Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

by James Welsh

  Can these words break

  your bones or could this

  stick never hurt you?

  The dancers step out a rhythm

  written words are hidden in. The stage is

  a spitting image of a page, the edges cringed

  at the thought of public speaking.

  This is simply the way the game is

  said. The singer hums to warm

  her voice, her joys bubbling at the surface

  of her tongue like a taste would.

  The fountain does not

  speak, though, until it’s given time.

  It’s only then she follows out the

  measure lined across a page, the

  staff written as notes in the margin,

  the ink hardened as resolve.

  We hide in the thin thickness of the paper,

  meanwhile breathing and

  tapping out words that are

  worlds longer and skies higher.

  March 11, 2010

  Branch Gives Way to Leaf

  I am someone’s son, but no one’s father – I’m afraid

  of the day saying I am someone’s father and no one’s son.

  My future bores into my buried grandfather

  clock, twitching its hands to pass

  the hours. I like to think its oak stock

  is seed and it will resurrect in branches,

  dancing in winds that are chilled but

  still steel up the warmth like gin.

  But I know the days of being grandson

  are already gone. I was too young to

  know him so at least I can’t forget him.

  They say a branch ends at the reach of its arm.

  But when a leaf

  shatters and

  rafters across the fields,

  who’s to say

  the branch stops growing?

  And who would

  guess it

  was time

  and nothing else that

  willed the

  lush wind to

  push that feather on?

  September 9, 2010

  Breath Fast, Stomach Full

  The clock’s hands are waving at me,

  all two of them in their honest glory,

  never missing a beat, a heartbeat in

  which things are buried, the stories

  of my people past and future. All

  this is no more than what I want to

  know of – the

  love isn’t there if everything

  else is, I think.

  At least, that’s what I’ve been told.

  Because two things

  cannot breathe and dream in the same place

  at the same moment, unless they share

  a mother and who says brain and love

  are brothers? Drummers move the clock

  along, the doorbell only bringing in the

  noon from the cold.

  I look the clock in

  the face. I don’t think it can

  tell a lie. It only dabs

  its eyes as it insists that now’s the time

  to wither my flowers and dry out

  in the pavement to look presentable

  for the dinner bell.

  Burrowed in the Sun

  I watched the sun

  wash all of the dirty dry,

  the spurts of green

  dying in growth until

  the weeds coffin

  into the ground – limper

  than hangman’s rope.

  And still the sun

  widens its precision,

  turning all the

  rocks liquid. Even

  at night, the lights

  hang there in their

  aching suspension.

  The city fountains

  its lit windows – the

  light-switch

  flick

  flick

  flicker of broken

  streetlight staccato –

  all the lights heavy

  in the sweaty summer

  evening, waiting to

  fall back down

  to the ground in

  morning like widows.

  April 15, 2010

  Calm During the Storm

  …train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng…

  -Molly Bloom

  It wailed as loud as

  whisper, passed about

  the chamber like a

  rumor, until it autumned

  down as thunder –

  the law of gravity loves

  his company.

  The skies all around

  thunderclap applause,

  hands squeezing out

  the friction of scribbled

  lightning. They live

  as quick as lust

  can. The wind kickstands

  the clouds, swirling

  the motions up – a mountain

  mirrored in the

  clear lake beneath.

  There are few songs as

  sonorous as the rumble,

  the thunder’s chorus

  rusting in the rafters,

  humbling me into deep sleep,

  an ellipsis beyond words.

  Yet I still love the

  flickers of daylight cutting

  through the midnight thunder.

  April 25, 2010

  Calypso for Excuses

  I remember her jumping up, quick as

  some slug gummed down with table salt.

  Her eyes of ocean blue were swept beneath

  the torn carpet as if for me forget before

  I could write this. Those tsunami eyes

  splashed what it was her mouth couldn’t strum:

  “You wanted to get lost like Odysseus –

  I’ve been waiting for you like Penelope though,

  drinking my coffee slow, sleeping off the sleep

  that comes earlier and earlier at this time each year –

  when the wind whistles away, walking its

  way to work, whispering our names

  into the oak trees for all who are near

  to hear and see. The leaves are

  shakes and rattles now, each a windowpane

  in the wake of some train’s roaring whistle

  muscling its tracks in the

  snow glowing along the bend.

