Crane

How much time on our knees is sufficient

for mercy? Neck strained upward

toward the beamed ceiling, the stained

sunlight. What happens when knees no

longer agree to bend, or worse--

when the refuse to unbend? They say birds

always know where they're going

and when, except for when they don't and

men, in a crane-like plane, must guide

them through their migration. There

is a fine line, it seems, between a bird

and a machine. There may come

a time when I can no longer

distinguish between the trumpet-

like mating call and the rumble of chains

and sheaves, the Crane

Duet Concertina. How much can be

folded from its naked two-dimensions

crease by crease into a mimicry? A

bird that rests on the corner of

my desk until I run out of notepads and

my pen needs something

to scratch.

Taper

The weight of a book will change the longer you hold it. The ink can morph--after all, it is a liquid that chooses to secure itself, to take hold of what was also once liquid, moist pulp pressed and dried. Paper. Cyprerus papyrus. What is permanency? If even pages can be deinked with the right chemical, returned to its natural, unmarred state. Erased. Reborn. Bleached to create that perfect virgin-white. Are there words behind these words? Forgotten and removed? If you think of all the things that can be buried, you might just learn you don't know anything at all. You sit by the fire, dog-earing and un-dog-earing each and every page until you can't tell where you are and where you've been.

Headline

1.

A headline:
Suspect arrested...trial pending
Then a picture:
a slight underbite, a scar
almost hidden int he wrinkle of his eye.

The expression of your face--
it's almost as if you watched
my heart fall through
my bowels and to the floor when
I read it.

There's more to this than you know.

Sit down and I'll try
to explain. The story is
faded; most of the words
are lost. What I have is a series
of images, that's all.
The white space
is yours--open for
your interpretation.

2.
Some things you can't help but remember.

Ice clanking against
            ice                                 and glass.
His tongue scraping
                       across porcelain
teeth.
Brown eyes drifting
over.                              They don't break
         away
when they find
                                                               mine.

I thought I saw a tremor.
A pure white
            shiver,                   a sigh
of something like relief
                                        but not quite.

Sometimes forgotten
                              broken
                                        memories get stuck int eh senses.

The black-light
stench
                     of the dance floor fueling
the breath on the nape
         of my neck.
Bodies blurring
                         lurking
around and behind
                                        dancing the sweat-
polluted atmosphere
               over my taste buds.

It's something like my failing ozone layer.

                                 There's a stale sound of
                                                        and I'm almost sure
it's my breath
hung up
           between two ribs.

He didn't ask my name
but he covered my tab
and watched me all through
the
                                   memory.

3.
The door of the ladies' room closes slowly enough
for me to see he's just outside it.
There's no easy way out of a bathroom window
like they always make it seem
on screen. Instead I have to wait
and wait
for someone to come--to answer the phone.

Women don't walk
alone in this town
after dark.
Not home from a bar or
anywhere else.

Some cats will wait forever
for the mouse to come out of its hole.
Others
move on to an easier catch.

4.
                               Every line has a hook
                               to suffocate with and it will
                               if the velar stop is
                               held.
                               The thick of the tongue tight against
                               the soft palate creates a
                               barricade that cannot
                               be penetrated by airflow.
There's something about a tapered spine,
a trailing point blade,
that quenches the rising
sound that lifts
from some unexplored depth and claws
through the fingers
the silver chain locked
around her windpipe.
                             Sometimes I see her
                             in the shadows and wonder what she saw
                             in the shadows that night.
                             Pinned, brick in her back
                             A distress call in silhouette? No,
                             the clouds were too thick to drop
                             shapes of any kind. 
It was three months before they found her
body, wrapped in the silk wings
of decay, rising up
from the melting snow
like a moth caught in its chrysalis.
The scurrying of rats beneath
made her appear
to almost breathe.