40ozmotet

[40ozmotet]

Your secret room

[40ozmotet]

Twelve Chambers of Your Heart

The chambers of your head must number more than four

In a grove of Brutalist sentinels you opened the first to me

The second unfolded beside the Darent ford

And then a silent doescream in a hidden shepherd’s hut

In the morning, the first showing of your sea green eyes

Across the barley, across the chalk our futures spilling

Yet neither hair nor oil could match your tender tending

And after nettles, after ink, our hip to hip

The ninth in your mile upon mile concern, my failing ankle

You the English Venus wading in the swooping swifts

A slanting sun upon your blesséd triumphant brow

And an urgent embrace in the cool cotton inside the thistle

In a bleak midwinter’s workday rendering me numb

Your Heathrow salt still on my cheek; there is more to come

[40ozmotet]

Joe & Sam

He was 15 when I met him. I was about ten years older. We both had much to hide, but it didn’t show on our faces that day.

In full confession, I state that I was a founder, a lead, a performer convinced that I was greater than my worth in an Evangelical Christian troop that specialized in puppets (?!), creative movement (Southern Baptists don’t dance), and the occasional short drama (we somehow legitimized ourselves by never saying ‘skit’). It was the mid 1990’s, and we were hosting a festival / competition at a rural Methodist church very close to southern Alabama. Comfortable in a pulpit, I emcee'ed the open competition. Large for his age, he sat in a pew two-thirds of the way back wedged to his diminutive beaming mother (she originally of Yazoo, Mississippi - search Jerry Clower and Zig Ziglar for reference as she shared personality and hometown with both) and cradling green felt named Wendell.

I introduced him (though knowing nothing of him) as if we had toured the Vaudeville circuit together. Nothing could be closer to the truth.

He performed as ventriloquist with Wendell serving more as a recalcitrant alter-ego to the straight-arrow Kermit the frog that was Sam (not his name, but you get the idea). That day I marveled at his immense talent even masked in his stale patter with an ugly puppet.

Fast forward: Sam’s family, which would also include a kindly if dense father and an unremarkable (painfully so) older brother would come to join the South Cinco Baptist Church (the fictitious name I gave a real church in so many poems and ravings). Sam would join our performance squad. I’d know of him closer through machinations of the cuñado (then not related) and with the company of a fourth (another story there about a tiny 4 yo girl I held as a young teen, later become friends with as we grew to adulthood, and now barely keep up with via Instagram – much more story here, but it is mostly the cuñado’s) We’d regularly meet on Saturday mornings, the four of us (two teens, two men) and write stories, scripts and improvise with puppets. The cuñado was a news station camera man then so we’d make short VHS and super-8 films, sneaking into the news station late at night to edit. The South Cinco Baptist Church tapped us to create edifying Bible-based puppet plays which we did, secretly creating parallel irreverent bits that involved purple Hector the crooked evangelist, Malcolm the bald dancing chorister, Neurotta the pink fluffy depressive who toured late night talk shows, and Janet the church pianist with an obsession for figgy pudding. Eventually the new youth minister would call upon us to write and perform Wednesday night youth services in a pseudo-Saturday Night Live format. We did. But then Sam began to fade from the picture (his older brother, David, at last seizing some limelight). And I began to drift - first to the Episcopal church and then into a second marriage and Ohio. Meanwhile, the artist, the cuñado, and I kept encouraging Sam to connect with the Muppets (he had - and still has - that kind of talent). He finally did send in an audition tape partially including our late night editings. Kevin Clash called him personally. He was invited to perform Harry Monster for Disneyworld in Tokyo. He moved to Orlando for college. He did (and still does, I think) work as a performer in MGM Studios there. Fast forward again: I’m living in Ohio with first child in the way. Sam, who rarely contacts via email, suddenly writes me about this amazing book. He goes on and on about the magic, the Vaudeville, the comic books. The thing is he never reads. Not even comic books (that’s much more the cuñado’s milieu). In past he’s only read biography of George Burns and Bob Hope. I must read this book. I check it out from the library. I make it halfway through before I have to return. I don’t comment back even though I really like what I read. Fast forward again: Since then, Sam’s father dies suddenly of a heart attack (Sam would stoically discover his father in a recliner.) The artist (sometimes Sam seemed to pine for her) grew up, married, and moved to Philadelphia. Sam would keep closer contact with the cuñado, and so he clumsily and obliquely eventually came out to cuñado and my sister. Now as I read the book Sam tried to press on me long before he openly came out, I realize he tried to do so through my reading a book recommended by someone who never reads. Like Joe, I only kind of got it.

