The wealth of contentment

Sunday Advent service on this final day of rest,
like a quarter inch of sunlight into the subway.
     I had a heart like a red brick storefront
     but I made the prices too low and never made a profit.
And the word of God like cracked
recordings for connecting lines.
     I had a heart like a white mansion,
     but I could only rent it a day and had to give it back.
And the word of God like fresh graffiti,
then the vapor of bright surface.
     I had a heart like a downtown loft,
     but the doorman turned me out to the storefronts.

Lighthearted #3

Cataloged in your history between your first move 

and your last taste of espresso, my hardback volume

loses pages each month, and I thank the years for passing. 

In the expanse of ruined neighborhoods, we had a laugh

at the peace we found a couple thousand miles 

from our conflicts—the admitted relief of escape.

I thought the cosmos was born between a dashboard
and the rear windshield's heated lines,
but your condensation drawings dried in the summer.

I grew up the way you'd expect: with the stories 
of strangers, with the sharp climate of new cities.
I heard a soldier tell of leaving his wife and family. 

I heard myself reconstruct the past as it flickered 
through the subway window.  So I left it underground
and tasted the universe like I hadn't before.

The truth of leaving

The truth of leaving
is the end of your small pain,
then the worst hunger.

Lighthearted #2

You woke when my car coughed, and
you tripped up the steps while I drove.
You said it's easier to have no hope
than to have two and choose.
You said it comes down to how
much gasoline I can afford.

I set you a place for dinner, and
I set a record for getting home.
I said the winter only comes rarely
and now it's ours to own.
I said there's room by the hearth,
where I burn my books for heat.

You said the best part of saving
is spending it all in the end.
You said the best part of staying up
is the orange morning light.
You broke an egg, broke the quiet
and said no more highway.

Lighthearted #1

After 25 ounces of 2009 wine,
you told me it's not healthy to drink
by yourself, so I opened a new one
to drink for us both.

When my eyes shut, you said,
"Don't bother coming home."
Half asleep, I said, "This is my house,
and we don't live together."

You said, "In the morning I'll be gone."
In the dark I laughed and said
"I know, but when you get off work
come see me again."

You slept, I hiccuped, and the rain
filled my car. I bit my tongue
to keep from singing
then I slept too.

When I awoke

When I awoke,
   a gold hair wrapped around my ear,
      across my neck, and into my mouth.
I had half a mind
   to wind it around a house key and say
      "Here's the rest of you, come back and see me."
Instead, I shook peace
   over breakfast with a spoonful of cinnamon
      and lay down in the grass to doze again.
So I dreamt
   of the Argonaut and a fleece, I set
      full sails and flung my sheets starboard.

When I awoke,
   the story was unwrapped over me,
      and I laughed with my new purpose.
I found you
   on a porch swing and we were lifted
      into the open sea all morning.
I said, "I have no idea
   where my retold odyssey will lead,
      but I love this Ithaca."
You leaned back
   to rest your head, "Ithaca
      also must travel."

After ninety-three years

After ninety-three years of her life
   and twenty-one of mine,
after she learned the date and told stories
   of her children as children,
Grandmother said, "You're a good man–
   you have the integrity of your father."
I bent down and said I hoped so,
   someday at least.

I was afraid to have half a purpose

I was afraid to have half a purpose
     like the bedsheets of a priest
but you just asked if I'd be back
     by dinnertime at least.

I said I'm sorry I lost my way
     and that my voice is going hoarse
but you gave me a smile
     and pointed me back north.

I said I can drive you out of town
     and bake your favorite bread
you laughed and said you didn't care
     as long as we got fed.

I was quiet Monday morning
     while I learned about myself,
but without plan you took my hand
     and put the book back on the shelf.

It's easier to return

It's easier to return. Going away
   I count the telephone poles and dirt turnoffs,
      to find a resting place.
Away, in the cold air and iron chair
   a lion-faith smoker keeps his mouth open
      and his paper hot.
Further, an empty shed, red water,
   and my yellow headlights sign to me
      the night's come.
Further still, an opening between silver maples
   holds our dim voices and the vocals
      of the city.
Again beyond, new forms and a doorman,
   rich for the rest of his shift
      and hopeful yet.
But home has fishing rod arms
   that stretch taut, hook me sharp
      and spin me in.
Since I left, you dressed our house
   in mourning clothes as if it
      had given me up.

Hey old body

Hey old body, here's your chance
to run downhill, headlong with a girl
and feel your knees buckle in.

The past five hours

These past five hours, I dug a dry well
deep into the black loam.  I knew an author
couldn't leave their protagonist so far in the soil.

