Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

by James Welsh

  March 28, 2010

  I’ve Forgotten What You Look Like

  I’ve forgotten what you look like –

  I’ve forgotten what you sound like,

  leading me to think your talk and

  sunsets in the mountains sound alike,

  sunsets that wisp away like sand

  in the ocean, the colors all crammed

  into the pot atop the iron stove.

  I doubt it’s something you’ll ever understand.

  I like to think you look like a deep apple grove,

  that deep green sea where we once dove

  for apples before the winter called.

  Or that you look like the day we drove

  until the car’s engine stalled

  and – until help came – we crawled

  up to the top of a hill

  and saw our world small and sprawled

  like toy cars on the basement stairs.

  Jacob Marley’s Moment of Silence

  This silence speaks a lake’s rush

  to me. Sometimes I feel

  it all should pulse out like

  a fervent jet engine – where

  all of the mousy small talk

  is finally deafened. The

  silence is itchy,

  scratching lessons in the

  chalkboard on the cold brick wall.

  I’m just some student – too glossy

  with that coffeehouse fatigue –

  too groaning to take some lecture

  home with me. And when the silence

  eyes me, it bedlam buckles with

  chuckles, jotting me down as just

  some man who runs with the

  sunset to escape his shadows –

  shadows which long ago

  stopped growing by the inch –

  now instead they flow by the mile.

  October 18, 2010

  James Welsh

  James Welsh is a sentence fragment.

  A fragment that forgot its meaning.

  Its purpose.

  James writes. But what for?

  A mere period holds him at arm’s

  length from answers.

  What would the object, the purpose be?

  Linguists think it’s a lost love, others think it’s glory.

  And others are not sure if they want to be sure at all.

  They just know that if he forgot the period,

  the two sentences would be sewn back at the hip.

  And all would be right with the world.

  But what would be the point

  of him finding what his poems sore for?

  An answer ends the puzzle.

  Nothing less or more.

  Perhaps if he were to use an ellipsis…

  yes, that final piece of the jigsaw puzzle

  “accidentally” thrown out with the trash –

  then that will keep him searching,

  the periods standing in for footprints

  that follow him in the desert’s sands…

 

  Judgment of Paris

  I have these muses crowding me in,

  Shouting my thoughts into a thick quiet

  As I try to riot with a deflated ballpoint pen.

  Just One More

  The bride was a porcelain doll, ready to break

  hard into little shards of tears at the touch

  of a clumsy hand. Not to say the groom was a

  soldier at all – he was a pillar swaying in the breeze

  of earthquakes. He shook off his shaking hands

  as nothing more than the shame from

  being in front of people.

  The roses – all the roses – were wilting

  down the minutes to the ritual. The ritual

  of chants, of vows, and a kiss to seal

  the deal from going stale. Then comes

  the dancing, all the feet working out

  their tremors as the bass taps out

  a 4/4 on the speakers.

  Just one more drink and then I’m good.

  Just one more drink and then I’m good.

  Then comes the limo drive for

  the newlyweds, the car’s

  colors already bled and

  lost to the jet nighttime.

  For the rest of us – those cab

  rides home come,

  our woozy feet still

  shivering that 4/4 rhyme.

  LaGuardia

  Can’t tell if the jetplane’s the wind now.

  Can’t tell if the wind’s the jetplane.

  Maybe the wind’s mechanical.

  Maybe the engine is what’s curling our hair.

  We could look out the window, prove who’s right.

  But really, I just love the fact

  that the jet and wind are singing in the same choir,

  their throats burning with that same gasoline fire.

  November 10, 2010

  Lighthouse at the Garden’s Edge

  I knew windy afternoons would be here

  long before the days could stretch

  their arms inside that blinding yawn.

  I could hear the rumbles in the rocky hills

  spilling around the town like waves

  around a lighthouse world. Thirty years ago,

  I would have written it off as the mountain trolls

  bowling, roaring over a strike that knocked down

  half of the trees in the valley.

  Even knowing, I’m still left out here holding

  on to Sylvia Plath with all my heart,

  trying to keep her bell jar from slipping,

  wishing itself into shooting stars of glass shards

  the wind would shuffle through my backyard.

  The afternoon pushes hard, making the

  book’s pages bite down angry on my fingers.

