Yellow.

Somewhere in America, this afternoon
there is someone who believes
in the pure wonder of possibility,
seeing the yellow leaves around white trees
through the fogged window.

There is something on the mountains
either fog or smoke, between us
you who believes and I
who knows.

Recently I have fallen in love with demolition,
the smoke rises from the earth and separates.
It has proven everything to me
about forgetting, and how we can.

Every length of time that is possible,
less then the time I have been alive –
I have lived them all.

At twenty-two years old,
in between my day job and
the parts I save for you, and you, and you
I am a person and a poet
always knowing how to say words
when I am quiet,
what to say when I can’t find how.

The Most Dangerous Game

The most dangerous game I think
is not what you’d expect
it is in fact monopoly, played by men with knives
and bad intentions.
These men were released
from one hundred institutions
just only yesterday in fact that one is still
wearing his gray jumpsuit
which gives him a measure of order the others lack
except of course they are all holding knives.
You are exempt from seeing
All the knives they are holding
For the purposes of this game
in order to make it interesting
and also because part of playing
the most dangerous game
I think is that you don’t know
you are.
The advantage of that is
without the nervous tension,
knife-based mostly,
you’ll probably win this game of monopoly
in which case the knives may or may not
become an issue.
Emotions run high
In hidden-knife monopoly
For reasons known and unknown
but it doesn’t change the price of hotels
or the fact that you’ll trade the Electric Company
for Reading Railroad,
and that consistency should afford you
a measure of peace in an otherwise
wildly dangerous, albeit secretly,
game at least
as far as you’re concerned.

Poem for Wang Wei

Living alone now in my bare rooms in Onion-River valley,
Waiting for a visitor at my green gate who never arrives.

Sitting by my window I watch as the forest changes colors,
each morning more and more of the trees have gone yellow.

I drink cold tea all day long and read old master Wang Wei
wondering at similarities between our rivers and mountains.

Service has brought me to this wild valley, between peaks
I think it funny that the old master had it quite the opposite.

I Have Been To Las Vegas

I have been to Las Vegas
And on the whole, it was not a good experience.
But all the red dirt and plastic
Helped me to get to know America
In the way you can only get to know someone
Making love in a car, someone you normally
Limit your love-making with to a bed.
Faced with new difficulties,
Creative problem solving is required,
And you bear witness while trying
To get your pants off.

These parked cars and driving cars
Everywhere now and they leave that out
When they talk lovingly about the past
That there were cars parked on the streets
Back then as well, maybe fewer but equally
Insidious.

Once they were all machines, metal beasts
We could understand, it was like riding a horse
Or riding inside a horse I suppose,
But less bloody – the point is the
Muscles were mechanical
And everybody could relate.

Now we have digital cars, I think
And the thing about them is
Everything in unobservable,
All quiet on the western front.
You put in a quarter and they go,
And fuck man they go.

Somewhere in America children are howling
At the moon and breathing the dirt kicked up
By passing south-east Asian cars speeding
Through the noonish, electric nighttime
And it’s all our fault.

second train song

Train-Song # 2 08/05/08

Rectangles of corn standing stick straight beside the train tracks,
green mourners watching the procession as it rolls out of town.
The river, red with dirt from between the rows of drowning crops
drowns its banks and falls with a wet flop under the tracks
snail-sliming its red way off into the horizon that changes always.

The dark green of trees, soggy and smeared, is like a paper chain,
a fence of men in damp green raincoats holding hands and frowning.
They guards the distance from the train, whose whistle finds the cracks
and slips through the wall of trees and homes and telephone poles
howling out towards the mountains to the east across the grassy space.

At every station the train grinds to a halt, like cold sandpaper from the shed
dragged across waterlogged wood brought in by the tides of an ocean
so far from here that no familiar gulls circle down to compete
With the local pigeons for brown cores of apples and white crusts of bread.

Beside these tracks only the homes of the poor sit now, alone and tired
leaning this way and that, sinking down to meet the ground that buckles
and cracks the boards of the porch, pulling the sheds into their terrible slouch.

Burnt orange flashes of rust and decay mark the walls and doors now
of these houses once new and straight, standing square beside the tracks
and built from the wood of the trees that stand beside the corn plants.
Houses filled with people, fed by the corn, who watched the trains go by.

Train Song.

The window slides along the landscape
Like a lost man dragging a picture frame
Across the green heart of the north east

I am sitting, facing backwards
And as a result I can only think about
What has happened.

Tomorrow there might be loud discussions,
I might go and buy pots and pans.
I might sleep in all day.

I can’t decide, it’s not my decision.

But wait, there’s more:

Two nights ago I confessed a love
And was ashamed.
Last night I was ashamed.
Today I am ashamed.
I might be ashamed tomorrow,
I can’t decide.
It’s not my decision.

But wait, there’s more:

There is a blonde girl on the train, but she is no help.
There are two boys on the train, but they are no help.
The train and its tracks help me some,
With the space they put between my shame and me.

That is the space sadness fills, but there is only so much sadness.
It will be stretched thin and there will be space for happiness.

But wait, there’s more:

There are spaces between the trees outside the window.
Maybe there are trees between the spaces, and sadness only between the spaces.

I have called her three times.
Maybe she is with another man.
Maybe she is crying.
I don’t want that, but I can’t help thinking about it.
I will call her again before I am done writing.

But wait, there’s more:
I have seen one thousand houses and I will see one thousand more.
None of them are my house, none of them are her house.

But wait, there’s more:

I am a man with a face of great concern.
I am a picture of shame in a steel frame,
Shooting across the green heart of the northeast.

It is a traveling exhibit,
The fastest in history.

But wait, there’s more:

When I go to sleep they will build a museum around me.
It will be all the explanation I can manage.
They will build it next to the other ones,
Whose frames are now empty,
Because I am on permanent loan.

In Response to a Prompt

like a still life in motion
or: a clock, if you prefer
its case, so perfectly still
surrounds the whirring
each and every little part
some of them are animals,
the rest vegetables (fruit)
or minerals, stone solid
points, and around them
the flesh things spin,
though only fine oscillation.
Somewhere between
An instance and an instant
you’ve trained your eyes,
ears, nose, mouth, heart.