that harvard kid

WHAT CHILDREN DREAM

Last night I dreamed of an old

schoolroom. A wasteland,

and students edged into view

laughing and not laughing;

And one holds a bag

full of lily white powder.

A fight – a lunge – a yell.

I know what will happen.

The bag tears the room quiets.

I walk through and

I breathe it in.

And I know what it is.

I like it and I do not like it.

My mind clears. It is blue and

white, like orgasm and nirvana;

and it lies to me.

What is this feeling?

Even in my dream,

I question knowing this,

but I know what must happen

so that I can know this.

THOSE PEOPLE, 1.

People die everyday. They wither in their lowly graves as people whistle to music above them.

They like it and they like it.

THOSE PEOPLE, 2.

The dead care more for special interests:

Like being proud, burnt cloth and celebrating tyranny.

That is what wisdom death happened to afford them.

Me, I live, unwise and trampling atop these honorable graves. For I have yet to appreciate what pleasure there is in pain,

What freedom lives in the surrender of liberty.

The young in me vows never to learn.

The old know better.

Wanderer

The peaks lay with valleys in between
Where the daughters are thrown at night,
Thinner blood on the mortal scale
Hollow bones and a hollow life.

Faded

Camera lens, find me:
See my hairless skin, my soul
Touch upon my back,
With a hard flash.
The obscurities in focus,
A bargain model.

answers shortly thereafter

Frozen, in dim curtain time
Pale and black we wait, we pray
For company, in the parlor
A wrinkled toddler whines, aged
Whispers and breathing, mildly
Because death is among us,
Raspy and foreign.

Piano Keys

Quietly, we turn, we dance
To drown ourselves in a room so full of others,
I am blue, the saint of doting mothers,
For a porcelain world I could not see
So pale and wistfully passing
Cast to appeal, things on the side,
Listen to children because they have
Nothing sinking, only suffered cries.

Blood is red like love.

Untitled #5

And if Mary, you’re afraid,

Come home.

A summer’s stone throw,

Strikes me in the face - romance,

A woman’s appall, man’s appeal,

Illegitimacy and daring, run run deep,

Deep into the caves of our sinewy core,

And Mary, if it strikes you badly,

Come home.

—-

Untitled #6

Dreams, postmodern

Debts, quite real,

God indifferent,

A life sans zeal.

Love you too mom.

—-

Untitled #7

Did I become too much? Too much a fiend?

A student dancer, a striking scene,

Sigh, haven’t you realized?

I, girl, am none of these things.

—-

Untitled #8

Noises! A cry from a cell!

And she takes that call, anyway in the middle of lecture,

And the teacher, oh he’ll love this,

He laughs at her and drags her onstage,

And still oblivious she presses her ear to the phone,

And we all laugh and jeer and still she hears,

Until we and she are done and she returns to her seat.

From which she never came back.

—-

Untitled #9

All alone, a bone colored rose

Blends with the ground-up ice.

Left there by some wintered bride,

Some human being that could not embrace

That false solace brought by thoughts material.

—-

Untitled #10

You, integrate my hearts. Try.

The drippy numbers unkindly slip on by,

Making mistakes and the eraser has

already burned through my page.

—-

Untitled #11

Angry thoughts, sin, and tables Turned.

Altruism incarnate, God’s own flesh,

Did himself sin by his own admission,

And it makes him all the more human, see

I understand Him a fair bit more,

When I see some of God in me.

Itio 

Cherished function, unknown variance,

Oh cellophane ripple and velvet fold,

Unbridled senescence and decaying adolescence,

Wet, sinewy dawn.

A character scorned, though through thinness passing

Through and through a simplicity:

Like the rules that govern our favorite colors,

Or those that create our portentous histories

Simple, like a gleam too soon in a baby’s eye.

The challenge, I suppose, is not by hands two’s creation

Or by minds some imperfect invention,

Instead to accept the fate of billions,

Whirling atoms becoming and unbecoming

For a brief moment to think! to render what dreams

We may so profess as our own. And it is not some lofty feat.

So soon we post upon the walls, having suffered the same scorn,

Taking photographs in these same places ..

To what if these spinnings are merely vapor,

They are to me, my complex. The question abridged

Is this, to pacify the mind’s fears of the mind’s fate.

There - there! listen! hear the wars and cannon-shot,

The quiet dagger spilt into a back, or that pistol fired,

Pumice-lidded eyes and crowny smiles, unsuspecting.

Terrible is the chorus posthumous, 

Peaceful are the sorrows of the survivors with whom rest

Still more years to study. Still I find myself edging closer:

In water, there! lies the wintered answer I now muse upon.

