuna-colored shells around visitors,
and soté boys from the jump-up in Gros Islet dive from docks,
their dreadlocks golden as the crests of hummingbirds,
mister, madam, coin, coin! petition tourists
to throw cent, five cent, ten cent, dollar
into the deep water, shoving each other,
and one-by-one nosedive after the coins,
bodies dance upside-down, feet flit
like minnows, racing for the specie,
specks of silver sinking under the sea,
flipping end-over-end like history –
which side you on?
then surface and shout for more, raison d'état,
their voices a soca chantey, a chorus of gulls.

A Circus Elegy for Dad, June 25th, 2001

I

The simplest way to start is to say
We stood together without you.

The salt and pepper crowd filed in, 
    More than I ever knew you knew,
        In charcoal suits you fought so hard not to wear
            And the chaplain with all his pins and medals
Intoned an urgent prayer for the retired sergeant.

The base chapel smelt of microwave popcorn
    As you sat, ash in an urn,
        Salute half masked by the flag.
            There are certain aspects of tents
That provide a singular backdrop to my life – 

Their blank canvases, telescoping poles, their portability,
    Transported from town to town with no foundation,
        Never a firm fixture, the loose faucet handles
            Spill out way too literally, spell out
A place I’ve never heard of but would soon call home.

Under $30K, the fixed wage you earned until I was thirteen,
    Your soldier’s salary poured salt in wounds of service –
        Indentured by fractured dentures, 
            Teeth pinched out by a 2-ton icy windshield
In that German o-dark-thirty  when you were just thirty.

Mom stood years on the highwire balancing finances,
    Feeding a family of five without driving
        When you’d spend months TDY,
            Our clothes on layaway until the next school year
And mom’s part-time teacher’s pay blew chalk in my face,

Like those other kids, the many black eyes.
All those young minds, not one left to waste.
 
II

I read aloud from his personal copy of “The Road Less Traveled,” 
    His favorite poem, the one from the collection 
        That mom’s mother inscribed “Happy reading, 
            Xmas ’74,” two days after my birth, 
The year they hitchhiked down parenthood together,

She, teaching English to Tehran’s alleycats,
    He, stationed to maintain foreign relations
        Passing coded notes as an embassy liaison,
            Floating into Soviet water with Iranians
Behind enemy lines in fishing rafts on the Caspian.

Waking in cold sweats unable to share his secret fears,
Turned into beers in the officer’s club afterhours.

Every word reverberated against the chapel granite,
    Each rounded vowel altered the chambers,
        The plain and simple message of a pastoral walk,
            My understated, monotonous prosody 
Spoke of suffering and loss between the lines.

My father’s cold war friends and heroes
    Lied low in the last few rows
        As if exile were second nature,
            As if keeping distance from a caged lion,
Heads bowed, bronze as a statue, a monument.

A layer of Frost coated stone faces
    As squeaking pews slipped into silence.
        They silenced their breathing with memory 
            with each tentative, vocal step through the passage. 
As the final line was uttered with a stutter,

I sat back down between my wife and mother,
And that has made all the difference.
 
III

We return to the scene of the mourning,
    Every thought itched with stubble on my face from staying up late,
        packing our place to move halfway across the country.
            I had followed in the beard of your name for 26 years,
But this week mom lost both her Stephens.

I held my wife’s hand like a breath, 
    Circumnavigated emotions with the rings we’d exchanged
        Two days before; noticed mom still wore hers, 
            The smoke rings had signalled carcinoma,
Some form of semaphore over the tumor,

Folded in among the radio and microwaves,
    You lied in silence sipping shaved ice, beard ever silver,
        Until the night we walked you to the back door
            To get one last look at the home you’d hoped to retire to.
You caught the lightning in your clenched fist.

We were lined up like a firing squad,
    The rifles in cages on the patches of your folded uniform,
        As your friends shared our grief, shaking hands
            like clowns who can’t look at themselves in a mirror.
If I had succumbed to tears, this would be a pure memory.

For this I offer an apology – 
The chaplain forgot to read the eulogy. 

