Mural on the Bedroom Ceiling

I’ve dreamt four nights of children,

but the long days teach me to give up

dreams of children, so these three nights

I’ve lain awake.

 

But what am I?

I am a hand resting on a doorknob.

I leave behind traces of oil on the locks I’ve tried

and left behind.

But what am I?

 

I am nothing compared to a child.

Look into my swollen grey eyes and tell me,

 

is there more substance there than in

cheeks rosied with laughter, the face of a baby girl?

Or will that miniscule finger that blesses my face

with its touch one day reach out for locks I’ve tried

and find them broken by a father’s hands?

 

The ceiling is unchanging these three nights, but

on it my eyes have painted scripture and promises;

laughter from lips resembling mine.

Lake Junaluska

Clocks in the stems of leaves; gears whirring to push grass from the dirt. Blue mist haunts above the soil, tasting of mercury, like blood rather than water. Run your hands beneath streams of coolant coursing through the mountains from the heart of the mechanism; where we performed triple bypass on the earth’s core. Her breathing is in rasps; it shakes with the smoke of her artificial lungs. And we, with bloodied fists, beat the soil, watering the grass with tears of disillusioned abandonment, and fall asleep in the dust, alive only in the arms of another.

In January, when the comforter is dirty and sits in the laundry room, two bodies shiver close together in every household. There are choked sobs to be heard, as outside, trees recede from the mountains like the aging man the planet is and sirens pulse over plains of concrete chasing men and women whose faces glow with lust – worthy only of horror stories told a hundred years ago. Again, on the pillow. Regrets of having brought an untainted child into a suffocating world. In the corner a seed dies beneath the dry soil, but a seedling waits for day to sprout.

Stepping Through the Doorframe

There was a man with feet

bronzed by the dirt he’d stepped in –

dirt faded from red to bronze by a southern sun.

He steps over hardwood floors

with skin dry enough to glide

over the panels like ballerinas

dance over undisturbed water.

 

I am a vessel; breathing and moving

as the waters that pour from the

mouths of mountain caves.

I called those mountains ‘home’

as a boy; the light was redder, then.

 

The deadbolt groans coldly

as it serves its nightly purpose.

Metal is unstable: frigid in

my heated living room as the

winter I left behind, outdoors.

I Versus Terminal

I dated a girl once that told me I reminded her of Matt Damon. I don’t know if she meant in looks or actions. She’s married to an athlete in Arizona now.

I shift uncomfortably in the seat. The man next to me turns on the overhead light.

In middle school, my best friend and I got in a fight over a comic book he’d lent me. I hadn’t finished it. It’d been three weeks. He said I was a bad friend. A good friend would have given it back as soon as he’d asked for it. I still have the scar on my right knee from when he pushed me. I gave him a black eye. He’s studying business at Texas, now.

I have to turn my music up higher than I’d like; the engines are so loud. The air tastes stale – processed.

When I was a kid, my brother told me I should be an architect. I was always building things back then. Pictures of the Lego cities I’d made are still on Dad’s fridge. I think the fort I built in the woods at Mom’s house is still there. It was made of a fallen Leland cypress and plywood I’d taken from abandoned construction sites. My brother’s seeing a therapist about anger management now.

I slide by the man next to me back into my window seat; I’ve just used the lavatory. Outside all I see are the clouds and wing below. I can’t see the ground.

My first boss told me that I reminded him of himself at my age. I never liked him. He never realized that. He said that I had the same motivation, determination and personal integrity that got him to vice president. My dad had gotten me the internship with him. He reminded me of my dad in most ways. The door to his office was left open one day. I caught him with the girl intern. He had threatened to fire her. He and Dad couldn’t keep their hands off of women. I reported him; he didn’t know it was me. Several other women testified against him. He lives in a mansion by himself on the coast of California now.

There’s a crick in my neck. Airplane seats are a chiropractor’s worst nightmare, I think. A baby starts crying in the row behind me. Ocean’s 12 is playing on the TV sets. I watch, but don’t listen.

I fell in love with a girl on September 11, 2001, minutes after planes flew into the trade center. I was a freshman in college. Her name was Camille. I felt the moment I fell for her – when her head fell onto my shoulder. We’d just seen the news. Her grandmother had died of a stroke the week before. We had the fact of our parents’ divorces in common. She had green eyes. I’ll always remember her smile; the sun-seed between my ribs. She started falling apart after that day. She needed me. She needed more than me. She needed a rock; I was gravel. I could only handle so many tears. She needed a shoulder to cry on; my shoulder was eroding. She began seeing a therapist that December. She stopped seeing him in January, right after we broke up. They began dating in April.  I fell out of love with her on May 4, 2005. That was two months ago; on the day I bought this ticket. She has one child and is in the process of a divorce now.

I’ve been trying to read a book; I put it away. My hand finds the acceptance letter in my backpack and I pull it out. The baby behind me is sleeping now. The yeasty, microwaved smell of airplane food pushes forward from the aft.

