Wednesday, October 22, 2008

PRESSURE POINTS


when my wife sleeps
she leaves

all her pressure points

exposed.

i know holds
from self-defense
to make an enemy
or a wife
relent.

laying there spent,
my wife has already submitted,

if not to me then to some other
force, equally dim-witted.
her mouth leaks when

she speaks in dreams,
and her hair
drapes her face and
channels her tears
into streams of wet ache;

and I guard her
borders
like an occupying army,
present
and waiting for something
impossible to arrive.

METAFESTO


locked in tiny verse,
my words are like kids
or worse:

better seen
than heard.

(talk about old-
fashioned.)

in this age of slams and self-
confessing, this way seems so --

funny
there's no shorter way
to say --

minimalist.

but this life has switched me
into the younger
brother: tough.
keep your hands off
my stuff.

my words
are like the paralyzed
army men i placed
all around the room,
prepared for doom.

here's how it is
also the same:
the battle never came.

CLEARCUT


your friend means
well, she says
"i really love

your poems,
you should

try to get them

published."

you write back:
"thanks, maybe
you are dead

right, except
the part about getting

published."

she wonders if a poem is
a question in the form
of a statement,
making that old riddle
all the more relevant:

if a poem is
published
in the woods yet
nobody reads it,
you can't tell her
it ever
made a sound.

you, on the other hand, find
a poem is like the roots
left behind

underground
as the tree is

on the way
down.