A memo to tomorrow’s pride

You haven’t known humility
until you’ve had your foot run over
by a woman in a wheelchair 
smoking an off-brand cigarette (She rolled off it
as I stood in the middle of the crosswalk
and she flicked her butt to the pavement
without a single glance at me) For true humility
to stumble over grace 
you gotta sit in a vegetarian restaurant 
on Guadalupe in the off-peak shadows
for an hour and watch the window
pane passed over
by hand-holding lovers Yesterday’s woman 
                                         Someone’s mother
(tongue soothing the memory
of her brittle lips)
ambles with arthritis
with a lone tray of leftovers
tosses rice to pigeons (in 
                           Tok Pisin
muttering something about the starving people
on the many islands of Melanesia
you’ll never know)
which tumbles on the peaceful pavement
in the shape of Indonesia
and at the far table beyond the edge of your world
the Spanish-speaking busgirls
repose from the lunch shift
enjoying an energetic picnic
in the empty restaurant
where three voiceless whispers 
echo with the cadences 
of confidentiality Multiple men in retirement
from what you wonder
with tired rage wrapped around their faces
creep in cardigans shielding their wings
talk to the pigeons as they pick up styrofoam meals
(which didn’t exist in their youth) 
and buzz away To become humble
you must stare as a silver man in a lavender uniform 
charges across the street
between the buses and the bicycles
wielding a black plastic bag 
filled with you wonder what
and you wonder where he is taking it
(to dispose of in private you suppose)
though you can’t help speculating about his childhood dreams
and what his last job might have been Fear 
how you will one day become netted
                                   as a metaphor
by some image-hungry poet Return
in silence to the uneaten curry bun
on the table
studying the significance
of employment, voice, food, and locomotion
in this haven of workers in and out of motion
you have prayed the humble prayer
                                  of words

Kristin (2nd draft)

The last time I saw you
we shared a dinner off a slingshot,
then curled up with our pillows
like willows in early winter weather –

I massaged the day off your body
and the light was like a t.v. mosaic
of seltzer bubbles in my fleeting
fling with a Tom Collins –

Your hands reminded me
of a comb across a balding head,
the careful caress of your nails
like club soda fizzling flat.

After those long summer days at work
I imagined some nights you dreamed of
Kindergartens and Cristkindlmarkts
under Allemagne skies.

I will give you, and you me, a child
and we’ll waltz through Marienplatz,
like two marionettes in tune
with strings untangled from today.

Kristin

The last time I saw you
we shared a dinner off a slingshot,
then curled up in bed –
I massaged the day off your body
and the light was like a mosaic
of seltzer bubbles in my misdirected
fling with a Tom Collins –
the ginger caress of your nails
and your hands reminded me of
a comb across a balding head,
the gin fizzling flat.
I imagined some nights you dreamed of
this summer’s return to Germany.
I will give you a child
and we will plan a return trip to live.
I wish to waltz through with you
Luitpold Park, Königs- and Marienplatz,
like two marionettes in tune
with strings untangled from today.

A night in Bal'more

I still recall that autumn evening
when we picked up the drunk in your truck
at the liquor store, and he asked us
for a ride home from AA
and then for some beer.
We u-turned back to the dorms
and your finger slammed like an apple
in the basement door and we rushed you
to St. Agnes in our pajamas,
sat out front with the addicts for hours
throwing bottle caps in the birdbath.
Down Rt. 40 and Wilkens Ave.
the main drag road downtown,
Bal’more rose in sky scraping towers
and we were falling to the sidewalks
like beetles drawn in by the neon
blinking of three letters: BAR.

apostrophe

there are so many days
when the hours are arranged
like a computer's keyboard

in perfect rows running,
digits climbing 'long the top,
and jagged columns perceived

like a feuding couples'
divergent sense of time
that sends them into fits

and then there's this
tiny little character
on this gigantic key

staring me down to a hunch
from across my desk,
beckoning me to contract

the droning hours
spent spinning lyric yarn
when the whole house is resting

but i won't truncate,
i can't cut short,
telescope my distant vision

and i'll stay at it 'til dawn
because that tiny little
character is my witness

on the great big key
'tis the key to writing
with any sort of dialect

the only chance i'll have
for you to believe me
when i have to write you letters

once you've had too much.

breakfast

the tiles in the kitchen
have warped and cracked,
attacked by too much expansion,
too many contractions,

too many contradictions
of protein and carbohydrates,
too many starts of diets
and ends of loaves of bread,

the loathsome crusts
crumbled to dust and crumbs,
falling apart like meals
that rush by like menus

read all in one breath.