Santa Monica Cemetery

Next to the graveyard
it's a funny world
bushes and caper vans
motels with flags
soft serve

There you can find the secret, the key
to all happy, to all good
to bad and everything in between
to death and ice cream
palms and parking meters

The blue college
forever in its footprint
smells like chlorine and art paint
and planetarium dust
breathe it all in

The secret to all happy, all good
it's there as I read the news
I already know
let it settle, walk back west
step into the mausoleum
at sunset and close my eyes

January 24, 2009

We Came Into Town Under Cover of Night

#1

The drives home were sluggish
Perfect for a heavy heart
To step inside was to catch the eyes
Of cats and mirrored lasting impressions
And heroes, what were they anyway?
Or villains, face first in the snow?
No, no, I don’t know
And I’m almost there
Almost to the edge of falling back into
What happened first, way back then
When the shadow light was just physics
And my favorite songs had choruses

I could romanticize that spring
And call Caroline my savior
With her little hair and little head
And little hands and big words
I gave her a book and a stack of papers
She read them all, I believe it
But she’s in Columbus and I’m still here
And in Columbus, as Mark says, there’s no spotlight
To dazzle and that’s alright because dazzle hurts the eyes

I listened to Tallahassee almost every night
As I drove the two big boulevards home
It made me feel better about my own circumstance
But it still brought out the hurt
That I wore in my eyes, wear in my eyes
As I pictured peacocks
And Cuban planes and empty roads in college towns
And you


#2

Hey you, “No”
Where did your little hair go?
To other towns with colleges
Big ones and little ones
Santa Cruz, Columbus
And hey you, “No”

I never went anywhere with you really
I only went outside and back in
I only went to Pico and that other street
And in the cruelest of ironies
I was in the goddamn Gap dressing room when you cancelled
Our second date and we still haven’t rescheduled

This is my own sweet time
I can say what I want, want what I feel
There’s a hundred years to live
And a thousand years to heal

The secret is, no one knows
Hey you, you never said ‘yes”
And I imagine you leaving Los Angeles
And then that other town and that other town
In the bright white dazzling morning light


#3

I slept on that floor for months
I slept on that floor for 9 long months
I slept on three blankets, sometimes two
And a soft thick rug on the hardwood floor

(The rug is gone now, sold or under the bed)
(Two of the blankets are still here but I only use one)
(And the hardwood floor’s still hard, with little short nails and splinters)

I think I’m going soon, I’ve got a feeling
Maybe down to Long Beach or up to where I’m from
And anyway this isn’t the town we came into under cover of night
That was 2002, that was some other place
Two cars and one truck and a posse of friends
All spread out, Midwestern now, like brown sugar on waffle plates

Santa Monica was misty that night
Santa Monica was misty every night
The mist cut into me, messed with my sinus and the bed wood
But whatever I loved and missed that air
So it was with heavy heart that I left
In the Caroline, No and Peacocks spring of ‘06
I don’t remember what the sky looked like that day
I remember it was Saturday
It was morning
It was heavy
And then I’m gone again
Some day


#4

So March and April I listened to Tallahassee almost every night
And April and May I dated a girl from Tallahassee once a week
I didn’t treat her as well as I could have
But we learn from mistakes and we shake up the breaks
And May and June I found a Milwaukee swoon
And June and July I was back in the heat and yeah
It was the hottest endless summer of my life
I can still feel it
(should move closer to the water)

But what about that girl from Tallahassee?
Where is she now?
She’s in Burbank
I’ve never seen her place
But I hear it’s nice
No air conditioning
Must have been hot that summer


#5

Sail on sailor, come sail with me
Sail away with me
Between the moon and Kansas City

Fly with me on paper planes
Feel the freedom in the middle states
Interstate, in the dark, in the light

They make the trucks yellow and orange
So no one misses the fact
You’re moving away and you can fit it all
In one vehicle

(I’d rather drive a UPS truck)

“There’s danger of me losing all my happiness”
Then she lost it
I can’t see it anymore
I can hear her voice
I hear the call
I hear it all
And if the words were 50 years old
The happiness was only 20
And still not hitting 21

There’s morning
And afternoon
And evening
And sleep
Floor, bed, side of the road
And you

