Mirror

I went to the lake bed

Today

It was different than before

Trees and bushes bloomed where

Once a sheet of glass had lain

I wonder what it is that makes

Me feel so small and naked

When I take in open space

                        open sky

                        open roads

                        open fields

            filled with rain.

Red ferns with their wings like swan feathers dripping with dew.

The granite gray of wet sand, damp and dark and filled deep with nothing. No thought. No knowledge. No voice crying out for a kiss.

Moss covered buildings, tired old dinosaurs asleep in the rain.

And black, black asphalt hard and slick beneath my feet.

I remember the blue you used to wear, not like the sky’s, all clean and light and empty—but a fuller, metallic tint that sun beams and soft stones would skip off of on hot summer days.

I remember your sand bar, the one that stuck out like a giant lazy tongue from your shore. It was an old tongue, grown gray and wise under thin layers of liquid sheets. I would—with every step—bury my thin, bone white toes into your small gritty teeth as you chewed away the pieces of me that were dead to add to your vast store of life once lived, of memory soon to fade.

You never owned a heart of flesh and blood, but the wind wrinkled your skin, and naked toes (a thousand at least) tried to imprint their souls into the deepest part of you.

                        You sang of sleep.

                        Quietly.

                        Through water.

                        Always.

                        Quietly through water.

            Your face is different

now

the grass grown long on your stomach and under your chin and down along your neck.

Is it you, Walt Whitman? That I see grown wild and wondrous and sexy in your beard?

Do my eyes hear your breathing?

Do my ears detect a kiss?

Washed old by a thousand sun-baked wasted moments, by whispered kisses along the shore—raped naked and brown by a bright sun’s tyranny, by death back into the muddy womb. By death waiting. Waiting for rain.

It has been some years since even then, since your

ovaries grew dry and your eggs were harvested

                                    there was nothing left to

                                    to eat. Your catfish are

                                    bone. Your frogs all buried

                                    their heads. And the sun

                                    set on your breast—stripped

                                    bare by hungry eyes and

                                    licked up by sand-paper tongues.

You went away. I walked

Upon your corpse like many

Others

Surprised—angry—confused—wanting—but mainly lost: lost and wishing that the things we give away and the things that are stolen from us continue to live, somewhere, somewhere they can dance and laugh and be eternally themselves in their best suit, their best skin, their brightest smile.

Do you live on?

Does the sun?

Do we?

You stunk of rotten mud and soggy weeds—yellow and brown—trampled into your organs in queer, grappling shapes, like lonely snowflakes

or

star fossils.

You tried to pull me in.

You sucked and squelched

and slurped at my

shoes, my ankles, my

knees even—

But I knew you didn’t mean it.

            Stay with me

            You rasped, choking on the

words. Sleep with me. Stay with me. I transcend. I change. I’ll be here long after your dust has danced away, you said.

But I think all you really wanted was to not be alone. You just wanted someone to touch you.

I left you naked and wet, the skin under your eyes swollen and puffy.

You’ve changed on me again. The deep blue of your tin blanket will never be again, but you’re okay with that now, aren’t you? You’re content to lay all day and inspect the beetles and spiders that burrow their legs and cold noses into your brain; to grow the green shoots of your chest hair and brown twigs of your scruff in the cloudy afternoon time, to feel tickle of wind or tender claws of a sparrow combing your children.

What gripe have you with the colors of time?

nothing but the soft ripples

of a dream

forgotten upon waking

only a fading kiss

only a hint at the tears

of yesterday.

I see you and am filled by the expanse of your emptiness.

my lonely soul burrows into

a black sky

snatching at star-light

to warm

this withered face.

That is how it is. I am next to you and I feel my own loneliness. I see, as though through a tragic mirror, my own sparse soul, my own narrow mind.

You’ve known me and I you, from our youth when you were blue-yellow and wet-wonderful, sandtastic, and glistening in my dew and I in yours.

You saw me grown older, my face patchy, my limbs grown lean but still wet and wild.

You saw my blue match your blue.

You saw insecurity and doubt.

                                    You saw the scars last

                                    Summer that bloomed

                                    On my wrists like cherry

                                    Blossoms ripening on

                                    The bough, turning pink

                                    In the heat and dark

                                    Purple-blue in the cold,

                                    And I let you see, I let

                                    You see me swinging

                                    From the trapeze bars

                                    Oh so high up in the

                                    Hysterical balancing

                                    Act of my one man show

                                    Drinking dreams and

                                    Memories of her face,

                                    Her face, her god-damned

                                    Fucking face for months

                                    And months on end,

                                    Never ending screaming

                                    Of nails scraping on balloons:

                                    Their thin skin (mine)

                                    Squealing until something

                                    Exploded inside. Imploded.

                                    Then there was one less

                                    Balloon that was a part

                                    Of me, one less thing

                                    That could ever hurt me

                                    Again, one less something

                                    Inside, one less me.

You saw.

You knew.

And you judged not at all.

You held a child once

a child of rain. She is not yours any longer, but love’s imprint is harder to erase. The bowl of your arms continues to rest.

There is love in this world.

Somehow.

Despite it all.

I guess I’ve known it all along. But this is how I find it, this is how I make it visible: in reflection, in writing…

Love is fleeting—like rain or snow—leaving behind its kisses on the hillside, its cracks in solid stone.

I was once a granite man, incased and trapped in stone, but love seeped under my gravel skin.

See now my flesh, I am destroyed and reborn—no, born for the first time within.

Roslyn lake—empty scab of mud and sand, transistor of memory and life, mother to things yours and not your own: thank you for being my mirror on a cold, winter night.

(poems go here)