Scoplaw

Poem

My Sister of Dust and Mortars

I spend a day saying your name without

saying it. I arrange some keepsakes on a shelf.

Stone. Pressed flower. Photograph.

Photograph. Pressed flower. Stone.

Each a phoneme to build You-In-Absence.

As though I could hold something of you

in the pattern of my habits, by wearing

the shoes you favored, keeping

a dusty bottle of your favorite wine.

 

Poem

A trellis of legs and sheets,

the sunlight green through leaves

falling across us. It takes courage

to say no more than:

there’s little point, rushing

off to save the world. People work

themselves into and out of trouble,

agreements are made, broken,

while I live in the bounds of eyelash

and breath and half-sleep – the place

into which all things ground.

And in grounding, grow. 

 

Difficult to speak from such

silence, with the day’s petty weights

pendant.  I want to understand the phrases

that rise in me, to have grand design,

to know my work in the world

not occluded. Or just have the illusion

that things end cleanly,

do not have to be struck, struck

clean of myself and my loves. 

 

Her breath threads across my neck,

pooling itself in the hollow

of my throat, a poem into which is let

everything but doubt and frustration,

across which moves that blur

of evocation, of detail. 

 

She hums a line from an old love song

and bites my shoulder.

 

Poem

Summer

When in pain it is easy to praise, in pauses,

easy to praise even the uncritical ants which labor

under the shadow of grass, tree, myself,

here in the courtyard of my old elementary school.

The small garden, the slab of shale

which bears the shrunken tread of dinosaurs,

which, as a schoolchild, I measured

in finger-widths, hoping some still lived,

in the world unmapped, as we hope as children,

before the consciousness

of our body’s scale, before we fill our skin

entire, when we could endure

without knowing we were tested.

Poem

Murmur

I have left our country, closed
the border gate behind me,
and thrown the key back over.
Except the country was an open city,
from which I was repeatedly banished,
and asked not to leave,
and the key was a small house
with a garden. Or a handful
of solid acts – letters, trips
to distant cities, your love for other men –
fogged by intention.   I spent a set of seasons
writing it on myself, but now the story slowly
leaches from my skin, episodes blurring
into each other, small constellations
colliding. I still make out phrases
in the webbing of my fingers,
could-have-done-better
ought-to-have-(something?)ed
but even in bright sunlight I am unsure.
A woman long on her own journey
pauses, pulls her tangled hair aside,
and through my cloudy skin,
listens to what I cannot hear,
the muddy murmur of my heart.
She’s no expert, and I didn’t ask,
but she thinks it’s innocent. 

Poem

After the Plea

As the marshal orders him against the wall,
cuts the new laces from his shoes,
he's near-choking over his rage at wrongs,
and would speak, except everyone's watching,
perhaps with rawer deals.  He's done. 
No going back - to any moment of choice,
to the mouth of the alley, or further,
to that which was chosen for
him, marked by a growth-stretched scar
on his right brow, the tremor in his speech,
the slightness of his anger. Again,
he's stood waiting for the sentence,
for a last minute mercy, built on the hope
that these powers know, actually know
him.  And could do no better themselves. 
Again, he's gotten exactly what he's asked for
though myself - his mouth, who will soon pass
ephemeral as agency through these doors
into the warm sunlight of a gorgeous afternoon.
I know how it works, he snaps, and softens
because, after all, he's gotten
exactly what he asked for,
what he, fists clenched, had been made
to so-want an hour ago.  Oh, may you not
be blinded, bent or broken by these
least of your victories.

 

Poem

S.

I dreamt you alive, and today
to name these (silences?) inside myself -
dangerous.  Better to glide, silent
though my last days in the floundering capital,
past the loud parties of the insulated,
and not to wonder.  Is it wonder, 
this complex knot of my heart? Is that
what's left, absent name, shape,
this place you never came to,
now empty as anywhere else? 
Yeah, it's just like you said, back when
I kissed your neck by the ocean, "you're nice,
but somebody's got a date with a coffin."

Poem

I am filled
by confessions so common,
no one would wish
to hear them.  I have used
my loneliness as a lever
against myself. Across the table
a woman shakes out her hair,
looks elsewhere.   

Poem

Sleep

Draw bolt across door,
blinds against sight. Call
darkness into each room,
light by light by light put out,
as though you wiped names
from a slate, named this place
as your own – peace until dawn.

 

Poem

This Place Where You Are Not

The routines of my day
ground into a dozen half
snapped threads.  Reach
for the phone, and stop
short.  Save half of dinner,
then eat all ten minutes later.
Replace on the shelf, a book
you'd like.  Let slip
some anecdote, image,
story which once I'd save, say,
the one about the mouse
who in summer lazed
as others labored,
who, midwinter, warmed
those frozen others with
the warmth of words.