December 7, 2008

I Don't Think Of You That Often

I have empathy
unlike you
this is why
I'm better than you

hot cocoa and s'mores
for all the poet's whores
is an appropriate reward
for years and years
of praising perfect verse

your best friend told me
you worked as a sailor
for months at a time
in the seventies
the implications of this
are too numerous to mention
until more data is ready
data that demystifies
the certain blurring
that such an endeavor implies

there's an intimate moment
at the end of our movie
that defines us as people
you know the moment
it's after the guns come out
and after the tension breaks

I love the way your green shirt
brings out the green
from your green green eyes
now here come the anesthetic
feel the pain, common worker

there's a part of me sleeping
a part of me you don't know
because you have no empathy
there's a part of me sleeping
out in the desert
next to the windmills
in the heart of the beast

I'm better than most
but not better than others
this sums me up
in the eyes of the caged one
and in the eyes of me
this tells you that
I'm coming home, but I'm coming home alone
that's the way it must have been meant to be

so where's your pride?
your pride's on the radio
I've heard the only song
you ever knew how to play
I've heard it sung badly
I've heard it sung falsely
you were the only one to do it right

October 26, 1995

Allies

the sugary one is stirring up trouble
making threats and speaking loudly
of canyons and the yodels therein
I haven’t seen you smiling lately, why?

packing your things
you think of going
but really you’re staying
because tomorrow
you’ll be back
so you may as well
leave it all be
climb up a tree
and make your own threats

the trouble, once stirred, is absent now
the sun is falling from its sleeves
the gauges we have are unreliable
and I think that’s the sound of trouble again
it couldn’t last, it wouldn’t
but that doesn’t mean
my eyes aren’t green
my skin isn’t soft
my lips aren’t dry
but that doesn’t mean
my angles are worn and rounded slightly
because, brother, sister, other, they’re not

June 6, 2000

Sightings

I'm looking at the fog, can't see the hills
I'm thinking about a revolution
I'm thinking I should announce my retirement
I'm sitting on my couch, can't feel my feet
I'm remembering the drives along the west side of Bush Lake
And then it spits you out
By the highway, near the glassy buildings
People I didn't know worked in
People I didn't know slept in

I'm waiting for an answer
I'm confiding in you, can you feel it?
I miss the mollusk, I miss the ocean
I miss the lake, I miss the muddy feet
But I can't just do what they say
I can't just covet the end of the day

She saw me on 3rd Street
I saw her on Chapman
She saw me on Pico
I saw her on Colorado
She saw me on Larchmont
I saw her right back
She looked away on Normandale
I looked right through her on Burnt House Hill
She saw me on 3rd Street
I punched the little spaces on my iPhone
And considered a move, eastward in the dark
I waved
She drove ahead
And in the fog I will know you by the trail of what I've never said

December 2, 2008

They're Calling Me

They're calling me to come to
To wake myself, to wake the earth
To rouse the bursting fields
The harvest that I built
But I'm sleeping in this morning
I'm dreaming of a wake
A man with knives is pointing
The path to a dead girl
The coffin lies half-empty
The child too small and low
She's pushed herself to one edge
With gravity, grief, or both
I nod my first and last respects
I never knew the girl
I often dream of strangers
With half a sparrow's curl

They're calling me to come home
To trumpet my return
To sing of highways drawn in
To exhale, exhaust, and cough
But I'm careful not to tip my hand
No commitment, no regret
Songs are for romantics
With fists for wings and feet for feet
I never knew the girl
Though I recognize her hands
Pale and soft and empty
Holding out for holding back
Her years were warm and heavy
With snow on each her birthdays
But her name is a mystery
I never dream of names

They're calling me to slip through
The gateway to the next day
The keeper sleeps his day by
Like I wished I'd sleep my own
They've called enough to wake me
I'm shaking off my dusty sleeves
I'm breaking up my shaky schemes
My charts and graphs and sketches
Of running in inertia
As far as eyes can see
But eyes are built for sleeping
In dreams the fever cures the well
I recognize her hands
They're open to the extra space
She hopes the lid stays open
Oh God, I recognize her face

They're calling me to speak up
My voice is soft but pure
No threat I make is veiled
No promise too impossible
I switch back to the road to town
I'm coming back to kiss the ground
To bless it and get out
I get tired but then I don't
Her face was all I couldn't see
When a word called for a cure
Medicine too slow to do the trick
To thick to save the world
Don't close the top, she loves the sun
Not ceilings of spiders and pine
Love requires nothing but love
Nothing but love never hurts