[40ozmotet]

The Hyperliteratti

I will write in the present for this is how I must begin to own happenings of the past.

I am in the 8th grade. I am in Florida and in my third new school in three years. It is a middle school. At the behest of my first made friend in a new town, I join the Speech Club. It should be more properly called a Forensics Club as it includes debate, declamation, persuasion. But it also allows for an infrequently enrolled division of short dramatic scenes. The friend wants me for a scene. He wants to play the headmaster of an English public school interrogating a boy accused of theft. I am to be the boy.

I wish I could say it was the only time that an English public school headmaster has been played with a Cockney accent, but I know better. I am closer to authenticity, but only barely, My R’s appropriately rhotic, but my vowels are inconsistent.

We are at a tournament. Just before we are to enter the room for judgment, a girl swoops in with a floral print, drop-waisted dress (you know the kind). She throws an arm around the friend and starts talking to me as if she knows who I am. I still don’t know. Maybe she did.

For the rest of the day, she shadows us. The friend seems partially annoyed, but I detect that he does indeed like her. I am nonplussed in both the American and British senses of the word. I don’t think of her again until…

The next school year. I am at the fourth new school in four years. I pick up my first mellophone in freshman summer band. Before I know it, a clarinetist is slapping me on the back talking to me as if she knows who I am. This time I’m pretty sure she does. It turns out we are to be in all of the same classes. We are the academically elite in a low to mid tier American public school.

She is well networked. She seems to know all of those in our academic class. I only know a few. She is often surrounded by other hyperliterate girls, hence I refer to her (altering your coinage) as the alpha hyperliterate.

Sometimes I think I have a Jiminy Cricket. By 10th grade, my subversive ways are no longer a secret. I write the sneering nonsensical poem that you have read. A devotee of Dickinson and fan of Tennyson, she chides. It is now known to a few that I will calculate to the number how low I can score on a final exam and still acheive an A for the course and then score that number. She scolds. She knows my grades on essays before I do. She coaches me to put more effort into writing. She switches from clarinet to French horn and exhorts me to practice more. Aware that I only listen to Handel, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, she buys me a Phil Collins cassette to get me to open up. Her parents own a Chinese restaurant, and she invites me frequently, but only with others in the hyperliterate set.

We are at the end of junior year. A fringe hyperliterate girl (she would never be fully accepted as she was a cheerleader and had her own popular set) is to move to Spain with her military father. Before leaving, she tells me that the alpha will have a message for me in the following autumn. So in September I ask. “Nothing” I ask again, and immediately realize I should have not done so. “She said she would have gone out with you if you had ever asked her.”

I feel too guilty to be wowed. I understand what I should have in every action described two paragraphs ago. I am again caught between intense roiling emotions inside and a stoic face.

It is the final year of high school. I begin to withdraw from all of my friends for many unrelated reasons. I gain a sense that I am anathema to the hyperliterate set of girls. They now speak to me with cold indifference if at all. Various extracurricular commitments have me more days away from school than in school so I drift further away. She is accepted to Duke. I don’t tell any where I am going but word gets out from the guidance counselor’s office. This news doesn’t not help in any mending with anyone.

Then something seems to clear. One of the set asks me to prom (for divers reasons having nothing to do with any of them, I decline). I am invited to the restaurant again. At graduation, she is the valedictorian. I am seated on stage to introduce local dignitaries and others present. During her address she tells a joke. I don’t hear it because of the echo in the auditorium. I can hear nothing she says. 200 of my classmates turn their eyes to me. They begin chortling. Still not knowing why, I mug with a raised eyebrow. I learn later that she told a corny pun but used my name as the hapless patient of a psychologist. She is over me now.

I see her one more time. It is 1989. We are all home in Pensacola on spring break from college. It is a Saturday at the beach with the hyperliterate set. She brings a boyfriend from college. They are all trying on adulthood. I am trying on normalcy. It is a happy day. As happy as I had with them. I don’t see any of them again until…

In 1995, I get a phone call from the hyperliterate girl that asked me to the prom. The alpha has died in her sleep of unknown causes. We learn later she had a liver condition of which she was unaware. The caller wants to know if I want to ride up to the funeral in North Carolina. I cannot go for reasons I still regret.

It still affects me. A couple of years later, I write a poem. It is in a binder upstairs.

