Thomas Waxwood

a poetry blog

[thomaswaxwood]

Sometimes you walk around the edge of a poem.

You park in the half-flooded lot behind the gaudy Chinese restaurant.

The stairs with the red and gold carved bannisters: you can't ascend them from the deep end of the pool.

You walk up the truck ramp. Not for Chinese. To pass the restaurant on your way downtown.

You nod at the man taking the servers' dry-cleaned shirts from the back of a van.

At the top of the red and gold stairs, you look down into the rippling water.

You watch as a man your age in an orange Subaru drives through the shallow end of the flood.

In circles, again and again.

[thomaswaxwood]

The cobweb

On the well head --

A hockey player

I dragged to the Met

Arrested by a Pollock

A fly that doesn't

Struggle

[thomaswaxwood]

To exhale and dissolve on your own breath, say haaah and melt the momentary just-so arrangement of ice crystals in the glass which we call me, myself, I

[thomaswaxwood]

Time tells me

I can know well

but not know why:

Just so.

I can try to shake you

but the flesh will

slough from my bones

before your jaw

unclenches

from my arm.

I can number the fallen

branches but nor find

nor plumb the cave

that spawned these

rattling winds.

[thomaswaxwood]

The acoustics of the showerspray

in this beige tile chamber

of a beating heart

modified by his body,

the way a tongue

Reshapes the resonance

of every vowel,

whether meaningful

or not.

We are noise passing over

the dripping naked

body of the world.

[thomaswaxwood]

Tinnitus and Hirabai Baroudekar, a cobalt-blue slice through my head.

The sense that sometime soon you might become the person you were always meant to be. A DM drafted but unsent.

A galvanic tang, a nine-volt on the tongue, hairs raised on the back of the hand and your own ghost crossing your path.

A tree full of, well, a species of bird you can't name. Stray laughter waiting for a mouth.

Numb to ring tones. Subscribe now or forever hold your peace.

Chaucer cursed Adam Scriveyn for less.

Only the Cupertino Effect remains. A snow of mismatched meanings hangs like Spanish moss from the map of Lost Tokens.

[thomaswaxwood]

After Saturday Breakfast

griddle smoke

thickens the shafts

of white November

sun. Kiss the kids

and taste syrup

hours later.

[smakkabagms]

night’s dream stains a star-touched, blue feather   near the silo of my gathered hand; her, on the cloven hooves of dawn, ear stilled near the pulsing raven plinth, neck or dandelion howls rove the mist-thick woad, recalling with the terror of flesh the wool of another colors once loved, now colored dully elsewhere - a poppy nodding a red-heavy head, lips languished I pry mud-spangled fingertips over the indifferent reign of tides, mimetic animals sloughing sideways where night has emptied her entrails into the crook of my arm, where I once held the sea, slipped from cerement’s scythe                             and moonborne dew; earthen, wax-drawn figure I bring you to my hidden room and speak this yellow nothing

[thomaswaxwood]

Pitch perfect as always

[thomaswaxwood]

Speaking one truth

A tree grows

Speaking another

Lightning strikes it

[thomaswaxwood]

You crush a

bayberry leaf between

two fingers

Do marcesent birches

Do anything but

Sigh and rattle

A pine in

The sandbar like

A matchstick upended

Vinyl decals don't

Stick like they

Used to

Snagged plastic bags

Tattered sails on

A ship adrift

[thomaswaxwood]

My heart has

Been clamped around

That pearl you

Wear for eighteen

Years now. Remember

That: a calcified

Regret. A bone

Spur. Why at

Midnight does this

Broken brain tread

The loud floorboards

Of buried hurt.

[thomaswaxwood]

Goldberg Variations

Pajamas

A leaf lighting like

A bird might

The band by the lake

Plays "Born to Run"

Canada goose shakes

Its feathers

[thomaswaxwood]

Don't forget--

Despite everything

These are in

Fact the good

Old days

[thomaswaxwood]

This night, obsidian air--

The sound of crickets rings

In a void clear and solid

[thomaswaxwood]

Veterans Park

Half a dozen killdeer have mistaken the parking lot for a body of water. Crabgrass and clover has made a carpet under the unclimbed jungle gym. Ground bees tend it like elderly flocked fingers. The killdeer pass again the silent M-60 in drab green, a ghost war camouflaged in civic pride from an age when enemies could be seen, aimed at.

[thomaswaxwood]

There are times

When all I want is

For things not

To mean things

[thomaswaxwood]

That afternoon,

The hill was yellow.

The four-year-old and I

Lay in the leaves,

And for a half hour

Talked about death.