They're calling me to come to
I'm sleeping again, it's late
I'm driving asleep, it's dusty
The air is ugly but ugly's alright
The day I sprained my ankle
I fell to the blacktop just like that
I asked for a nap before the hospital
I asked for my book and my cat
She loves the dirt under the sun
The sun as it looks from the moon
The moon as it looks from the sea
The sky as it splits from the earth
She kisses the dirt under the sun
The ground I walked yesterday
I woke when they carried her out
When she shouted “It's okay”

-2002

The House

There’s a danger in there. We shouldn’t go in there. They have secrets made of small leaves and strange histories. If we go in we will find nothing.

It’s an old house, next to the new ones, in the old town we have grown up in, as philistines with baseball bats and short-sleeved shirts. It’s an old house with a creaky door with a cobwebbed knob. No one has lived there for years. It is unsafe. A crowd is forming behind us.

We must go in. But we shouldn’t go in. There’s a danger in there and I can almost taste it.

Still we enter. Still we walk slowly, in awe, with no flash cameras, with eager souls. The others are following us, tugging at our clothes because of the dark.

There is a story to be told for every room. There is a history but I only know some of it. Knowing too much could be dangerous. Knowing too little could be deadly. We could make it up. Or we could get out of here. I don’t like being haunted. We shouldn’t like being haunted. The crowd is abuzz.

One of the crowd – the youngest – is almost giggly with anticipation. She has heard more stories than we have but we are the oldest so we have to lead. Sometimes having the most responsibility is dangerous.

The youngest one tells us that she once heard the house was to be demolished, that a prospective buyer wanted to sell the land to our fathers. But then there was a lull. Months passed and the buyer backed out at the last minute. He backed out quietly, with only a note on out-of-state letterhead to show for it. He hasn’t been back to town since. And this story we believe because the youngest one, a child, wouldn’t voluntarily speak of buyers and letterhead.

I am afraid for myself. The silence is relentless. There are ten of us in here and none of us can hear a thing, none of us can make a sound. It is dark and old and dusty and dead in here and we aren’t adding a single audible breath to the room’s sound. We have been turned into nothing, ten of us, and we are helpless to do a thing. The youngest one speaks first but most of us don’t hear her. We are in another room now. There is tugging at our clothes, a train of children and teenagers both frightened and overjoyed and the youngest one is at the end of the line and we can’t hear her.

Perhaps she has said something important. I can hear breaths of concern, that the youngest one is missing. I hear the front door slam, perhaps she ran outside. I want to ask the one who was supposed to be in front of her if anyone is tugging at his clothes, if anyone was tugging at his clothes, but I can’t say a thing.

Often we are brainwashed to believe exactly what we want to believe.

We find a spiral staircase and one by one the nine of us now walk upstairs to where the real secrets are answered and the deadest ghosts recline. I try count the footsteps. I can tell there are more than five of us but probably less than ten. I am hoping we have only lost one. I am scared. There is danger upstairs.

I make it to the top first. There are two directions to walk, straight ahead or to the left. I walk straight ahead with my forearm leading the way. I touch what feels like a slightly ajar door and I push it forward only to realize I should have pulled it toward me. I change course and pull and feel for the opening and I walk through. I don’t say a word because I want everyone to follow me. I want everyone to feel the same fear I am feeling as I enter the first upstairs bedroom, where the deadest ghosts are said to recline.

I stop and I wait until I no longer hear footsteps. I count the steps I do hear. By my estimation seven of us are in the room. I know the youngest one never made it to the stairs. The next two youngest may have stayed downstairs or gone to rescue their frightened child friend. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are eight of us. Or nine or five or one, me, making echoes that sound like others. Maybe the person tugging at my un-tucked shirt is a ghost, no longer dead and reclining but lithe and spry and here.

Next I try to find the first upstairs bedroom closet. The closet, according to local legend, is where it all happens. This is where the victims, sanguine and oblivious, spent their final restful night, before they woke in the morning to the terror in the closet that doesn’t have a name, the dread that so surely occurred and just as certainly cannot be defined. It smells like a thousand years in here I say to myself and though there were no houses in the town a thousand years ago, though this house is no more than a hundred years old, my sense is shared by the others in the room, I think, I hope, I fear.

