Spontaneous Combustion

The trapdoor sticks for a second
but a second can be just enough.
The tuba misses its cue, a trembling
edge enters the voice of the man
behind the bank of microphones
at the end of his long explanation,
a stadium of spastic flashbulbs
which is of course the polar opposite
of an inchworm resting at the edge
of a eucalyptus leaf at night.
In the complex tropical mixed drink
the paper parasol opens and seagulls
scatter over the beach, the waves making
the sand like new snow every six seconds
or so while all throughout the heart
never stops its work. Or that’s our hope.
And after many years spent performing
simple tasks inefficiently there’s much
catching up to do. True, scaling walls
is not hard but let’s not ignore doors
or even the small window cluttered
with the husks of last summer’s bugs
and thus are we able to discover more
of our surroundings: car keys on the
dashboard on the wrong side of locked doors,
an outlet overloaded with extension cords,
a column of crows rising from the
bedroom window, the dark smudge of
a handprint not your own on the ceiling
and moonlight spilling over the flame-
retardant carpet. A marshmallow blown out
the moment between toasted and torched.
But wait, why’s the fire in a bathroom sink
with stacks of pink handwritten pages
on the toilet tank? Best not to question
the succession of events that precipitate
such a situation which doesn’t tolerate
vacillation or much other motherfucking
tomfoolery. See? Urgency slips in side-
ways like the last echo of a footfall before
the heavy slam of the fire door redoubles
down the long corridor. The white lamp
that’s nudged from the table never stops
falling and when it does it never stops
breaking and when it’s broken it stays
that way no matter how long you sit
with the pieces in your lap or how large
your supply of toothpicks and glue.
Still it’s true, a second can be just enough
as once you were floundering in a gale
but then for a second you imagined
a blue hot air balloon over a river,
a strawberry at the center of a blizzard.



Patina

You reach your destination
but it has already left you.
A pillowcase caught
in overgrown rhubarb,
all the light bulbs gone.
Being in the rain can disguise
some strains of sorrow.
See, everyone’s a mess.
Other times your pants
slogging through puddles
only enhances your beauty,
hair in plastered disarray
as you shoulder through
shining arcs of fine spray,
then it becomes impossible
to believe you’ve known
disaster, that you’ve applied
glue to running wounds and
lost entire nights bent into
new shapes by a foldout couch
and a bottle of bourbon.
Beauty may be predicated
upon another but all forms
of sadness may be practiced
alone. Despair should be kept
smaller than a sparrow’s nest,
joy may call for enormous
machines and complex reactors
churning through the night.
There was dew everywhere
then it disappeared but later
came back as lightning.

 

 

Chained Padlocked Burned and Buried

The river could’ve been dredged
to reclaim what was lost though
no one agreed on what was missing.
It was just a hunch to begin with,

some notion a grape was gone
from the bunch, a letter rerouted
through the bowels of Detroit,
nobody thinking to check the fuses.

This marks the seven hundredth time
a ghost has tried to write my life story
and failed. Not much to say anyway,
the tea steeped till it got bitter and cold,

the dial-up connection failed before the
downloading was done and after that
the lures dangling from the clouds
got tangled in the meat hooks of the earth.

What a mess even if it had the radiance
of blueprints on fire, of charging giraffes.
The enormous maple leaf I was saving
for someone broke to bits in the bottom

of my bag, the dusty residue drifting
into notebooks, clinging to fingertips.
You can tell a surgeon is clean by how
he holds up his hands, and that’s good,

we could use an expert around here
although no one needs an authority to sit
on the museum’s stone steps and weep.
Purity slips so easily into squalor, now

butterflies are exploding from the trees
now there’s fiery havoc at the reservoir.
The aloe plant outgrows the terracotta pot,
the banana truck overturns on I-75.

Maybe someday soon my skeleton
will walk up to your skeleton and say hello.
Maybe someday soon you’ll reach
into the wreckage and recover

a perfectly seaworthy paper boat.



Isallobars and Tubificids

What do we do with our old gods
once they’ve ceased to be threatening?
Love is still one option,
though not a terribly popular one.
I like to line mine up on the kitchen shelf,
a row of tiny gods under glass;
they seem to evaporate a little bit daily,
despite a moist piece of sponge periodically
replaced. Their eyes dwindle but still shine
in cragged brows, they still have hammers
and winged sandals, dragons on leashes
and peaches on chariots, presiding over
matchbooks from the gas station
and moss harvested from the yard.
I like that they lounge about, occasionally
smashing a toothpick house or turning
a penny into a dime, changing their heads
into fires then yawning and rolling over.
Sometimes then a word will pop into my head,
one that I like very much and could never use,
like, say, methenamine.
They’re great for things like this.
Helping me to keep the TV off,
displaying new uses for salt and lye
in and around the home, growing
small trees that blossom into tinier fish.
At night they curl up in their white beards
and graying braids, hugging swords and spears.
At their sides, grimy sacks that contain –
what – flowers or world-powder, old
rolled-up scrolls that are too parched to be
plied apart with fingers or even tweezers?
Some things still remain mysterious,
and must. At night they rattle
like little furnaces, glow
like soft electric clocks.