4:30 A.M.
I was listening to So Long, Marianne
with its line about
washing
my eyelids in the rain.
Suddenly. I remembered I’d forgotten to
use my eye scrub
to
help my exposed nerve endings.
Thanks, Leonard Cohen, for your right
words at the right time.
THE SKY IS FALLING
I rolled a poem into the body of a
telescope and looked through it
to
see Henny Penny and her shrill megaphone,
the
skin of the sky is falling.
The sun has stretched its parchment
across the clouds like a trampoline.
How many people die each year jumping
into airplanes,
their
parachutes unopened like a letter banished from the alphabet.
From the ankle to the knee, there is a
sonnet prone to flight.
From the thigh to the hip, there are
1000 curtsies made of lead.
16 expectations.
How many obituaries do you type per
minute?
There’s a piece of flesh underneath the
arm.
It tickles.
It’s an incubator.
How many times did you feel pregnant
when you felt your fingernails itch?
How many times did you drink orange
juice and sandpaper
in
a glass with little umbrellas and think you were having fun?
Humans are so architectural, building
such great walls.
We walk stethoscope to stethoscope.
Two by two.
Noah is clearing his throat.
There’s an almanac in every ark.
If a punching bag has 100 m.p.h.
velocity and there is no hurricane,
just
a family reunion, how far has the apple fallen from the tree?
How many streets pave America?
How many orchards?
PEOPLE
there are people
who hold an abridged tablet
of the ten commandments
in the space between their teeth and
jaw.
there are people
who come into a room
with stardust on their breath
like a lullaby of backward halitosis.
there are people
who hold the planets together
by clicking their Achilles heels three
times.
there are people
who skywrite
without an airplane
without a net.
there are people
who twirl a room
like a rodeo for the sheepish.
there are people
who have bowling parties in their
pajamas
while the rest of the world
seems like a pin
waiting for an angel to step out onto
the dance floor.
there are people
who seem to have eyeball upon eyeball
like gumballs in an arcade of vision.
there are people
who walk into a room
a thermometer preceding them.
there are people
who wear their weather like perfume.
there are people
who know the cuckoo is the state bird
of most states of mind.
there are people
who went to the same high school
and spent each recess
in the lost and found room
uttering their phonetic name.
there are people
who will have conversations
deep as deathbed soliloquies
and never speak again.
there are people
who make whatever street they’re on
Telegraph Avenue 1964.
there are people
who write a shopping list
in hieroglyphics.
there are people
who look up at the sun
8000 times a day
and lack an eclipse.
there are people
who drag questions
from the tongue
like photos one second
before the crisp of a fire.
there are people
who ask nothing
and your heart sits like a blank check
in a bookstore that sells only elegy.
there are people
with a little past
behind their ears.
there are people
with a newscast on their eyebrows.
there are people
no matter how many apples they held
teachers resented them.
there are people
who ring many doorbells
but won’t let themselves in.
there are people
who light candles half the week
and swallow swords the rest.
there are people
who memorize the footprints
made by the snow.
there are people
who dine on shivers.
there are people
who chew on icicles
all year round.
there are people
who pray
with the nostalgia of baseball.
there are people
who laugh at life
openmouthed like a kiss.
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