My parents paid for my college education. I was pre-law. If I hadn’t been, my parents wouldn’t have paid. My mom never finished her law degree; she felt I could make up for her failure. Dad thought English was a dead end. So, for once, the two of them agreed: I was to be a lawyer. I was eight when Dad left. Since then, I’ve been set on disagreeing with him. But free education at the Ivy League was worth more than vengeance. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA. They began talking about the bar exam – separately, of course. I began disagreeing. Then they locked their respective doors until I changed my mind. I spent the next year – this past year – in Hawaii. I lived with a friend. He got me a job at a hotel restaurant, tending the bar. I wrote in my spare time. Two months ago I met Jesus and a girl in that bar, within five minutes of each other. Both told me to honor my parents. I made a few calls to the two halves of my home. I apologized. They accepted silently, gratified. They offered to pay for law school. I tried praying for the first time. An English program at Oxford caught my attention. I daydreamed. Dad got me into Northwestern University Law School with his connections. Mom bought me a plane ticket. The two of them are waiting for me to call when I land now.

A nearby woman yelps. The cabin jolts as we land. Rain streaks the window. The flight attendant chirps into the intercom with a Welsh lilt, “Welcome to Heathrow International Airport! Local time is eleven twenty-four, AM.” The girl I met in the bar winks at me from the other side of the plane. The man beside me flips through a magazine and I see a picture of Matt Damon. I smile, thinking:

I’m nothing like him.

Part One

We cheated when we painted the stars

and placed fireflies in the black ink

around our canvas-planet.

 

A half-sky hovered in limbo as we

copied and pasted the constellations.

 

Nothing we’ve made is complete;

no love, no star, no road through the hills.

 

We smile in mirrors with half our teeth

and laugh half-heartedly at the stars

we’ve forgotten are our own failures.

 

A moth beats against the screen door:

“imagine us beneath a whole sky.”

We put our paints away, kiss goodnight,

and hold hands in our sleep.

Fault Lines

For a moment Atlas grew weak,

I found what I seek and left it behind.

Stones rolled, broke and replicated;

the sun devoured clouds dripping

 

the sweat of worry

poured out on the dry soil.

 

The foundation falters.

I am standing on nothing, but I am standing.

 

I looked into your simpering eyes

as the ground opened beneath us

and we fell and we felt free, smiling.

 

Hands clasped. Desires clashed.

We fell and we stood on nothing,

but we stood as we fell.

 

Our toes brush the bottom like a shallow lake.

The moon jumps from sky to water and back,

and still Atlas wavers, the foundation cracking.

 

I don’t know these words we say,

but I’m not afraid.

Barefoot

There are still bare branches outside the window;

browned, winter-kissed bramble shivers

lifelessly in the spring breeze,

smelling of rain and thunder.

The air rumors of life, but I’ve

yet to see it beneath these grey skies.

 

I don’t know how one goes about

starting these adventures.

Are my bare feet enough?

 

Sometimes, I still try to talk to the birds.

When we share the grass mattress I feel close enough,

so I chirp like a child that doesn’t know better.

A child can never know that they won’t talk back.

 

This morning the birds flew back into the grey skies.

I was left bare-footed beneath bare branches

that let the rain flood me and the browned bramble.

Waking to an Open Window

O! For the wide, white nights of the far North!

The warm breath of earth tinged with flowers

falling from the leaves that ousted them.

The ground white with Bradford’s pear blossoms,

reflecting nights that never truly dim to darkness.

 

And we lay on a carpet of clovers,

violet with the vibrancies of new life.

 

What is this world set on stone and soil,

fringed by cloud and outer oceans of vacuum?

If I were to feel the entire heartbeat

of the universe at large, would I

 

be less awed by that white heartbeat of yours,

beating violet in the clover beside me?

Verdant Hymn

There’s a welling up, as of waves,

in me, but also without me –

I am only a member of the swell;

a vessel, uproarious with delight

as the waves pass through me.

 

Sweet energy! Glory! Rebirth!

Laughter and mirth are all we are

in these streaks of redemption!

 

The taste of a silent, still buzz

of electricity fluttering in air,

like the first rays of Spring’s sun;

the quiet hum beneath sparrows’ song.

 

The clear, fragrancy of the beginning

to vernal eternity, telling us – nay!

Crooning to us:

            winter was well worth waiting through.

Beneath Birch Saplings

Blinded as we pull back the curtains.

A sigh from the sill

as we lift the window, caressed

by a breath of outside.

 

The smell of newborn blooms

mingling with the rust

of the screened-in porch.

Warmth.

 

Sight returns. Sunshine.

The floor is agape with it,

the waves of it lapping

against our ankles

while the daffodils on the sill

twist their roots in ecstasy.

 

We lay on the floor,

and grass sprouts

between the tiles,

cracking the boards.

 

We run our fingers through,

and through the blades

as if they were the hair of a lover;

We bury our faces in the scent of it.