Lennon

You said to me the other day,
Did you know, Tom,
that the gym you go to
is right across the street
from where John Lennon was shot dead?

I said,
No, I didn't.
But, that's so interesting.

There were riots,
back in the day,
You said, blowing into
a soft white tissue.

A tear,
Shaped like a grape,
Dripped out of your eye,
And fell onto your breast.

But your clean cotton shirt
crunchy from starch
licked it dry. 

You fidgeted with a jar
of amber nail polish.

I noticed on your study table
Three pregnancy test strips  
Pink lines missing
in the Test area.

I asked,
Is everything okay, Sherry?

You said,
Miscarried, again.
It's not meant to be, I don't think.

Embolus

1.

A train car

Floats away –
Tripping on acid.

 

2.

A cloud,

Moved in,
To our tenth floor penthouse.

3.

The candle complains

Of cataracts
And astigmatism
While his blood orange hair

Swishes like waves.

4.

Your belt’s

Organ donor
Somehow
Slid into my dreams.

5.

It is not,

Babe,
A mental health issue.

My thoughts mostly originate

In a corner of my spleen.

6.

I sit and watch

A water drop
Curling into vapor.

 

7.

You say,

What is a nuclear war
But a buffet of sounds?

 

8.

Our spider plant

Has emboli
Swimming through his veins.  

I’m scared

He’ll have a stroke
And I’ll lose
My only friend.

Molly

1.

 

I notice

on your face

a forgotten tenderness;

Tears –

That have lost purpose

And dried.    

 

Your eyes

Are as dark as candied plums.

 

Your fingertips

the color of ripe clematis.

  

The Mexican money tree,

your new roommate,

introduces herself to me

as Molly. 

 

Her body

is caught in a wooden braid.

Eczematous skin

causing her discomfort.

Why don’t you take her

To the dermatologist, Eric?

 

Leaves have sprouted from her nipples,

Alongside dark green veins.

 

You say,

She needs a haircut

but she disagrees.

 

She says

She is lonely in your apartment.

and wants to go out to dance. 

 

Canvas Roll

1.

The roll of canvas we had bought
almost a year ago
from Barry's art studio 
has symptoms now
of hairy cell leukemia -
The hyper-ventilation
being particularly noticeable.

Usually, it stays
on the nightstand
wrapped in a gray plastic bag,
by a pot of green watercolor
that has gone anemic.

But this morning
I found it on the floor
quaking in a fit of violent cough.
So pale and erratic,
Frothing at the mouth -
That I thought it would die.

But it didn't,
Thankfully.

The medication helped.

It reminded me,
in a way, 
how strange life can be.
 
Living, now
Living, then
Gone
within a fraction of a second.

Gloves

You want to be
the one-glove-fits-all.

But my desires
come in different shapes.
And finger sizes
you have never seen -
nano-inch
to a giga-mile.

You are
but one mold only.

The one,
however,
most sought after.

Elvis

My scrub sponge,
today,
had another asthma attack.

Poor Elvis -
his third time this Spring.

He has pollen allergies also,
from the chamomiles
and chrysanthemums
blossoming on my terrace.  

So I went to the pharmacy
and bought him
a bottle of Flonase,
albuterol,
and a stuffed animal.

For baby?
The cashier asked.
I said,
Yes, for baby.

Domestic flying

1.

At the airport
I am asked to check in,
My pair of lungs
Two cages of ribs
And memories of you,
for security reasons.

The rest, I am told,
are allowable carry-ons:
Two arms,
A brain stem,
Forsythias, even.

The flight is uneventful
From Queens
To Nashville to
Minneapolis.

I eat breakfast with the whirring engines.
Count calcium levels of vowels and consonants.
Think about minerals
and lymph nodes.
Observe clouds take violin lessons.

The aircraft -
With 184 pregnancies, each
the size of a wrinkled pea,
feels saturated.

We land safely.

But memories of you
didn't make it
to carousel 6
or got lost, perhaps,
in baggage claim.
 

Saturday

1.

How often you say,
Your dark skin is beautiful,
out of love. 

But I feel itchy,
every time.

Your logic
collides
with my insecurity.

My retina sweats. 
An artery breaks.
A dozen brain cells fall asleep.  
 
