No Heroes

There was a war you never saw.
You still report on the last one you knew—
The zepplins and horse-drawn artillery,
Black-and-white newsreels of pain.
Today I read headlines about your latest clash:
Sleek drones and dirty bombs,
Lasers in the city somewhere.
But I have in my attic a Samsonite case
Full of a dossier and a lock of hair.
The passport I gave my face to, not my name.
And that is how history is: broken skin
For which we will always be hunting a cause.

Impatience

The trees marched into town
while I slept
like the hounds of a faith.

She misses me.

In their towers
empty chairs
wait for lightning.

From a nest of burnt feathers
my color tilts with lances
of ruby, sapphire, and emerald.

She misses me.

A gate of clocks
sways minutely in my absent hand
while I do something else.

Three Found Poems*

I.

Around nightfall love leaf
The idle was like a sense idol
Become the sunshine of autumn still not learned,
One wheel under flower of spring rain and overdressed,
I was away from the limelight, but you
Continue persistently to me, musicians of loss,
With vocals of love like leaves muttering.



II.

It is the birthday of the servo today.
With that said, I chose songs from her.



III.

I will continue on my trip: theme.



____________________________________
The phrases were all pulled from a flawed Google Translate translation of entries from a Japanese music blog: http://blog.livedoor.jp/starofkamuy/

September Will Be There

Last month of the summer
September will be there
The sunlight is failing
September will be there

Go across long days
Powered by doubtful
Visions of good love
September will be there

Having a soft drink
From the outstretched hands
Needing a stiff touch
Never lost memories

Watching a jet plane
Scratching the blue sky
Heat from the concrete
September will be there

Black top, white hand
Static of the blown grass
September will be there
Lean against the siding

This is no good (no good)
I am no good (no good)
She is no shadow (shadow)
The treetops are buzzing

September will be there
My ghost will be there
The future will be there
This is not an ending

Come Back

Haunt me,
my eaves,
my cellar,
my bed.

Rattle your thin golden chain.

Whisper in the shower,
you know the blood
from the walls.

Be, in your grace,
my phantom anatomy,
a ghost envelope
in my hand.

Watch me.

Be the shadow riding my chest
holding me calm
and still.

And still.
I will tend your grave
but never fill it.

I will lay flowers by your name
so that under my tongue
the taste of sweet violets.

You,
who made a candlestick
rise and float across the room.

You,
unseen fingers
haunting my hair.

In the dead yard of our silence
the stone will only
hold one date.

Til The Checkered Flag

I am slowly polishing up
My gleaming brain
In the tented light of a garage
Staring into the middle distance
Circling hand, blank eyes
Lobes like pink chrome
Shining but still asleep.

Taking The Beach

The dead wash up on shore
As if they know no other way.
In a daydream we
Walked by them
Smelly in surreal sunlight.
You point a light-gathering device
At their glistening bulges
And hundreds of thousands of
Numbers (values, they might be called)
Become remembered by something without a soul.

I roll over in the dark
And we are having dinner on a boardwalk
Out of a paper bag
Leopard-spotted with oil.
The severed heads of bright red roses
Bob in the breakers in mimic of lotuses.
I know there are wars in the world.
This shall not be one of them.

Painful blue sky snaps into view
As the wind takes your towel.
Riding the half-shell your hair is too short
To conceal what you are offering.
And I am Guido leaning back in his chair
Clapping like a melted tail of film
In the unattended reel
God left running when they figured out sex.

Now eyelids brush a lid in the black
And our elbows waltz into pine boards.
Oxygen grows into a diminishing return
But the dreams get heavier.
Names for two people mean less and less.
Out on the sea
Life exhales a cloud of roses
For the camera only after for us.