[40ozmotet]

As Lily Briscoe Sat Up in Bed

As Lily Briscoe sat up in bed, she was returned to a place she once knew many years before. She knew the sun through the windows, the scent of the air, the feel of those bed linens. She wondered what she'd find in a family she once knew. There was joy powdered lightly with apprehension. There was dark roasted familiarity tempered with a foreign cream. So I sat up in a loft in a town I once knew. The angle of the sun, the perfect tableau of sky. The sound of buses and of an undefinable gait of every passerby. I, too, sat up in joy I dared not acknowledge, and I sat up in a heart flutter. I was to come face to face with someone I've loved deeply for so long. There was a swim, a bus pass to purchase, a currency to relearn. There was business. After all, there were hours. Hours I couldn't count. And still, I alit in the village center hours and hours early. I ordered my custom coffee using uncustomarily long phrasage. I fidgeted with a book. I signaled knowing I couldn't be more than a hundred yards from you. When I walked beneath your window, I knew I had, but I hadn't dreamt you'd be looking. I flew. I froze. I walked aimlessly and got lost in a grocery store, the very sort of place with which I'm most familiar. I paced the same crooked lanes over and over looking for a storage card for something I couldn't recall. I looked at the bees in the churchyard and considered offering my nervous energy to their industry. I parked on a bench and read the same page sixty-two times. I glanced to my left one hundred eighty-three times. The one time I didn't, I heard a stride and a voice. I never heard the words, but the voice reached the core in me I couldn't reach myself at that moment if I tried. There were kind old women and lacquered pews, light through an array of beautiful saints faded by the same material that had stiffened upper lips. There was peeling paint and the tree of Jesse. And there was the scent. The half scent. Maybe the intuitive scent of the one I love. There was my heart shredding my shirt, my breath running circles unable to pass my throat. You bought lunch. I opted for a brick of melted cheese and breaded butter. My hand didn't ask me. It suddenly had yours, and I feared the intensity of my feeling leaked through my grasp. I stiffened. I tried to hold something within. Not to overwhelm. Lighten your grip, man. Your wrist. Your breath beneath your buttons halting, but your voice as cool as a philosopher. I reveled. I dared the hour not to change. But then we walked back towards your office as I willed myself to try speech. You stopped suddenly. I still didn't know exactly to which window you'd go back behind. You turned. You embraced. I softened. I breathed. I let you go, but only barely. You were lost in the crowd, but I'd hold you again. I knew it. I walked to Poundland and bought some cutlery. I glowed in the cashier offering all of my currency and letting her sort it out. When I sat up in bed that morning, like Lily Briscoe, I had a foretaste of all to come that day.

[40ozmotet]

If you can go to Tumbling Bay

If you can go to Tumbling Bay, do Walk the green and feel my cardinal points Tell me that we'll again shed our clothes and swim there If your schedule allows, please stop there Order tea and smile — Shout inside, "I'm swimming in the Thames!" Know that the finest sight I ever saw Was your bare body shivering back into your clothes If you can make your way from Botley Count each blade of grass as daisy petals Each one saying only, "He loves me!" If you can go to Tumbling Bay Take me with you Touch the tarmac my tears nearly did as I walked away I want to hear your voice I want to share every river with you

[40ozmotet]

Kyrielle

From stir to stretch, we hold the fray, All dragons and hats and strings and cans Every seventh step is our dancing day On our knees with the bread of your hands. Each tendered stitch, every written word — Each leavened loaf, our pots and pans — Feasts of love for the speckled bird From our knees with the bread of your hands. The golden calf become brown leather, Our respite from the day's demands. Let's entwine our limbs together And drop to our knees with the bread of your hands. Spread the quilt and light the candle. In open windows, at every chance, Let's share our scars, slip off our sandals And get on our knees with the bread of your hands.

[40ozmotet]

Tonight You Sleep in Bristol

Tonight you sleep in Bristol, And there, too, I lie. Tonight you heard my bells, And I your answering sigh. Tonight I heard my lover's voice, And tomorrow I'll jump the fence. Tonight our souls will mingle, As will our limbs in Ourense.

[40ozmotet]

Somewhere in the interminable bad puns and incestuous doling of lucite keepsakes, the chair to my right wasn't empty. I saw you there as real as I felt your hand in my lap. And it was as tender as any of the highs, any of the lows we've shared. It was as if, still connected, we each followed the preoccupations of our waiting tomorrows, all dragons and hats and school runs. It was as if we'd each stand and turn to those on either side: "It was nice to meet you. Goodnight." It was as if we'd then walk together back through the hotel lobby to the same car, drive to the same house, and get in the same bed. And there was nothing more I wanted.

