The Thick

I am heavy in my own salt,
My feet high arched.
In the morning I will plant mustard.
I will take prisoners
Or flying lessons
Depending on the air.
For now I hear the refrigerator running
Like robotic crickets chirping.
I see your face in street lights
And parked cars.
I am a softer angry,
Willing not to let go so hard.
Willing even to overlook the spelling error
In that Dear John.
The air is thinning.
I miss your hair in the sink.

Do Not Fold

I saw them naked
I washed thier faces
I closed thier eyes
Crossed their arms
To make them peaceful

I watched your loved ones pass
But I never thought to cry
No one makes it out alive

But I watched you sleep
I built myself into the shape of you in the dark
Do not close your eyes
Do not cross your arms
I am not ready to miss you

Excerpt

I sat there that night alone like I had sat in so many other places on as many a clear night. Everyone I asked had other plans, other people or other lives. It was just me, a stale camp chair that reeked like vomit and a tall bag of pine boughs I had pruned off a dying shrub in the front yard. I had eaten too much again and felt swollen but I was ravenous still. That was in the days when I could never get full of enough of anything to quiet the longing for more. Only memories seemed safe enough to count on then.
The pine boughs were too fresh and lent more smoke to the air than flame to the fire but I couldn’t seem to mind. It was the day after June ended in a heat wave. July brought in a welcomed breeze that lifted the sweet, sticky smell of sap into the air and down through my lungs. It was like smoking Christmas in July.
I was not supposed to be alone that night. Though I had known for some time that company did nothing to insure against my loneliness, I had hoped for a distraction. Without it my mind went to where it always went. My mother had been dead for almost ten years by then but I still held silent séances in the checkout lines of grocery stores praying she’d show me the sign of a balanced meal. It wasn’t the holiday that made me miss my mother. The ache was a constant vibration in me. It was small things like sea shells, Coke cans or the color mauve that struck the fork at the core of me.
Since the 1930’s people have been burying cherished things in the ground and digging them up decades later to see if they still cherish them. My mother was my time capsule. Her ashes are buried beneath a stone in her hometown. In those days, I still held onto the idea that I could dig them up, water them and rediscover my childhood, my innocence, my sense of safety, and my mother.
That night I wept into my hands for the child in my heart, for my mother’s sisters, for my unborn niece and her father. Long after the pine boughs ran out and the flames sputtered down to still coals, I sat and blamed the smoke for the salt on my cheeks and wailed the low, long broken cries of a man with a hole in his soul.

(from Passing: Memoire of a Nobody)

Trickle Cell

"It gonna come," he say.
"Gonna trickle down," they say.
They say
They Say
But nothin good ever come this way.

"You got a nigga in the office now,"
"You ain't gotta hold your breath,"
Says the man with the fatter cow.
But when it trickles down there ain't nothin left.

"We been been poor so long it's in our cells,"
Says the beggar with his cup
On the day the market fell
But the riches trickled up.

Logic That Tries Too Hard

It's twenty past ten on a Saturday and I am waiting for the doorbell to ring. I have not asked for any visitors but I always expect that she will come. She will knock on the door and I will answer. My face will go pale and my eyes will lean left. She will say, "I am here," and I will reply, "I have always wanted to meet you." It never happens on Saturdays. It never happens over decaf.
I wonder if there is a place in the netherworld where the "almost saints" go. Where they sit chewing on coffee stirrers while the synapses of their brains cuss at them. There must be so many of them that stood at their bedside with knees that wouldn't bend. I bet they know the lonliness that keeps the poet up at night. I bet they have waited for the call.
I wonder if saints are real. Or if the wind just blows when the pressure changes. I have sat beside the leaves of trees with ears too intent to listen. There are languages the mind refuses. I play at being in love but I haven't the mind for it. Logic tries too hard and speaks too quickly. I have not spirit that rustles or listens. I have the saintliness of a nomad who stands still.
I wonder what she will look like. If she will have fine hair like my mother did. If she will be angular. How big her hands will be compared to mine. I can never hear her voice this way. I have never been that patient. Fifteen minutes have passed and no one has called on me.