Something in the way we might be one.

yes, you 

the ice begins to fall apart,

ellis island stories unlock

girls pressed out copy-made,

this one taking more time

the glass held drops shatters

your paperback novel surprises

children cobbled dramatic ways

this child less contrived

the reflection held dear

this homeless emotion

a shameless grace

this girl a city underworld

(the dreams hide me inside)

The Lover Writer

I am the lover writer
I write the poems that unlock hearts.
I can fold my kiss-words to taste like thoughts,
Their shrill chorus is a first-date’s perfume.
Where I dip my pen I melt the ice-
My papers could handle this waltz.

And there we begin to see,
That behind locked doors,
The story of a lover writer,
Is an untold tragedy.

Chasing

They came with machete justice,
Fingers, children, the soft parts of my face,
Knives and a grimace that hallows death himself,
Forty three then ninety four and on, races
Lives as the lives weigh less,
And less, and less.
Until the blood runs dry.

China

A piece of china for your shelf, girl
Every time its broken you glue it back together
Until it is only polymers and dust.

Stir up a quiet river, ripples to the girl
Take a hand and don’t give it back all your life
Palms sweaty and still calloused.

She’s some song for somebody else,
Stitches in a doll alone in Batelle,
The woods lead somehow to Rome,
Follow the frozen vines into the cold,
I could not find it,
Maybe she could hide it,
Whatever the case, girl,
I need to find you.

Let your feet sink into the sand, girl
Toss a few stones until the river throws some back
Was it love, the stones so smooth.

She’s some song for somebody else,
Playing the piano alone in Batelle,
The road might take me home,
Like the dreams I have when I’m out in the cold,
I could not find it
Maybe she couldn’t,
Whatever the stakes, girl,
I need to find you.

The stones so smooth,
As they skipped across you

Untitled No. 3

I become Russian winter
When the children fall
As the incarnations of desire
Migrate to me to rock and roll
Despite the ashes settling by the way

Firmament

We are in a movie and your life is the plot
I am merely scenery, a member of the cast
As an extra turns to you and asks,
Why has winter gotten colder
And why don’t the stars shine anymore,
You look up and its my cue,
And I look like I’m supposed to.

Winter, Winter

This slant of light, oppressive-
Books too, align to feed upon the soul
Blessing wives who run out as
Respect’s icy mistress suddenly seeks love.
While some will don inky cloaks, and others
Bury their ineptitude amidst fellow prisoners,
They cannot bear the weight,
While huddled are your masses
They cannot bear the weight
As some break free to find a fire

Winter, Winter [Same thoughts, different writing / style]

While under the weight of winter
And reading some disarming books,
I thought about those who survive despite the bitter cold.
What clothes they hid themselves in,
What escapes they seek,
What efforts they make to huddle together,
(including making families),
And I thought that they alone,
These individuals amongst many,
Could not bear the task.
We cannot depend on them for the solution,
Because once they have found it they no longer bear the weight,
They become as fire,
Which leaves us confused, for which of the many men
Who appears so thawed, so convincingly content
Is not false like the others?

[In a Car]

My vision blurs as your distant words echo on,
My face did realize far before I knew, that this was over,
And you closed the door, our future children waving,
Disappearing into the crack of a light,
Like a wish stored as a dream never remembered.

My heart has a hand with which it reaches to grab you,
My mind has a way to stop these things
And yes, you’re right with the door,
Today it hardly matters.

My driving’s skewed as the road curves strangely,
White lights ahead flash and confuse me,
I can see that foreign creature comforting you,
Inside a car that likely as not is coming at me,
Today it hardly matters.

[Photograph]

Inside a picture there is a handsome man somebody captured,
Looking at it I peer into myself,
Oh, how pretty I may one day be.

[Voices, Children]

Softer the voices cry telling us not to separate,
More quietly they chant about fidelity,
Doubt springs quietly to drown them,
The voices themselves choking children
Not knowing how to swim.

like a dawn that turns off the lights

I was writing a page in a book that would never be read
Only to think (or dream) that you or me might
Have fallen in love that night on my bed..
We talked for hours about our problems
Trying to forget them through a glass of wine.

My diary reads something about how we
Debated the existence of destiny, and that you won.
I wonder what I meant when I said that
All of us die watching a movie or reading a book,
Because that night I felt so alive,
I canceled a flight and we made love.

Five more minutes of insistent speak,
She crumbles and yells, yes I’m listening,
She’s nameless anticipating my casual refusal
Because while I’m not much to look at,
I’ve been there before, Tom,
And I’ve written too much about Anna.

[ A Salted Sea ]

The stones we throw into the air come down on our heads
Splitting us open, a make-believe sea
Of blood and misery, let’s not make this worse
By binding ourselves, girl, this is no story for the children
Oh, bitter companion, don’t quote me a line
Too many tries, too many flexible lies …
Time will come and pardon you surely
Imagine what you might have done
If you could have loved, or if I’d gotten lost
A blind animal captured and struck.

