#cleo rohn

[haikuambulance]

Avignon (A Ghazal)

I peeled off my clothes like postage stamps to join you in the current. The rising water stole my shoes; that greedy, green-gray current.

Not long after we met, you pierced your ears with a sewing needle, dyed your hair with henna leaves, anything to stay current.

The summer smelled of sandalwood and the berries we’d pick from the fields by our mountain stream: grappes de groseilles. Currants.

Ev…

View On WordPress

[haikuambulance]

Quatrains for Dakota

With one wheel in the sand and our faces stung from sun- burn, I ground my ankle into the gas till the van

choked and gasped from under the seats, from deep in the belly of the beast; our Dodge, with a roar as thunderous

as hunger, rammed the road, kicked and pawed the surface of the canyon route, and freed us from the stretch of bloated

ground that swelled beneath our four tired bodies, as we…

View On WordPress

[haikuambulance]

A Disturbance

     The girl is not awake when the boy’s fingers vice-grip her doorknob, jostling it in counterpoint rhythms, hands like earthquake aftershocks. She only wakes when he stumbles, catching his toe under the recycling bin, setting off the lights on the front porch. Out the window, she sees the boy who etched his name into the wall above her headboard, years ago, before she ever moved in. She does…

View On WordPress

[haikuambulance]

The Quarry, Mid-afternoon

Ekphrasis

(An ekphrasis, inspired by Francis Colburn’s painting “Granite Quarry”.)

This industry is under our fingernails. It is the mortar and pestle, grinding and ground by us into the soil beneath our feet as we plunge our bodies into the earth our molten strength crystallizing into the gray and fractured fruits of our labor.

Through the settling dust and the roar of explosions We are the metamorphosis,

View On WordPress

[haikuambulance]

I have fallen in love with so many things the word slips from my tongue like a curse.

http://cleorohn.wordpress.com/

[haikuambulance]

If tomorrow becomes an ocean, if it swells to the foot of our bed and wakes us with salt stings, if all of today’s ripples tomorrow become tidal waves I will not forget the meadows and dunes of you, the warm smoke of your breathing If tomorrow we are bound for separate currents, if we flood separate corridors, if we swallow separate ships I will feel your spirit in seabirds above my head I will remember you in islands I will remember you in sky

In Seabirds  || http://cleorohn.wordpress.com/

[haikuambulance]

Poem for a Hand-me-Down Toyota

Everybody thought the words would flow like river water from our minds to our veins to our mechanical pencils and ballpoints, effortless. Instead, they choked and sputtered, ran low on oil, became rusty and frustrated us till we lost our patience for language. So on the days when the frost lifted, we’d skip our poetry classes to hit free verse in the parking lot like a cheap high, ankles dangled from the hoods of the older kids’ cars. We’d wax poetic in that apathy, talking like we’d escape, draped so deeply in the fog of our futures we couldn’t see our hands a foot behind us. So we talked then as we talk now, about becoming a someone with the help of a something, a lottery ticket or a weed farm, a better car or a design job, as if having was being, as if something was a savior we could all reach our fingers out to touch, a real, live, beating-heart something that would pull us up and out the way the stars did, the way jazz did, the way two a.m. did. We’d crank the stereos in the idling cars we’d been given by our parents and our friends. Something with a beat, something with a bassline that buzzed our bodies as we leaned back on the windshields, watching the sky and feeling bigger, breath spiraling and pillowing from our lips in vapor rings. Those parking lots heard our most vulgar and beautiful wishes, those wheels spun our innocence till we couldn’t recognize it; till we weren’t children; till the universe was ours; till our confidence wrote itself out of us in swear words, in graffiti scrawls, fuck the man, fuck the system,fuck it all; till the spring-green promise of our youth pooled around us, teeming with life, breathing and twitching restlessly; till we could see our lives stretched out like runways before us, straight things, But there is sanctity in a life that curves like a back country brook path, that stalls like an old leather stick-shift, burn-holes in the cushions, cracks in the windshield giving way to the sky. No matter the exits we’ve taken, we’ve all made it to this place, to this time, to this lobby of the here and now. No matter how rainy the drive, we are here to marvel at the domes and towers of the architecture of the present. No matter what we have done, we have this to be proud of: We are standing in a building. All our floors are concrete and all our ceilings are open. And amidst all these blocks and beams, we are standing here with our engines still running. And we are tiny, and we are important.

http://cleorohn.wordpress.com

[haikuambulance]

Tell Me More About It

This song is reassurance on a cold winter night, she says

When your breath fogs up the glass on the panes of your bedroom window as you press your nose to the cold and stare at the sky, this song is the feeling that he still might be thinking of you. This song is

the steam rising up off the cup of coffee that will cure your hangover

the heat that circles your nose without singeing your eyebrows,

the smell of a new day beginning. This song is the pages

of a new diary, just opening up

so you can stare in wonder and you can wonder what these pages might someday hold. This song is

the space between the driver's and passenger's seats

that you obsess over some Friday after school

wondering if the hand of the person you love

can reach across that space to weave into your own fingers. This song is the feeling

of having all your bags packed

and just waiting for the takeoff. This song is the day

that all your homework is done

and well done

and on time

and maybe one assignment is a little bit early,

that day that you run outside

even if it's raining

especially if it's raining

and you thank everything you see

for the chance to be alive. This song is

the slow dance that everyone is dreading except you

because this time you're ready

and this time you're feeling empowered.

This song is the moment you realize you've grown up

And you're terrified

and you're heartbroken

and you're vulnerable but in spite of that

all you really want is to keep

listening.

This song is more than you thought five minutes and eleven seconds could hold

This song is more than I thought I could take when I sat down to breakfast

This song is the sun in your eyes at it's most unforgiving,

it is the black ice on the highway that makes your heart jump screaming into your throat

and with no possible alternative,

it is the only thing that can possibly have gotten you through.

http://cleorohn.blogspot.com