Alas, Poor Ghost!

[moirose]

Can i keep touching your skin? But that’s all Keep your eyes on the Back Side Top of my head Slipping in and out of my gaze Darkly lined and piercing Keep a hand Delicate prints On my back Kisses on my forehead My ears And just that? I want a finger on your veins when they’re full and warm And legs wrapped around when they’re cold I want flesh and gravity But i want to sleep alone In the dark And quiet

For now? Ask me again. In some other language

[moirose]

I'll curl up inside the first quiet rumble of thunder

Live there for a while

Eating the stale old shadows of his lies, left behind when they all stormed off set demanding one thing or another.

Drinking iodine

I won't ever sleep. My dreams will stick in the clumsy wet air, obscured in grey, tumbling further from my itching eyes.

I'll do all of the thinking I've been putting off. Really buckle down and do it. Pull out the water damaged stuff and breath among it again

I won't be happy

But maybe I'll be something

[moirose]

Well I had it coming

didn’t I have it coming mom?

dad?

It was sprawled in the stairwell 

locked out

had stopped ringing the bell a few months back

concrete for a pillow

concrete for a home

but coming 

I used to laugh behind it

smile knowingly down at it

lock the door 

bolt the door

back against the door

dress sliding up

but I wasn’t fooled 

were you, mom?

dad?

fooled into thinking i could stay up here forever

never smell the stench of that stairwell 

unbolt the door

unlock the door

have it here

a lump in my throat 

a lump in my breast

[moirose]

Waking up covered in fire white salt

Dried and caked onto our laughing bellies

Lord, his lungs are rotting away inside

Smelling of tar and putrescence

And has anyone ever felt whole

In a place like this

Whole and full of sadness 

I’ll try to leave it behind

Try to get on with it all

Only a few billion years and I drew one good picture

That’s something

[moirose]

out loud in Adams Morgan

Because now I’m full of headaches and spinning rooms The smell of American Spirits yellow Taste of trident gum Hands thumping away inside my ribcage A cold spring across my collarbone A warm spring down my neck Trickling Light as air piercing lips It’s rare he says I’m crazy he sings At midnight in the parking lot by the dumpsters Guitar in hand American Spirits Yellow A voice that carves in my gut This is not safe Nothing worth wile ever seems to be I should have seen it I should have seen it was safe

[apoemaday]

On the Fifth Day

by Jane Hirshfield

On the fifth day the scientists who studied the rivers were forbidden to speak or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air were told not to speak of the air, and the ones who worked for the farmers were silenced, and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands, began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak and were taken away. The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers that spoke of the rivers, and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence, and the rivers kept speaking, of rivers, of boulders and air.

Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless, the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers, code writers, machinists, accountants, lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day, of silence.

[moirose]

Perched between counters head hung dizzy dark rooms of poisoned people comforting one another with yellow skin and purple lips dying all together on a dirty air matress in some basement in Hoboken. The boy with strong arms and soft whispers hasn’t opend his eyes. These proclamations must be the true ones. These strangers know me for this. In some conciousness this is me.

Bergen, NJ || Jan 18

[moirose]

There was the pounding at the door Echoing and trembling through the door frame One hand Now two The shuddering creak as the great oak slab in all of its grandeur Opened

But now there is something else Something ritual Like a prayer or a chore perhaps One sweet to each several part of me ‘Thank you’ he says Over and over my body Those mirror curses howling ‘Thank you’, quite plainly Simply Like the sun rising or the rain falling Like worship

The task complete, he nestles into my hair I cry quietly His breathing evens

I’ll cry a while longer The door is wood shavings on the bed

[moirose]

At the Helm

First there were kisses on the streets Cheers and the buzzing of wide eyed wide hearted Many sided thing of people Together Something historic And we were all HERE for it

Then mouths dried out Pitchers dried out It smelled like ammonia and sugarblossoms Itching Walking back and forth past premonitions One at each longitude Nowhere to go but on

Folks left and we left Moving the air away from ourselves Toward our other selves Short of breath Long of face

In Pennsylvania, I think, A rock split And that’s the one we felt Somewhere off the mainland someone hummed a melody The first song to be written about it Shades of green It will be beautiful

Now there are tears on the streets Weeping for the future, for the past A polygon of people ripped out of their skin, themselves Mocked, ridiculed, spat upon Now walking the plank Now weeping Now At the helm

[moirose]

Oh God it is pouring rivers of streets and islands of sky scrapers and the holes in the city aren’t big enough too flat for too many miles the drops are heavy with reslove the air thick makes it's way through our ears past the sirens and thunder to our fears. we are drowning alongside the pavement two of everything; a mother and a father a city drowning

[moirose]

well sometimes the winds are warm

shouldn’t that be praised?

Hallal it is so!

Sing this day,

the glory of the air.

you there 

on your knees

while you’re down there why don’t you feel the dirt

watch something green 

and praise the winds that they are warm

[moirose]

It’s the times spent in cars that I remember 

I guess

feet wrapped around the front seat

feet out the window

the song that was playing 

always what song was playing

so I’m going away 

to spend a while in a car

that’s how I used to fall asleep at night

when the car stops, 

that’s when motion sickness sets in

when I stop catching up with the turning of the world

when a year goes by and nothing is changed, 

just in a new place

and I’m still alone

but at least I’ll be going somewhere.

and a song will be playing

so maybe I’ll remember it a year from now

[moirose]

No one can do a thing to me

Not one thing

I won’t let them

I’m untouchable 

so there

[moirose]

On a Night Like Tonight

There are only two things that people long for I mean really long for True love And vast open spaces. And the heinous travesty of the human constitution Is that it must always long for something. So on a night like tonight You can be sure That you are not alone. All around the world People have stopped longing for the one and begun longing for the other People will not be satiated. How cruel. How comical.

[moirose]

On The Platform

we solitary ones

wander

to keep warm

perhaps to distract oursleves from the great disappointment

the holy weight

a thing perilous, and glorious, and blue

we keep moving

but it catches us

sparks, and sputters, and jerks

pulling us toward one another

we solitary ones

[moirose]

Grimy plastic Good for keeping an eye out Or two Boys end up dead on the pavement around here So he takes everything apart Watch Glasses Cleans the pieces Pulls fifties out of cigarette box Counts fifties Replaces fifties in cigarette box Stands over two soiled seats Sighs It’s Christmas eve And we all keep an eye out

[moirose]

My Face in the Sopping Leaves

I whispered 'I'm scared' I hauled myself to the timberline I called to the top of the mountain 'I'm scared' I crawled to the uprooted tree roots At the side of the ice blazed path  'I'm scared' I sang to the love lost tunnel 'I'm scared' I sank to the sand in the riverbed 'mother, I'm scared'

And then I looked to the dull, grey twilight And I sucked in the same old air And it tasted Sweet