Published on: 2/26/2015
The Widow and the Flowers

We wanted you to have these,
they told me
after burying you,
and handing me diverse bouquets
of flowers,

and I think about the trade
of you for flowers,
what they'll do
other than throw up dirt
and smile at me for drinks.

Will the nasturtiums
fill your armchair with new life?
Will the chrysanthemums
turn toward me as I talk?
Will the narcissus shave
his stigma in your mirror?
And will the sunflower
surround me with his girth?

"No, you are useless,"
I pronounce to their sweet faces
in a row
that keep on smiling
indifferent and bright.

But when the sun sets,
I arrange them
on the shelf above our bed
over your absence
and my slumber, keeping watch.

And in my dreams,
some revelation
flames in petal-thin array,
some life springs up from us
in flowers,
after mourning and decay.

You skip the grave for resurrection,
I skip life in your pursuit.
Our lifeless bones subside,
then rise up in a flower.

Published on: 2/21/2015
Your Adolescence Rising

Your adolescence rises
like a vapor from the ground
with awkward stops at nursery windows
and at tombs.

Your conflagration blazes
like a banner in the night
against the folding gray of tables
and of hearts.

You hold your mollusk soul
supreme above its ever-changing shell.
You bleed out pearls
against our sandy contradictions.

I only wish that I could help you
through these seas and through these tides.
I only wish I could illuminate
your rising in the night.

But I cannot, for I am part,
although reluctant, of that night
of that conformity in which we adults sleep,
perfect and dreamless, only broken
by occasional regrets
and only startled by the coming of your day.

Published on: 2/17/2015
Second-Hand

You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new.
I say some impulse makes me deck myself in quaintly vintage stains;
it is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you.

There is no newness to be found in these ghost-haunted, ancient rooms,
if not the newness of two souls mixing their pains.
You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new.

I cite the hope that makes the fleeting bird repeat his age-old tune,
warbling anew the hoarse millennial refrain.
It is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you.

It is the impulse of the sun always returning to our ruins
and of the madman who can still recall his name.
You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new.

I cite the crowning of man's shameful night in tiny pearls of dew
that pour their water on our parched, polluted plains.
It is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you.

It is the placing of our tattered hearts like spring's first blood-red bloom
up in the windowsill to greet the coming day.
You ask me why do I buy second-hand, untempted by the new
It is the impulse that keeps drawing me to you.