Ode

The urn is overrated, meant to carry ash
Or flowers, or perhaps just air.
I wager the urn’s admirers scarcely care,
And for the owner, would be a push.
Had I a brush to paint or stroke,
I think a creature in its wrinkled way
Would be more interesting than clay
And appeal to more varied folk.
Fur is too kind and soft, I think,
While needles offer an offending pinch.
A nice accord would be just flesh
In brown or red or black or pink.
Though nakedness is exacting to create,
A simple jar of clay is simply dead.
A naked subject may be out of date,
But no urn made an artist lose his head.

EJR

In the Skins

This is no game, with a ribbon

For guessing what person

Smiles from behind the mask--

Lawyer, doctor, minister, saint.

The truth is easier than that.

Were we only one actor

With one metered act, pacing

Through one measured play,

Our days would be coddled,

Our nights rehearsed, doled out

Inevitably, at a passionless rate.

But happily, we do not choose

A solitary role, do not memorize

A set of well-written lines.

Existence is branded by a coarse

Ménage. And these parts

Are not a deck of cards available

To neatly draw, but they shuffle

Carelessly from one suit to next

With unintelligible rapidity.

We are friend, saint, salesman

Flashing an identity only so long

As it flashes, for these aspects

Are summoned not from some

Arcane catalog. They float

To the murky surface, only to

Mystify and disappear again.

Thus, when we fall in love

With hints and riddles, the mystery

Is not one of the beatitude of love,

But of love's capacity to tolerate 

Foolishness and wondrousness and tears.

Love loves similitude, but

It must not run from fear.

The heart believes it must endure,

Unchanging in its face,

But which of us would choose

To live in such enslaving space?

What lover, knowing her own

Mistake would not be drawn to grief?

What saint would choose to turn, to spurn

The pleas of a prodigal thief?

EJR

Aurora

Australis

The soul is no heliotrope,
Bending its stem, slowly
To grope its way to the light.
I believe it throws its tendrils

Open, singing wildly, idly,

Southern facing in the face

Of thunder, turning round

A compass rose, flashing

Fast as if to cast a net

To catch another wanderer,

A confused forgotten lover.

The soul can bleed a desperate

Color despite its sober strength.

And South is quite the green,

The red, the blue of any other.

Borealis

A heart requires nothing more
Than a target, where the soul
Must be satisfied. Cautious or
Reckless, broken or whole,
Where the soul sings, the heart
Shouts, translating all its potent
Poetry to the many grays of dawn,

Etched in acid across the sky.
True North is a calamity of blood,
Casting stains upon us all.
The fall will not be heralded
By a battalion of aimless souls,
But by the seamless assault
Of a billion hearts, giving voice
To the colors of day and of night.
And as we await the time
Of our demise, we face the North
Expecting something true at last,
For the North is quite the dark,
The light, and dusk approaches fast.

EJR

Lady

Tumbling down steep stairs

A case of cobwebs heavy,

Smiling at the utmost effort,

Skin the tone of scurvy,

Boston's boy can climb

The dunes for twice

The cost of gravy, but he's

Dangling from my skinny sword

With half the wit of any.

Many glad returns are hid

Between his teeth of gypsum,

But that granite planet rains

A bluish sort of flotsam.

I scarce believed my lady

When she secretly looked eastward,

Chanting magic amulets

And singing to the mustard,

"Mayn't I sit down to pray

Before we beat our custard?"

Silky simple reasons are

The meanest form of violence,

And so I braided back her locks

With maple-flavored pie crust.

But fancy prancing silhouettes

Kept rolling past the market,

And 'spite considerable wealth

Her value tumbled skyward.

"One bashful kiss," I whispered

On her blissful lips that hour,

And though her Boston boy

Was felled, my lady made me wander.

"I'd rather eat my cream of wheat

With any other dullard!"

But as I wept into my soup,

My mind had scattered widely.

As night crept near, I'd never

Dreamed a bird could keen so sadly.

For after all the wind and wing

Beat back the bedroom window,

My lady bade a dirge to march

On golden-silver meadow,
A piece of poverty gilt over--
Feathered, soaring shadow,

Spectacle in one blue boot,
Her face made up with tears and soot,

For now she was a widow. 

