by James Welsh
a foot and declared the world
to be ours for the taking. Although
the world was lost in all directions.
Still, we were afraid to shout
our joy – after all, worlds as
brittle as that could crack
at any given noise.
We wiped away the snow beneath
our feet. We saw the fish cradled
in the ice – they looked dead, but
their eyes still spun like globes.
We wished they
had actually been dead.
“This is eerie,” you had whispered softly.
“I don’t know if this world should
be alive or dead.”
And whenever you said that, the world
howled wind and bled more snow,
that time in deep, innocent gushes.
When will this day come? When will it come?
Even the sunlight seemed to sleep.
We dug holes in the snow and slept in coffins –
at least, we did for a while.
The wind was still knocking on
the door that the fallen snow
had made for our home.
“Go away, no one’s here,” we whispered. And still:
Life. Has always. Persevered.
We woke, we rose,
we felt the knives
of ice pressed to our feet.
Is this our life? Why can’t we die?
We thought – we shook off sleep.
We dug ourselves out and looked about.
Ice stuck out of the tundra like unearthed bones.
A long time ago, we would have
called it a graveyard, but then
we called it home.
Though snow-damaged,
and winter-ravaged,
and ice had managed
to kill off the world’s core –
still we talked, and
still we walked, as if
we could have forgotten the
punctuation against our world.
It was hard – especially with
those winds whispering to us
mutiny against each other.
We just spoke louder to drown
out their offers. And still
we talked, and still we walked –
our pace by then matched to drums.
And then came that one morning –
we knew it was morning because
a soft light scraped the skies
like a butter knife. We knew then
it could have been the closest
we would have to day.
“Listen! I hear whispering!” I muttered.
You had turned, listened, then, with eyes misting,
You sighed that familiar sigh, “Love,
you’re hearing things again.”
Maybe I was – my mind has been
gypsy for years, coming and going.
It was then I realized we are all that’s left –
that we are what we hear.
But still – one thought still ran my mind:
Life. Has always. Persevered.
We had walked until we tired,
cold sleep dousing the fire in our feet.
Once more we awoke – we rose
inside of our own snow garden.
But what are roses? What are gardens?
Neither of us had ever seen such things.
I only heard them then from what
the winding wind had been whispering.
It always whispered to me the same thing:
“Your world was once emerald.
There used to be a sun
that would wake up the roses.
You all once had those gardens,
but frost has now made the waving leaves harden.
Why bother dancing still now that
the music’s stopped playing?”
Because our life together. Has always. Persevered.
Sailboat Away Yesterday
I cast off yesterday like some sailboat
I hope would float everywhere
except down to the ocean floor
that’s dusty in the corners.
Yesterday’s little more than venom,
calcified harder
than caves, bending these veins
into origami caricatures
that bleed pain through the
panes of suture.
Or maybe I could bury the day
over there by that bench
sitting in front
of the picket-fence –
forgetting that cemetery
to the shopping list of anniversaries
and such we always seem to
miss. But this time we mean it.
That day seems overrated,
anyway – I could shut my eyes
like door and trick myself to night.
I could wake this off like
vague dreams. Know what? I think I might.
And it’s true I’m afraid that
I’m waiting for what might
be yesterday disguised in
tomorrow. But it’s true
that I can bury tomorrow
just as easy as yesterday too.
But I hope I don’t have to.
April 22, 2010
Sailing through Windstorms
Our shirts are sails –
our short, ragged breaths
the gale winds that
wing us across the floor,
scraping our shins and
knees on the hardwood.
The dog is our white whale
that we’ll never catch,
its nails scratching up
the floor as it scampers
towards the door, out
of range of our harpoons
made up of shoes, shoes, shoes.
We riddle the floor with
scars, our fingernails digging
grooves in the wood telling
more tales than a poem or
painting ever could.
Years from now – when they
forget how to speak our language,
forget how English sounds –
they’ll read the scribbles
in the floor and decipher
love out of them.
Saint Crispin
The twilight’s echoing against the field.
