another non-rewrite

Nothing down there but trees

He had believed he was a ghost for a long time
He would introduce himself that way
Hello, I am the ghost of Daniel Johnston

And that day, in particular
He thought he was Casper
He brought one of those comic books
With him on our flight
And there was a picture of Casper on the front
In a parachute
Floating

And Dan decided to bail out
Let’s bail out
Let’s jump out

He grabbed the controls
He took the plane away from me
He’s stronger than me
This son of mine
Has a super-strength

And we were going straight up
And then spinning straight down
Nothing down there but trees
But I’d had training on ditching in trees
I didn’t stall it
I flew it into the trees
Between two big ones

And we walked out of there with our lives
The family came to get us—got me
We put Daniel in the hospital and left him there for five months

He’d had a great time of it that day
It was an adventure, a daily adventure for him
His free-fall to earth

rewrite #16

Caput et membra

when the whole body prays
as one
the thin skin weeping
for relief
the mind urging the flesh
to hold
the eyes pleading for the mind
to remember
the spirit undergirds the whole
heavy load
and whispers in the body’s ear
“I know”

rewrite #15

November 16, 2002

Erika, do you remember Kerrville?
How we stifled our shivers all night,
each of us thinking the other
was able to sleep? Dawn came like
ink being rinsed from a rag; slowly
the sky grew gray

and in those quiet pearly
moments I rustled out of the
tent to find more firewood.

You must have finally drifted off
and while you dozed
I worked to coax the embers
back to life

The too-solid earth
trickling nearby stream
and woods thick with decaying
leaf and autumn spice meant nothing.

Fire: the whole world, our floor and mooring.
Warmth: our greatest hunger and satisfaction.

You pushed open the tent flap and
stepped into morning
as I put some water on to boil.
You shook your feet,

stretched and turned
in front of the fire’s blossoming
blaze. You held your hands up,
fingers splayed, over the flames.

rewrite #14

All I do not Know

Could the unknown be a solid, singular thing?
A giant onion or cake resting in my back yard?
I nibble away at the edges most days, timidly
Lick around the corners with a cautious tongue

Sometimes, ravenous, I throw my whole body
At it, and find that all the things I do not know
Are sturdy enough to hold me up, strong enough
To throw me up toward the sky, and with this

Change in perspective, I see that all the things
I do not know are much too large and much too
Dim to be a pearly overgrown onion, or a waxy
Wedding cake on steroids, and floating higher

And higher above all I do not know, cradled in
The safe enclosure of the small tract behind my
Childhood home, I can look down onto me, into
The depths of my groaning, undiscovered self

Day of Silence

A year ago today, one of the students I worked with died. Out of respect I took a few days off posting my poems for napowrimo—because they were about him—knowing and losing him, and because it seemed irreverent to share them. Exploitative, almost. I thought maybe time would make it less so, and that after working on them some I would post them today, but I still don’t feel quite right.

Hopefully I will write something new the next couple days.

Or be back with the great April rewrite by the 17th.

rewrite #9

Lullaby

I began, in two halves, at the end
of a ragged, rushed half hour of love
that began at the end of a day spent
laboring over draft sheets and
dirty sheets and all that has occupied
man and woman from the first
beginning, which itself began at the
end of the void that was before

So the two half-me pieces met and
I began, which meant never being
that old dichotomous not-yet creature
again, but growing and feeding and
enjoying months of soothing warmth
until what surely was the end began
and I was carried off by end-time
disasters: flood, blood, and first-born death

And delivered into the waiting
arms of my expectant mother who
promised to explain, but promised as
a hushing lullaby to end my cries,
her soft murmurs carrying me until the
very end, yet I understand nothing
of this bleeding death called birth; but
I live it daily: warm new death, old life

rewrite #8

Let this soon be over

I have this dream several times a week that I am driving through the center of town, tucked into the black folds of night. I can feel wind in my hair, even with the windows rolled up tight. All the air is pushing over my cheeks, down my neck, into my mouth, and somehow I can never push it back out. In the struggle to regain the in out in out pattern of daily life, something shifts, and all I can feel is the sear of your stare, one lane over, driving your daddy’s black Crown Vic, windows down and a smile on your face and cascades of alibis streaming from your grinning lips.

for ruler of elves

From Kanye West’s vimeo account.

rewrite #7

Acts of remembrance

sound
like water
pouring out
over
worn linoleum floors
and feel
like the slow
and steady walk
toward hunger in
the long wait
since
your last meal

Skipping the rewrite again…

But still did something poetry-related.  I contributed to this chain poem over at Read Write Poem.  They guaranteed that this counts as a napowrimo/naporewrimo activity, and they’re the experts, so… whew.

There’s a lot going on, and if I get some of my laundry done, I’ll tell you about it.

Go poetry, my friends!