Book Read Free

Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

Page 1

by James Welsh


Runaway Odysseus:

  Collected Poems, 2008-2012

  James Welsh

  Copyright 2015 by James Welsh

  Other Titles by James Welsh

  Pale Eyes, Fantasy

  Those Years Without, Historical Fiction

  Through the Woods of Babel, Historical Fiction

  Tidal Swans, Romance

  Where the Sugarcane Tastes Like Dirt, Adventure

  Whiskey Romeo, Science-Fiction

  Dedicated to the speech therapist who showed me that you can’t stutter when you write.

  Individual Poems Published

  Benediction for the Outside

  New Plains Review (Fall 2011)

  Calypso for Excuses

  The Stray Branch (Spring/Summer 2013)

  Colors (An Old Man to His Wife)

  flashquake (Summer 2010)

  Ghosts in Subway Windows

  See Spot Run (February 2012)

  how a speed bump destroyed the world

  Caesura 29(2008- 2009)

  I Am My Muse’s Right Hand

  Grasslimb 8(2)

  Penelope's Lament

  The Centrifugal Eye (April 2011)

  Tricycle Worlds

  Kaleidoscope (July 2011)

  Where Fireflies End, and Lightning Begins

  Mused (2011)

  6 AM

  Silhouettes ripple in the webbed

  mirror, against the ashgrey

  sunshine leaking through the

  window blinds.

  It’s all a losing hand

  tossing the dice.

  My fingers are limp, but

  I can feel the scars roadmapped

  across these anemic arms.

  Atlas has finally molded

  the globe he could never shrug off.

  Last night’s dreams glint

  brokentoothed in my eyes –

  flash like fool’s gold – flames

  flickering, starving, wanting

  to come in from the cold.

  But it’s too early for stories –

  it’s always too early for fables.

  Besides, I folded up my biography

  months ago, tired of reading

  into my past like future.

  I’m too quiet, afraid of rubbing

  my past awake. I suddenly

  feel that ridiculous urge to crackle

  the glass in the mirror even more –

  the crimson neons the first

  coffee spoon that ladles out the afternoon.

  November 16, 2010

  A Century on the Mind

  Have you already forgotten you

  are the immigrant's son?

  Have you already forgotten you

  are the immigrant's daughter?

  I guess a century’s long enough

  to sift the dollar from the barter,

  the begging from the supermarkets,

  the starving from the artist.

  Yes, centuries are long and memories

  are the kids too short for the

  carnival rides – but they’re

  not that short that you would

  forget you’re still the immigrants’

  daughters and sons.

  A Death of Cranes

  If I could melt the mathematics

  off my odometer with a lighter, I would.

  But that would mean crawling

  backwards to the beginnings of

  my world, and why?

  Just to watch this walnut of cancer

  perched on the cliff of my lungs

  shrivel down into a seed

  instead of hatching like a popped balloon,

  and an essay of bad words flapping

  out of the nets of my mouth?

  It’s too hard to be born again –

  the birdwatcher says

  it’s much easier to die instead.

  August 17, 2012

  A Goodbye Wave to a Hello Face

  I do not know when the sun will rise,

  will rise again, the night is dark,

  a blackjack of spades spades

  quick through the thick

  dirt that curves and works

  its way, lost, around my veins.

  I do not know, I do not know

  where the crow crows, but

  I do know why – it has

  cried too many times before

  for a bluebird lover that

  loves him nevermore.

  Two deer gather at the

  lake where the red clay

  rises in groans like

  worms at the gardener’s

  hands. Two deer gathered,

  not knowing why nor how

  nor even when in the dark,

  uncharted waters

  sloshing at the trees –

  none of those seem to

  matter to two

  lovers like these.

  I do not know when

  the sun will rise, will rise again

  but until then, I intend to rinse

  my face with the thin

  harvest moon’s rays

  that stray down into

  this forgotten place.

  A hallowed eve in

  a hollowed-out place.

  Well, at least none of that

  is your goodbye wave

  to my hello face.

  A Moment’s Thought

  “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!”

