Contents
Muddy leaves
The stinking root that tethers leaps
Fighting past my breath
I wait on flimsy legs
Empty hours after moonset
Life leaps from the death
Tall, hard grass
Lips that only part for careful reason
Dreams like black dew
We were antelopes
Night sounds
Huddled under blankets, watching
stars
Affection from my hands flows
Pink skirt of a wren's mother
Soft drops of sound
A lake of secret depth
Skitter of such slight feet
A brown and autumn leaf
Where welds catch spider webs
Fruit without stem or seed
The pendulum that drives my
rhythms
Melancholy webs
Who called this tree from slumber?
Flaming through my thin hands
Home
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Muddy Leaves
Harnessed just tightly enough
To work without a smile or hope for any toothy gleam,
Wrinkled eye drifting in dreams as brief as smoke
And much less noisy,
Without the comfort of a touch or the promise of a touch
I pant and sweat, beast and machine.
When did we lift these gray ceilings?
When did we crawl back in caves?
Can we speak again of this and that,
Mingling moisture of four lungs with casual words?
Our lips ring beneath our grins with shrill urgency,
"No one speaks our language!"
Shouting to strangers once,
We broke our shoes on cobblestones
(Crazy foreigners),
Wavering in wet streets, kicking muddy leaves.
Can we please go back?
I tire of creaking in morning light.
Fighting Past My Breath
Fighting past my breath
All rales and scratches,
I never find full lungs,
Never get quite enough air,
Hope to fall back
When I fall,
Into your blood-lit water,
Hope your eyes will watch and hold me,
Hope to gasp one sigh of gladness
In your helpless arms.
You patch my wounds.
You can't repair the years.
I Wait On Flimsy Legs
You couldn't drive the nail that splits all wood,
Crush the breath of minor lives,
Drain the blood from sorry neighbors.
Why then with careless gestures
Grind to dust my heart's foundation,
Pry from rigid fingers
Keys that unlock tears and twitches,
Night's unwanted guests?
Yesterday I walked your garden barefoot,
Blooming warm tomatos on my thirsty tongue,
Lifting shy carrots from muddy wombs.
Drenched in sunlight's mad joy
I swelled and grinned,
Ripe and fat and standing straight
On happy heels.
Today I wrinkled
As I read in glowing, linear letters
How you clasped your new pale god
And dashed to other planets,
Sleeping under sand blankets,
Dropping my last address,
Rinsing your mirrored face
With new and distant lights.
I counted the holes in my socks.
Rivers flow again in spring,
I know,
And dawn is never far away,
But did you really laugh the way they said you did,
When all my dense desires dried up
And windy silence touched my unbelieving lips?
I wait on flimsy legs
For a postcard,
For better answers.
The Stinking Root That Tethers Leaps
What concerns us is
The stinking root that tethers leaps
For wider lawns and lower fences,
The reptile slit that stares us down
In narrow tubes and tracks us dry,
The dingy murk that cloaks the eyes
Of closest friends and nearest lovers,
The stainless veil that keeps our hands apart
And seals our touch in sterile sacks.
What concerns me is
The way you rumbled fierce and glowing
Past my stumbling feet,
Targeting your conclusions, your reprisals,
Without a map, without consultation.
I cannot see the end of you.
Empty Hours After Moonset
Locked alert by burning visions
In the empty hours after moonset,
I soak my sheets
In battles with delusion and stark afterimage.
Swimming rigid toward sleep
I cannot sleep.
A lover's hands could draw the waking currents
From my humming head,
A whispered word could cut the stiff, sharp ropes
That fasten me to weary consciousness.
Minutes pass untended.
No whispers reach my straining ears.
In the darkest turn of the night
No hands relax my agitation.
Tall, Hard Grass
In the tall, hard grass on that windy hill,
Dry, but alive enough yet before the first frost
To rest easy on, I sat all but easy,
Watching you pick with care your steps away,
Down to the field where the band once played.
(We played. We were in that band.
How we loved that simple noise!)
You found your paths away,
You found the lanes once worn smooth
By travelers' tires.
(Now they take the interstate.)
My eyes bled with that vision,
With the sight of your back, your solemn wave goodbye.
I could not ask you to turn, to bring again
Your smile to me in the tall, hard grass.
I could not call to you once you gave me your last smile.
Could not. Could only
Sit in the tall, bitter grass and watch you walk,
Smaller and smaller,
To the sea, to the sea birds calling.
