November 2001 | back-issues, poetry
[b]Neither Here Nor There[/b]
Otis, in all his mercy, on some lost tablet,
etched for granite minds his stony commandments:
Elevator decorum demands agreement,
look forward, keep space within a space,
appendages shall never rise in gesture,
nor brush the flanks of erected riders,
and weathered souls?–the topic weather!
the irony of the getting off before got on.
And, so too, in a dusty corner of Metro’s chamber,
locked in a file without a key,
the rules of disengagement have a proper seal,
codified and passed by council,
(forgotten but by one forgotten civil servant)
for rider’s (with riders), the commuting clan.
Have proper change, expression changeless,
avert the gaze, less it acknowledge
the trip has no sure destination,
and always be an unspectacular specter
traveling in a tram stuffed with empty ghosts.
Oh, we’ve seen them before, while awaiting the call
at the dentist office, leafing National Geographic
of an unpeopled place, those imposing, inscrutable faces,
the blank eyed and stony forms, gray seaward facing,
expressionless, looking like wayward bicuspids
incisively needing bridgework to bring there to here:
those distant looks embracing distance
in the silence of an ethereal, blank stare.
But who among us does not wait
For one to twist upon his base and
falling to the ground with a heavy thud,
blink awake the heavy lids upon its face,
unsmack his frozen, muted lips,
unstick the ears and take in sea-sound,
and roll downhill upon the ground,
laughing and squealing with delightful spree,
plunge splashing into the unknown ocean.
[b]Insurance Man[/b]
He sat in our living room,
papers cluttered across the coffee table,
the computer print-outs of future fortune,
financial security, and an implied spiritual bliss.
The self-assured manner of one who knows:
Whole life, term, annuities–it was all there.
To hide chain-smoking cigarette breath,
he sucked Hall’s mentho-lyptus,
rolled each drop cheek to cheek, while tallying figures,
puzzling over “the possible.”
Puffing through his declamations,
he rolled side to side, cheek to cheek,
upon the straining springs of our worn sofa.
It was then, as I remember;
after nodding toward “the wife,”
his face grew flushed,
a cold sweat broke about his brow,
and he clutched his pounding chest.
Falling face forward upon our financial future,
his head smacked our prospectus hard-table center,
like a piece of the rock,
and he died,
no doubt,
with a tidy little portfolio of his own.
[b]Horizon Highway[/b]
When we were young
we rumbled down the freeway,
top down, cutting a rush breeze,
radio blasting over steamy asphalt.
Sidelong, I watched you,
a hair blown Medusa
in mirrored sunglasses,
burning the horizon.
Time’s collisions and
weathering circumstance
have faded the paint,
worn the upholstery,
and, now, the rag top seldom down.
On occasion we laugh recalling
the days when we chased a hot pink sky,
and did not notice
the fleeting images
receding in the rear-view mirror.
[b]The Highland Theater Lobby at the AIDS Fund-raiser[/b]
See her, over there,
it’s Solo Sandy,
The girl with a one-eyed Siamese cat
(Half-Mongolian, I’ve been told),
smoking a cig during intermission
at a “Surprisingly Sassy” show.
Standing in the theater lobby,
black hair and gown, dark eyes,
Mediterranean complexion, she
looks alone like a kidnapped Helen,
amidst soft and feathered barbarians
each extravagantly trying to outdo
the simple, classic elegance
of this quiet beauty, this
stranger in a strange land.
She, unaware of the corpse-littered battlefield,
never notices the vanquished,
the slain victims of her bloodless victory,
nor the suitor preparing the ship.
by Michael Carano
([email]michael_carano [at] hotmail [dot] com[/email])
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
your child is dying
in some version of america
i never wanted to know
the poem slips into my blood
at five in the morning
without a sound
we were closer to
something beautiful at one point
i think
were alive in a different way
that couldn’t last
and my voice gets too loud here
my son is asleep in the next room
the kitten curled up on his pillow
and the edges of this day
have begun to drag themselves
out of the darkness
what i wanted
wasn’t to be someone else
but maybe someone
better
not a priest
but a conquistador
a phoenix
and i am tired of feeling
gravity’s pull and i am crawling
towards the year of
crucifixion
belief in nothing is still
belief
but april refuses to see this
what grows between us
becomes something more complex
than war
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this will be my year
blood and famine
and small crucifixions
and there is nothing i can do
to stop any of it
the shadows of birds
across
the walls of this room
the names of the dead
written on tiny scraps of paper
buried by the water’s edge
but nothing grows and
nothing grows and
nothing grows
and it’s october
and the wind cries all night
tears your face from my mind
and then it’s november
the missing girl turns
seventeen
her parents walk away
from their religion
let the flowers
fall from their hands and
gather up whatever bones
they can and i have no
words of comfort
i have prayers
but no god
that the sounds are made
at all
is the important thing
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
and i am tired of reading
all of these words i wrote as if
i thought i might actually
know something
i am tired
of these empty notebooks
like mute accusations
if you were in this room
right now
you would smell desperation
would feel a small cool breeze as
the storm pushes its way north
picture it
three years in this house
and i know none of my neighbors
ten years in this town
and i refuse to call it home
and did i pray
at my father’s bedside
in the last days before his death?
no
and does this
make me a bad person?
i’ve been told that it does
and there is a man
who returns what i send him with
a note that says
“these are not poems”
and there is the possibility that
he’s right
there are my hands
crippled with self-doubt
burned and then healed
and then burned again until
they refuse to acknowledge the
simple pain of passing days
and if i don’t call myself
an artist
then i can’t be crucified
as a witch
the logic is subtle
but it’s there
think of war
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this is the hand that
cuts the moon
in two
this is the ghost
do you
remember these myths
or are you someone who
believes in the soft
sweet purity of
childhood?
you can only be one
or the other
you can only be living
or dead
for fifteen years
i had the dream of the
burning house
and then i married
the woman who
grew up in it
i give you this as
final proof
of the lack of god and
you turn away
one of us sees
the ghost
the other a shadow
in between the two is
the desert of our pasts
and the scattered ashes
of old lovers
this is the land
where
the myths were planted
these are
the bones of lost
sailors
there are better things
to be built here
than religion
September 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
sunlight in
an empty room
changes nothing
the mirrors are all blind
the windows slowly melting
and i believe
in the burning girl
i believe in the boy
buried among the redwoods
by his father
these are the myths
my son will inherit
and this is the country
and the politics of fear are not
politics at all
what i call silence
in this house
is actually the sound of
clocks running backwards
what i call sorrow is
actually guilt
despite the fact that i have always
maintained my innocence
and on the day i give up
the last of my teenage heroes
my oldest friend writes
to tell me he won’t be
writing again
a minister’s wife from the
town i grew up in
is found naked and dead on
a stretch of railroad tracks
eighty-five miles to
the north
we are always spending
too much time
measuring distances that
can never be crossed