  I would drink my hair as the wind

  blew the strands across my face –

  I would sip on the hair and keep on waiting.

  I’ve tried eating oranges to taste away the sadness.

  I ate them until they tasted like

  I imagine that red would.

  I’ve waited the days down, my thoughts

  spinning hard, spinning the hour

  hand on the clock around in a dizzy,

  until I fell asleep in the bedsheets

  of the apple tree’s shade, until

  the night rusted dawn and the day –

  and the wait – began again.”

  Cat Got

  Cat got my foot –

  find it hard to run

  away from my problems

  so I have to walk beside them,

  talking to them

  beneath a copper moon.

  Cat got my writing hand –

  got to learn writing

  with a pen stuck between

  my teeth, writing

  more than I can chew.

  Cat got my ears –

  got to plant my head

  against the floor, finally

  feeling the sound waves

  wash me all over.

  Cat got my smile –

  have to learn sprinkling

  that twinkle in my iris

  so that people woul
d

  have to look me

  deep in the eyes

  to see if they

  made me smile.

  Cat got my “cat got…” –

  I’m now whole and full again,

  but like always and forever,

  I’m sitting here

  crippled in dependence.

  Chimera

  Our marriage? It’s a chimera – it’s

  not enough to say that it was never

  meant to live. All things – even

  the beautiful pottery – are meant to

  fall and break. No, it is a chimera,

  in that it should have never lived

  to begin with. I see that now,

  as we step on our memories like

  the crumbs of china,

  waking up the baby in the

  other room. But even with this

  madness, the two of us will still

  wake up in the same bed tomorrow.

  It’s going to take you

  saying “I don’t love you”

  to be the noose to straighten

  out my spine. It’s going

  to take that sentence to make

  me pack this bag and leave.

  September 9, 2011

  Cold August

  This cold August rusts the pipes

  lining the roof of my house.

  The rain – a leaky kitchen faucet

  turned on to wash these grimy hands –

  comes down in fallen bed sheets

  to cover the chilled morning and talk

  it back to sleep the way a mother would –

  just not as good.

  Yesterday was desert, the way

  the heat stuck and crawled down

  the short sleeves of my shirt,

  spinning webs made of beads

  of sweat down our backs, reminding

  me of late mornings and giggles

  we shared before, along with

  the ones we haven’t had yet.

  But now the rubber rain bouncing

  off the roof – scoop up

  the jacks before the

  rain bounces twice – sounds

  the same as rolling down

  snowy hills did in my youth –

  a rolling stone gathers no moss

  if it’s covered in ice.

  The crackle of the rain lingering

  in the shingles of the roof, it’s

  the static, the grey snow that

  glows on my broken TV, causing

  me to put down the remote,

  pick up James Joyce,

  read Molly’s soliloquy

  and believe.

  But now we’re growing dull

  around the edges – with grey

  in our hair and a faint to our

  talking. And sure, we

  could meet halfway at the café,

  but I know she doesn’t like

  to come outside when it rains –

  and she knows that I don’t either –

  so until this monsoon ends,

  I’ll miss her the way the

  sun misses the moon during the day.

  Color Me Blindness

  Color me blindness because my hands are eyes

  and my palms are gloved

  and I suppose my sight is also.

  All I want to see though

  is the spectrum to your

  patterns. If only I can warm

  the silk between the friction of my fingers

  like cats lapping milk between purrs.

  If only I could stop playing blind beggar, though,

  especially with this moment

  still billowing on beautifully,

  the furs furling and unfurling in the winds

  like tattered battle flags.

  November 9, 2010

  Colors (An Old Man to His Wife)

  “Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?”

  -Pablo Picasso

  You were in the corner, crying until your eyes crimsoned

  and I wondered if the sun – in all its ambers and orange –

  would rise today – like a flower – or hide amongst the auburn

  mud, the khaki stones, the withered tiger lilies in goldenrod.