Lips That Only Part For Careful Reason
I need to walk with one who walks alone
At other times,
Not kitchen cats who rub from one to next
Without thought or memory of what last heart they stroked,
Nor dogs who run in teams or packs,
Nor birds who stoop and turn and cruise in numbers
Or not at all.
I need to hold the hand of one whose hands are rarely held
At other times,
One who slips through crowds like melting ice,
Warms rocks above the line no tree will cross,
Speaks to stars before the sun comes up
And calls the moon, in day or night, a friend.
I need to clasp with eager arms a soul whose breast is seldom touched
At other times,
One who knows the silent noise of mountain spring
And sings out loud the melodies of pine and sand,
Who lives in neighborhoods and laughs
As human as the next when babies take a step,
Cries when lovers lose their mark.
I need to find a path that joins with one that never meets
At other times,
My strongest love will rest at last
On lips that only part for careful reason.
Life Leaps From The Death
When you curl your fingers,
When you give with a glance the go-ahead,
When you summon the leaf's unfolding
Wet in a brown world on the first warm afternoon,
When you call to attention
The spring song of the grateful sparrow
Nervous in her new shadow,
Do you know the potent thrust riding on your gentle whisper?
Do you think of the lives you bend with your laughter?
With the absence of your laughter?
Do you itch with the prayers you walk away from?
Your phosphorus eyes burn white, burn deep,
Searing in random souls words like
Life leaps from the death at the end of winter,
But scars from the ice,
For those who remain after the ice,
Stay cold and pale, stubborn in the hottest sun.
Dreams Like Black Dew
Heavy dreams like black dew draped my waking vision,
Dulling briefly after sleep's numbing injection
The flame that marked your passing.
I drummed your knotted stare
To trap the rhythm of journeys
Past and taken not for quest
Or new knowledge,
But for finding what we lost:
A ring, a book,
A broken china cat that once cried love
And understood our solemn questions.
You burn through walls, through worlds.
You heat my skin,
Make me sweat and drip like a boxer.
Your great bell voice chimes my brain's chambers,
Clanging savage choruses from treeless mountaintops
I climb down blind from, without equipment.
Your odors cover me,
Condense my breath to gasps.
I breathe your finer air now,
Drunk on your smell, your fiery heart.
Night Sounds
Warm wings stop the night sounds,
Shield baby flesh from wolves' foul breath.
And should some beast dare breach this shield,
Steel beak, iron talon
Send even hungry tigers on other errands.
Love,
Your arms stretch like wings;
Soft, tidy feathers promise comfort
And dreams without disruption.
God, how I'd like to
Press my face against your heart,
Lose my careful thoughts in your skin's blanket,
Stir and wake and sleep again
Safe
From wolves' foul breath.
Huddled Under Blankets, Watching Stars
Huddled under blankets, watching stars,
We twisted hands together tight
And spoke with sad, contented smiles
Of dusty, gilt-edged dreams we memorized
So long ago
And never saw outside our nightly visions,
Of promises once silver-shiny like a wedding spoon,
Now dingy gray with years of smoky sulfide,
Good intentions never crystallized and polished.
Not dismal with our failures, though,
(A target set so far is rarely split,)
We counted burning meteors
And traced our names across the backs of bears,
And made new pledges,
Crossed our hearts and drafted covenants
For future reveries.
The ground was damp from recent rain.
Huddled under blankets, watching stars,
Two hopeful heads against a midnight sky.
We Were Antelopes
How could I breathe to you yesterday,
Shuffling our feet in the leaves
We were smelling autumn,
And far off in the sparkling sky,
Flickering out in your studious gaze,
A thin black gauze, a hint
Of cold and the northern winter,
Chilled us ever so slightly,
The dark gate at future's end,
And my tongue froze.
It was so slight, so consequential.
I held you through your sweater.
October, October!
How could I hope to call you
Through the sunshine pressing on our faces,
Washing them?
We were so glad.
Did you guess my speech was so unmade,
So unready to rustle out among the leaves,
So willing like an animal
To stay unspoken in the darkness,
Gleaming and tense?
I could not breathe to you my questions.
We were antelopes
And could only move among the grasses,
Stretching our nostrils,
Offering our lives, our afternoons,
Tilting our hopes ahead
To the night,
To the winter.