I must learn to be unready. 

   

Finger on the Play Button

Well, I’ve had a relaxing few hours.  In another life, they’d have counted as life-maintenance-work – i.e., the stuff you gotta do to keep on going.  Dishes, laundry, shopping, bills, those sorts of things. But here in law student land, those become absolute pleasures; you have a physical task to do, you do it, it’s done. 

This is very unlike most elements of my current life, where it’s hard to say whether you’re “completing” something.  Even if there’s some kind of deadline (which is usually mutable), in the time leading up to the deadline you can always do more, prep better (but not over-prep), and then, once the deadline passes, you wait a heck of a long time (usually) to find out what the result is, and/or what the *ultimate* disposition of any legal matter will be.  Sometimes sentencing is only the beginning. 

Law school parallels this as well.  Prep for the class, there’s always more, until the exam is done, after which you’re already deep in other classes before you find out how you did. 

It’s not an environment that allows for easy self-assessment, in that it’s sort of like juggling.  You just concentrate on the next toss, with some idea of what’s coming up.  But the next toss must be done before anything else.  While you’re in that cycle, you’re not spending a lot of time thinking about your last toss – better or worse, it’s done.

Thus, it’s so nice to break out of LS mode and simply do small things and have them go away.  The jacket is sewn, the letter to a friend is sent, the bike tuned, the clothes washed.  Not that there won’t be letters and jackets and bikes and dirty clothes in the future, but I don’t have to wait and find out about the result of my actions.  They’re right here, I enjoy them right now.

I realize this must seem like an odd thing to blog about, but, well, there you have it.

**

At some point last night I got in touch with an old friend, Thinks Before She Speaks, and we did some chilling, some thinking, and some speaking.  She gave, as always, good advice.  Sometimes I worry that I’m too harsh in my assessment of things, so when getting advice, it’s nice to be able to tell your adviser a version of something that’s favored against whatever position you’re actually taking (i.e., you tell the story in a way that exaggerates your biases while minimizing others’ culpability) and then still have someone you respect find that yeah, your “harsh” assessment isn’t so harsh after all.

Is that even a sentence?  I wonder.  But not too deeply.

We now have a pirogue date sometime in the near future.  Her old friend (the Artillery Woman) ‘s mother sent a batch.  So I’ll be drawing on all my western European skills to come up with good preparation ideas. 

**

My apt. has been hopping lately, and it’s caused me to reflect that I’ve now spent the majority of my adult life in non-owned housing (and if we count mortgages as “not owned,” then the amount of time living in owned places is 0). 

The number of places I’ve lived is still greater than the number of years I’ve been doing this (i.e., the average amount of time I’ll spend in a given place is still less than one calendar year.)  A well-off ex of mine used to give me shit about selling off my library, but when you live like this, there’s not much choice. 

Apt. living has an odd dynamic to it.  You’re intimately aware of your neighbors, but often do not know them at all.   I wrote something about it a few year (7) back, and thought I’d repost it, with some small revisions. 

When reading this one aloud, it’s easy to, by inflection, indicate that the first line of he poem means something like - the postcard has “The weather’s fine here,” written on it, and it’s signed “Upstairs.”

The Postcard Pinned to my Door Reads:

The weather's fine here.
– Upstairs.

Now that it's spring, I haven't heard the pipes clang
as you whap your sole against your radiator's regulator,
nor have I heard your evening curses, percussion
of implements in mixing bowls and the crescendo
of pans clattering into your sink
as yet another omelet goes awry.
In fact, it's been rather quiet lately, and I wonder
if your excitable dog is dead, kenneled
or has been educated.

Its been weeks since I've abandoned playing The Clash
at full volume over his yapping, and even then,
five minutes later, I'd just hear The Dead Milkmen blaring back.

How is it we've never met?

I've often thought you might be the blonde
with the terrier, whom I saw one day reading Keats
in the laundry room, and for that alone, never
called management, even during your midnight
Valentine's Day bash – all those hard paired heels clacking. . .
though I suppose, in an odd twist,
you could be the matron with the poodle.

Why are you home alone recently,
always by six, in for the night?

I flip the postcard;  a picture of Roman storied-apartments
recently excavated from under a volcano's flow.
Bright frescoes, some ledges, little clutter.
Plaster cast from an ash hollow, a gecko drapes
his underbelly over a pear in a wicker basket.
In the corner, a ladder leads up, out of the photo.

It's so quiet.  What message are you sending?