[40ozmotet]

Throbbing Still

and I’m seated on a bench trying to pretend I’m reading, stealing glances north

and then you’re suddenly there all spoken words and a paperback I haven’t heard, and I ask you say, and I still haven’t heard

and then we are as close as close can be not touching, but touching more than if we were touching

I say that you smell magnificent but I think I meant that you are magnificent

[40ozmotet]

Notes from a redeye

The primitive consciously choreographed Like some plastic hacienda The coyote on cue And this was the day they drained the beach Yellow peligro placards shading the pump Set to rearrange the elements. Conflagrations of configurations LCD pop culture masquerades Whirling as if they were something More than spinning fruit. The dazed spending their last breaths Convinced they've crossed the Jordan. And somewhere between The orange-cranberry muffin Bigger than my heart And the pale blue paradise One stroke too short Cut from the desert rock I had the most real morning of my half life. A real better than dreams. Locked eye to eye with you. 1-March-2016

[40ozmotet]

From here to Dubai

The morning draped as a pall, Thick and weary with its own silence, Yet, bare limbed she be The weeping cherry dancing From Spanish fourth just the other side Of the glass, and right now it doesn't feel Like a half a world away. 26 December 2015

[40ozmotet]

Friday Streams

and God said ‘let’s mix their eyes together to make an ocean between them. let’s let them walk on water’

and so green met blue, and unprekown depths surged. unseen clouds summoned wind and rain. tempests in the blood — the only calm in the eye of the lung a breathless still

from the meeting faulted floors, a swelling of magma, through mantle and crust, draws the New World back to England, the fallen back to the firmament, life back to her lover, the arching back to the weight

she kissed the glass and pressed to end the call. her name leapt from his core, for one day she won’t have to…

[40ozmotet]

As you stirred and felt my hands

As you stirred and felt my hands, I sat on a clogged freeway. You had a tough evening, And I had one to come. As you stirred and felt my hands, The horns and hoarse voice. Replacement double negatives. I can't hardly wait. As you stirred and felt my hands, Two swirling flocks of blackbirds Swooped against Mt. Storm, And in fleeting moments, O they flew as one.

[40ozmotet]

In our syncopated comings and goings, In our passings on the stairwell, An urgency to taste your breath takes hold.

In our dirty dish rag churning and wringing, In our bitter bitten tongues, A sharing of salt and yeast leavens love.

In our tender screaming thumbs, In our silent pounding gazes, A covering desire as red as chalk swells.

In the cotton ordained nightly rite, In the settling subtle kiss, A psalm of heart and hearth arises.

Darling, we don’t have forever. Yet sometimes, I’m certain we already have.

[40ozmotet]

Thanksgiving

How do I tell you about the unheated room in which I slept year after year? It was the only unheated room in a small farmhouse and given to me as I was always too hot in the heated rooms.

How do I tell you about Idaho? Weiser is a small town in the Snake River. The grass is always brown, yet those flats were fertile enough to fill truck after truck of sugar beets motoring down the narrow two lane outside of the window from the room in which I slept.

How do I tell you about my aunt’s painting? It was rudimentary yet skillful. Two deer stood in the snow outside of a glowing chapel. I adored it, and it hung in that unheated room which I now dream we share.

How do I tell you how Roy Rogers serenaded our cooking? It was that or Scotland the Brave even though we were a half a world and many generations away from that unknown country though the regimented tea times told us otherwise.

How do I tell you about the volumes of Kipling and Zane Grey that crowded the shelves and the library copies of Presbyterian sermons poured over by a woman in a lemon yellow pant suit. I read the Kipling and the back issues of National Geographic as if they were holy scripture.

How do I tell you that I’m sure I could find the traces of the scent of that house in your hair for we are like trees born of the same roots? How do I tell you we share blood and breath and bone? How do I tell you there is no end to the ways I love you?

[40ozmotet]

Were we to bury swiftly stinging eyes in necks, Were we to shed each our brew of brine, Were the heaving sobs within gain sudden parole, Love's commingling would turn flesh's water into wine. Were we to daily meet fingertips to whitened knuckle, Were we to make a host of each discarded crust, Were we to beat our breasts against the God of Job, Love's chafe separating winds would bring us dust to dust. Let's build a fire, let's fetch the water, and every tear we shed, Waters prayers for our dear children, grows roses in our bed.