I heard a vice president tell twenty-seven
weary new captains the half-congratulations of
"I know you didn't mean your career to go this way."

I heard fifty thousand say "I don't mind the pay cuts,
and the days of commuting, but no one's on our side."
So I'll claim you as characters in this story, I'll save you.

Wake up, this is your first act!
Where is your desperation
when you are known?

Before I cashed this morning's check,
my nose bled.  I saw my warm life course away,
and everything was first-person.

It took two hands on my shoulders to turn me back.
It took twenty-one years before I said,
"here is freedom—I dispossess myself."

Have a little soul

Have a little soul,
'cos this morning I'm going dancing.
Have some fun
and let yourself get thrown around
in the storm.
I never tried to make here safer
but if you're cold,
I'm doing something wrong.

You're a street-walking saint
made of plaster
primer and paint, and I'll follow
blindly at best.

I've never been pushed off the street,
or been invited into a country,
I've never asked for more
than I could carry with me.

But I dashed for the subway,
I snoozed on the ferry, and
I shook along with the bus.
I spent my savings playing roulette
with public transit, where I lost
everything but the frenzy. 

When I scraped past the casino,
I remembered "In the long run,
you lose as much as you win.
Andrew, you're better off at home
reading a book." 

So I ran on with my
four and a half dollars,
still trying to make myself full.

These months I'm going down a new hill
in a red and black coaster
made of heavy wood.
My Dad built it for my sister and brother
but it's my turn
and I'm not sure if I know how
to use the brakes.

Bad television

All the accidental accolades
from teenage degenerates
mean you're placed
in hot-faced disgrace
for the town to take a taste
and try to waste
what you made chaste,
but even 'copy/paste'
can surpass the past,
and unmask your caste
of casks and flasks,
of caskets and flashes,
of cash and fast crashes,
so relax! But not so fast
you relapse, pay your tax.
Keep your laughs,
mad gaffes and carafes
off our backs and our banks
though we owe many thanks
to your cranky pranks, fakes,
and mistakes for making us vain,
insane for your fame,
as we aim our name
for the same acclaim.
Although you came to refine your art
and find your start in a starring part,
about a starry-eyed heart
(who's funny and smart),
your jaded faith fades and
all the accidental accolades...

Los Angeles, CA

first, god and the soil
play Go with circle farms
on a board of New Mexico.

west, the hills
turn from chalk to pencil lines
all drowning in peach and gray-pink.

from thirty-two thousand feet
we follow the sun to Los Angeles.
but the haze disappears and the day ends.

evening hits like a dark marriage
of halogen and mercury vapor,
full of non-repeating beauty and quiet light.

second, my sister finds me in Burbank,
gives me water, and takes me home.
to be a foreigner and to be found!

our Orange Line city bus offers me
a five-dollar haven of rattled peace and pulls
the weary through palms and pawnbrokers.

family of the summer with
new life coming in September,
I had forgotten we stretched this far.

A haiku for yesterday

The park, the lake, and
the air hot with you nearby.
I can't read a page.

A haiku for travel

I hadn't ever
kissed a boarding pass until
I flew home stand-by.

A haiku for exercise

My treacherous lungs
wheeze, stab at me like Brutus!
Caesar, at least, died.

Dallas, TX

Here, I saw a jump-cut ballet of green skyscraper
dance across a Cadillac, scatter into a haze
and escape through a false night sky.

So I gave up faith in Orion's Belt, kissed Ursa Major
goodnight for summer, and found my home on Loop 12.
Moving tore me open, but now the architecture heals.

On the museum lawn, jazz wrapped the red, sprawling
sculpture and brought 75 to their feet to slide across the bricks.
Then, a black woman smacked my hip and said, "Smile, boy!"

So I smiled at the horse race in its colors of royalty
and beasts of speed.  I smiled at my place of rest,
my home for the Summer.

New York, NY

Here I pushed through the dirty thicket of all Manhattan
in breathless insomnia, a Van Gogh of lost lucidity
with the colors of madness, and the half-genius of delirium.

But in sewer's steam, in the humidity of industry, Williamsburg
brought me rest and distance. I stepped on soft grass
and sat near the water.

The Navy in white cotton rode for Staten Island,
and spent the ferry searching for company.
The air was cold mist and the city swelled into our wake.

Above Central Park, I heard the chords of a dense, hidden hymn
emanate from the MET, matching history with chaos,
where a green quilt is the lifeblood of this neighborhood. 

