Unbearable

Unbearable discipline and
Self-control. The world dull
green and white, pale
Except inside, greying bones;
Red embers warm muscles,
That bend to touch so gently
The world cannot see it.
They miss so much, the frightened
Eyes and damp nerves—
Everything that twirls past
Like an inconceivable cascade
Made hot with blood, mouth
And foaming torrent, too fast.
But to speak words that are
Less than a mask, a self-negation,
This is work—this is labor—and
A dying. The flood rages, drags
With an irresistible current, and
Every day struggling upstream
Tears the heart. But breathing
Quietly withdrawn, and longing
For another nearly-imperceptible
Touch—or worse, screaming,
Clawing at the breast, the mouth,
The jagged shoal—
Rather another hour
Of unbearable discipline
And self-control. 

A Word

With the first word

The skin begins to thicken

As if resisting revelation,

So that which and what

Conceal why—as a cloud

The sky. Perversely trying

By mouth and lips to exhume

The heart (or even just

The bones) of him or her,

Instead sounds plant a stem

Of not and never within

All cells and soil. Every small,

Separate moan—which

Speech cannot gather, as

The tide piles sand and rock

Into beach and steppe

Instead of one deft edifice—

Misses once and twice

With its inept escape.

It cannot breach your eyes

Or even slip

Through your smile

Because—it is true—

A word is less
Than you.

Aspens Song

The aspens, all overwhelmed

With snow, almost part as I come,

Come trudging glad up through the trees.

Green grass dots the drift-white waves,

Buoys lost in a bright argent sea.

My breath crystalizes even before

It leaves my lips, as if knowing its reach

Is frost-bound and it never will broach

The close canopy—that speech

Is beyond its meager capacity.

Cold is escape and the closeness

Of parting, longing, the distance of skin,

And the dimming of light.

When the mind tries a spark, yet insists

On the shadows that rush toward the night.

And the smoke curls higher

Than I ever could rise,

When we twirl and we spin
Round the fire.

I gather your hands, and your eyes

Cry my name,

And we dance till the night

Sings with light
And with flame.

And still aglow, I race down the foothills

Through tunnels of over-taxed limbs,

Silent but for the bark of my breath,

Lest a shock cause the trees to succumb

To the push of the snow and distress.

Before I’m halfway home your voice

Makes its plea to my chest and my lips

And my longing—they cool and crystalize,

Forming a wound and an ache in my hips.

And the blaze settles lower an inch.

Within sight of home, I again am afraid

Of loss, losing guileless arrogance,

Brilliant inconsequence—all the stuff

Of our busyness, hands holding thighs,

Lips on skin and the joy of enough.

And the smoke curled higher

Than I ever could rise,

When we twirled and we spun
Round the fire.

I gathered your hands, and your eyes

Cried my name,

And we danced till the night

Sang with light
And with flame.

EJR

Caught

Strike at what you do not

Understand. Hit it hard

Enough and perhaps it will run,

Will show its back. A strange

Back cannot repay. With head

Bowed, the sun cannot illuminate

Its face and so create a soul.

You were born a stranger,

Live a stranger, die unknown.

Childhood is the act of balancing

Resentment and infatuation—

Safe to cast out bedlam

And cosset slow familiarity.

Safe to lose yourself

In crowds without shouting

Your name across the sacristy.

The bare mouth and nose,

Eyes and chin, her face and hair—

The features of a carefree dream,

Or a decoy carefully concealed?

I know what seethes beneath

The surf that bubbles spiraling

Behind your brow. Now the flick

Of your glance stands to raise,

Then with one stroke to fell

The harmony you once enjoyed

When you were lithe and green.

The wave-front swells with every

Iteration of your longing,

Every heavy-hooded stare.

Will you let her wander free,
Or will she trip your snare?

EJR

Love, Perhaps

I choose to exclude ugliness,

Pettiness, spite whenever possible.

My own such contributions surely

Are enough and might suffice.

No, I may be able to keep my eyes

Gazing into your eyes, days or weeks

Of longing splintered uneven, hours

Of daydream fading, folded into you—

But your kindness lets the nervous

Pace (tending toward a foot race)

Relax, so we walk hand-in-hand

Instead. The heat of your damp palm

Against my skin; the alternating tug

(hoping for your hand back one more time)

And soft settle of our cupped hands,

Small in large, then tug and settle,

Tug and settle. This rhythm is a gift

Made possible only by your grace—

True beauty is potential, freedom

From the need to fit a form oneself.

The most beautiful sculpture may enfold

All the viewer’s ugliness—embrace it—

Or on the holiest day of the calendar,

It may join love and beauty in a brief,

Exquisite momentary gaze.