Born to see everything as love, you were a girl
Promising what lives beyond our reach,
Bury your head under your shroud,
Keep those eyes averted because
The world does not give in for a dime
Some fraction of life, this is a last kiss girl,
Go forth through the land and be someone’s bride

[ Throw Stones ]

I’m only an animal crawling through the world
I don’t pretend to love anymore, such a lie, you see
Should not be made so arbitrarily

[ On my small wooden craft ]

i could not, for all the seas around me, find you
until of course, it was too late

[ Intro to Social Analysis ]

I was a dream and you were a part of me,
And when you left, there was nothing
And I could not help but wake up.

[ Like grains of sand ]

I was once capable of writing
And writing well.

It seems I have lost my skill
And instead turned to age,
To watch talent erode
And love aglow
Such is the suffering
Of the once-talented.

A beautiful self-pitying lament,
Just to moan about
The loss of what I’d got
A cry about being talented.

[ a petal dancer ]

A petal falls to die
Wither, crumple like me,
An impression upon a day
To pass under your sight
Quietly like a depression
Or a burdened girl’s lies
That I might paint lavender
If I only cared as much,
While that petal turns to the ground,
To dance or cry upon her beaten shore,
Blossomed once.

The wet, red canvas

I paint with who I am
And this is my art.

-

In ways that we do

Why must we kill
In all the ways we do
Is it some social commentary
To participate in the human hunt,
And does a death fulfill a life
In ways unnoticeably subtle
Submerged or tied up with a gun,
Are you more for the kill, my friend,
Have you become something I am not?

-

Respect

I can feel my tense terse breath hollow out the room,
I can see that I and she and they are all ready to go home,
Yet we sit and we stare - they pretend like they care,
As we express our love for ourselves;
Not that I challenge the feat of watching over the deceased,
As we stir in our seats, haven’t we cried enough for today?
Maybe I don’t understand - haven’t we loved this man

Still quiet sheets turn over to reveal hollowed cheeks,
A distressing scene unfolds over the minds of the living
We are all listening for the moment he goes
We’ve tried to prove ourselves
And is it out of love that we never give up
Or is it because these prayers are gifts to ourselves.

-

To What it Was

We parted ways with a kiss goodnight,
So I turned to write
Outside, with the flicker of her father’s hospital room light
I watched on from inside myself
Knowing that dying has to do with all the living,
Seeing the thousands tremble in the moments of faith,
All of them in earnest though dying all - asleep and awake.

“You don’t know what it means to die”
Words like that pierce through my skin
Like an angel that comes to take you away
She can break you as she’s sleeping,
She’s sleeping

I watched from the opposite end
Crying into the clouds of different things,
Not God or religion though the devil be in him,
Into the darkest rooms of the suffered and suffering,
For the mourners in black already, watch them,
Spilling rounds of the darkest coffee;
What is death but a friend who exposes our weaknesses
Or another chance to assess how we might deal with him.
We the dying walk on towards this room
Paying respect (an investment) only to comfort ourselves,
We strike a deal with the night to save us not him.

“You don’t understand” - fill in the blank,
A few words when she wakes up to see him
Quietly they commiserate as I vanish from existence
She can break you as she’s weeping
She’s weeping

And in the room there is nothing but silence
As death comes closer in all of us
As we so gently surround him.

-

Untitled No.2

I propose we find a shooting star tonight
even if it takes the rest of our lives

You were a splinter in my mind that I could not retrieve

I gave my heart away
To the first girl I met,
I was capable of better women
And she, better men.

We sang like angels
In the flower-filled garden,
We were lovers yet
Under this illusion, dead.

To pretend – to hope,
Dance, wed, and dream,
To spill away better things
Drink up, my dear –ine.

You gave me back
My heart, broken
You thought it
Like a gift, friend
And had you not wished for better,
We’d’ve settled to the end.

Every girl since
Is a repetition of the dream,
Where every girl is
A flower-filled disease.

One Winter’s Afternoon

I remember a girl from years ago,
She ran away with me to the winter,
And thought it nothing much at all,

She kept me warm at her expense,
But when I went to get her coffee,
The old girl had changed, someone had left.

She drank from the coffee, bitter and hurt,
Embracing the coldness of a winter alone,
My promises fell on cold eyes once more,

So I slipped and I fell, we both laughed,
She took to her feet, coffee in hand,
Crying and frustrated with my errors, I knew,

Thought her too disappointed to keep,
Too much love, and I so believed neither of us could leave,
But she walked out, it was Christmas Eve.

I ran outside to comfort her in the snow,
Where she knelt beside winter, crying alone,
And the bitter taste had gone, but the comfort too was lost,

So maybe my arms warmed her,
Or perhaps it was the drink,
But I’d like to think that she didn’t need anything but me.

