The Beautiful Dirt of Possible Lies: Six Poems From the 4th and 5th of July

1. For Too Long, I'd Wake Up Every Morning...

This one goes out to Annie
Who held her heart out
For all to see and take
Pieces of, see the drops
Of rain or blood on pages
Too sleepy to read now
So
Just lay inside the heartbreak
Fly above the helicopter elevation
See the starry spiked portraits
Bringing you down, singing you down
What else could she say that day?
So again, so
There was the Saturday
(I remember days of the week)
We converged on the campus
Annie, the anchor, and I
Three students on an off-day
Hands in pockets, pockets full
(Different Annie, different anchor, same story)
And we slapped around the Minnesota sun
Paced around like gophers with no holes
Only flat hard dirt and picked-apart shrubs
No love, just mutual respect
And time, time, time

Now, today, here
It's just a made-up memory
Details - Saturday, the toothpaste, the names
All true and covered with
The beautiful dirt of possible lies
Chris the anchor, he moved to Hollywood
I followed him 20 years later
Almost to the day, now he's in Atlanta
I'm still here, a mile from Orange Drive
Ten more to Overland and Venice
Where once they said the secrets were kept
Bastards - old kids, stuck
Damn - I'm sleepy now
New times, old kids, stuck
New false universe
Turn slowly when you hit the corner
Speed over speed bumps
You're not going anywhere, not falling down
The whirling story
Comes to a crawl
A stop


2. Four Mistakes

They came at me from both sides
They filled up my voice mail, my insides
They crushed the cardboard boxes
They replaced the gophers with sly slow foxes
They don't exist, I do

I've made four mistakes in my life
Which isn't so bad for such a long time
It's just that
I made one mistake 600 times
And another 245
But that's cool, no crimes, no wasted holidays
No corners turned blindly, eyes open
Narrow and tired
But still open and green

They came from both sides
Doesn't matter if you get it
Only matters if it hits you
Hard enough


3. Superhero

She's a slipped-up superhero
With a longing for a longing
A galley with empty walls
And a filled-up floor
Littered with love and rugs and last year
Or the one before - '06 - which dropped hard
Hit hard and blatantly
Into a wall of deflecting fists
And risks well enumerated
Described like flesh and stone
Neither one breakable
Despite what you think

She's a stuck watch superhero
Flailing for the light to disappear
Big songs are better because
They never leave you for a moment
Unlike, well unlike a lot of things
Which just don't stick
There's no one, there's only
Dust and black and air and dust
And the dust is invisible anyway
Brick and wood and dirt and brick
And the brick and wood and dirt
Don't mean a damn thing
When the hunger is holding you close
Like a field full of babies
Or a house full of DVDs

There's a color carrying you
A shape holding you
Losing, running my mind
Running, losing my time
Large, the world gets
Big, the song stays
I'm shaking from the beauty
Of all graceful things
Of each healed broken wing
Of all never healed
Of the bursting baby field
Or the sunrise facing west
Or the damn elephant hovering over us
It's inflatable from a curse
We do not want it to burst
We only want the love
You take that's equal to
The most brilliant mistake


4. Days of the Week

I fell in love for the first time on a Thursday
In November and yes I remember the year

I was thrown to the ground in Westwood
On a Wednesday and I don't know the month
Or day but I think it was 1996

I rode up the elevator on a Tuesday
It let me out in the student union
Of my third and fifth college
The woman asked me my name, I had an answer

Nothing ever happened on a Monday
Except for the day my marriage ended
MLK Day and the sun was brighter than
The opposite of death

Sundays are easy - when my friend and I
Walked the free meter streets of downtown Minneapolis
To pick one of a thousand beautiful 12-inch singles

Saturday is tomorrow and six days ago
When I tore through the desert
In a sadcore haze, avenging the gods
And enjoying the last days of holding
The phone to my ear in a California car

Friday. 1996. August
I was back home and I didn't know why
Didn't seem real, the Twins on the radio
My shit in the U-Haul my cats in an Edina hotel room
I found a place to live by that Sunday
But fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck?
Where did the days go?
Where will they take me tomorrow?
And the next day and then Monday


5. They Were the Music Lovers

Eleven years ago I boasted
Of moving three friends to London
To bask in the foglight
To sleep in the stuck rooms
But they got me back
One went to Waikiki
Another to Brooklyn
The last one just down the street
From the prettiest of the five Minneapolis lakes
And I'm holding my hand to my head
To cover the sun and protect the dead
Half of me, the identical twin
Who never committed a crime
Who never crossed a blurry line

My new friend, she's considering
A move too, I wish I knew
If I want her to go or stay
If I want to go too or play
The same mix CDs over and over again
Because it's not easy to be my friend


6. Crow

My eyes moved in too many directions
The mixtape mystery girl, she cradled
Her home phone like it was a bible
I committed myself to 14 words
To the girl with 8 names, only two of which
Mattered

She moved south
Near the Iowa border, surprised
That I called her to say goodbye
I stayed in town, in school
Never saw her again

It's a stain on my record
The lost cause years - '92, '93
The false start years - '92, '93
But I have to blame
Myself for decisions made
In '92, '93, and of course '85
I lived through it
Don't need to hear the songs again
My eyes, under water and closed
To the surface
When it all comes clean