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

Slower Than I Was

I might have exactly
What I'm looking for
Within reach of upturned palms
Tall people and short people
The sound of the uphill cars
The purr of the buzzkill bars
I think I've got it / Now do I want it?

I shadow the slow walkers
I lie because it's easy
It's simple and pure
I'm slower than I was
Last fall, last time
I coveted and lost
It's an eternal internal cost

The girl with the red hair smirks
The one with the brown hair cries in a coma
The one with the black hair works
The other two with red?
One saves the dead
The other lives in Chicago

May 19, 2008

Veronica In Winter

We're in long pursuit
Of an impossible goal
To fill up the hole in the earth
To cradle the action
To covet the fraction
Of good into bad
Or false into all that is true

I don't name those numbers
Some numbers are proxies for names
I don't give out my real past
Some facts are unnecessary
I hold implications in my left hand
I hold cash and coins in my right
My notebook's a big one
My pens are blue and black
My family's dead, they're not coming back

It's a longing, she's got
A second child ahead of her
I'm confident she's got it down
As she rides into the new town
Her husband her soldier
Her first son her partner
Her cooler in the back
Iced out, blessed out

It was 1995
It all went dead or stayed alive
Revolving doors
Led me to bleak rooms
Forced me to speak doom
And on that June day
We wasted Wilshire Boulevard
We traded it in for a dirty 405
My cat was sleeping on the edge
Of the bed, like he will tonight
He's older but he's alright
I'm older and what I write
Trading gypsies for punks
Trading Jersey for Silver Lake
Trading legends for cold stark truth
Like Veronica in winter
Archie-less and effortlessly cool

May 19, 2008

She's Got Her Seatbelt On

It's come to this
Waited two years for this
Golden opportunities
One, red-tinged and north of the river
The other, bleak and blue, by the mission
I'll take one
I prefer two
None would be a disappointment

Take the body with you (sing the sequel)
Take the body with you (lotus position)
Take the body with you (it's an abstract world)
Take the body with you (portals, icicles)

The force of wonder made me blink
The eyes intolerant of passersby
Golden opportunities, gold sounds, gold lion
Red-headed stranger on the brink

It's strange, the darkness leads you through
The light, the black, the orange, the same songs
You heard in a Tears for Fears blur
Or a Blur flash in your lying eyes
She told me the end was never coming
That the city on a Saturday was a blessing
That if I stayed and watched the crowds form, I'd be good
Today I sleep, in cul de sac Hollywood
What goes on

April 17, 2008

Some catching up to do: 4 from 2000

Mimi’s Cafe

anchored down in Yorba Linda
sedentary and blue at times
I came to on that Sunday
I wrote my finest rhymes

the Highway was Imperial
the light was wearing thin
the grass was brown but beautiful
dinner took me in

it was almost half the family
a crowded room, a cult
the menu was irrepressible
none of it my fault

time to go, the night was young
I said goodbye, I shrugged
I thought of running far away
I said goodbye, I shrugged

and dawn would come, it would
I held out all my hope
and dawn came and nothing moved
I fingered up the rope

and dawn had bad ideas, dawn did
I couldn’t hold it in
and dawn gave birth to Monday
the rain would then begin

January 14, 2000

Hassling

feel like you’re hassling me
from the front, with a spell on me
from the back, with a curse for the progeny
you could see them coming down
from the last good part of town
before the mayor set about reforming things
and now he’s dying of the little things
he couldn’t touch to change to kill

feel like you’re hassling me
so what I’ll do is this
I’ll come for you in pieces
black cows five and easy
the first one will taste like morning
the second one dessert
the third one will seem like acid rain
the fourth one just acid, the fourth one just....
and number five
good to be alive
sometimes it’s just good
to be alive

May 1, 2000

The Doppelganger

the doppelganger fell on the sidewalk
he blamed the city

doppelganger fell on the sidewalk
he blamed himself

that’s what you get
when you first forget
that a doppelganger, fallen, is a fool
go back to school

July 31, 2000

Crazy Talk

you could end up wringing necks for sins like this
but what would that do? who would that help?
where would the wildest flowers take you?
you could end up wringing necks for sins like this
but who do you love? who do you think?
where would the wisest writings lead you?
do you have peace?
do you have flesh?
did you trade pantomime for art?
do you have feet?
do you walk fast?
did you have hardly any heart?
you threw her out the door, out of your life
one minute before she admitted to you
she knew that you knew, the footsteps were hers
but what about all your handsome hairs
piling up, all over the world, all over the world, all over the world

November 11, 2000

The Thumbprint

The thumbprint stays behind
Wrapped in crinkly paper
Four fingers beside it
Filing cabinet cold, the thumbprint's gold
If you know the story
Black if it's all a myth

The thumbprint's in your mind
Cold in the corner, cringing
Cement underfoot
They hooked the boy to sensors, damn torpedoes
Flying in the sun
Soaring from the magic hills

I wrote a riddle
I read someone else's
The rough knight cradled
His dancing girl
Her hair on fire
Gelatin and cellular
Scarred and cultured
She claimed the hills as hers

Demolition, marriage ended
Streets on fire, merry widow waltz
A parade of little cars
Down the hill, to the canyon
He grips the wheel
She's got a feather touch

And in the plastic pitch of all that's lost
He screamed the names of silent underdogs
Who won the waltz but lost the dancing queen
His fingers touch the gypsy skin of a raging libertine

Her arms with tracing tracks of old regrets
Her balance off, her hair an impish mess
She shakes her hips and hangs her head
Down so we see the back of her white neck

In the little village beneath her hair line
Is a circle, all traversed, a dropping hint
He put it there one night, wearing shoes without laces
His final remnant, his random right thumbprint

December 18, 2007

Middle L.A.

It's as if the weight
Isn't heavy enough to feel
But massive enough to see
Clearly, on a cloudy day
Like today, in Middle L.A.

The kids with cameras
Follow the kids with skateboards
The dogs on leashes
Obey the cats on cell phones
The rain looks as if it's coming
But it won't
The sun will win out
The sky will break out

But weather is weather
And irrelevant
So let's go
To a path of razor blades
To a field of gopher holes
To a river running through
The cities east of here
The continents west of here
The earth is shaky
My eyes are open wide
Let's go on another ride
Demolition derby
County fair and crushy stares
From girls with funnel cakes
But now's not the time for regrets

It's as if the weight
Has bounds and limits
Maps with insets
Here on a Saturday
At ease and play, in middle L.A.

The soundtrack has been silent
Since the broken down version
Of the laminated streets
Put their hex on us
But it's cool
Fires have burned out
Albums have come out
Sequels have panned out
Little lost kids
Have turned their tears to food
For a minor revolution
Marching on City Hall
Misbehaving on the bus
Losing their siblings' trust
Reading books and seizing lands
Writing treaties, breaking treaties
It's a trajectory

It IS a better day
Than the blue black yesterdays
Or the tow trucks in the haze
There are no alleys on these streets
Just the blind and blank at play
In easy breezy middle L.A.

Everything makes more sense
And holds less truth
In the plural

October 27, 2007