One eddy for another

When I met you the summer had nearly begun,
and when we met again
it was nearly over.

In our rush to enjoy the season's carbonation,
we foamed at the mouth
and let our pupils open too widely.

Your movement was a typewriter hammer,
your eyes were cold tea,
and your mouth was tequila.

You were a collection of bright stones
under a fast brook,
and I was at home in the water.

I was swept downstream and swam back.
I wouldn't admit the undercurrent
that never ceased its dragging.

I fell in these two directions at once.
I loved your style and soft sarcasm,
yet I had read our last page too early.

I was nearly unconscious when I relaxed
my muscles and let the melted snow
turn me toward a new eddy.

Family, join me in a tradition of joy

Family, join me in a tradition of joy
we never cultivated before.

Sow christmas and cinema
and 'company at the door'
across the warming spring dirt.

Winter has been my forced strength
and solemnity has been yours;
silence has been my defense
and morality has been yours.

At nine, I was stubborn at each command
to read aloud or volunteer an answer
of 'milky way' or '56' or 'Jefferson.'

I taught myself resistance
to Mom's goddamn protocol
of openness and kindness
to my unknown cousins.

My silence bred quiet pride
at a classmate's misspoken word
or Pastor's mistaken Salvation metaphor.

I gained too early the habit
of erased contentment.

I let myself be unknowable
for the safety of my pride
and false construct of my happiness.

Family, come with me and kill
this thief of joy.

I made art my joy's surrogate,
enraptured in the lines and space and color
of cheap cereal packaging
and company letterhead.

I bore my faith through
eyesight and fingertips,
shaping glass into broad elms,
paint into planets, and ink into
the silhouettes of four women.

I measured myself against Monet,
thankful for the impossible distance
and willing to let his godly brushstrokes
be my severed inroads to joy.

Family, find a new direction; don't follow me
when I'm outside my mind and inside film.

Poetry grew downward through us all
the way rain dampens an old oak--
from father to sister to each brother to me,
and I'm nourished by the trickle.

In the ink rows I find the margin of Impressionism,
freeing me from my sureness in color.

Monet lets me doubt the blueness
of morning port, and Manet reminds me
the surreal tint of blood red.

Family, walk in step with me
and let approximation free you.

A haiku for McKinley Ave

The cop spoke with grace,
"OK, try to make better
decisions next time."

Dad made breakfast

While I awoke to sweat, stress and a raw heart,
Dad made breakfast in a once-blue bathrobe.

His quiet concentration of prayer and tiredness
were hemispheres to mirror the morning Earth.

He joined ancient Hebrew texts with the American
tradition of employment, then unemployment.

He purified his heart over oatmeal and fruit—
a heart, whole, like a bread advertisement.

Early, I fought brokenness with only cold water.
God forgive my slowness in understanding him.

Ninety-five

"I think I would live to one hundred,
but I've run out of husbands,"
     said Grandmother
     on the eve of ninety-five.
"Oh, but God gave me good ones,
they never cursed or yelled,
they were good to me.

"On our move, Bill told me
'I'm going to spend the rest
of my life making you happy'
and I just laughed

"that will last three months, I thought
but he sure was a good husband.

"The cigarettes caught up with them.
You know, in my generation,
if you were a man,
and you didn't smoke at thirteen,
you were a sissy.

"It would be something to live
to be one hundred, yes,
they were good men."

The wildflowers

The wildflowers from your wedding strain
     from my windowsill to filtered sun.

They grow soft like hair from black soil,
     roots contained in peanut butter jars.

You were braided together with rings,
     sowing, even in summer, a new plot.

A conversion

My mother cried, my father frowned,
and the living room grew tense and full
like the Tolstoy I sheltered behind
as my brother admitted atheism.

Calgary customs

Calgary customs dissected my heart,
opening handwritten notes
collected in my wallet,

unpacking my clothes, and cycling
through photographs and phone
calls like a gossip.

I was whittled down to my marrow
and brother to a guitarist with
his pockets out too.

The empty airport exhaled when I,
like a stray, limped outside
in search of sanctuary.

With cropped hair

With cropped hair, your laughs

were cut short too.

So we folded our newspapers,

so serious in our

new, misguided sympathy for

the printed word.

Tonight spilled

Tonight spilled bourbon,
tears, and red bull across my
fabric composure.

The City and her orange tape

The museum's height forgave the City her orange tape,
while sunlight forgot each east office in limestone
glass, and red ink.  Yet what altitude absolved
and evening hid, still echoed through my voice.

Home by bicycle

My Schwinn spokes vibrated the neck of Sooner Rd

like a violin string, the lone Stradivarius in a roaring 

Stratocaster line under this Oklahoma, stratiform sky—

and I tuned this autobahn precise as Audubon.