And thus tomorrow morning when you smile

And I smile at you upon waking,

And the taste of your upper lip is nothing

Like I ever guessed or knew—then

You’ll close your eyes, for the length

Of a sunbeam, perfect in your place.

And after a moment of joy, the dusty

Imperfection of the sunbeam bought,

I’ll pocket one more memory of grace

That’s freed me to remember love

As love, perhaps, was not.

EJR

The Boat

Stay with me

Today—

So that even when

You are not in my eye,

The pasts before you

And the futures

After would trouble us no more

Than the ocean

Surrounding my peculiar,

Leaky, slow and

Rather unseaworthy

Boat.

Whether you perch at the

Helm, vigilant steering—

And I love you there,

Bright in command,

Finding our way toward

That future

After, inevitably,

we both land.

You need me to navigate,

To rearrange the past

Preceding us,

Make a safe path.

Or near the glowing sunset

If you choose to guard

The forecastle,

To gaze back

across the bow

With your palm edge

Shielding the setting sun,

And suddenly I am able

Silently to look

At your face,

And finally know

The true color of your brow.

And noontime

Perhaps we stand along

The side rail,

Hand in hand,

And count the hours

As hills and valleys,

Portraits, not chalk

Marks on our cabin wall.

But still, I understand,

And hope you might as well,

That love is not an ocean

Or a plotted course,

Not the telltale wake

That dogs a ship,

Not even the salt spray

Beckoning us ahead.

Love is a peculiar,

Leaky, slow and rather

Hasty cobbled boat—

Mine happens to have

Virtually no crew.

The only rules that govern there,

That half (whichever gleans my mood)

Puts up with me today,

And half belongs to you.

EJR

Potter's Lake

The path was concrete,

Following some old idea of a slope

Down from gravel road

Over grass—lush to the threshold

Of overgrown, or perhaps

Neglected to the edge of overmuch—

Stuffed with such a bunch of snowdrops

And the occasional half-felled elm.

But the foot-worn secret track

Paced through a colonnade of thick-

Bloomed apple trees that had thrown

Their arms (or were they legs or lips

Or wings) agape, naked, buttery

Yellow-white, droplet-moist

With dew, with careless stickiness.

As I wound down again, again

I felt (and not unpleasantly)

The morning melt into a humid hum

Of birds and insects, blunt breeze

In this tree and that, wet leaves

And buzzing things tuned to a sleepy

Ceaseless mumble by the sun.

I would sit beneath the apple blooms,

And strum the grass with my feet,

And imagine that the pale white

petal-skin boughs, by bloom weight

Spread apart, were like my secret

subject, almost flesh and blood—

Hid by incompleteness in the

Pregnant space between desire

On that naked afternoon (sweating,

Breathless as one can only be alone)

And the few real visions in the grass.

For like the ripple, up-down, in a pool—

The slapping of a rock thrown with the wind

Into a waiting pond—there were two

Trajectories, opposing eptitudes:

   The dream I kept like a well-

Worn journal in my belt, borne

From one orchard to the next

To add a word, adjust a phrase,

Yet sound as constant as a sacred text.

   The waking held its humid sticky damp

Just out of bounds—too high a branch

However high I learned to reach.

I came day after day, awake, asleep,

To hunt until I found the apple root,

While summer after summer passed

Like damp and naked skin

Beneath my hands.

EJR

Eyes

Easier
To shuffle mile
After mile
Eyes to ground
Or cast ahead but
Slightly down perhaps.
Not because
You'll miss the rain
Beading glassy on the small
Fruit of the tree
Behind the house.
Not because
You won't be burdened
With gray or darker gray
Or night.
After all, you might just catch
The rain
or sky
Reflected in a muddy pond
or broken window pane.
No, you may decide
To hide your brow
Beneath
The same blue hood
You wore when last you came.
Because you might
Be stranded at the bus
With just the eyes
Of an old love
And not recall her
Name.


EJR

I Lay

I lay on the closed-lipped earth,
Reaching downward toward a heart
So deep beneath I thought that part of me
Had broken off, had sunk, awoken
In some wet cave, some dark corner,
Or been rendered suddenly asleep—
Laid in a grave with no stone and no mourner.
I’d been sure the collateral of the hurt
Surrounding me was veiled only
By uncompleted sorrow, failed misery,
Refusal to accept a troupe of wounded
Whose footsteps fell in close proximity.
But your pale arms, parted lips
Persuaded me to wake. I stood watch
On hilltops, counting blossoms, seeds
And leaves. I ate nothing, drank your skin.
Sum the silver joy that drips from trees,
You said—and winnow shade from light.
It is wrong what you do, with tears
A bitter smile and your ecstasy a blight.
Come with me. Leave the barrow deep—
Seal it up with dirt and stone.
Tell everyone you used to walk alone
With footsteps droning in an morbid march.
We wander with our hands entwined, we come
Together, fall apart when our sorrow dies.
The rhythm of the world (its love)
Engulfs the earth—a flood, a sigh, a breath.
Drying tears and mastering our grief,
It drives the ecstasy into our very blood
And quiets wounds that slumber far beneath.