In my country,
Dark and beautiful
are mutually exclusive.

Dark, a matter
of social embarrassment.
The color of shame;
A family punishment
for bad karma.

The answer
always
is bleach.

2.

Sometimes
It feels as though
you live
in the anvil-shaped bone
of my middle ear,
having escaped
from my heart.

3.

My ankles dream
of Mauritius,
and turquoise beaches.

My joints interact
over Saturday brunch -
about arthritis,
and loblollies.

I have created an atlas
of my blood's highway system,
spread over the coordinates
of a closed country.
 

Band-Aid

I notice
on the floor, 
a Band-Aid
with separation anxiety.

Orphaned
from its gossamer
of clotting factors.
The breastfeeding, too.

I write an obituary
for Band-Aid Ramon.
 

Saturday without you

1.

I come back home from work,

Knowing
that you are away,
But wishing, nevertheless,
That you are there –
Waiting for me.

But of course,

You are gone
To a clinic somewhere,
And the apartment
Is silent.  

I switch on a lamp,

Change my clothes,
And pour myself a glass of wine.

A dozen pink peonies

drink water
on the east windowsill.

A violent wind

Percusses.

I finish my glass

Walk over to the kitchen
Sit on the floor
And meditate for twenty minutes –
Listening to a recording
On Quiet Lotus.

It ends with the words,

Love yourself.

I don’t.

I cannot.

I pour myself another;

            The sound of refill,

A new acquaintance,

And read

from an anthology of ocean poems.

It feels comforting,

Relaxing, even.

But then I scream.

The neighbor, Jon,

knocks.

Are you okay?

            Are you okay, Tom?

I keep quiet,

Holding onto your toothbrush –

Feeling,

The remnants of your breaths,
Circle around my fingers
Like a ring.

Eventually,

he leaves.

I hear his footsteps

Disappear.
 
I leave a voicemail
On your answering machine
I love you, Babe
And go to sleep.

Theodore

At the therapist's
you say,
It is not he who speaks,
Nicholas,
it is his altered self.
Believe me,
I know him well.

I notice three lamps, light
forming pleats around their porcelain legs,
and listen
to the cadence of our breaths.

He asks me,
Do you agree, Tom?

I say,
Yes,
mostly
to appease your make-believe.

With the passage of evening,
I think more about
the altered self, and
the voices of dissonance
that hang above us
like an umbrella, bent
with the weight of discomfort.

I name him Theodore.
And we are brothers, he
born of delirium
in the belly of my sub-conscience.

His voice feels heavy
like a fulcrum
of dark misgivings.
His nails, like shells
of dangerous longings.
His teeth, like bullets
of hardened sorrow.
His arteries, a venue
where sustained moans
of a fevered brain boom
with theatrical acoustics.

Most often he is calm,
like an ocean of wild veronicas
over which a breeze whistles
at the peak of summertime,
and at peace with my other self,
sleeping in the caves
of my minds utmost imaginings.

But it is the stimulus of an argument,
the battery of your confrontation,
that cause my voice of temper, my
altered self Theodore,
to curdle out
of my blood's dissolution;
morph into a venomous snake
and strike you -invoke
your insecurities,
cause waves of water
over the ridges of your eyes,
beat your voice of reason
with a destructive hammer.

Perhaps it is this need
to bring at peace my duet of selves,
that I seek to address at therapy.
And for you,
to meet my other half,
my bone whisperer,
my elderflower,
my heart's shapeless twin.

Impossible bottle

In the book of poems
that came in the mail yesterday,
I notice
A stranger's eye lash
asleep
between two blank pages.
 

Thinking Out Loud

When you ask me,
in that manner,

Can you
tell me what you're thinking?

I want to run away,
and crack my bones
and light myself on fire.

I want the orange tongues
of dancing flames
to sear
the lips of my desires -
ones
that make your eyes humid,
that dot your
translucent lids with white
curtains of sorrow,
that cause your heart to sink
into a galaxy of darkness.

You treat my longings as
conscious decisions
sprouting out of volition;
And my inner self
with such judgment, 
and contempt and disdain,
that I wish we had never known
one another, that
I were born an oyster
or a jar of yellow paint.