Still, I’d failed so many times before,
She couldn’t count on me (or so I thought),
And that was why she had to leave,

But to every winter there is a spring,
So she forgot untracked debts still lingering,

And when I brought my girl some more coffee,
She sat down and smiled forever at me.

Distance

Spill from me
The soul of you;
Oh dying stare
As your children
Leave your side,
What drinks you drink,
What things you think,
And what maturity,
As your children leave,
You alone concede,
Alone, alone, alone,
Again, you say, to sleep.

.

Inside

In her pinkish pool,
Amanda looked more alive than ever
And in her mother’s face was death,
Her father (so proud) did not cry,
As if he’d seen it all before,

So strange the luxury,
Of living between the here and there,
And in a way we all are dead,
Her parents living on this side
Of the dark, dark door.

.

For What Life Might Be

The light leaves the room,
A soul lost to darkness,
A son murders his father,
A girl gives birth to a son,
A man takes a girl,
A mother beats a man,
A husband drinks with a mother,
A life is given to a husband,
To a mother, and a man,
A girl, a son, another father,
A life to all. A fair, fair life.
But the light leaves the room.

.

Composition VII

Shapes fell and formed a face,
None which nature could so arrange.

.

To Live

I don’t fear dying, I fear not having lived. What dreams may come will come, or if they be nothings, then the emptinesses must in the end suffice. Yet when I, at some far and future date, begin to die, when I know this, what will I say about today? It is likely nothing. And still, there are certain days where any sane man would have gone back to the war just to escape them, or given up a year just to relive them. The fiery arrows and crimson flushes of our lives live on into our retirement. Those singular moments must, when the time calls, fill the forgotten today’s. I will not have lived, but I will have lived. I hope.

for lovers and those who love

a jealous heart
only jealous of the time,
or one person,
or just a few,
or no one at all,
envies the paper you
write to
in secret-
so privately
and lovingly and teasingly,
so empty am I,
a poor heart with no
eyes or ears, naught but
intuition,
or suspicion,
whichever way you see it,
I can only be love.

A Girl Writer

If I died would you blame me,

Sarah read this poem by the bench where we’d grown up, spending summers counting down to our last; she was my sister, but she never complained or hurt me, or stole my dolls or my boyfriends. I was her little Marie. She’d left for college, of course, but even now I can see her on our front porch, dreaming of more, better, pink suns falling over distant beaches. Sarah was not just a writer, she was a girl. A girl more a girl than I’d ever be; she would glide almost effortlessly, gracing the front steps of only the best young men I’d ever know. Beautiful hair, too - but that’s beside the point; she was a girl that Cosmopolitan only tried to emulate and capture. Sometimes I wondered about the story behind the poem, who wrote it and stuff. I asked her once about the little slip of paper in her copy of Sunrise, Sunset; she fell to the floor, and beneath the delicate, shivering folds of pink satin my sister cried.

Just curve a little - fall away,

Sarah was never much for growing up; and I’m concerned she’s still fifteen inside. I visited her at the Ivy with mother yesterday; the summer light spilled over onto some early falling leaves covering the grass and I knew that behind these walls were people, but still I felt that they were not real in a sense - they all had their fifteen year old selves sleeping and waking. And between it all was Sarah, and it was like there was a Kennedy in the air, you could taste the intangible prestige (the worst kind, mother says). She glowed like a girl and salvation was only so far away. The boys knew it too; mother wouldn’t look at them, but I could see something divine reflected in their eyes.

Could you hate my tender eyes,

Beneath the bench there is a collection of short stories Sarah wrote in her darkest hours. Whenever I felt on the brink of something awful, when the color drained from the photographs in my memory, I could turn to her in secret. I wrote notes sometimes, as someone must have written the original poem into one of her stories. I read her stories and discovered her secret; I felt that psychotic pull towards the gray of life. I knew what sadness was, and against that, what joy was. I am not like her, but more than her in secret, a pool of potential waiting to wake up.

Or save me from my little lies.

On the floor of her college dorm I saw that she had grown up. Something occurred in me as I stretched out there on those hardwood planks and my Marie and I stole away from the life I could no longer be a part of. Floating above my family, watching their movements, little soulfilled tears forming suddenly, I turned to Marie and asked if we could go back. She looked into Sarah’s eyes and so did I, wondering how suddenly I stopped, and we saw her break too. I reached towards my dying body, understanding that I was as much the light of her life as she was mine. I gripped my still-warm hands and cried into them invisible, so invisible, to my Sarah and my mother. When I woke up beneath the rose-red glare of hospital lights and mother, I felt in my hand Sarah’s note; a poem maybe or some secret. And we knew I’d lost Marie.

Piano keys are playing here,
I sense your grace, the smell
The taste, and your atmospheres.