Bent and Beat

by an address

a year

a street just distinct enough in my memory

that perhaps i recall every other house

right at that point where mostly things are foggy at best

but certain other things are clear and accessible

as if i am the ghost

staring over those distant moment and observing

so close to it that to the keen eye

i am visible

though fading in and out only at their periphery

still tangible

perhaps in their minds i am a time traveler

come back to observe some moment of great historical importance

of which the are somehow part

when i am but merely a specter feeding upon the scent of yesterday

afraid of the next world

so i tarry in the last

just a few days are all you need

to carry you through

if they are good days

and they shine with just the right light

in your memory

the dunes that buried cities, collapsed civilizations?

a sea of sand that drifted and piled

making everything exotic and foreign

so strange and beautiful they had to create a new language

to describe it all.

along with the language rose cultures and religions

that paralleled those interred beneath the dunes.

for most of a summer the sand blew in

blasting away the grey and damp dark of the city

etching new meaning into that which remained.

make for poor charts

to set course of a ship already in threatening waters

and

castaways make for poor sailors

bent toward solitude and madness

making better hermits than shipmates

a letter in a bottle means nothing

once you are found

but the weather never suits it

it erases familiarity

and evokes dreams more than nostalgia

it gives new meaning to old songs

the past is reduced to ashes

simply by freezing fog and hoarfrost

we have been long here in this hazy world above

the brown eastern expanse

and the green western valley

our moods determined by the rising and falling (age) of the clouds

the air has grown stagnant

no lateral motion

only up and down

winter has me now

in her cascade cold grips

the sterility of ice, the chill of logic

frozen

like the past

like the pines spiraling the butte

biding time until the thaw

between genius and love

it is vanity and addiction trying to be

something grand that hides in his being

showing its face just enough to tease him onward

coming close only in his youth

and after his dying days

we had moved southward

my step father told me one late friday night, well after dark we were going to get a tree. we slipped out into the darkness with an army surplus store hatchet, a flashlight, and i'm sure some beer. we took his beat up old chevy truck, rotting wooden bed and stolen stop sign for a passenger side floorboard, out of town and turned off along the farm roads past the covered bridge. in the snow, under the darkness we found a tree and cut it down, like cavemen proud of the hunt. mom said it was hideous, short and a huge bare spot that somehow managed to girdle the entire tree not to mention the bird's nests.

my stepfather and mother were a good decade older than i am now so how can i fault them for having bad habits that i still possess, well past their age at the time? my point is, i've been broke enough now, crazy and reckless enough to slam a few beers and do a couple of huge bong rips and head out into the dark night to steal a christmas tree and save the money for presents and such. so i say, bravo. it was a sort of rite of passage and bonding i guess.

that christmas eve i was sleepless, the small fake christmas tree adorned with the ornaments of my childhood, my entire live, lit up the fernfrost on the window. i lay in bed reading an english version of Le Morte de'Arthur having discovered my new friend the public library that same year. i knew enough to read and understand the text but still young enough to believe it could be history, still young enough to check the window for Santa and mistake the wind in the powerlines as bells. i rush from the sill to bed, fall asleep reading.

it is dark as i wake, waiting impatiently as my mom stalls me, coffee brewing and dad smoking a quick bowl in the kitchen, tossing the milk and cookies her forgot last night save for one he manages to eat half of, stilldrunk and getting higher. he packs one last toke as he pours coffee and calls us to the living room. they both smoke cigarettes as i open presents, and they a few themselves. the soundtrack is his new Queen album.

i recall a special and rare troop carrier with stilted recorded voices that were the height of technology for toys and mix and match plates that one used to make etchings of monsters. so much more, everything and more.

just before the sun broke, we loaded the clunker trunk and headed north toward the city, the road snowy and few cars and no trucks passing. about twenty miles short, the truck stalls and dies, unrepaired and maintained for lack of funds due to star wars toys and books they don't understand. mom and i wrap in blankets. we always carried blankets in cold weather, a sign of the times and our social class i guess. he walks through the snow, wind, and freezing air to a gas station and phones my mother's stepdad who arrives at the truck only moments after my own stepfather returns from his brisk hike.

the snow is gone and forgotten here

only the red cinder remains, crackling under feet and tire studs

while back at home

it piles up with no sign of stopping

what to wish for then?

what to bemoan, the lack or distance?

in a time of the heart i listen only to my mind

not by choice as much as it is simply the way the winds blow

through the valleys and passes

twisting around the mountains and growing more unfamiliar

as they grow more distant from their source

though their force is rarely diminished

the faces in my house twinkle lately like the lights hung on the houses

while i wonder about trees and symbols

books and unfallen snow

the smoke in my periphery is a ghost

it fools me more than once

while a voice from yesterday sings without a trace of nostalgia

fresh and new and only recognizable by its tone

sometimes we are poets

others we are reporters

but mostly only typists