Liquid Ars Poetica

/ Arambler / Leave a comment

No word in this language
I inhale/exhale
can release the last 36 hours
to their rightful wild.

There’s James Brown.
Is he still alive?
A stranger asks.

Rogue stanzas need to interrupt love
poems when they begin to stick
too well to the soft side
of a fall into the river.

They snake around themselves
sometimes slithering
through tunnels, down slides
to exclaim

DUENDE, SAUDADE,
and other
single
word poems.

To laugh inside a church
while attending a funeral
is the most
beautiful answer

to float through
in a repainted blue canoe.

Attack

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Everyone stop talking.
I can’t hear
the grief hissing
in my head. It begins

in the heart,
spreads to the lungs
into the throat,
releases behind the eyes.

Not always exposed
through tear ducts.

I can’t hear
your laugh
leftover from the last time
we saw each other.

Decades ago. Drinks
and dancing
inside Euclid Tavern. Yes,
you were dancing.

I was always dancing
back then. We were
on again off again
in high school.

Old friends by the time
we got to that night.

You were destined
for love, marriage, children,
cooking, sailing, cycling—
a life lived large.

For me, the night
to end all nights,
dance to end all dances,
kiss to end all kisses,

you get the idea,
had just happened
in the Flats
the day before.

It would take years of too many
drinks followed by no more
drinks to discover a life
to be salvaged in a northern town.

Everyone stops talking. It has ended
with your heart.

I Have Some Decisions to Make

/ Arambler / 1 Comment

translates to

farewell to undressing
in the evergreen wood
through a prairie wetland
under a natural bridge
beside a drained creek

farewell to hiding
inside an abandoned
boathouse waiting
for familiar voices
to fade away

farewell to believing
your shame
is love

farewell
my love

Where City Meets Woods Meets Lagoon

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To go to my happy place
means trespassing across sea glass
beds I will never possess.
Land possesses me. Land that leans

over water—fresh and salt. Land that shifts
from hot to cold and repeat. Land
that reveals itself through fractured narratives
and images to prove and dispute

who got here first. I didn’t get anywhere first.
No more own my happy place than a hermit
crab pays rent to reside in a hand-blown glass
shell or one that glows in the dark.

Their housing crisis is ours.
The crustaceans got here first.

Hey Virginia

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Get this:
Chloe still likes Olivia
Chloe loves Olivia.

Chloe proposed to Olivia
right there
in the laboratory.

Chloe and Olivia
are getting married.

Everyone’s invited.
Come back, come back,
Virginia, just for this one day.

Like Tom Waits

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I can taste
the bourbon
when you sing.

The beads of sweat
forming on my chin
contain salt, yes, but

a sweet
lyric too.
I whisper

savory nothings
to the framed
picture of you

I hang
in my mind.

You are the lost
song I know

by heart. I should/will not
erase the burn.

Taint

/ Arambler / 2 Comments

She dances on
the pelvic floor
of her younger self.

It’s not disrespect.
Or it is. It hurts
to remember so much.

The body knows.
It’s not always enough.
She hasn’t relaxed

in a hammock
in 20 years. An expandable
weave. Wouldn’t know

how to begin.
Hers is
a gravity celebrating

Martha Graham
denunciation of
sentimental leaps.

Bitten Off Part

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for Lester

He can’t put me back
where he found me.
He’s been dead nearly
five years. Living

above the cobbler’s
shop on Lake
Street—those were the best
days of his life.

His brother says.
I agree. Will never know
for certain. He stopped
skating outside on bitter

Minnesota winter nights
with his best friend
when he was 16. 32 more
years to lose track of

without a hockey stick.
In cardboard boxes,
all those records
he didn’t listen to

in his final days. From a distant
radio, I hear Tom Waits
growl “Downtown Train.”
We took one of those

when he came to
the big city

before he moved me
to the middle.

He didn’t get to see
a rat till the last night.
He just wanted
a glimpse. A bit part
In his own life.

Back in the Middle

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Where empty sidewalks
outnumber one way streets
you can dart across
in less than a tenth

of a New York
minute. Where no one
gives you false hope
of seeing Lombardo’s Adam

reassembled. Where
airport bathroom stalls
still have their locks
and toilet paper dispensers filled.

And the cat launches
a hunger strike
to teach you a lesson
for abandoning him

for a hundred (cat not dog)
years. And the Mississippi
isn’t a myth. Where you exhale,
slow down, unpack

your thoughts and feelings
onto the floor. And you remember
how the definition of home
floats in freshwater too.

En Route

/ Arambler / 4 Comments

“Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements.”
—The New Yorker

There’s a poem in there
somewhere if

I can just unbuckle
all the belts

wrapped around
our faulty limbs
and hearts. I think

of death and dying
to be born
when I read

exquisite poems. I do
die a little
when I read yours

is another way
of saying

there’s sex
going on
between those lines.