EJR

Morning

I approach my bed

In the hopes of escape,

And to find upon waking

That all the day's failing

Has been not a dream,

But a comic mistake.

In the morning, I break

Off the covers as if they'd

Caked overnight with snow.

I pay the daily wage

Of uncertainty solely to breathe

What I breathe on the page.

Left at midnight on the boards

Of morning's cold stage

Awaits a tired chorus.

Absurdly I feel burdened by

Today's first possibility.

And I know that every turn

And touch of this new play

Could crack upon the icy scree

And cleave excess from

perfect form.

And I'm torn, frozen, twirling

The myth around, around

In my morning-idle mind,

These silly-sounding sounds,

This work of clumsy hands.

And I wonder what it will be,

And if I'll laugh or cry at last,

Or try to make amends.

EJR

Hail

Morituri

Not yet dead but blistered,

As wound by wound aching

Burrows in weeping skin

Furrow sterile rows; suspense

Hovers over the identity

Of the checkerboard graft

Laid on top, for apparently

It need not be identical to

My moon-translucent skin,

But may instead be tough,

Scaled to new callousness or

Soft, perhaps, not rough, nor rude.

Time consigns each crop

To a separate field, and no will

Imposes order on the riot feud.

te salutant

I have become resigned to this

Haphazard patchwork shell--
The naked skin rubbed raw
In the wind. What fell on the flesh
Is the end, is the seed.

And the death of what once was

Is still the birth of what will be.

EJR

Three

The first time sadness

Is strong enough to weaken

Those levees that restrain our

Tears, desperation may awake

And the wreckage be so fearsome

As to frighten it to stop.

Second sorrow rattles the gates

And what first was torrent now

Becomes a more hypnotic crawl.

And living in the shadow of the dam,

The sense seeps out that this stream

May never break the wall.

But three's a wave that horror cannot cheat.

Three is the bereavement that

Drives summer into fall.

It’s not that the stone has caved,

Or that the deluge fell again, but

That now there is no dam at all.

EJR

Dirty

It rained so much today

That drop-by-drop the dirt

Was sluiced from the cars,

Rinsed from the gravel roads

And pavement, purged.

And staring at the roads and cars,

I thought that they looked sturdy,

Like fresh metal and stone.

But other things being equal,

I still prefer them dirty.

EJR

When I Was Older

When I was older and loved myself,

I shuffled a path, looked at my feet.

No untied laces, and no storefronts mounted

An offensive. Senses unusually clear.

I’d claim I was wise to an intuitive rule—

Each happenstance has only so much power

To delude as we give it our touch,

Or perhaps greater still, as we are touched.

But our wisdom itself defines tragedy—

We know how to defy ruin, circumvent pain,

But our nature makes this solution

Too bitter to swallow, lest we cede humanity.

At last there was a day I woke, crushed

By the requirement for intercourse

With so vast a menagerie of guests

That I searched for a chasm to dive,

A life with such velocity that might, perhaps,

Bring my old monocular path back

To eyes that had forgotten how to close.

And falling, I am occasionally apt to smile,

To window shop without insisting touch.

Still I struggle to judge whether to smell,

Taste or hear those things that yet intrude.

And in its turn a question that predates

Even birth and, I imagine, to which death

Is utterly indifferent, teases me—

A matter of fractional ounces, scant drops,

A muttering of fate, a distant whisper:

Did I jump too soon, or laughably too late?

EJR

Wants

I’m on fire, but without fuel,

Oxygen, or spark nothing burns.

Such an odd feeling, casually aflame.

I flush, pale warmth, but I fear

The blaze is my imagination—

Imagining what I wish to hear,

The crack of ignition through the air.

Yes, I bear stigmata of heat—

A variety of sunburn from a failed star—

As if a lover’s soul had moved

Up in the queue with me behind,

And I’ve inherited its spot in line

Along with some discarded afterglow.

I wonder if the body knows

The difference between heat

And fire—one locked in skin, the other

Maddeningly inconsistent, cruel,

Rushing from tongue to mouth.

The problem is this warmth has turned

Impersonal—it extinguishes all attempts

To kindle more.

     Fuel, oxygen and spark

Are out of reach, and so my soul,

Having flared, has settled down to ash,

Spent on a hearth now cooled, now worn.

But one crack of an ember calls it back,

And my soul, it wants to burn.

EJR