EJR

Lessons

She wended her way,
Winding
Hand-in-hand with anyone
Bleeding, broken-hearted.
Yesterday,
By their defeat defeated,
By their collapse
Collapsed. Perhaps
Today
Dear fingers knit, entwined
Could bind with one shy
Glance
Ten wounds, one each.
And then perchance
Tomorrow
She might love someone
Whose lips speak back
Ten lessons before the
Sun
Settles over the eaves
And warms the bedspread
Atop four arms, four legs,
One whole
Heart.

EJR

IV - Gently

Ornamented branches reaching, ivory
And rosy dimpled thimbles gathered rain.
A lone drop fell upon your upturned lip.
I kissed you there, then kissed again.
I kissed your eyes and nose and neck;
Your hand braced me. I brushed your back—
Breath and pulse, breast and hip—
I followed a wanton beam, a bead of sun
That trickled languid down, a drop
That dripped and lapped a lazy rivulet.
I prayed with mouth to your mouth,
Fingers opened you, immersing, both
The depth and surface rippling, floated
Gently from one wave crest to the next.
All these in the ever-wider space
Between two shuddered breaths.
And on exhale you rose again to meet
Me as I rose. The matted hair you swept
Out of your sweat-stung eyes, and time kept
With your bare chest on my chest. Clouds
Skidded by. The rain soon lashed the grass
And soothed your flushing skin.
Spread naked by the sun and rain, you came
Unwound twice more, first breast, then hip—
Began one dance, then scarcely parted lips
To moan my name before we joined again.
Your damp limbs tangled mine, one, two.
I wandered in and out of you.
The sodden silver moonlight dribbled down—
You wore a million droplets simply sewn
By our hands’ insistent rhythm in the dark.
I rushed to stroke your body, strike a spark.
You slowly burned my body as your own.

EJR

III - Either

I seem to have molded a statue,
An unclothed form in a fighting pose.
She from ambivalent clay arose
With not a portrait’s sly smile
But with arms and legs in tight
Formation, holding a weapon high.
Tribute or insult? Truth is daughter
Of both and friend of neither.
Whether victor or vanquished,
I cannot decide. Either to shield
Her protectively, a loverly medic,
Or fall and surrender, or at least
Call truce. I admit, were I her lover,
I would not have thrown her
Into battle, even the rear guard.
War is not too hard but too small,
Petty, brutal and forlorn.
She is too beautiful to waste
A day on something stained and torn.

She might squander with me
An hour, a day, a year—and we may fight
With petty words, or even end a time
Bereft and sad, forlorn—but war
Defeats the victor and victim both,
Its temper not cloud but storm.
Yet she stayed warm and soft and idle,
As if no blood or muscle could strain.
She remained moist and supple,
Like grass giving after the rain
When we lay together on the lawn
Gazing at my statue—and we laughed,
Recalling either of her earthly forms,
Because what sculptor needs a blade or staff
Who has a woman in his arms?

EJR

II - Together

From my driveway the entire vista,
Limited, but only as small as an
Observatory that projects a billion stars
On a spheric screen. A lounge
Where I lay to read the coded map:
The world unfolded crease by crease
In the sky and clouds, the trees—
Those inconsequential beads of leaves
All spun and flashed on the cottonwoods
That dominated distance, chittering like rain
Above the house across the street.
And I, deluded by the brush of wind
Impersonating hands that (unlike me)
Are not afraid to stroke real skin,
I close my eyes and, for a time that runs
As far toward tomorrow as I allow,
A perfect ghost lies next to me.
And together we are—both real and unreal—
Collaborators, she whispering secrets
And me believing them. Together
We lie still and uncover what is behind, inside,
Beneath the sky, the clouds, the trees.

As years go by, my ghost survives,
Stopping by most days to stroke my skin.
She holds my hand as days begin,
Sometimes whispers longing as I sleep.
We sit together as if watching a parade.
“Look at that woman’s breasts, and that one’s lips,
and that one’s eyes. I know a world where
You are not afraid to stroke her skin,
And you would watch her day begin
And catch her hips as she begins to rise.
That is what lies behind, inside, beneath—
It awaits your breath to breathe.
It waited at inception of the world,
Projected on the spheric sky.
It danced across your skin, the wind.
It needed only longing to survive."

EJR

I - Slack

We are tethered to this body,
With its well-known deceptions
And its naked betrayal,
Told to resist its repetitive insinuation—
Sinew, bone and blood, the pattern
Ravenous and perfect, storm and flood.
The most outrageous of all whispers,
Implying humid want is actually need,
The treason at the basis of it all.