Affection From My Hands Flows
Affection from my hands flows
Streaming to the quiet corners of your face
Spreading to the ruffled feathers, the acid headaches
Dropped by drivers sprinting to their fuming, angry trucks.
I want to handle your hot troubles,
Cut loose your weights,
Groom your grand wings for flights beyond the borders
Of our most daring sentences to the green land
Where we speak without machines
Where alert like animals we feel
The cold air's actual blade deep in our nostrils,
Where waking well past the dawn, well past the long weekend,
We leave camp on indefinite journeys,
On time clocked only on distant paper.
Soft Drops Of Sound
High across the smoking hills I toss my silver pipe,
Spilling cloudy gemstones into fading, August air,
Wanting to carry to you on soft drops of sound
My hidden pulse, to tell you
How the reddening sun comes through clouds
And lights my blood furnace,
How the flames in the next canyon coax
(I do not want them) stinging tears
From deep wells at my own stony rim
(I think it is my brain's reservoir
That actually pours out these tears),
How I fear this blaze, or some other,
Might threaten you, set you to running,
A rabbit frisky with terror in the smoky air,
How that blackbird stays behind,
Bedded down in watered grass,
Frightened by the passage of her flock,
Waiting maybe for a late friend,
How my flute sings so sad, so sweet
Across the fire that burns between us.
A Lake Of Secret Depth
Your eyes
So dark and close to mine
I see your thoughts,
Nervous fish needles
In water lit by incandescent blood,
A lake of secret depth,
Your eyes
I want dark and close.
I want their deep strength under me.
Our story is in that water.
Pink Skirt Of A Wren's Mother
I sense more clearly than in any dream how even now
Your spirit perfume washes through my thankful hair,
A scent that dances potent over miles of wire,
Drifts through concrete like a painting in a cave,
Carries in its atmospheres your steps, your smiles,
Your soft replies to whispered questions.
I smell you over oceans, over years.
I trace your subtle trail from spring to spring
Without rest, without provision,
Knowing well I track elusive vapor,
Knowing well the source that gave it
Turned to earth and ashes long ago.
Nights are twisted, moonless now,
And summer has no end, no cool September.
No green leaf remains to effervesce
That bright bouquet you wore
An inch from every square of skin.
Only hot winds blow,
Without odor, dry and full of death.
I kiss your ghost at the last boiling of the sea,
Hoping for that pink skirt of a wren's mother
Flaring out in the breeze like candy
So many years ago before the sun began to die.
Past all further sorting with the knowledge of your grave,
My tangled memories knot when I think of your dancing
In the light, quick form of a small bird.
I cannot distinguish your first day from your last,
But in my hands I feel the black fact of your absence.
No skirt, no smile advances over sand or soil
To hold me in my longest search skyward
For younger stars, for water cool enough to drink.
Skitter Of Such Slight Feet
Infected this morning with the mad joy
Of birds you never heard before
You raise your arms in the new sound
Unfamiliar songs play on your face.
The skitter of such slight feet across the roof tiles
You once thought was silent scratching at your numb ear
You now sense as light percussion.
You dance without shoes to the feathery beat
Glad so glad for the boxes, the batteries,
Placed inside your head
By your doctor's slender, brown fingers.
Where Welds Catch Spider Webs
Addicted in my cage I wait for the next injection
To clear my fog, harden my rubber teeth.
Your ivory hand holds my release.
Behind your yellow dials leaking steam
You pull my roller coaster levers,
Hold my needle high.
You chuckle at my ignorant lack of a key.
Choose! Choose
My descent down squealing rails.
I leave my nails
Where welds catch spider webs.
Fruit Without Stem Or Seed
I said I understood the blood stanzas
Booming and repeated in the crowded chamber
I proclaimed into my companions' inky ears
I understand the necessary pain, the requisite
Twisting and turning of the cold knife.
But I said I didn't clearly see the need for darkness
Didn't clearly see the need for such mad secrecy
Didn't clearly see the need to hold up in church elephants
Who want only the way to their graves.
Let them, let all of us have our straight paths,
Our maps that match the mean terrain.
Replace the missing markers, the burned-out lamps.
While I said I understood I said I knew at the same time
The red-haired girl clinging in the night
Her witch eyes tossing me on a hot, liquid bed
Melting my proper language into aging dribble.
She seized what I called my understanding
On the frail finish of her auburn web
And held it to her laser lights
Coaxing from what she called my understanding
A vapor for our masked monitors
Who breathe this ether on their darkened stages,
Its sweet scent not wasted in empty barrels,
Its short perfume a brief prisoner in their nostrils.
