Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012

by James Welsh

my mailbox. And in a way

  the poor mailman became Atlas,

  having to drag the world behind

  him in his brown canvas bag.

  Through pictures,

  I walked the mountains with her,

  saw the Northern Lights

  with her, and we both

  swam through the blue

  sea and saw the coral

  that was burrowed deep

  beneath.

  And I wondered if she would like

  postcards from around here –

  of the crumbled highways,

  of the railroad tracks,

  of the flat lands that have

  looked the same since the last day

  she saw them –

  postcards of a lackluster town

  that we’ve been condemned

  with since birth, from

  which she somehow broke

  free to see the world.

  But I don’t want to give her

  more reasons to stay away.

  Tricycle Worlds

  I became a god by the age of three,

  my hands, my sleeves choked with

  chalk dust as I drew a house on the

  sidewalk, the concrete drunk

  on the simmered summer day.

  They told the parents that the boy

  was clumsy, dropping and breaking

  English as he walked the floors of his

  home. They told the parents that

  the boy would never learn his Rs

  or Qs or Ss or Ts or Hs or Zs,

  all this while they sat and watched

  the boy play alone.

  And the parents could do nothing

  but sit back and watch their son’s

  dreams bleed through the slurs

  and stutters in his speech – the other

  children on the playground not so

  willing to learn a foreign language just yet, leaving

  him to play with his babble at the swingsets.

  They left that young boy to

  his mind and wild noise and so he

  built within his heart a world of fighter pilots

  and dinosaurs and all this

  before he learned his phone number

  at the age of four.

  He was a muted,

  broken trumpet until they noticed

  that he could speak through his

  drawings, his scribbles of a cup –

  a cup dripping water on a tabletop –

  speaking more English

  than his foreign words

  ever could. And so they told the

  parents to let the boy write and

  before the ink had time

  to dry on paper, I learned how to talk.

  Turn of the Screw

  We pass around the three-faced shame –

  those tricycle wheels

  turned assembly line

  turned push

  because we’re frozen,

  turncoat cowards against momentum –

  Newton’s law-book is

  on the shelf,

  the title scratched off, forgotten.

  It’s a game that just goes

  on and on until we’re playing

  grown-up in daddy’s three-piece suit.

  April 15, 2011

  Twist

  You curve and twist with that

  famous bluster of yours,

  mustering thousands of storms

  spinning in the distance, a distance

  that wisps with steam in the summer

  heat – it takes me back to my first

  and last home in my mother’s womb –

  how fitting.

  You shout and scream and pound

  lean fists against the lumber

  table – making the wood crack

  like trees in the mortuary

  of winter. Your snarls break

  like eggs, but instead of

  birds, there’s words

  like “how could you” and

  “why won’t you”

  and it feels rather marvelous to

  wrap myself in the blanket

  of all of this.

  You could

  be screaming because you care,

  or you could be screaming because

  you aren’t for or with me anymore.

  Either or, it doesn’t matter because

  I could feel the strength to your gravity

  since you brought my head

  in on a silver platter as if

  there wasn’t any food left

  from this winter frozen over

  with vanity and pride and judgment

  and – oh how the cold brings

  out the clarity!

  Umbrellas Swept Up Into Trees

  We’re both umbrellas swept up into trees

  on cold afternoons that forgot the sun

  and when we forget what the sun looks like –

  I like to think it’s the

  orange pulp that crowds

  the bottom of my breakfast cup

  (the only time you could say you

  were looking down at the sun

  instead of up).

  Instead, as we stretch out

  like scratchy wool blankets

  on the cold lawns of November,

  we see the pale yellows murmuring

  beneath the surface of the clouds,

  the dull sunlight whining,

  sharpening its claws on the

  front door. He wants in,

  but we’re about to sit

  down for dinner anyway.

  He can always come back later.

  Perhaps tomorrow,

  perhaps another day.

  I wrap a butterknife blade

  of grass around my finger

  and try to remember

  this moment out

  from beneath the rug

  and onto the

  coffee table, using

  the memories to

  warm up conversation

  in the moments before

  our forever of dinners.

