In Thinking of You Today

I am led along the backstreets

of this ancient city—

I peel a feather from beneath its

history of lost steps,

trace the dissolving paths of

pigeons  in the grey sky

above the silhouettes of two children

weaving through the dark world of

crinkled trousers and scuffed shoes,

follow a leaf as it tumbles into

the feet of a man standing still in

the street, his palms open, head tilted

toward the sky, muttering in prayer.

I once became what

I saw, what I touched;

now, only sometimes –

in waking from dreams, or

when your eyes dilate in

the faded light –

am I stirred into the soft

sensation of unraveling,

of returning:

there, in some twilight, I heed the

distant tinkering, and begin

to walk down to the waterfront,

toward what you may

come to know in me. 

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The night your spirit welled and rained

The plains flashed bright, startling

Eyes drifting through the past,

Through earlier years rapidly

Hardened beneath all-knowing clouds.

Old voices thundered

This never happened

As the sky teemed with

Droves of former fathers,

Wiping away the heaven’s white,

Flaring bones, and

Pouring upon your boyhood—

Until now, you have been a stray voice,

Amiss, garbled, rambling.

One can build a house from old bones,

One can sit idle in the doorway,

Peering out onto newly drenched

And softened land.

Boy, go stand still in that field,

Bloom radiant a new body—
Go sing your new song.

On Voice

Sometimes coffee don’t make my eyes see better

Or my legs be strong enough

For this bow-legged walkin

But you know when voice glow like different kinds of light?

You know when people put words

In their palms for us all to watch how they and

Different shades of them sound when they

Headlong into one another down the furrows

That an old woman once used for the

Telling about your tomorrow years?

Lift them up here to look see how they

Twirl each other like cowboys with packed lips and

Low hats do gals with strong backs and

Stronger guts. Them all wink like stars gone

Fireflies in purling water we stew for the

Crank late night on frontier. I said I knock back cups of

Joe in a far side range,

But only to grab that calf

Half in half out by the ankles and pull

Like dreams do that yeared man hunched and rocking and

Working his beat fiddle and he only look up twice

A night so you better not miss the soft diddy bar lights

Lick and lip on his well rained eyes.

That calf’ll get strong legs soon enough too

If you just watched. And even though

Cowboys don’t talk much,

You should see the maps
Running their hands.

Alles ist auf dem Weg

Some recent scrawl...

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Pink ribs in the late sky and birds

running fingers on that body—

touched me, too, and if

sunsets are made of wet eyes

however they come about

then at least there’s seeing

going on. Try drawing the

face of the last ride home from

memory and see if the eyes you cross-

hatch aren’t a bit bigger than before.

Then, breathe on your own neck and go

to bed early so that you might rise in time 
to glimpse a new body

barely lit.

---

There’s an indefinite design of things

recognizable: of showerings and

sitting by the ways and of

lips soft with salad dressing so

let’s talk bodies about the good day gone—

of running to water and shivers

of brining foam just there and the

echoes of laughter on a wind

whistling itself and if you press

your fingers into your eyes hard enough

you can still see the stars come out
in the city.

Via Turkiye

Long Time Coming

A few in from last summer out West...