On each block, I found the constant chemical reaction
of hot life.  In each park, I found the holiness of empty space.
And in the street, I found a home.

in memory, my mom's father

in memory, my mom's father
faces his recliner towards the corner
of a brown, paneled living room.
this is how my subconscious built the memory–faceless.

and it's my only one of him.  but his Jaeger-LeCoultre
wristwatch for five years of service with Tulsair
teaches me history.
and the family lore of persistence.

the crystal is chipped from the inside,
four layers of unreachable dust coat the face,
and a forest of rust has grown over the hands
into the white inlay.

in the decay is new-found freedom
of forgoing formality, of wearing your sunday best
to change the oil, and of a wholehearted
lack of delicacy.

today, a gold watch from Reasor's for my five years.
and I'll scratch the glass, neglect the band
and break it in
in family tradition.

Easter groceries

Mystic

Under daylight, a mystic learns science,
with music, history learns manners,
and for a second, the choir takes a breath.

the weather comes to us!

a thunderstorm grew above the interstate,
so we followed the funnel clouds east of Ardmore
in the now hail-littered countryside
and we drove over the fresh green leaves
laid at our feet like palm leaves leading to Jerusalem.

a family stood out on their porch
to capture the purple and gray growing mountains
and the radio reminded us every two minutes
take cover, find a bathtub!

we had box seats for the devastation, where
our adrenaline grew the lifting storm. where
the people who lived so long
in window boxes stretching out for sunlight
now had the weather come to them.

to the children of automobiles

to the children of automobiles, 
to the servants of technology:
live reality as it erupts in front of you.  
come to tears with me in the morning
when the frost forms and we hold out our arms
to soak solar radiation.

I have tried so long to find closeness
in the hot swarm of cheap communication,
in a blue glow, but I want to start anew. 
this will be my confession.

oh, women, I haven't seen you look as rich 
as the Americas, you didn't swim after me
when the hills opened up to swallow me alive,
when I went to take apart the university brick by brick. 
but I tore it down nevertheless!

at the Yellow Brick Road, it was two beers, 
two games of pool, "I hear it's a lesbian bar!" 
and "what can I getcha darling?"
my soul longed for this
dark world of comfort and darts.

my soul and I have earned this richness.  
I paid it forward with cheap PBRs,
black coffee, and water-water-water. 
my parents paid it forward in a old suburb
built by a dirty river, 
where the interstates come, cross, and carry
air-conditioned families on through to the west.

when Tulsa was the oil capital of the world,
it built a Gold Driller, but sure enough,
Moses came down the mountain and dried it up.  
so in desperation we moved further south, 
we made the streets wider and the driveways taller.
forgive us, downtown.

let me admit, I spent my savings 
on french fries and tacos,
I gave away my good fortune 
to fly airplanes, and I turned in my
Badge for Good Ole Boys
Who Can Still Make Their Mommas Proud.
careful who you deputize, mom.

an early morning airport
keeps my conscience at bay,
faltering for a passport in his saggy pockets.  
every night that I shot full of lead,
every girl that I dipped in copper, 
and every piece of silver moonlight
that I tarnished green 
won't make it though the metal detector.
I'm almost to the gate. 

what the world is coming to today

"what is the world coming to? are we being too loud?"
I like the idea our planet is finding a destination out in space
and our voices won't be holed up in a mute apartment
or folded in the trunk of a lincoln towncar
while we try to kick the taillights out.

"everyone else is whispering here, should we keep talking?"
yes, and we'll be in an opera's balcony for our inheritance:
a planet speed-delivered to almostthisplaceagaininayear,
but hopeful, because the earth has one life too.
Don't convince yourself that you are an unclaimed suitcase
on the baggage carousel, you'll be found
when a businessman is done buying a pretzel.

"if I walk too far in the wind, will it carry me off?"
yes, and good morning you entrepreneur of emotion,
all of you is orbiting right next to me!  something like
a merry-go-round and the flaking horses are worth the wait--
look there's my mom...blurrrrrrrrrr...and there she is again!
go bowling with your gold globe, because you know
these neighborhoods, these roads by heart.

same kingdom, new species

"las aves delgades del aire, / las dirreciones de la dicha."
"they are the slim birds of the air, / the directions of joy."
From "El desnudo" by Pablo Neruda.

they are the destroyers of airplanes, the builders of forests,
aptitude of the atmosphere and flyweights of feathers
patted down and tucked under the shoulder.
nothing so contaminating, eventful, scavenging,
or random in joy or space. same kingdom, new species.

in the wettest part of the jungle, in the oldest ruins
of mankind, are the warm wing flashes for a berry.
nothing so fresh! like an oriole in the crumbling downtown,
fishing for red brick crumbs. a bath of french fries
on the patio and the world's a gum wrapper.

and the nine percent chance I'll make my mind into
a bird is enough to drive the flock away. in the dust
a cartoon puff of plumes before the beaks settle down.
joy is cohesion and the explosion of tiny, hollow bones
that are perfectly random.

welcome, valentine, to the personal ads

welcome, valentine, to the personal ads. I think you'll sleep
in those human flea market columns tonight,
but I envy you still.

the men in the bar drink while they sing, I think that's fine.
and quiet girls sit home writing love letters
to boys they haven't met.

that's a table of empty coronas and a shelf of journals
if you're keeping score. here I do my best
to hedge my bets.