Keep still – we don’t want the night
knowing that we’re here.
I’m still clutching this card
of spades in one hand, bottle in
the other, standing over Crispin’s grave,
drinking to a brother’s honor.
Are my shoes sprinkled with rust
from a walk along the bridge
or are they martyred with
the blood of these freezing saints?
I know no more than you do
about these sort of things.
All I know, though, is that
we need to walk with pride –
the harder we step,
the further the blood is flung –
I always heard St. Crispin’s blood is
good for irrigation.
And so his name lives on –
Crispin keeps the worlds revolving
even after the worth of his name
had been washed away
by our earthy aims.
We happy few, you and I, all
standing in lands that all men
fear to step in. St. Crispin,
we need to know, are we all pawns,
bleeding ivory from the rook’s
hacks and slashes in this
checkered chess game? Those,
after all, are the only games
I know – I’m still learning
how to read these cards –
this five of clubs does nothing
but taunt
my illiteracy.
Our St. Crispin, read to me
and teach me how to fight,
how to run to this Age of War.
Tell me too how I should walk the floor.
I’ve always wondered about that:
should I walk bare-foot or clothe
my soles solely to keep my soul clean?
I was always told my spirit
was what had moved me forward.
So I always assumed my soles
were my souls.
And it’s then I hear the war drums roll.
And it’s then I hear the war drums roll.
Samson Sheared
Without a beard, my chin just sits
there, weak like Samson sheared,
now no more than a beak
with no plumage blooming
like embarrassed plums. For the sake
of the beard, everyone confuses
a guitarist for the madman living
between pieces of cardboard damp
with the drought’s sweat. Enjoy
this metaphor for as long as it lasts.
A beard holds power, an age –
the same why we turn to wine
for wisdom. Dwindle your
beard to a clean-shaven face
and you’re mistaken for fools
or for businessman, both of whom
have martyred their wits
for the now.
A beard doesn’t
have now; it has to wait until
tomorrow to grow. Your
wishes are as simple
as missed sunsets – you hope
for something not there,
but you can find the wise
lying in a puddle of your hair.
April 4, 2010
Sargasso Sea
Sometimes, I wonder
if I’m some sea –
a motion in a thousand
places. I don’t ask who I am
at times, but I do ask
what sort of crowd
I am. Maybe I’m a
train of strangers’
faces, a train roaring by
as you sit at the station,
patient with the arrival times.
I need to be more:
I can be learned behaviors –
I can be marbled rivers flowing upstream –
I can be a being of cobbled words –
I can be the milk the sun
delivers to your doorstep
in the morning, all to the beat
of dew drops falling.
But all I am is what you are.
Sea Pagans
The grandfather piano chuckles smoke through its pipes of cellars
as each note folds and grows origami wings, singing oriole
cries – we talked with our ears and worshipped idle
thoughts of pretend dragons and cornfield laughter,
back when we were children, back when we were pagans.
We used to hunt Marco Polo’s ghost in the South China Sea.
But see, we now must sail through this Black Sea
of pavement meant to wear down soles to their cellars –
we age quick in our dog years as, like all-seeing pagans,
we chant commercials and jingles until oriole
paints our cheeks; we die with unheard laughter
because it’s only in death that we could only be less idle.
Like shattered china dolls in attics, we float idle
in debris of forgotten memories as the sea
throws us, as the seagulls crow with laughter.
We age like the whisky in the cold reaches of the cellar:
at each sip, our cheeks slip and drown in an oriole
sea as we watch TV like good commercial pagans.
We’ve stumbled in fog for so long, I forget if we’re pagans
or Christians; we’ve fallen into a snake crawl and snarl idle
threats to the boots that thunder down, leaving us as oriole
stains in the grasses. We’ve swam senseless in the sea
that’s dressed with a headband of seaweed. The cellar
calls to us, begs us to come down with a case of mad laughter.
So we all ashes fall down, crackled with laughter,
bowing to ourselves like human nature pagans.