  I’m angry – I bite back.

  The wind isn’t there, yet still

  it dizzies me on my hammock –

  I look up from the book to see the garden

  just beyond my feet sway back and forth,

  the green now algae warming up

  a coarse storm sea.

  I call me sailor.

  I hang on, my keys

  clanging like anchors,

  dancing on the edge of my jean’s pocket,

  impatient with its scratching just like a pencil.

  Like Mosquitoes

  If I went deaf, I wouldn’t miss this,

  how the sounds get thrown

  into the stew until they brown into a

  hiss, the snake’s lisp, the dishwasher’s fritz.

  But you aren’t this and this isn’t you.

  Your song is more than taking a violin

  bow to your strings, playing the vocal

  cords down to the last measure.

  You’re no condition, an inscription

  of voice written down – how ironic

  that that’s how the scholars

  will talk about it one day soon.

  February 18, 2010

  Lions and Tigers

  He’s the lion, and I’m the tiger –

  each of our hearts burnt clean

  by fire leaping off the Irish Sea –

  from his ashes, smoke rose and twisted,

  folding into forms of soldiers standing

  shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to fight at

  the general’s shouted orders.

 

  But see, he always lazed about, yawning

  to show off daggered teeth that

  wreathed the edges of his mouth. Always

  standing at attention, never marching

  with a purpose – a snarling lion wrapped

  in chains at the circus while the

  audience cheers and points at him

  all dressed up in his Easter Sunday war paints.

  From my ashes, the shadows f
ollowed,

  each a past I couldn’t run from

  even if I tried. I dress myself in those

  spirits – you will never hear my footsteps

  when I wear deaths of loved ones as my shoes.

  Their deaths make up my soles.

  Their deaths make up my soul.

  They pull me forward

  through the forest as I stab

  the air with pencils, writing

  thoughts that could crush

  anvils if they want. I am the tiger –

  I stay hidden even against the fire.

  Yet I make worlds happen – I create

  actions as I please. I write

  and make things right and

  make wrongs gone in the

  heat of night, yet all you hear

  is a rustle of leaves.

  Living under the Graveyard

  After a hard day’s work

  of looking at a lake, alchemy

  seemed easy. We kettled

  up some of the lake

  water and hummed and watched

  it boil. We made a tea’s weight

  in gold. And then, more than

  the steam from the kettles in

  the breeze, we settled in the ease.

  While she stirred her sharktooth

  sugar in her tea, I stirred the fire

  awake with a branch. When I did

  this, I carved out whole herds

  of something wonderful, the smoke

  seeming to gallop instead of floating

  upwards. I watched the incense press

  through that orchard of midnight

  over us, between the thick branches

  of dark and into a sky of light.

  Don’t you remember earlier in the

  night, when we were at the lake, when

  I was skipping stones against the

  struggling waves? We watched

  as that whole mirror of stars

  shattered with every skip, with

  such a loud noise for such a small stone.

  And she said, like she always said,

  that we lived under a graveyard. I asked

  her how, like I always did, and she pointed

  upwards, at a fool’s golden sky.

  What she said was right – the Ancients

  buried their foxes and bears and wolves

  and lions in that same speckled night

  thousands of years ago. And some nights,

  when the wind gushes, the dark soil

  in the sky blows away, and those scattered

  bones shine through like day.

  Constellations may have been something else

  before, but now they’re only skeletons. Sometimes,

  the remains are all that remain.

  But here’s to hoping she is wrong.

  Here’s to a night like a guitar of stars,

  where strings of comets are being tuned,

  where constellations are songs groomed and waiting,

  with just barely enough patience

  until they’re played and come alive.

  March 21, 2012

  Lost the Red in Her Lips

  She lost the red in her lips years

  ago. I mean, she’s still alive

  but now she’s suffocated beneath

  a moss of paperwork –

  the crows are gathered on the

  windowsill, their shrill, eager

  calls remind her that someone,

  after all this time, is still paying

  attention to her, but this does

  nothing for her wince.

  I don’t know why she makes

  me fall down for the first

  time in years. I never met her

  before, don’t even know

  her name, but she could be a mother,

  a sister, a cousin – she was

  at least someone’s daughter –

  I mean, after all, our family tree

  grew from just one seed

  so I guess that could mean that

  a stranger and a loved one are the same,

  but still we ignore her just because

  we don’t share names like ice cream cones.

