milk light

I remember
certain kinds of light
that belong only
to old days

basement book days
underground stone days

humming disks of light
roaming hallways
pooling in church corridors
seeping under office doors

like
spilt
yellow milk.

"hold on"

I steal
bobby-pins and sugar
and creep
back.

Drown out the sounds of talk
with music
that scatters my thoughts like a glass dropped.

"Sailing to shores of white sand"
"Sinking to the muddy bottom"
I trade these for the other, and dream of a time when I will be able to hear them again,

when music will fill up my house like a tight brown drum.

lilac smell

This morning I wake
Silently, stealth, cat-like
Into a dirty morning
Aching, squinting, blind.

New York is wastrul.
I'm not even sure if that's a word (but it was running in my head).
It is the only word that seems to capture something
About the deadness, and waste slack fitfulness
The light here too bright, outlines bottles of pills and book spines
with ragged impunity at their content, their worth.

My sentences leave me like birds.
Distant scratchings before I can capture them.
I wake, with a toy animal clutched to my heart,
Central lozenge pill-box
Head between the two pillows like a child.

I used to go into my parents room after they got up
And lie in their bed
Center exact straightened

I had to lie just so with the covers pulled exactly straight to my chin
To see the angels in the yard
Bright flames blond angels that lived in our lilac trees.

That's how my mom knew I was special.
Because I had conversations with them each morning as the sun stripped the leaves of dew
Starched washed clean golden light
That poured silently into the room
with that purple lilac smell.

They told me to lie still as a pill-box.

quartz

tangled postings sheets sun on sheets. anger, at what? starting again today, getting in the right frame of mind today, already out of sorts... dreams of barking dogs, something else that woke me shocked awake (can't remember). tired of cold, tired of bed, tired of frozen lungs.

my shoulders are tired of remaining as hunched, bird-claws clenched, ribcage breath...

i know i need to adjust the surroundings, change to new, escape!

even the screen is flecked with ice.

i see helicopters and sun, they are towing the plane that flew into the hudson yesterday. i can't see this, but i know it is happening. the plane looked like a small bird that flew into the water... and people standing on the wings, like children, or penguins clustered. what is it that allows us to connect with anonymous tragedy, almost tragedy, the what-if or almost-was. i usually sit over the wing, i usually sit in the exit row. i wonder if i would have been able to lift the plane door and throw it , heavy, into a cold sea. i like to think that something like this "wakes me up" or "reminds me what is important". what it really signifies is a disconnect in my own life-- the desperate need for me to plug back in to my own life-- bone intimacy and ropes of hot blood. we only have so many rituals that allow us to feel alive, like animals i suppose.

i'd like to feel my body in the early morning desert sun. i'd like to feel shafts of light around my face, my skull, to bathe myself in a landscape that is mostly dust but crystalline-- solidified shell but translucent,

quartz.