Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

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 r />
  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