We hear faint laughter and shouting from cellars –
we hear our inner children, idle
with play, pretending they’re princesses and captains of sea.
For the first time in years, we cry, our eyes turn oriole.
It’s been too long since we flapped wings like an oriole.
It’s been too long since we’ve tickled out our laughter.
It’s been too long since we kicked and swam the sea.
It’s been too long since we have let our minds grow pagan.
It’s been too long since we’ve sat in on rainy days, grown moss with idle.
It’s been too long since we were last afraid to enter the cellar.
We flutter blind in cellars like lost orioles
as the grandfather clock ticks with idle laughter.
Yet we’re still pagans at heart, worshipping meadows and seas
and I like to think that in the end that is all that matters.
See Icarus Jump
Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo
I bury myself into the tremble of the bluebird
with its fur of feathers, its two quick wings a thousand
ghosted leaves fluttered in the strong,
March-long breeze.
I feel a need to lay
down in the clouds, but I think
that’s just me. I always wanted
to drown in the sun.
So I just jump up and down,
dreaming dreams
into the feathers glued onto my
sleeves.
But I’ll mend, my wings will learn once
more how to breathe, all in due time.
One day I’ll swim up the streams of rain
that drain down from the skies.
Shaking in Your Skates
How many angels can dance
on the head of a spin?
Just one or so
she wants you
to think. She digs into the
bread of the ice with her blades –
she waves herself up, she
gives herself up to the glow
in the lights that coaxes
out the cold in the ice.
She twirls into a clean blur,
greening out like wheat in a field
during a summertime
that’s in its early rise.
Her spin tricks her two raised arms
into a hundred, the arms becoming
snakes – she’s now a
Medusa on skates.
Any man who looks her
in the eye is plastered still,
lumbered silent as a statue.
So this is what awe is supposed
to feel like, raising applause out
of our hands like they’re loose kites…
that is, until she trips and
spills down like warm beer over
the sides of your dirt-smoked glass.
March 18, 2010
Sharing Eucharist
She balled up
her fury into the
finger point,
her pilotblue eyes
ruffling into scales.
Her fingernail’s a
swordblade to
my caesarian chest –
shaking off stuttered
words like dust –
her spit rusting
her teeth some lipstick red.
She rinses me off with her spat baptism –
not so much that I am sin, but that I am her past.
A pagan love that rubs apart with
some Christian friction that turns
the mere thought of an us
all fiction.
October 19, 2010
she cherished her thoughts, held on to them tight
she cherished her thoughts, held on to them tight
against the snarl of the world’s own might
dawn day dusk night
she shoved away rid she ignored forbid
the wind, it whispered, the wind, it called
for her to follow wherever it galled
but its pleas fell on hard ears
laugh yell pain tears
she always knew the sky breathed blue
and towards south the birds flew to
night dawn day dusk
but to force lies, the world felt it must
and when the world took her joy like thieves
she smiled and glowed and shimmered relief
because now on nothing she’s eaten her fill –
no longer do those hunger pangs stir
while the world grays as the time runs
she stood up and gave chase to her chance
and stretched out her arms to hug the day
squeezing until the day’s breath did stream
laugh yell pain tears
because she had known the love would remain
after she smothered the jealous ember
(which birthed smoke and let ashes fall down)
and it was then the world was impressed
(for she suppressed the world in its place)
humanity rose, freed the denied with
kisses by kisses and hugs by hugs
tall by tall and steep by steep
people stood up to play for we keeps
and to play in the rains of April
love by know and maybe by yes
all of the people (both follow and wise)
dawn dusk day night
cheered as know rose and naïve fell
laugh tears pain yell
She Smiled Fists
You could see it in her smile –
it was a warm raised fist
against a world that whirls
too quick for anyone to
keep up with. Some let
knives or rope dig and break
their skin, yet she always
sit there, absurd but gorgeous
with that smile of hers –
the sweetest raised
fist I’ve ever seen.
I know her past the smile, though.
I know she grins to bare her
teeth, that she puts up that
