Monday, December 15, 2008

#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.

Friday, December 12, 2008

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.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

#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.

Monday, December 8, 2008

#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.