In the daytime, before we entered the house, I said to the group, we need to do this while we are still young so we have stories to tell our children, so they navigate the world with an endless curiosity. I know now that I tell a good story. I know now that I didn’t mean any of it.

Though it is unnamed we know that in the closet lived something, a person, a spirit, an animal, a ghost, something that had a motive to kill and make bodies disappear. Though it is unnamed it is understood this way, in these terms: something, kill, disappear.

As my arm reaches out for a closet I sense that I am stepping on what feels like dry leaves. The oldest one before me, the boy who did not come along today, the boy who gave us every detail he could name about the house, told me that early each spring, with the house’s surrounding oak trees plied with fragments of leaves, a harsh wind would touch down in the valley and the swinging shuttered windows would open wide, thirsty for the tree’s new life. The tree would shed its first set of small spring leaves, not yet full, hardly green and the wind would carry them into the upstairs bedrooms, this one and the next. The wind would dissipate and the windows would shut and the trees would be still, waiting to be replenished with the next rains which would always come the next morning by dawn, always the morning after the wind.

I didn’t doubt what the older one said to me. I believed it then and I believe it now as I step on the small dry leaves and I listen for the crackled footsteps of others.

The history of the leaves was not the most important thing the older boy told us. He also implored us not to speak, not to scream, just to breathe. If we spoke, if we screamed, we would perish in a blaze of light invisible to the living but unmistakable to the dead. Perhaps this is where the youngest girl went.

This is why when I hear a whispered voice in the bedroom I cringe. I am now more alone than before. This is why when I hear a scream following the whispered voice, a scream surely emanating from the child whose clothes were no longer being tugged, I cringe again, one less friend, one less confirmation of our journey into the soul of death.

If there were no more than seven at the top of the stairs, there can be no more than five now. I still feel the tug on my clothes, so we’re somewhere between two and five.

The terror I felt before entering seemed justified at the time. Now, though, the terror has been replaced by a sense of pride at being one of the few still left standing. I’m in the top half, perhaps in the top two, and this is a story I could tell to my children with pride. My friends may be dead but I didn’t love them as much as I love myself and the history I spawn.

I find a doorknob and know that I should pull, as is the case with all closets. Except this one. This one isn’t moving as I pull so I push. I hear a creaking door move forward. I disappear into the darkest place I have ever conceived of and I feel the second oldest one follow me, squeezing my shirt so tightly that it hurts both of us. I don’t know if anyone is behind us and I have to stop to think to count the footsteps and when I am primed to count I have to stop again to feel the airspace in front of me and when I feel nothing but air and I remember to count again I no longer feel anyone touching my clothes. I chase my short term memory. Did I hear whispers? Did I hear screams? Did someone say something, anything? And I swear I hear nothing. But perhaps I was too busy feeling and counting to hear. Perhaps I am alone. This makes me happy. I am the last one standing. They are all dead and I am still here and I am in the closet that houses the spirit that killed the people who now recline in the rooms of the house as the deadest ghosts of all. I am the bravest and I am the oldest and when I descend the staircase in a downward amoebic coil and I retrace my steps to the front door and I stay silent as death and I open the door into the safe night beyond this house I will be alone to answer for the ten of us. I will be questioned and I will be studied. Many will wonder what it is I carry that others do not possess. Some will say it is age. Some will say it is that I am a natural leader. Others will say I failed to lead but I will blame the higher powers, the house and its century of neglect and torpor. Some will suspect me of the darkest crimes but I will walk away from them. Now, the closet is defined for me, as I touch all three of its walls in succession, as I hear thunder crack and winds howl outside, as I remember that it is spring and this is the first storm, as I hear the shuttered windows bang open in a defiant thrust, as I feel the first of the oak leaves slap my smooth, un-goose-bumped skin. I hear myself breathe in, breathe out. I feel myself fighting against words. I feel a scream flailing its way up my throat. I twist my tongue to keep it inside, I clench my teeth to keep silent, but the thunder smacks and the winds grow stronger and the leaves won’t stop. I am too weak to stop this next scream. I can feel it punch my abdomen, squirrel up my windpipe, and shove itself into my mouth and because I die the moment I scream I hear nothing but I know it happened.