If we sever the tether, we will fall
Like an astronaut weary of her lifeline,
Once freed of her anchor and oxygen,
Careening toward a cloud of stars—
I’ve avoided this folly and done the opposite.
What a discovery! That if I tug
On the rope as hard as muscle and blood
Can make flesh pull, the rope springs loose.
Severing the tether requires
Meditation or some similar bluff,
As if plugging ears will turn the whispers off.

Instead I’ve spread the spirit of the skin
Into every pore, all marrow, every cell—
Made this rotting vessel into a pleasure mill.
The apex of this fleshy metamorphosis
Is a rhythm of climax and despair.
It fills all chambers with a slow, unceasing
Stream, ending its pressure with release,
Then building to begin again.

And when I pause to eye the room
And smell our sweat and effort,
I wonder, briefly, how the air might taste
If my body were to bow and take its leave—
I suppose it might be clean and sweet,
Not blemished by the bite of blood,
The narcotic residue of sex.

Instead I stretch my slackened rope.
My arms and legs swing free. The knot, I test.
And tethered to this flesh I yet remain.
I choose once more to build, begin again,
And stain the air with what the skin wants next.

EJR

Sense

What does vision yield

But the shell,

But the shell?

What does vision yield

But the shell?

What does hearing glean

But the song

But the song?

What does hearing glean

But the song?

What does smelling sense

But the heat

And the ghost?

What does smelling sense

But the ghost?

What does tasting take

But the bitter

From the sweet?

What does tasting scatter

But the bitter?

What does touching softly

With the fingers and the lips

Gather but the bitter, and

Weave a counter-spell,

Reduce the song to braying,

All to reach inside the shell?

To spurn the other senses

All to break, to break the shell?

EJR

Breaking

There is one quiet place--

Only one--where lying wide-eyed

And staring at the ceiling,

Anything might have its day.

The mind has a furtive way

Of creating out of wistfulness

A shadow more appealing

Than any real being or form.

The breaking breath that warms

Such a dream is a thing of its own.

It has its own peculiar flow

And ebb. Once scrawled upon
That quiet place, such verse 

Has a voice, and it casts

Its secrets hard into the hollows

Of life, like or not. If a dream

Breaks the dreamer, who bears

Blame? If a vision precipitates

Only to embrace the seer,

Who is to deny such a ghost its due?

Harder ships have run aground

On softer sands, it's true.

For listeners in life are delicate and few,

And breaking gently does not make

A sound.

EJR

Secrets

I would like to claim fearlessness.
I want to reassure the world
That I have turned over the rock
That is locked away in my deep heart,
Turned the dirt and revealed it all.
I wish to be brave. I want to wade
Through the days of trembling hurt
And arrive at the other side,
To stand astride the cold stream
And chant the rosary of being undone.

We have but one chance to shed
The husk that binds us to our sins--
But the secret is that our shell will slide
Slick from our skins, in our sleep,
While we whimper, unaware.

There is no unlocking prayer,
No epiphany. The truth leaks
Through the chancel drop-by-drop,
And we speak it as if by rote.
My power of candor has one note:
I claim the courage that is my right--
It settles in my ears at night--
You hear only what rises to the top.

EJR

Lips and the Woman

I sit listening and am enchanted

As the girlish voices sing,

Wavering then down and now up, 

Romantic in innocence,

Bird-blush in their lashes

And autumnal in spring.

But vivid voices fade grayly

When the generation of song

Is done without identity--

A voice behind a curtain.

The great and powerful things

Belong to a body and bring a

Mysterious magnetism lacking

When the figure is implied.

Lips and the woman I sing,

Where a body stands upright,

With unclouded clarity.

To see the heart of joy or pain

Is to enfold it in one's own heart.

To hear alone is to enjoy the sense

Without the human frame,

Blissfully reading the tale

Without knowing the author's name. 

EJR

Emptor

Nobody in their right mind
Would want a body stuck together
With blood, tied with rags, patched
With thatch and tar and mud,
A horizon revealing nothing
But antalgic gait, limping forever
But generally safe from a fall.

I suppose all life is accustomed
To pain, and thence the brawl
Between the parts that hum
And those that groan and catch--
So I've become inured to some
More dramatic hitches in the
Cadence of my body's crawl,

But I warn anyone who would so
Much as approach or, worse, attempt
To polish this worn-out shape, this tarnished
Form: the insult of the daily bruise
(The hidden whip-sting on the skin)
Is too much for the man within.

Does a prisoner prefer a scripted blow
To the crushing end he doesn't know?
I wait for my daily dose of pain
And long to know the unknown again.

EJR

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