  –Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

  “For to articulate sweet sounds together

  Is to work harder than all these, and yet

  Be thought an idler by the noisy set…”

  -Yeats, Adam’s Curse

  The pinprick of this pencil opens

  up my veins like a smile,

  smearing the lambwhite

  paper red like a lamb’s sacrifice.

  My blood is already dry,

  though, before it even splashes,

  the drops black and crackled,

  like midnight painted the house earlier

  and now it’s morning, finally.

  Still, I write on,

  and I write more –

  There’s the first bike standing upright, without a rider as a kickstand.

  There’s the first tuxedo, filled out brimming like a balloon.

  There’s the first book, pages turning, the wind literate and interested.

  Perhaps it’s too easy to write off my

  poetry as a ghost’s literature, even

  if the page is inky and rubs off

  on your palm – a page that’s

  a sponge of some writer’s blood.

  October 13, 2011

  A Poor Man’s She

  You’re a poor man’s she,

  rising from the trash

  drumming with tin cans

  and crinkling in brown bags –

  barely enough to warm a shaking

  man drinking his whisky,

  rubbing the bottle like a branch

  to start wildfire in his hands –

  “Prometheus I am” – yet still,

  summer days leave him

  to cold winter

  nights.

  The old life lingers deep

  in his eyes. The rich man’s she,

  the flickers of once-thick mattress

  memories dancing in

  circles – wearing their

  best watches and purples – all

  those waltzing tides, how they

  wear feet like shoes (a laugh,

  a smile digging up like a sole).

  She was a rich man’s she, />
  the glee of a white wine’s

  taste chasing away the names,

  the faces, the days we all

  want to forget.

  Please come back

  and have a drink with me.

  A Time Capsule for Yourself

  Sad man –

  you’ve gone white in the cheeks –

  Man on the Moon –

  It looks like death

  is beating its breast now,

  worshipping

  its frantic power (yet,

  even with such ambitions,

  the wind is the only

  thing that speaks

  death’s language).

  You say you read tea leaves

  easy enough, yet still you cannot

  sleep, eat chocolate, play music or

  urge gorgeous love to crush

  the air out of your lungs.

  Tell me why you’re sober

  on living – the drink

  has turned to water

  in your palms, water

  which you drink,

  then swim in,

  then sleep in and

  drown, the sound

  of smooth bubbles

  lurching – then bursting –

  too much for you to

  handle.

  The water’s gone now though –

  now dance a thousand

  flames on one waning

  wax candle. The

  weak purples that sag under

  the storms of red and orange –

  they’ve become the

  whisper of grain breathing

  in deep like a diamond

  beneath the weight

  of the summer sun –

  no need to breathe out.

  But even when juice runs,

  your tongue still

  feels numb to the touch.

  Even when roses rust

  the dry, iron fields,

  for some odd reason

  you can only smell blue.

  I know you watch time,

  waiting down the alarm

  ringing, the sting of the

  beeping waking you up

  from your sleep, your

  sleep of crude, mean

  dreams free of the

  she’s, the we’s (though

  watching your watch

  does boil the moment

  into an enormous

  eternity dancing

  with itself, though

  the band’s given up

  and left hours ago).

  But though I’ve been

  writing years until my fingers

  ached, rain-chanting

  just a single drop

  lost by a clumsy sky

  full of bitter winters

  and lazy shadows drifting by,

  I’ve been dreaming the rough shape

  of my goddess from clay –

  still polishing the shine

  in her evening gown –

  I know a kiss on her lips

  would stick like honey

  and I know this will

  happen soon, while all

  you have left of love is

  an old picture, the canvas

  gray as the moon.

  A Tumble and a Bluebird

  Obscure is not a virtue.

  It is the prelude to something greater –

  my dancing blind on

  the edge in the

  hopes I fall down

  so that as I

  tumble around,

  I can

  spread my arms

  like butter on

  your morning

  bread.

  I grow feathers from the hairs on my

  arms, I fly. Like leaves would, I imagine.

  And until I hit the ground –

  harder than a tired face

  into a pillow – I’m both a tumble

  and a bluebird, no obscure

  tucked away forgotten in the

  forest.