  Under Construction

  “To build all solid.”

  Sylvia Plath, a journal entry dated February 25, 1956

  This glue, this tape is déjà vu –

  the wind reads the pages of

  the instruction manual

  as, for the fifth time, I pound a patch

  into the roof, my clumsy hands

  raining nails and screws into the

  pail on the floor below. The holes

  in the walls – “Who put holes in

  the walls?” – the tired calls

  to plumbers, electricians – the exposed

  wires hanging from the ceiling,

  the ends sparking like lures –

  it reminds me of fishing…

  I know there’s more to all this,

  though, than yet another trip

  to the hardware store.

  The faucet’s constant drip drips

  remind me of the honest slips

  of “Well, maybe I don’t love you

  anymore” or “Where were you

  tonight? How come you never

  pick up your phone?”…all this

  is more than what another trip

  to the hardware store can fix.

  I don’t even know if I want this

  pain and hardship anymore…

  But I remember back when

  the house was fixed, when

  we never had to hold

  a hammer, instructions,

  or a piece of tape.

  I remember a kiss

  in front of

  the kitchen sink

  that we never had to fix.

  And though the exposed

  wires were still hanging

  from the ceiling – even then –

  we never thought of them

  as f
ishing lures and lines,

  but instead we used to flick

  the light switch and wish on

  shooting stars without

  ever having to go outside.

  Unfolded Maps Can Sprawl

  The blood smears my television. The

  blush dripping from their heads – a leaky

  fountain of life.

  As these lotuses raise their

  fists and shout, more of their strength

  runs down. When it hits the soil, it doesn’t

  puddle – it becomes stars that streak

  like the bricks from the roofs, the whips

  in the streets.

  It streams with the shadows and pavement

  into their flag. They say you

  would need an atlas

  to find the Nile, but you can read their country

  off that flag like a map if you want.

  And with that map on the street and with

  you at your height, you cannot help but

  to look across it. And then you cannot

  help but to rise above it.

  February 6, 2011

  Van Eyck

  She painted herself into a canvas,

  canvas as smooth and soft as

  jazz notes tumbling down

  the king’s mattress, canvas

  as smooth and soft as she is,

  as she was.

  True, she’ll sink in time –

  her eyes diming from

  a sharp noon sky to a

  moonlit sea where the seaweed

  rots and lies. Her face will

  wrinkle at each new worry,

  each wrinkle just

  another line for her

  life’s story. Her midnight

  hair will snow with flurries,

  her youth further buried

  in the pages.

  This painting will survive its

  inspiration – it’ll stand guard

  over this gallery, soothing the

  rally of tourists’ eyes.

  But when the portrait

  begins to curl its corners

  into a skeleton’s grin and

  the canvas ghosts away

  as dust into the day,

  not even van Eyck or

  even van Gogh could

  put life back into

  such a painted ghost.

  Vintage Dreams

  I seem to dream in black and white.

  You always say you dream in greens

  although it’s night and there’s no light

  in which to cast your meadow lights

  upon the bedroom filled with screens.

  I seem to dream in black and white

  like ancient movies without lights

  or cameras, without Wilhelm screams –

  although it’s night and there’s no light

  and shades grow monsters out of sight

  beneath my trembling bed unseen.

  I seem to dream in black and white.

  However, you are rolling right

  through creamy fields of Irish green

  although it’s night and there’s no light.

  You tell me sleep’s a gorgeous machine.

  I want to dream your dreams…but see,

  I seem to dream in black and white

  although it’s night and there’s no light.

  Warlord

  This singer’s cherished, although he

  hasn’t yet been snuck out through

  the exit, with the funeral sobs

  an understudy for the mousesqueak

  of the door hinge.

  He’s praised like some saint,

  an ant given picnic instead of

  squished into orange by

  some misplaced footstep.

  This is the part where it all

  becomes clear to the singer –

  the world becoming picture

  under the wide-lensed empire

  focus, the mountains flatter than hills –

  or at least it’s as clear

  as night-hidden lion roar

  to the singer, drinking his

  cigars like whisky until

  he gets his train pass –

  first-class I might add –

  to wherever his god is (probably hidden

  in the pond in Narcissus’s backyard).

