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