#4 There and Back, Again

Lately, I have been on the move. 

Every morning waking to a stiff neck and crumpling back. 

Every morning waking to an old man in a grey

and tattered hat.

                              My mind is an intricacy of winding

roads and I'm coming to realize that even the trees

can be articulate. I hope they can explain my departure.

I hope they can explain it to me.

I grope about in dark tunnels,

alone,

some great power, my burden

brings nothing but my own doom. I want

my bed. My feather bed and a world observed

through closed and half-open eyes.

My eyes have been wrenched to see a world darker

than I imagined, yet some say

I cannot chose my time. 

One day, kings will kneel to me, yet I will never feel at home.

The earth will open up before me like a morning glory

and I will walk aimless among crabgrass

and barren places. I will sit in the comfort of my home and ache,

knowing that at the very end of my journey, I did not bleed

or say a prayer, but looked into darkness, feeling

less fear than I ever felt, I closed my eyes.

When Spider-man Opens His Eyes (revised)

Sometimes, when I fear to be alone,

I entertain the night, the only thing

I can't get out of my mind.

It is Blanchard Lawn.

I have left the city behind,

that contracted darkness.

I wake in the morning. I roll over

and gaze into the sunny eyes

of my magazine-cover girlfriend.

I don't feel much of a hero anymore,

more like a normal man.

I will kiss her on the cheek,

the step out the window.

Buildings in this urban landscape

string out before me 

like the beads of a rosary;

my nightly wanderings

become my most earnest prayers.

I escaped my room again

last night, drifted in a maze

of suburban town homes, the dust

of a million commuters, pilgrims

on the same dismal paths,

to which I have seen no end.

I find freedom in the fight

and the desperate pain

of a forty-foot

fall. Sometimes suffering

gives me gratitude

for life in all its forms-

sometimes I wake in a sweat;

I hear voices over me.

Escape. It is still Illinois

and I don't know what to do.

Those nights, I watch T.V.

to keep myself from sleeping.

#3 When Spider-man opens his eyes

When I wake in the morning, I roll over

and gaze into the sunny eyes

of my magazine-cover girlfriend.

I don't feel much of a hero any more,

more like a normal man.

Sure, I face my daily dilemma, the undisputed 

morality of a vigilant observer,

engaging a life of great responsibility,

envying everyone else.

I will kiss her on the cheek 

and step to the window.

The urban landscape is

strung out before me like

the beads of a rosary

and my nightly wanderings

are the most earnest prayers.

I find freedom in the fight, 

I awaken my mind

to the nearest criminal 

activity and the desperate pain

of a forty-foot

fall. These things

give me gratitude

for life in all its forms-

my girl's eyes,

her morning breath

and the way she holds

my bruised body

when I tremble

and the pain

is too much.

#2 Our First House

Our house on Xerxes was small,

many windows and a smaller yard.

A forest grew there, trees

my brother and I would climb until

we noticed a sky, until the the ground dropped from us,

a ragged burden dispelled before a multitude of wings uncurling

like ferns above our waists as we ventured 

to the basement couch and a patient television.

The television, muted now, glows blue and gentle

and I feel it caress my arm. I open a door

and peer into the night. This is not my house,

but the house of a foreigner. I question the empty street

running past the house. To where does my family walk?

Holding hands? We appear younger and I see how much

my mother and father love each other. I see their eyes

and how they open on each other as if in waking.

When I was sixteen, I called myself

nobody. I liked the sound it made

as if I said it underwater in a storm. Nobody

gazed into the wide open blue, 

those days. Nobody cared for their own houses

anymore. Now I want to go back

to that house on Xerxes. I wish I could

unravel it in my fingers and spread it thin as a leaf. 

#1 A Hero Returns Home

This is the first in a series of poems written for my senior seminar class. There will eventually be seven of them. 

The second time we moved, I wasn't home. 

I was in Illinois, trying to disconnect myself

from a life I already understood,

putting on my nightly costumes and walking 

the streets alone as if I had purpose.

I did this so long, I woke up 

one morning and forgot where I was, which life

I didn't love and who my parents were. 

They were waking up in Minnesota, 

my father to dry toast, my mother to sunlight.

They called me home and I found no difference,

the furniture, the same, was all there, but

seemed a little smaller. A woman

with quiet hands, my mother, 

she arranged that furniture, perfectly.

Outside, the sun is in the trees. My father

working in the yard, opens up the earth 

with his hands. He was there before

dawn. He touches dirt as I turn away,

trying to regain a few lost hours sleep.