  You only used to forget shoes, staining feet with fern green,

  holding olive bark like playing cards between

  your fingers, doubled over with laughter, burgundy

  in the face from smiles and giggles. Aquamarine

  was your favorite stone, reminding you of the sea

  near your snowy summer home in Beverly –

  a town full of rusty piers and champagne houses.

  Now though, those are no more than denim memories

  fading away into some sort of mousy

  magnolia you’ve already forgotten, doused

  by the old age, the ivory hair,

  the lemon chiffon paint peeling off the walls of our house.

  But though you’re forgetting things, and you cannot bear

  to think of the things you’ll miss, I have colors to spare,

  I have colors to mix with yours – your greens,

  my yellows together make the most wonderful pear.

  Dancing for Writers

  I write the same way I dance:

  preferably sitting down.

  My weak knees are bully, having

  pushed me into a desk chair.

  You know, some glue up the

  walls, calling their cubicle a castle.

  They hallucinate wars between the sheets

  of their reports, the paper weights cannonballs,

  felling the stray notes like trees.

  I go steps further with my words.

  I wrestle with my sentences, pinning

  them down with periods. Or letting

  them flap free, not bothering to paperclip

  the wings. I grip the pen so hard

  I bleed out the ink, let it sink like

  ships into the paper’s pulp or whatever

  it’s called. I press the pen so harsh it

  drips through. Now a backwards sonnet –

  perhaps a better one – is on the other

  side, glued there, too full for any more food.

  Without saying a word, writing’s the rough

  growl that dries my throat out.

  This is my life

  and it will be my death

  regardless of whether

  or not I can sell it.

  But writing has killed

  many writers

  in a way

  the war never could.

  And I’m not even a shadow

  of that good.

  March 28, 2010

  Dancing Swans in the Sun

  She was dancing swans in the sun,

  which settled in its wedding bed on

  the ocean yawning, stretching

  with a lazy blue and red. On one foot

  perched, she spun string in the

  wind that leans on the cliffs –

  the wind coughing on cigar smoke that

  curled and hooked

  the skies above. Some

  called it the evening, but we

  called it the wind’s fondness

  for hand-rolled cigars.

  She leaps far and leaves the world for

  two seconds pawned from this

  beach we’re standing on –

  two lovers against one world.

  Power in numbers,

  the saying goes; at least, that’s

  what I’m told. And though the

  night sticks to us

  hard and fast, she knows

  where the beach holds its

  ragged seashells and waltzes between

  them as the waves swell

  their chests and pound the shores –

  I can feel the sound sink into our


  souls like the shipwrecks strayed

  across the seafloor of

  this forgotten bay.

  This harvest moon feels warm

  the way a rainbow does when

  it runs through dying storms

  which forget how to beat their drums.

  I can see swans roam the moonlight

  that lights the water asleep

  against the beach – a beach

  within our arms’ reach and all

  we need for a world.

  And it’s then she falls for the first

  time I remember – she falls into

  the love I hold like a wreath

  between my arms.

  At that, the beach felt warmer as

  the skies blushed embers.

  Days Stretched Long Like Shadows

  For an hour or two, I

  walked in the wheatfields –

  the cousins’ dog

  barking like seals,

  thrilling some crows

  paddling the waves of grain –

  their fallen feathers

  flocked together

  in the autumn wind.

  The dog sees a scamper of grey

  and a minute and a chase later

  it had already caught its

  breath – along with some rabbit

  stuck like gum in its jaws.

  Oh, I love the honeydusk,

  how it drips slowly like that color does.

  The fields of grain were all waving goodbye –

  I waved back at them as I walked by,

  walking with the dusk, arm-in-arm,

  for the longest day ever.

  Desk Scribes

  Rap, rap, rap.

  I tap my finger on the desk, chatting

  in morse code with the tanned oak.

  The echo laughs with me.

  Even after all of these years,

  this desk still boasts the blush

  of lumbering, limber tree lumber –

  although now in peaces it rests.

  It holds my ledgers of writing,

  confusing the ink with its roots.

  And those ledgers? They’re biting

  on a weather of hopes. And those

  hopes? My heart is tightening

  its screw through them, and

  the hand is still turning.

  And that smell – that smell of