Civil Twilight or Dawn Poems

Basic Miracle of Music

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Let’s play lazy
eights and live
forever one night
in September.

The humidity won’t
bring us closer
to the outro
or its echo
repeating in
dark green.
A pigeon tries
to balance

on a hummingbird
feeder. You and I
were so
dimorphic. Tomorrow’s

sun will set
two minutes earlier
than it did today.
It will take me

two minutes longer
to memorize
those faces
decked out
in red and black.
It’s not just me—
all women look good
in red. I am

the erasable kind.
I won’t smear or smudge
or stain your fingers
the way the others do.

I fit snugly
inside a milk chute
no one bothered
to brick up.

Look for me
there where

I’ll be gently waking
the ruby-throated ones.

Lost & Found Summer

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I look for you
everywhere—beneath grates
and cellar doors
that open onto city sidewalks.

On the Brooklyn Bridge
pedestrian ramp
next to a woman selling
sliced mango.

In the Fulton Street subway station.
Behind that window
covered by Banksy’s (or Mr. Brainwash’s)
“Love is the Answer” Einstein.

In the Hudson, over the underpass,
inside the fermented
raspberry smoothie bottle
before it explodes.

An instant murder scene
impersonation stains
a white room
in the Lexington Hotel.

We lose an old friend
to a heart attack in July,
find each other
at his funeral after 31 years.

Maybe you didn’t want
to be found. Maybe I should be losing

myself in Grand Central
sky constellations instead.

Going Direct

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I am a tale
of two cities

ping ponging east
to north midwest
and repeat

the net getting
tangled and slack

big to minnie
no I won’t say it

pomme
there I did

Atlantic Ocean
estuarial to Mississippi

River and falls and lots of lakes
the Spuyten Duyvil
and Minnehaha creeks

four seasons
some longer than others
much longer

so cold so hot so pretty
in October

First Avenue
to the Bowery Ballroom

no more CBGB
no more Uptown Bar

no more every night
with smokes and shots

Walker Whitney
MIA MoMA Met

Central Park
Cedar Lake Trail

High Line
skyway skyway skyway

best of worst of
in a continuous loop
blurs the distinction

Loring Park
Kingsbridge the Bronx
Uptown the Upper West Side

home home
I say it twice

in two different time zones
to mark my place

Why

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because
Minnesota boys

the first cool night in late August
and a blanket
pulled off the shelf

because
the Mississippi
any time of day or season

because
First Avenue
with its ceiling replaced

because
winter windchill
bragging rights

the first warm day
in April
maybe it’s May maybe June

because
Loring Park
Armajani’s Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge

John Ashbery
in both directions

because
sculptures by
Noguchi Shea Serra

Lake of the Isles
Cedar Lake Trail
Minnehaha Creek

because
the C.C.

because
Minnesota boys

Why Do You Do This?

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Who will answer
this time?
Which one of me wants to tackle it
today?

I will.
I/we have no choice.
I/we say the same thing
each time asked.

Time is the ultimate
four letter word
scrawled on all the walls
of all the buildings

in all the cities
within all the worlds
we map
or make up.

The ultimate reverse
graffiti reveals
how much dirt we accumulate
within our own inventions.

Leave it to the scientists
and philosophers,
this poet (and this one and this one and)
hears an echo

split open in an alley
where a mangled chainlink fence
and rotting garbage in a dumpster
are proof enough for her

time does exist
inside this heart
where love and loss
slow dance all night

into a new day.
And it might rain.

Nobody’s Sitting in Your Chair

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I want you
to read me
all the time

even in the bath
even in your sleep

I’m so vain
I want you to want to believe
each poem is about you

they are about everyone
and no one

till the reader
enters the room
surveys the tile floor

wooden tables
plaster walls
painted cautionary yellow

chooses a chair
sits down
becomes part of the scene

an empty folding one
blocks an open window

its half-drawn shade
flaps in the breeze

In Search of the Lost Art

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“A writer is essentially a spy. . . .
With used furniture he makes a tree.
A writer is essentially a crook.”
—Anne Sexton (from “The Black Art”)

When we were lovers,
I didn’t know how
to wear lipstick.

When we were lovers,
we built and broke
our own code.

The Def Leppard
drummer still
used both hands.

Orwell’s novel
did not come true.
Ronald Reagan was president.

When we were lovers,
I had all the licenses
I would ever get—none.

When we were lovers,
you were thick,
I was snug.

We had no world
wide web. MTV was born.
Mark Zuckerberg, not yet.

We didn’t need replacements. Heard music
beneath stars, discovered our bodies’ perfect cadence
in a station wagon way-back.

When we were lovers,
house alarms went off
spontaneously.

When we were lovers,
eating ice cream was erotic—
didn’t give me stomach aches yet.

One bath almost shared.
One shower together
after three years of waiting.

We got locked inside a courtyard
outside a Brooklyn brownstone
and didn’t care.

When we were lovers,
a waft of ghostly smoke
occasionally hovered over the river.

When we were lovers,
we fought as intensely.
Almost.

We could reignite
as soon as one of us got off a plane
at the airport gate.

Thornton Pool had a high dive.
I belly-flopped off it.
You watched a swan glide down.

When we were lovers,
you would drive me home
at daybreak.

When we were lovers,
time stood still
but not for long enough.

When we were lovers,
we couldn’t keep our hands
off each other.

One letter got lost
for months.
Our timing was off.

Before 1950, making love
to one another could happen
through the mail without touching.

When we were lovers, we didn’t know how
three decades later we might submerge ourselves
in deep water to resuscitate the lost art.

Close

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The air thickens
throughout the day, stays
thick hours after dusk.

The kind of call
that leaves her exhausted
at the edge

of an unguarded rooftop
31 stories above
graffiti-scrubbed pavement.

As the gap between
exhales shrinks
she welcomes the disorientation

not the elevated
burning inside.
31 separate stories

she doesn’t know
how to tell
without interrupting herself.

Claustrophobia in this wide
open space means
only one thing—

utter confinement
within her
own skin.

Merely an optical illusion
that she can touch
the horizon

where the river
and bay meet
with her fingertips.

Merely a dream
that she has only one
way out.

She can open the hatch,
climb down those metal stairs.

Sevens in August

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Days in a week, deadly
sins, cardinal
numeral,
the Sabbath,
veils, virgin
daggers,
sacraments

spill onto the eighth
month. Only three
of them can stain
that late summer
block of moments.
Three of them
going back in time:

August 27, 2012
At civil dawn
my father gasps, slips
into death
for infinity.
The saddest relief
shuttles through my veins.

August 7, 2012
Twenty days before
I lose my father,
a rupture
inside your head
kills you. You see infinity.
Return to this.

And the third one
in another century:

August 17, 1980
In a half
circle, friends
drink beer
in your family’s kitchen
the night our eyes
first meet.

Never
mind
infinity,
time
collapses
urgently,
immediately.

We go
forward, backward, sideways
in a trance—
desperate to remember
how it feels to be so young,
to still believe
we are immortal.

Let Us Go Then

/ Arambler / 2 Comments

Objects:
Our dead friend
moves our limbs, our mouths,
our lids, our hearts.
Marionettes and
so much more.
He releases our strings
simultaneously. Knows
it’s futile to fight the laws
of physics
even from his side.

Subjects:
Despite the forecast,
rain begins to slap
awake an etherized sky.
Our skin protects
those young spies
dressed in our eyes
testing our voices
as they prepare
to go.

You and I—
none of anyone else’s
goddamn business.
Never mind the mermaids,
we’ve gotten so far
beyond the bath.

Note: partially inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”