Toppling from a tightrope
stretched between your bare knees
Last fallen man in a dance contest
Jumping from a plane wearing a
backpack instead of a parachute
dying, as they say, of laughter
Stomach so stuffed with sweets
the witch can barely cram you
into her glowing oven
Of thirst, mouth too dry to form words
So quickly from the impact
you still can’t believe it
In your sleep
stiffening into
something of an embrace
Last of the really early poems for a while, this one circa 1990. I make no claims for these other than that they are, indeed, poems.
Snowfall
I entered the dark to the sound of a voice
Echoed a thousand times, an exploring shadow
Which called all of me to revel in the night
Another early poem, circa 1991. This was originally titled “Sleeping with D. H. Lawrence.” I’m not sure why I changed the title.
Battling Lawrence
I dream at night of sleeping with D. H. Lawrence.
Unafraid of the movement
I sway under him, feeling the motions
Of a hundred frustrating imagined women.
In their vagueness they are too much like me
And I am lost in the whirl, waiting for some
Distinction to surface until eventually,
Faceless, I curl around myself
Tight and fetal,
His warmth and person comforting
And slippery seeping out of me.
Until I retrieve my journals and papers from Alaska, this will be one of the oldest poems I can share here. It’s definitely a poem. Circa 1991.
Elegy For Lisa, Finally Free
—You carried me so far
…
You’re barely beyond the grasp of our small sun refusing to let go. Wave goodbye to our last, demoted planet. Next stop: Alpha Centauri proximity, year 19600 AD. In the time it took humans to evolve from neanderthal to digital lemming you’ll cross the lawn to say hello to our next-door neighbor. If there’s life there that resembles your gold-etched humans, they’ll be more human than I. Here I carry a practical supercomputer in my pocket that can connect to Dial-a-Prayer across 13,000 miles, guided by a cranial electric storm, while mapping the walk where I tripped over a lost, tilted grave. You cross 13,000 miles in a fraction of a second, steered by a computer less powerful than a Pac Man watch. Who knows what seed you carry. I fell to Earth before you left our atmosphere. Blink three times if you miss me.