Two Poems for Two Voices for My Dad
Place the Stories Stop
(for two voices)
there was that
you that came before
you came after
here
a word unheard at birth
saying before saying
snow all over is earth
earth is snow all over
blue
breath graze
the field sunstruck
sometimes
this sunlight seems
plastic
and summer runs in reverse
i thought
i am a popcorn too long in the oil
then i thought no
i is a shell holding splitting
pastword
it already happened
i’m sorry you
drifted so
alone fisher
father
great blank
space
i’m sorry i
failed
to ask
putting one foot in front
of the other
remember
to breathe
to thread
to fill
and empty
i want to find you
more than a warning
what happens when we put our hands down
where do you stand when you’ve run out of
space
flicker into focus some glowing plain, it could be flat, no telling
i am what i see and now i see stars, the falling face of fathers
seed inside the grain, folded fields forming, filling, falling
rise and scatter, between the watermarks, in America
river under rippled moon spangled wonder
what does it look like to love without holding
anything
like this and this and this
who is it speaking please
Night call from outer space
voice comes on the line
don’t answer the phone we’re
alone here we whisper alone
to find yourself alone
inside a face voice comes over the wire
fucking junction box shooting sparks out of
fifty grey rooms some of them burning there
are three of us here pop back
into the mystery
are you there
are you here thought i saw something
move i was driving sky was
black field was purple road was
orange there were agents
like flies in the field
That was the secret winter
That was the time before telling
Hearing the numbers repeated
Zero and one it was only
A test human voice comes
Over the air are you sure
watch me burn
watch me slide and
wave unweave
the tree to its
root
maybe i’m hooked
at about that time you stopped
what’s an honest way to say
are you called
are you cold here’s a
light at the back makes my
face unfocus find oneself
unknown deeper into the
snow sky static between
channels air seems empty
miss you miss you all
not ready for nothing
watch me take a picture
watch me smile and wave
saw men torn in half
was told that was normal
never knew not fear
know now not
something kind in your eyes
can’t pretend to feel
more than i do what do i
carried sadness someone
pick up the phone the lines
smudge the lines run
rain bleed on the river
just one step to step
outside i’d like not to wake up
too sad too late it’s
started no time make a word
shape sound place memorial
patchwork for the frozen
falling word
here in silence stop
lost in water burned in fire
drift alight on the mountain
To Ashes
(for two voices)
“That’s what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.”
--Wallace Stevens
Then we’re at the airport
Then we catch a plane
crack to feel the pain of things
what lies in an ending
i’m cold
at once and everwhere
exposed
bloom
somewhere below
the moon
jellyfish
find a form
to fix
the fluttering
fluttering still
short of breath
what was i
saying in a deeper breath
you were stranger than i thought
waited so
late to see you
won’t do it again
ten sixteen thirteen
we were moving held up
my hand shadow something
in the bush moving
step by step alone land lined
mined trapped there maybe
eleven twelve
we saw each other frame
froze burned click
of a rifle don’t
ever
don’t leave me coughing numbers
10/17/13
no room
to return
going back
outside
every one
strange
so i found them
so i left them
ghost mind
clings to bushes
eighteen nineteen twenty
i guess we were a private people
kind of chilly maybe
made us cold
carry
as far and as loud as we can
voices
echo states too dire
to be taken
seriously
one
no dust
in the gate of compassion
cracked
projection
we never got out of the
mall even outside was
inside and closed
time was
i was all soft surface
no one came to find me
so far inside
i think it’s time
i don’t want it to be time
but i think it’s time
leaking all over the house
won’t know until
we’ve landed
maybe i’m only
talking to echo
(i miss you ixxy
eminent being
and ashes
you knew
what it was
to die)
opened my mouth
and my face was empty
slow
motion
collapse
feather
like
flour
closer
than
skin
parsifalzero
unbeginning and ashes
parsifalzero
the world,
two
parsifalzero
parsifalzero
monkey in a frozen
house
writing to say that i’m
here and not here and
now it’s dark early
and that so often i failed to meet fully
the promise and challenge of love
lost and lost and losing
voice and coming to you
direct from the Celluloid Ballroom
rickety signal
collapse just a
way of saying
scratch
singing at last
Must’ve been some kind of idiot.