They exhale another oxygen.
They look out like birds with brand-new feathers
At other mornings.
My freshest hair sprouts in strange places.
Cored, a fruit without stem or seed,
I ask for a mirror
That works properly in daylight.
I ask to see the natural sun.
A Brown And Autumn Leaf
Too black, too solemn,
I call the leaden bells that peal
For days that wander lost without their golden frames,
Cup rigid hands and lift the underside of rainbows,
Flush angry, snarling rats from dens they excavate invisible,
Beneath our routine understandings.
Too pale, too scrawny,
I raise alarms for dangers
Few can get their fingers on and study like a bug,
Stand close to flames that rage against our paper structures.
I cannot put them out with tears and weakened lungs.
Too small, too slender,
I taste the poison left in fancy jars
For decoration of our daily rooms.
And out loud (my crime), I name it.
I aim a steady arrow at the heart of all our desperation.
But darts do not bring giants down,
Wishes do not crumble walls.
My hopeful vision once blazing
Blue-white hot all spring, all summer,
Now dries alone in frosty crowds.
In the mirror
A tiger losing teeth,
A brown and autumn leaf.
The Pendulum That Drives My Rhythms
I drown in seas of benevolent mouths,
Gasp for breath in friendly laughter,
Twist in silence, hoping to
Find my place,
Speak some words that others know,
Construct sensible sentences.
I fail.
I touch bottom.
My tongue bubbles.
A toy voice climbs inside my ear,
Then sprouts and shouts like drums
Screaming thunder at my hairs' roots.
My heart leaps and races on its red track.
The pendulum that drives my rhythms swings its mighty sweeps
And finally shoves me to reluctant action.
My lungs reject this pointless water.
I splash to shore and walk on blistered feet
From parking lots to wheat fields.
I speak with blackbirds
In sparse, infrequent syllables.
Who Called This Tree From Slumber?
A tree that walks,
Lifting its wet, green weight like a queen,
Swivelling slowly and with great effort
Acknowledging birth and death in silent ceremony,
Gathers rapt attention.
Moss and moose and man alike
Halt business when a tree walks.
Odd creatures climb this ambulant bark
And quietly burst in upper branches,
Leaving no mess on nodding leaves,
No sign of name or purpose.
Who are they?
Who called this tree from slumber?
Who shook snoring lumber from its bed?
I stand rooted in her wake.
My skin hangs like white fungus,
Growing, probing with the moon's odd glow,
And drying, dying, crumbling in the sun,
Leaving me naked.
My wet bones lose their water.
I crave light to green my ghostly seed.
Send me light to drive my fiber further down.
Flaming Through My Thin Hands
Thin,
I beat off winter with thin hands,
Huddled in a flimsy room,
Hearing without hearing
The harsh mumbling of tortured throats,
So many voices pressing on these thin walls.
I wish for a warm hand on my neck,
For a black web to douse the stabbing swords
Of headlights crazed and smiling forced smiles
All day, all night,
A fence I do not care to cross
Guided by puffy moths born stiff in darkness
Who end their lives in lights.
I wish for a wrist to clutch, to kiss
At the sweaty bottom of a sleepless night,
Lungs to breathe my same air,
Arms around my thin chest
To share the shivering heat.
I am thin.
I watch the rising sun
Flaming through my thin hands.
Melancholy Webs
Sour and heavy, a leaden bag
Dense with swallowed, unspoken words,
My stomach sinks below the glaucous light
That steams and gleams at the end of an unkept promise,
And pulls down with it buoyant morning drawings,
Strands of hope that moored a weighty heart,
Puffs of gentle breath that kept dark fogs at bay.
Trapped in melancholy webs,
I smash my moldy peaches flat,
Catch filtered tales in drooping ears
Of lives I used to wander through,
Loves I used to water without fail.
I placed my finest plants in golden sun
And watched them die,
Dry and brown I could not reach them.
Now you tell me
"Cultivate! Reseed! Water more!"
I spit dust from leather lips,
Wish holes in walls
To spill the pressure in my skull.
No one hears my noises, no one
Stamps my puddles in the street.
Horns call me now from centuries long dead,
Their brazen voices tarnished from the drifting.
I turn, I touch my cheek,
I drop my sand in wonder.
Tom Vernier
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