CASSANDRA MEETS APOLLO
Apollo gives the gift of prophecy,
and later teaches what it means to spurn
a god not known for showing clemency:
he’d planned to bed a princess in return.
She wants to work with fire and dream and song,
see through the shadowed window made of time
and use this gift to make her kingdom strong–
blend now and yet-to-be in one bright rhyme.
Apollo tires of waiting for her nod.
Light-Bringer, who lets Hector die alone.
It’s never wise to disappoint a god,
for they are formed of less than soul and bone.
She sees her future blazing in the halls
and finds the pregnant horse inside her walls.
BLACK BLADE
Black blade of memory
honed at the heart’s edge,
make my red soul
strong enough to bear
the rock of love.When my knees quake
on the bridge of fire
over the abyss,
bar the way back
and send me on barefoot.When I cry for the moon
with April words,
nick the scar tissue
at my throat and
put winter on my tongue.Black blade of memory
honed at the heart’s edge,
make my comfort
cold enough to bear
the rock of love.
DREAMSEarly on a fall morning,
through swirls of feral leaves,
The only living thing I saw
was an old man who hobbled
to the street corner and,
waiting for the light to change,
lifted his cane
from the sidewalk
and did a little jig.It was a sweet, cold morning,
with the whirling, free leaves
and an old man
who jigged alone on an empty street.Waiting for my lights to change,
I dream of becoming
what laughter is before a voice,
golden and crimson as the leaves,
the umbilical cord broken,
a tourist with a one-way ride
on the wind,
dancing a welcome
to the morning.
MOVING DAY
Today I helped load empty cardboard
boxes from the attic into a van,
and say that I hate time,
hate its cruel way of blurring
the red edges of everything,
hate that I have known
this day would come,
somebody changing apartments or cities
and I would give them boxes,
tape, marking pens, and it would be easy,
and it would be easy to say
that I don’t need them now,
that it’s better to live without clutter.
NOTES FROM A ROAD TRIP WITH A POET
The sun lurched over the horizon
and we disyolked the eggs of breakfast.
There was meaningful morning mist,
a red leaf on an old stone,
a crow on a wet street.We followed a truck
loaded with pipe dreams,
slimy things with wheels
did run upon the road,
we dreamed outside the yellow lines.The road unwound through a scramble of hills,
the hills undulated to the coast
and a river ran through it.Glendale is an oxymoron.
Clouds clung to the treetops
like cotton wool to a derelict’s beard.
Sheep littered the hillsides
like the things that came before Q-tips.
Milepost 229 fled screaming
in the rearview mirror.Hawks hung in the sky
like staples holding the blue up.
Trees hauled the hills to the horizon
and buckled them to the merciless sun.
The sky looked like a dishpan
full of dirty suds, only bigger.Red barns pimpled the bald hillsides.
The slow-black, crow-black exhaust
flared from the belly of the metal beast.
Trees inhale slowly:
It’s just as well they don’t have sex.But all tragically tangled tributaries
lead to the ocean
and the finality of a beach
from which no herons fly.
Is there a free visitor’s guide
to the heart’s territory,
or do you have to pay,
as you do for so many other things?Oh love long gone,
it is raining in our room!
It was a rented room.
There are no refunds.