The Weather We Speak Of

 I.

beignets and being

drums are dreams

let’s not go home

hungry, I have a crunchy

guitar, it’s cold, let’s

be together, when

can we meet

II.

the room beats alive   becomes colors  

prep school weather   wood on gold

winter within   almost evening   café

as church    we are working

Jolie comes in with

her friends, the fog,

carrying a ukulele, her

dress dusting the floor

when I’m in San Francisco

I’m dreamin’ all the time

deep in the park where

the constellations shine

 

whittled in chairs, we

continued our work,

the fog took bird shapes

I grew lonely, a

horn sounded,

strings, and I under

stood, oddly, the room

was oddly shaped, circles

and squares, and I hoped

we weren’t too sad

here was an inter

section, we were

all waiting, made

space for more

souls, Rulfo sat alone

in thin clothes, small

hands, staring a

bove the heads

we grew cold, dis

tance grew

between us

a desperate strumming appeared as lamps, angled

panes, warm orange, lavender, cool green, one red,

one shallow yellow, black filigree holding white

tambourine light, syllables pulsed from floorboards,

people wore colored clothes, ate whiteness,

lions roamed the streets

through the windows

we watched them

creeping, dragons

roared, rattling the lights,

we heard hair growing, our

fingernails, our teeth, socks

stretching, sound of our

drinks evaporating, we were

animals respirating, breath

joining air, thump of books

falling

  a day was outside     then

  a night      we were quiet

  there was noise     a buzzing

        and buried melody

wooden stick stirs,

our past, steel bottles,

straw rots with wet,

straw smokes, turns

black with fire with

fungus, the scent

of straw fades the

way things disappear

in darkness, don’t flake,

don’t fade, there goes the

bar, the tables, the way

of rust

I felt, now,

as if the night,

far in and fallen

out, landed in

bed, or upon it,

I felt that sanity,

the feeling of

existence, a

common nest,

I wore clothes

that day

III.

tonight the bridge is

empty, a chandelier

heaped up in smoke

and buttermilk

then an un

expected clear

the bridge is red

its ramparts

art deco cathedrals

its battlements

rusted aprons

many ways

many silences

many stages

honeysuckle vine

shine, shine

get out, get out

of your house

let us lie

fallow, the fog

gobbled, the ground

is the day

immortalized, lights

take shape, lights of

the bay hallowed, turning

fields with north,

trees are tuning forks

that spin when

you tumbling pass,

don’t be afraid don’t

be afraid

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