On eating candy corn, and the coming of Autumn

Orange and white candy corn, where have you been?
Autumn was waiting for summer to leave,
and then it just dropped in. So here you are,
spilling off shelves in wal-mart
and piling up on the scuffed white floors.

I can taste you and your honey-soaked,
saccharine flavor before I drop the first
kernel in my mouth. I can smell the sugar
even as I tear open the bag,
letting air rush in to meet you
the dry, tree bark heat of autumn
being soaked into your yellow base,
your orange torso,
your dull white tooth.

I find it a little disturbing that
one of my cherished traditions is contained entirely
in the act of eating candy,
little shapes of sugar with no nutritional value,
nothing that can subsist you.

Somewhere in the world, people are putting on traditional costume,
picking up their esoteric stringed instruments and
tuning the compliant strings while their grandparents nod approvingly–
recalling how they did the same for their nodding,
compliant grandparents every year;
Before the festival that winds its way down
through the stone streets
as it does each autumn,
past the store which bears their fading hand-painted name
on its fascia.
Such a collection of cultural paraphernalia is a living thing,
and should you be its adopted child,
take heart and be glad.

Be glad that your tradition does not consist entirely
of gaudy bits of candy, which are compulsively
and even guiltily consumed,
regretted,
and quickly forgotten.
And then all that’s left is a clear plastic bag
blowing across the freeway,
and two men smoking outside of a machine shop
are watching this bag
as it leaps skyward and catches the sunlight, somehow brilliantly,
for an instant.

At your book signing

We shuffled forward inch by inch,
until I was alongside the antique wagon wheel
with its rotting spokes and rusted iron straps
Inch by inch,
until I was level with the front doors of the book store
which had been pulled from their hinges and set aside
Inch by inch,
until I could just glimpse your wiry hand gripping a pen
signing your looping name across books, cd’s, and loose leafs of paper

And closer, until I could make out the print of your shirt
and the sameness of our eyes.

Later,
I was speeding home at several hundred inches per second
your new book riding shotgun in the passenger seat
slowly reading itself as wind from the ripped convertible top
came in and turned the pages one by one,
and on,
until the very last page was turned
and your book closed itself
with the small humble sound of paper touching paper

For Ashley

I hate curd.
But just the word.
I find the food
really quite good,
but the phoenetics
are too absurd.

Call it sematics.
I might be pedantic.
I believe Satan’s name
is nearly the same,
and simply the sound
can make me sick.

But when you said,
“A slice of bread
with this above–
Is it true love?”
I went to the store
and asked for it.

Thinking smaller

…As i dipped my arm in a bath of ice
the sensation thrilled my inner child
who then cried out with broken nerves
and bottle rocket screams we learned
meant more than books when books could come
and steal your bike and take the fun
from army games in minature
trenches carved in my backyard
a treehouse leaned against the stars
could make us indians with feathers in our
hair but something evil stole those years
from me, at least,
….i don’t remember clearly
what went on inside my head
when i had less to worry me

Slow to wake

almost on the verge of recounting my dreams
i lay for an hour, still as a flower
in a pot on a porch in a town with no breeze

i focused my eyes on a corner of ceiling
where a cobweb chaotically was strewn on a beam
its features as jagged as cliffs by the sea

what dream was i so laboriously attempting
to bring from the theater of sleep
into the scrutiny of careful recollection?

what was my subconscious trying to tell me
when i was running through Paris’ empty streets
at night in fog as white as angel wings?

i stared at my corner and tried to remember:
wasn’t i searching for another dreamer–
were we to meet under the Eiffel tower?

yes.

finding that clue, and pulling it through–
like unraveling a sweater with one thread exposed
my dream came back like crystal glass

i don’t know if this was a rendezvous
conspired in secret by our subconscious minds
but last night in Paris
we met
and kissed

…so why the fuck did i wake up?

The clouds are coming

The clouds are creeping
crossing paths
and sometimes sleeping
staying still
for minutes more
than we should spend
simply, sweetly,
contemplating
the white
that breaks the blue

someone in seattle
might not be
so bewitched
by passing clouds
or singing storms
drumming on the roof
but inland towns
in mexico
will fall in love
with these wispy
white continents
inverted on
their paths across the blue

we can’t escape
the stoic, cloudless,
unembellished sky
with none of these
white ornaments
to make us sigh
(and want to spend the day outside)
its always here
and we are stuck–
patient prisoners
in our insipid cyan cell

(poetic souls need novelty,
embellishment and decoration
to satiate their appetite
for delicious images
for hearty, lush,
and potent emotions;
so you see why i say
the bland blue sky
is hell!
my soul is starving!)