April 22, 2007

mark me


the corner turned me into another black world
you lived in i loved you
as a breeze blowing pitch
unremarkable yet undeniable
full of small words and big ideas
or was it big words and small -
it was both at times
when the worst rain we ever saw
or felt or made pocked our future
and it came again and once more
and i loved you like a man who sees the bus blocks away
the bus to take him to the right place right time
and that bus disappears
and only then the love comes
and that's how i loved you then
and now the corner
so sharp and surprising
i can see none of it from before
i'm on that street no longer pacing or pouncing
cradled rather or rocked
undeniably kissed whether you are here or there
present or absent
the mark of today always there
whether the rain came yesterday
or is expected tomorrow


~~




woodypoem



the dead had expressed themselves when alive
filled us with what we called dreams, whether we wished
to be above or below them as they breathed, whether
it was enough to walk up the hill, nearing the watertower
but stopping before, drunk and hungry shuffling into the small
Italian restaurant for pizza just before close, its owner waiting tables,
knowing how we wanted what we wanted, and now i can't remember
his name, but remember the name of a friend
waiting there for me, already ordered for us including more beer
i remember sitting in the dark surrounded by wood
yet the place not as dark or woody as outside
and with just enough cheese, its owner waiting on us,
always humoring us, his expression when alive
and i'm sure he is dead by now and here i am expressing
and wondering and wanting to travel uphill further
to that watertower and the little house of an aunt of a friend
and the dull light of party with people probably fucking upstairs
while i sat with strangers telling enormous lies, all of us,
whether we knew it or not (i knew, and continued still
in my impish innocence), or sitting with headphones on
while all were finally asleep, listening to rock and roll
and seeing firesigns burn the sharp corners of thought
until in a flash i was no longer innocent but full of cynicism
as befits the outsider, surely looked upon as such --
as these things will happen, even in our longing,
even as we fight them through the streets of our cities and hearts --
looked upon as such even if inside there is the struggle to recover
days lost, loves abandoned, ideas spat upon in haste
not as the guy who likes a quiet pizza with a friend
a little further down the hill further up though from the bodega
in front of his apartment, street slanting toward pizza and a watertower
a house not his own a friend lived in further down than all
of this, the clink of bottles, music like accordians cutting through riffs
of deep purple and the buzz of a martin's strings
Cubans, Dominicans, quiet people from Pakistan and Iran,
their stores and restaurants waiting in what i still call my dreams
and how they are still
expressing themselves through doubts and over hills,
into the wooded dark of their eateries
unknown yet richly imagined from thousands of miles away
into and unto my cheesy dying day



~~