the worst sidewalks

The worst sidewalks
are the ones covered with loose stones and sand and bits of rubble;
they run alongside the busiest roads
east-west arteries through town, always rumbling
all blacktop-patched potholes like bad teeth,
never clean or smooth
because the traffic hurtles onward without cease,
the heavy trucks rattling and booming like doom bearing down,
the glaring mindless drivers in salt-riddled cars
revving their impatience with the narrow lanes
gunning it like rapists, to make the light.

Along these roads are the most unfortunate
of pedestrians,
those with no choice.
no quiet tree-lined side streets, and no time
and the damned stones eat into your shoes
while you drag a hundred pounds of whatever you must carry
and cringe from the shrieking engines
with no green margin between you and the crumbling curbstone -
no good line of demarcation
separating your small life
from the merciless onward pounding
the roaring annihilation
and that sand and grit creeps through your skin
chews at your heel
becomes the taste of filth in your mouth.

don't spill the beans

Find yourself waking,
and the trap of consciousness snaps --
Still weary of subject and object,
still in your work clothes.

Remember that kids' board game,
"Don't Spill the Beans?"
By Hasbro or some such.
A precarious balance,
to which beans are added one or two at a time, by turns.
You need to get your point across,
but you really can't say it.

-- whoever spills is the loser. That's you.

If you gag yourself with sheets and keep
the shades down,
You won't have to think in words, and no one
the wiser.

You need good old-school poker,
a game of unrevealing ways.
Intimacy is not what we're moving toward, here.
Though I don't know how long we can stand
at the edge of the gulf, without
tipping a hand.
Pray, and don't think --
don't anticipate, and for God's sake
don't imagine what you'd say
if anyone asked.

exhumation

Let me press my ear against your ribs
to hear
the hammering within,
to hear the gut and the breathing,
the soft sighs --
It's spring, finally,
and the tenderest of things are easing their stiff parts
into the sunlight.
Sun bright on the newly-turned earth of winter's grave.
It's the bright heat inside your car
that makes the stupid metal box into a womb.


In my recent experience,
spring is when people pass away,
and this week has been no exception.
What shall I cry? All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.

Kindly lay me down
in the park, unwrapped
to thaw, like so much meat on the countertop,
like something the Inuit forgot to bury --

be brave, look at me in the light --
kneel down beside me, tell me if you hear
anything.

As if discourse were a sacrament.
Back in college, all we did was stay up
drinking espresso or vodka
into the wee hours, talk about life --
now, maybe six words out of a thousand
are worth their vowels.
Better to sing those vowels, round-mouthed,
better to slap out the consonants on
your thighs,
now that we're older and we've realized
everything worth saying is already
set to music.
Take me to the river -- drop me in the water.
Fish me out clean
and wrap me in a blanket,
give me a glass of wine and sing me a lullaby.
Go to sleep you little baby.
Go to sleep you little baby.
Your mama's gone away
and your daddy's gone to stay
didn't leave nobody
but the baby.


(credits to Alison Krause et al.)