Don't fold up faster than the tide

Don't fold up faster than the tide when it snows. You are brown!
All silk scarf and the sofa's warm end. I have a plan for your life
just like the woman who walked past
and you laughed.

Is that your sister across the green door from us?
Well, why not? She hasn't taken her weather gear off yet, but
her coffee is open on the top.  Oh, hey barista!
Yes I'd like another.

Old man zigzag with two white ice cream
cone beards says peace to us. And peace is my car battery
and the engine's grr purr.  Warm pavement
means slush and sunshine.

I'm setting the stage for a one act novella opera haiku
and you're the star, woman.  And you're the Star Woman!
Build me a magazine and I'll fly it for you, columns on bourbon
pics of colours.

Two cups of joe and I've got a harebrained avalanche of Yes!
Thank you, calendar girl, I'll bet you have a sister or two
in the ink past of January.  Can I take a gray blob eraser
over last week too?

Understand this, mon amie, I don't speak French and the
red light is more than I can bear.  Every person I know is
dangling from a mobile next to the chandelier.  All my kingdom
for February 5th.

midnight mass

midnight mass christmas eve and already, the 27th,
there's butchers blood on my shoes and I can't keep my palms clean.
it's nearly time for my conscience to come calling from tulsa.

later, the sky is gold and blue and pink, and I'm in the back seat
following a smudge of black birds with my eyes
then our station wagon intersects underneath.

later, the bike ride from your apartment tasted like snow
and I was hyper-aware of my hands on the grip
and I thought of all my molecules separately when I was home.

it was cold as sin and I was hungry as sin and the low
warm fog gave me energy for an hour.  the sunlight that eased
inside all afternoon escaped orange through the blinds.

good friends, I have a dream of wholeness:
for this year, I'm a mass of tissue stronger than a paper trail,
brighter than projection, and as warm as blood

a rant, fully out of context

I think Wilde is wrong, wrong in that flowers are useless
or that art is a mood
I think it's more like a mind that is displayed
on a pedestal
and so we have a conversation with it.

discussion brings reform and we want to be reformed!

not polite or civil, but constantly reshaped and resharpened
by the world in a painter's creation.

and today, the trending photography in blurs and browns?
oh, it's fashionable
for a reason
and thus for only a use. then let's not overuse!
let's not follow the shy colors and mixed shapes of Fall
with Fall with Fall with Fall.

it's old because it's in style.

and on Miro, is art more than the aesthetic
we give to it?
can we revel in the ugly because we appreciate
how it hasn't been done before?
I hope so, in that case we can relax our critique.

no! no! ugly is easy. too easy, almost accidentally easy
and art is in the challenges
that make it profound.
it challenges me and I want to admire someone
who can overcome better than I.

there isn't a disconnect
between what we make and what influences us.
you'll never separate our habits
from the atomic structure of our hands.
meaning this: as detached as we make ourselves
there is always a cause
which is often unseen and unnoticed by the viewer.

but art is an effect! effects have causes
and causes are us.

and who is a sculptor
besides the person who visits the quarry, the tool store
and prepares the garage space?

or a painter
besides the student who learns the right techniques
and has a set of brushes.

there's no distinction between who is real
and who is an immature creator. And we wish there was
a divide
but we aren't sure what side we'd be on.
and there's beauty in the comparable
when the man and woman behind them
are so dissimilar.

I for one am done comparing myself
to my peers
to find any worth. I want to match up against my heroes
and find a similarity
and say 'yes, this is valuable in me as well'
and move on
and keep creating.

yes, I'll never be known as the artist
or writer. OK.

I can agree with Oscar on one point:
art isn't about selling or the money.
apartments are and their rent is
food is
gasoline is
galleries are
but not the works themselves!
when we make a new friend we like to show them
our home, as with a painting.
and then the price is born.

the artist has to get by.
but aren't artists motivated by the money?
yes. yes. yes.
but money is made more easily elsewhere.