  May 20, 2010

  Warm Saint Monica

  Her husband picked her scars like birthday gifts,

  her fullmoon skin ripped like scrap notebook paper.

  Her mudhair’s ruffled against the flatscreen

  TV. I can almost – almost – feel her pain.

  She doesn’t lecture a word – it’s hard

  to scream against a crowd of cuts

  he drumbeat on her with a five o’clock rhythm.

  She’s silent as dam, her minutes pooling into

  hours and days and months. Years.

  So now the raining of

  fists against the damwater

  is drops too weak to startle her.

  But we can see the murky water

  sloshing over, slashing through

  the cracks in her wood.

  She still doesn’t cry still,

  so I flood for her.

  October 5, 2010

  Water Stilled

  The daughter was born royalty

  into purple tides, where the waters

  churn pink like flamingo wings.

  The river herself was dazed, shallow

  breathing, under the spell of

  chemical daydreams that can kill

  and yet still make memorials of memories.

  This is where herons flew away from,

  their wings either vagrants or settlers.

  This is where the fish are little more

  than forgotten flashes of silver

  spilled in the indigo waters.

  Still, just like silver, this wildlife is pure –

  just like silver, these fish are still valuable.

  The river’s trying to mine the fish

  for their shine, growing them up

  like cornfields, above the irrigation

  and into the sun. The writhing

  silver is brighter than any sun.

  The river’s a mother trading

  breaths with her child –

  when mother exhales,

  the child inhales.

  And what if the daughter

  has the same color

  eyes as her mother? What if

  the moment mother

  shuts her eyes to sleep,

  daughter opens hers to wake?

  Would it be less of a death

  and more of a blink?

  October 30, 2011

  Wear Thin

  Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

  like an old man’s walking-cane grin

  or the blue in the lake

  where us as kids used to swim.

  Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

  like a cloud that skates the wintry evenings

  when the leaves have fallen and the

  evergreens are heaving, seeming to stand

  proud while deep down they’re freezing.

  Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

  like faded wedding rings that show

  that although the years pile on

  and the decades grow,

  that lovers still remember their poetry –

  no prose.

  Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

  like a clown whose painted face

  starts to wane and fade, his life

  showing through the curling smile –

  if only he could trade

  his kingdom for a game.

  Your arrogance is starting to wear thin

  like the gears inside that grandfather clock

  you keep in your living room. A clock that

  used to kee
p the hours, but now chimes

  at ten past noon.

  Where Fireflies End, Where Lightning Begins

  I could never tell where

  the fireflies end and

  the lightning begins –

  they’re all blank, jagged

  splatters crowded

  on the deep night

  canvas. All an origami

  landscape creped

  around this world – our world.

  We can goodbye

  across continents

  and still the sunset that I sleep to

  is the sunrise that wakes you up.

  Our dusks and dawns

  all look the same,

  each a chord tight on our

  black-and-white nights

  and days – all songed together

  into a sun that weathers down

  as rains of rays raise up

  the cornstalks while at the

  same time raze them down.

  All these things are different – like you and me.

  All these things are the same – like us.

  June 23, 2010

  Whim Sea

  I row

  my boat

  across the Whim Sea.

  I heave

  the oars,

  wiping away my

  sweat with my sleeve.

  I can’t tell

  if the salt is from

  the sea spray or from me.

  My boat’s crushing

  against the waves;

  my good

  arms lift and wheeze.

  But it’s no good,

  so now I share

  my name with that sea.

  Who Holds Your Hand

  Who holds your hand?

  I hold my own in

  applause forever,

  the clap clasped

  together like love’s

  last kiss against the

  glassed December.

  I transform into a

  closed-circuit in those

  common moments,

  the static jumping

  ship between the fingertips.

  It’s in those thens that

  I become less wiry

  and more of a wire –

  my nerves twisted together

  in a fibromyalgiac crush

  that could raise the bald