  Love is like a Cliché

  Love is like a cliché,

  the way it sways like

  the sizzled sun in May,

  like flowers drizzled

  with drips of rain,

  like dusty, old men puzzled

  by the game of chess in

  the park, the black knight

  having affairs with his

  rusty queen, asking politely

  if she wouldn’t mind

  leaving early the next morning.

  Love is like a cliché –

  no, wait…a cliché is like love

  composed of one quarter

  note and rests that

  dance on endlessly

  even though the music’s

  stopped and the band’s

  left – a cliché is like

  love made up of single

  glances and…well, that’s it –

  a single glance, maybe a

  “Pardon me” or “Excuse me”

  then it’s back to walking down

  the street. Don’t bother with

  looking back, because she’s

  already turned away.

  Loves Whistles Nighttime

  If you’d only

  give me a chance,

  I’ll love you

  for the way

  you never shut up – no wait,

  hear me out. Because

  nothing is more thrilling

  than hearing you

  talk about your

  day until the sun

  rises. And I’ll love

  you for the way

  you always lose focus

  like my cheap

  camera does,

  because I love

  making guesswork

  out of a hazed,

  glazed fog.

  I’ll love you for

  the way

  you drink yourself drunk,

  until your veins

  pump rum

  because I’ve

  never

  had a good

  challenge that I’ve run from –

  so give me a

  chance to love you

  the way the

  desperate loves the fool.

  Man with a Cigarette

  You seem to open

  your mouth only

  to smoke. That said,

  the way you

  hold that cigarette –

  lazy, but still trying

  to make a point –

  I find myself listening.

 

  Or perhaps it’s a

  whisper,

  beckoning,

  calling me closer like a

  fly to a light-bulb

  that’s buzzing even louder.

  I’m not sure if I can

  trust a man like you,

  though, a man whose

  face is painted

  by the light of the

  fireplace, a man who’s

  half-light, half-shadow,

  a schizophrenic

  ornament in this house, pulsing

  and shriveling with

  every flick of the flames.

  August 25, 2011

  Marinha Perto de Marselha

  Based off the painting Monticelli’s “Marinha Perto de Marselha”

  It looks like someone

  once tried scrubbing the

  town with a cloudy eraser,

  mixing the professors –

  stitched together with elbow patches –

  with the growth of drunks

  spilling from the pubs. The

  afternoon sun wakes them all

  up, even deeper than coffee.

>   The daylight’s white against the

  yawning water sprayed

  on the dock. The ancient

  boards don’t creak, but they

  talk in sighs that whisper

  ages. There’s one

  lone boat spun like a top offshore,

  the sailors flipping the pages

  in the sails, reading the tales

  of a future like past, where

  nobody’s risen higher than the

  tallest mast of the biggest

  boat in town. The skyscrapers

  drift in the harbor, waiting.

  There’s the occasional soul

  who wanders like lost geese –

  they sail through the

  harbor, dot themselves

  into the horizon – mixed

  like oil colors with

  the story of distant clouds.

  Their boats always loop back at night

  as shooting stars, sailing straight

  home through sky like kites with tails

  between their legs.

  April 26, 2010

  Mattress Light

  The spotlights are lazy arms, painting

  the long swatches of stars in the

  crow-drenched colors of the attic,

  the paintdrops falling slow enough for us

  to wish our dreams on.

  This is the way that paint should

  dry – the lines already dust by

  the time we seem them cross

  the rust of metal November

  sunsets, strong like ancient

  pipes that line the walls like

  grid. Here’s to hoping for that Tuesday

  deep in the Madridian summer

  where the sun builds cityscape shadows

  like Mandarin, the lines coming alive,

  dancing in the slightest wind the

  way some spiderweb might.

  I get lost in light more than in night

  colors (the night hugs like mother – the light

  scatters confetti, simply disappearing). Back

  to spotlights dripped in a deepheart haze,

  which I dip my eyesight in, wetting

  the edges of the iris until all I see is

  mattress, a magic that I earn a

  hard day’s pay to be trapped in.