What’s Going On
Contact me and I’ll get back to you.
Rainclouds
…a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees
Liar Birds
After May ended, I built steps
back down to home.
At the bottom we met in a bed –
a bird’s nest.
You spread blood, spit, and sticks
across my open room.
I spent weeks pushing out the knots,
you left like metal from under skin.
Now that you’re gone,
I try taking the steps backwards
my calves cry out again,
I want to turn back but can’t.
And I have to watch the crows
creep through our windows,
kiss and croak, cry and fight over
old eggs inside our bed.
We built out of stone.
It’s so much easier to hold something
when you never move it at all.
Snow Ghosts
Winter and I stand on the pool,
eyes staring at deer tracks,
spots where the ice gives.
Cross, pool to lawn, woods to field, snow falls,
lines up with the grass, ground–
burst, dried out.
Lie down, eyes are spiderwebs, snow catchers.
Sit up, eyes are film projectors, time–
blinks of light.
Sign on a telephone pole says Lost Peacock.
Imagine, someone finds that sapphire half-buried in snow,
eye-spots, blue, green, and red, unmistakable turkey tracks
stealing off into the trees.
Peas in a Bag
Whispers like solid stone
and my mouth fills with cement powder.
She picks up a shovel, saying
“I just need to flatten out your teeth.”
Broke a few keys in the process
of typing out her autobiography.
It sounded better than mine–
Hers had kids, mine didn’t.
She said a poem is like a quilt–
you can cut it up and start over with the old pieces.
But I laid out words in lines
and that’s the way she treats everything anyway.
Swallowing the City Again
The train rides past cement arms,
arches under bridges under cars
like empty door-frames.
Floating landscapes roll
through stone hands
as if time is tearing
canvas from paint.
Then empty boxes–
trucks jut from one-eyed warehouses,
windows broken or shaded in dirt
making stained glass
the way rubble makes a mosaic.
The meadowlands are still
grass and winding rivers shrunken.
Boots sink, knees, toes–
the familiar fear of mud.
Imagine, quicksand or something like it
so close to New York–
a city of always wet cement,
names and fingerprints
lined-up stones
leaving slow ripples, solid bubbles,
the choke-in-throat of words forgotten
as they melt into cement.
Matterknot
These fluttering chapbook pages
shriek, “Look at me, look at
Trees thrust up through
this hole that was broken into
womanhood like a board
stiff ground and grass seams
snapped in half. Nothing gushes out
not even blood or the grabbing hands
birthing limbs.
of a brother, baby
son, just wood crackling,
Not shocking. Wordless
wind.
breath of becoming and un.”
Lakebed
She lies down in grass
unfolded like old origami
crane creased, incomplete.
“Grandma get up from the grass”
Her fingers arch, stiffen,
but can’t lift the hand,
spider legs struggling to unbend,
three brothers, severed or missing.
Fingers always seeking tips
curve out from the palm
as if endlessly plucking
an invisible blossom.
Elbows hook
and grass imprint sighs
like a shadow unlocked from feet
dying back to green.
She reminds me of a dream
in which Carl Jung described me
as a classic Bedivere–
perfectly-sinewed except for a hand missing,
knowing that with it I could swim
to the bottom of the lake
embrace the lady and give her a sword
old age couldn’t break.
Orange With A Wick
I walk past people not talking
with mouths zipped around faces.
Clothing not questionable–
these are wagon spokes they’re wearing
to walk, blue collar, bruised
skin turning inky, future noose
loosening, the benefits of growing up–
growing down to earth.
Not sure I can weather the tree fall
timber storm and steel swimming
up into cloud cover.
Too many miles to climb–
the world is only as high
as the bottoms of my feet.
When the whistle calls,
like train punching through clocks
melting off of walls,
will I be untied from the track
my back relies on?
If I plant the seed quick enough,
maybe an oak tree 500 years tall
will explode from railroad
and smash cowplow teeth right out
of locomotive mouth.
Subject Matter
Honestly, the tree twisted
out of the ground
in bursted seams
where the grass split,
birthing limbs.
You laugh at this
and I want to say,
Not everything has to be shocking
to be worth words!
Yet these fluttering chapbook
pages shriek,
Look at me, look at
this hole that was broken
into womanhood like a board
snapped in half. Nothing gushes forth,
not even blood or the clawing hands
of a brother, baby
son, just air, wood, the crackling
breath of becoming and un.
Kidney
I am the blink
the mirror doesn’t see.
You are my companion-
shipwrecked in a bathtub
or a kitchen sink.
Water, don’t cauterize me.
I stare at you,
then back at the bathroom tile.
Like looking at the sun,
patterns never appear.
I trick myself into intoxication.
Making
indelible inkdots on my brain?
Outsmoke me tonight
I will be the winner of drinks!
Wasting ink on waking up
and falling asleep.
God give me,
whip or will,
flawedience that I am,
bricks to outlive this winter
dry-spell you cast on me.
Match made,
check box,
game set.
The Fat Lady sings to me
and I kiss her lips
say, for once in my life
let me do this
ending thing.
Dan Levin's Poetry Blog
This is my poetry journal, where I irregularly post my writing in random bursts.
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