Seamless Thoughts

Nobody bothers to sew anymore,
who has that kind of time?
Gussets and grommets
gores and plackets -
it’s like learning a new language.
Interfacing and easing a shoulder
sound like getting involved.
Nobody can envision
a template of irregular flat pieces
cut on the bias,
pinning right sides together
carefully matching notches
to fashion a three dimensional
approximation of fabric skin
defining the body
enhancing its form.

Nobody bothers to love anymore,
who can take that kind of risk?
Conversations and discoveries
declarations and intimacies -
it’s like breathing in a new element.
Dedication hours to another person
sounds like getting involved.
Nobody can imagine
a patchwork of quirks
cut from different remnants
accepted without bias,
joined seamlessly.
Optimistically matching compatibilities
to design a substantial affinity,
redefining two selves
enhancing their growth.

Oh, but you can always buy something
in vaguely your size off the rack,
go home, and watch actors
pretend to find true love on the Lifetime Channel.

Operculum

For every room,
there is a slightly larger one
just beyond it.
When you outgrow a room,
recreate the one you were in.

Fill it with the same mementos
worn bright from over handling.
Abandonment, betrayal
inadequacy, alienation.

Choose carefully –
these irritants accrete
and your eyes cherish
their polished gleam like pearls.

“Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.”
Ritualize your suffering.
It congeals the trap door
into a hard crust.

Solving For Y

This is how you solve a math problem.

If distance equals rate times time,
and one train is traveling
from New York to Boston
while the other one
departs from Boston,
where will they meet?

Tragically these trains
never actually intersect,
they pass by each other
a blur of random silhouettes
flashing in a sequence of windows.

Factor in, then, the mathematician’s
longing for emotional fulfillment
and have him debark
in Old Saybrook, say,
or New London, at least some
imprecisely equidistant
but calcuably significant
middle ground.

In the most elegant solution,
he makes eye contact with
another problem solver
a coy statistician, perhaps,
or a game physics major
and they continue the journey
one way or another
together.

Reflection

“If you look into the mirror too long”
warned my mother
“you will see the devil.”

So I averted my eyes
curious about my image
but doubting such alchemy
of glass and light and silver.
Not anticipating evil, or good
more fearful of seeing my mother.

After I experimented with mascara
a boy on the boardwalk
gazed into my face and crooned
“Your eyes are so blue
and your eyelashes are so black.”

From that day I swore off
makeup forever
but it was more complicated than that.
Despite my efforts
I was then accused of
deceit by gentle countenance.

An inverse Dorian Grey,
I preserved my sweetness in the attic,
and years etched
anger and jealousy in my skin
puckered disappointment
around my mouth
bleached gray weariness into my hair.

Today I peer into the looking glass
seeking the fairest of them all.
It reflects no demon
no mother, no vanity. Nothing
beyond the artistry of time.

A Meandering Vein

I consider her
my blood sponge,
merely that.

While in her view
I am an iconic shrine to emotion
clam shelled
in her rib cage.

Despite metronomic slamming
into her arteries after
that morning jolt of caffeine,
that hour at the gym

She skewers me to a more
figurative back of her spine
on a serrated spike of longing,

And when oxygen defeated
blood oozes through
a meandering vein
toward home

I have hardly survived
ache, starvation, crushing blows,
Mended crookedly
shattered utterly,

Withstood more abuse
than a dickensian protagonist
schemed into the poorhouse
by avaricious relations.

I am a tired, tired muscle
in want of enduring virtue
as a plot device
or failing that,
in denoument,
uncommon sense.

The Museum of Rain

(dream # 6)

From the parched sidewalk
we happen into the museum of rain.

Of course it is very damp
and gray and wonderful.
We pass among rooms
defined by the rain itself.

A room of fingertip mists,
a room of resolved downpours
a room of drumming thunder
and thick splattering drops,
a room of pearly drizzle
a room of spitting needles of ice.

Spectators shuffle through the rooms
murmuring quietly with respect
for each other’s tenuous concentration.

Most are protected by
umbrellas, raincoats, rubber boots.

But you and I
just wandered in
and we are getting soaked
and communicating with our eyes
that this is the “real way”
to enjoy the museum of rain.
We tilt back our heads and laugh.

In my awakening mind
I hold your wet smile.