  ABCs for Poetry

  All Baudelaires carefully diary

  everlasting freedom, grief,

  hurt in joking, kangaroo language –

  many need orthodox poetry

  (quandary? rightfully so)

  to understand vacant worlds,

  xylophoning, yearning, & zodiacs.

  Act Two

  The cottage by the beach still stands inside

  my mind, though, filled with giggles, laughter – all

  of that still echoes (echoes) like the wind

  that rattles a stick along the fence that guards

  Old Wilson’s Cliffs, the cliffs a mile past

  the cottage that my father built. But all

  I see is nothing more than beaches, cliffs,

  and some old grassy patch that stands in for

  the home my father built so long ago.

  A lonely grave for some old home in which

  I, as a child, battled army men

  against each other, helicopters all

  a roar beneath the ceiling. Later on,

  the army men became a book open

  to Alexander Pope – and even now

  his Chain of Being shows no sign of rust

  although the poem’s even older than

  myself (now that’s old). Looking down, I see

  my feet have somehow buried deep into

  the sand. I think of hourglasses. Why?

  Adam

  He could feel soggy moonlight

  slur his sight, all while he swirled

  the soupy night with his spoon finger.

  He could telescope the mess of

  stars that would linger and clump

  together in the path behind his

  outstretched finger.

  After giving it some thought,

  He called this the Milky Way.

  He strummed the silky strings

  strung tight across the guitar skies.

  He decided to name the strings

  after the sounds that they had made:

  comets were now their maiden name.

  And one time in the night,

  He heard someone crying from up above.

  He then felt tears splatter on him.

  He called those tears the rain.

  Against the Thick Wall of the Canvas

  In this hard-spun era,

  I puppet my reality

  as I raise my fist

  against it all –

  although I know

  each step is a hidden

  fall. At least, so crowed

  the crowd of crows in their

  throaty drawl.

  But although

  I know all’s

  vanquished, I’ll just

  mix my own colors

  and throw them against

  the thick wall of the canvas.

  Alarm Clock Squawk

  Sometimes, I take my time with waking,

  breaking dreams like streams that toss

  and stretch around my feet – yet I always

  step in the same freezing river twice

  for some strange reason.

  I will rise now, though,

  and writhe like dandelions climbing

  wind that winds them up like pocket watches

  that always keep the time –

  this is good night to the good nights

  as I meet the dawn armed with a sword

  that’s the spine of my pen, a sword that cuts

  to the heart of the matter, a pen that

  wires blood into the paper’s veins,

  just to keep this dream alive.

  I sing with angels in my dreams sometimes –

  and other times they teach me,

  reach out to me and pull me

  through worlds, each

  world a key shaped within a marble

  that warbles

  metallic
as it slips your fingers

  and skips the floor.

  Just give me three more minutes

  to dream my literature and I promise you

  I’ll give you something worth dreaming for.

  And We Drown

  “We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

  By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

  Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

  -T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  It seems I grow older the more I think of it,

  what with my knees gone to the dogs

  or knowing the dawn’s not drawn

  with watercolors that the frogs splash in

  or where the whooping crane reels in its fill

  of dinner. I know about orbits and rotations

  and the gravity pressing down on my knees,

  squeezing the air and truth out of me.

  On my walks around campus, I roll my

  ankles like some with their r’s, although

  I know the sound of my ankles crackling

  is not nearly as graceful.

  The tasteful comfort

  of the past strangles me like

  a blanket and I let it, coughing on

  the clinging dust rusting the fabric.

  Yet despite the charm crowning at my

  hair, the grey staring me down in the mirror,

  I know that each step I think of is one

  more to the door where you’re waiting

  with arms folded and a

  smile frozen on your face.

 

  And so I work my way back home.

  Apple Crumble

  “It may be the coldest day of

  the year, what does he think of

  that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

  perhaps I am myself again.”

  -Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

  Tonight, after we talk,

  I think I’ll walk through this field

  of lights I know of near my apartment,

  where each of the bulbs burst like

  stars across the galaxy, stars so distant,

 

‹ Prev