When your skulling is direct
I take seriously only
that black dot on the horizon
otherwise I float
toward the heel of clouds.
When you are pitter patter
you're bleach to me
without the sting.
I'm made clean.
With no rucksack
or attache, off I go
to skull you back.
There are moments lost every minute
explosions mimicked by thunder
and those burned limbs, leaving traces
of the nothingness we were
and some short life made shorter
while remembering childhood and war
while I have had the nothingness
without the fire, I've lost my way on my own turf,
mysteriously bleeding inside, knowing this,
ambling on. Maybe it's the curse
of the moment when it becomes something else,
something behind itself, a familiarity
turning even cliche even more than predictable,
the leaves fell last fall, my heart skips a beat
letting me drift into sudden explosive expectation
like the time before, and the time before that.
the last few years a stain
not as a mottling or spill
but veneer meant to reflect
vaguely whatever is present
and here you were
having a beer laughing
with your daughter there's sparkles too
there in the stain
underneath there's rough spots
places where nothing shines
where nothing shined
dark spots
for years and years
now i will
open the blinds
deep focus on
the well of reflections
squint into
the end
of the sky
(in memory, JAD)
John Eivaz (john e) was born in New York and lives in California. He has a chapbook, Remainder of Thursday Afternoon, available at Lulu.