January 26, 2009

I'll hate you more than I'll love you,
that is, of course, if we're drawing
lines between the two.

I'll love you enough to hold
you up to the light and comment
on how the colors explode in your wicker/glass ribs,
but I will love the colors more than you.

I will hate you enough to hide you
in the garden when your translucent edges
have lost their light, and you are but an afterglow,
a fidgety ember.

On the bright side, you may die before
the wave and particle fail you, so you'll never
see how I shovel the upturned earth without a pause.

If this seems enough, for what you call love,
I know a very good florist.

January 25, 2009

the pencil I'm thinking of
is not as yellow as the rest.
the bite marks along its torso
reveal its wood organs and
the chalky sleeve if its
crushed carbon spine.

the eraser is whole and unused,
a perfect cylinder of unapologetic pink.

the pencil I'm thinking of
doesn't allow mistakes, just hollow
toothed payment for every
sin misspelled.

January 24, 2009

Poor girl, never did know

how much new shoes hurt

the end of your toes

and the butt of your heel.

I bet she's still walking 

up and down and up

and down her railfence

road, unaware of the

black top two miles north.

But then again maybe that

suits her, poor dreams for a 

poor girl, not looking any further

than her cobweb feet could take her.

I bet they're quiet, spook

quiet when she slips them 

on in an early morning dark

then walks her twenty mile walks,

never an arm's length from the bed.

January 23, 2009

I'm tired of writing these love poems,

these milky lyrical labyrinths that

house the man and bull of my anxiety.

I want to stand in the center of your

cities, and your churches, and your unused

Rockwellian dinner tables and tell you

that there is no way in, and there

is no way out, and the only string we find

we'll use to tie a ten million necked noose.

January 22, 2009

On Discussing the Process of Creative Writing

Perhaps I'll tell them to 

forget about these rules

and walk with me.

We will go through a forest 

that is also the sky, and 

when they feel so inclined 

to cough up something beautiful,

we'll pull back a piece of the world 

and make room.

January 21, 2009

I attended a class today

“The Desegregation of Public Education”

 

I was the only white student

A rarity at our traditional southern institution

 

The challenge of a class like this

Is not, not knowing what to say

 

It’s saying what I know

While trying to satiate the backwards assumption

 

That it’s far too much for me to comprehend.

January 20, 2009

Did you see him

When the reverend

Said humility

Did you see him

Raise his head

Like Rushmore

 

Was it quiet defiance

A challenge to the tie-tacked

Tyrants of our nation

 

Was it authoritative

Majesty, just basking in

White sun of the day

 

Or was it looking out

On the crowds, on the

Steady hands of the silent

Trying to learn what

This humility thing

is all about