Summerblind

Empty City

8am, the homeless

lay like corpses

outside the shelter,

waiting for something

other than life

to happen for once.

The sky, grey, unmoving.

The cracked lips of the earth

a map through the dry grief

of the past three years.

Fantasies of a rain washing it all away.

people flowing down gutters,

people melting into heavy clouds

thick with emptiness.

The mass sits in the ice box

like an old papaya someone left

 to age, unknowing. Later,

lamenting, “it was so good.” Once.

Then, looking off into the distance.

Only rotten parts of the heart

could remain forever this way.

VI.

Halloween was kids

Asking their Moms what sadness

Meant. She had no guests.

V.

It was the only

House that never turned off the

Porch light. A small sign.

IV.

When dogs died they

Ended up as fruit blooms from

The backyard peach tree.

III.

At night when nothing

Lurked in her corners, she would

Hear the past whimper.

II

The living room was

Repainted after years of

Cigarette hatred.

I

Her bathroom was the

Only place that light could reach

When there was darkness.

You occupy me in all the ways cliché.

Meeting me at the four corners of my heart

where the veins turn purple with love,

and in each chamber lay lines of poems unedited,

raw, as they sail across the sea of my soul.

I let you live in places unknown to words:

dirt in fingernails, pus in blemishes waiting to ripen.

You pick up your dirty baggage, and rest it against

the door that separates the differences between us.

There’s no heater in the home of my ribcage.

Yet, you lounge on goose bumps that clutter my skin,

clustered in settlement patterns I once memorized

for something that didn’t matter.

You were ready to leave.

And finally, when the sun finds its will to warm my depression,

you slide off the ridges of my skin and swim in freckles

that my mother gifts me every Christmas.

You count them as if in the next round of travels

your few favorite places would be gone,

littered with mental bruises that manifest themselves

in paper cuts so small, they lack motivation to fill with blood.

Under my skin you wait for elements to expose you,

emotion gushing rivers uncontained. Pain puts you on a raft

and sends you down my legs to meet the floor with routine grace.

I press these places closed and you appear, needle and thread,

sketching a cloud across my open wound.

Later, you’ll live in my laugh

as I try to recognize how many ways the shape of the scab

could be pressed into the shape of my heart.

(Source: summer-blind)

It’s a long walk to the office

Couple gets off in front of the hospital

while a man adjusts his bike onto the front of the bus.

Another runs after it as the driver twists from the curb.

Couple crosses the street holding hands.

95 degrees and the girl is wearing a jacket,

trying to hide her pregnancy in June.

Maybe they’re on their way to the gender of their child,

the name already chosen.

Peter, maybe, for a boy. Ashley, for a girl.

The whole ride the man had his arm around her.

You couldn’t see their tattoos.

Off the bus and downtown smells like hot dogs.

Some guy yells when you tell the driver thank you.

Can’t forget that couple. The bus dry heaves to a stop.

Do they like hotdogs?

Helpless in the street. It is hot and your hair hangs.

Don’t belong to today. The hot dog stand occupied by robust men.

No one really looks at one another. You walk between conversations,

tasting the faces chewing on their lunch break through windows,

smelling curiosity and fear in between the differences of people.

Thinking about that couple.

What it’s like to be unable to recognize yourself.

I see reflections of myself in the bus windows as it rolls past.

5 picture clips, none of which I recognize,

yet here I stand reflected in this motion of my city.

The first image I am a child.

My eyes are not tired and I am happy to be waiting,

for in this moment it is all I have and all I have is what I know.

In the second I am throwing a tantrum,

the kind you see on Teen Mom shows,

on street corners when someone is left behind.

Only I have no tears, just sickness.

The third picture contains my skin,

an out line of a person,

just all hairy arms and jeans

worked hard against in order to fit loosely.

The fourth is the sun, bright,

it takes away the mistakes in my face,

replaces it with blindness.

The fifth I am trapped.

People inside the bus stare out

but I believe they can’t see me.

I hate the way it lingers, just for seconds,  

I can never forget. 

We have known each other for years

yet we do not speak as if we are friends,

so disconnected sending messages

even though your phone knows the number to reach me.

It is empty, and funny,

how our friendship resulted in what we feared

a relationship would. Nothing.

Emptiness in care, in thought in nothing.

It’s easy for me to ignore but truthfully, I don’t think I can.

I want to be friends but it is nothing.

We are two different cities,

with different murder rates,

no gridded street patterns,

but the same amount of rats and hookers at our feet.

I hate the memories we have together, sometimes.

I want to put them away

never create their stories,

never make them more real to me than they were in original action.

 I know not to wait for you to remember now. 

There is the interstate with many cars and many billboards pointing people to places they shouldn’t spend their money, lies, so many exits and turnarounds, if life was the interstate would you be able to race 70 or go over the speed limit, racing faster than allowed, only to end up in the same place as those who’ve waited in their fair share of traffic, stopped to go to the bathroom instead of holding it, where do we all end up on our road trips, with our cards, our bus seats, waiting and in such a hurry for nothing. 

Sometimes I’m paralyzed,

I wake up and I’m standing in a Chevron buying cigarettes

that make me feel like shit

wondering why no one called me to say Merry Christmas.

I know why.

The bruises on my leg throb from my adventure on the eve

and I know why.

But that does not mean I don’t care.

In fact I’m standing in this Chevron,

with nothing else but a fist to kill a bad sweet tooth,

thoughts of legs in legs and mouth to mouth and love,

this safe house I’ve built around myself

to keep shelter from the beginning homeless,

even today, on Christmas, I do not open its doors.

There is a level of futility in Christmas.

How behind all the curtains drawn around all the concentric familial circles,

 there is nothing but greed and desires,

false hopes and clichéd expectations that we are too human to admit to ourselves. Mothers in their kitchens with their wines and brothers with their soon to be wives, all hands over the shoulder and rubbed backs.

Sometimes I can’t stand to be in the light of their eyes,

how it haunts me by bringing shadows,

follows me around every corner.

I wonder what we try for anymore.

I wonder what we are. 

The Moth and the Porch.                                 

Nothing but a silent clap, lone,

an unrecognizable language.

Two hands meeting each other only to disappear

for seconds. There should be comfort, in sound,

but it is empty. The hands cannot remember each other.

They meet again.  A light in between fingertips.

This must be blindness.

This light is not the sun.

It is controlled by those hands, a failure.

It blinds solitude as the hands kiss each other,

milliseconds apart, pecking, almost.

There is no cheering, no standing ovation.

Just a clap beaten within the hum of an old light.

The sun will rise. The hands do not clap anymore.

There is nothing.