Come to me tonight,
And I will write you a poem
To carry with you
In your body,
On your skin.
My fingers will write it
On the palm of your hand,
My lips shall speak to your lips
in silent verse,
My eyes
Will show you the seat of love
From which all poetry comes
And in my voice
You will hear the sound of my soul
Singing your name
In words that come to you
As starlight,
Sweet wind through the trees,
The brush of grass,
The sound of your feet.
There was that very special book
of poetry
left to me by my mother.
One hundred and twelve years old
and a quilted cover,
Fields and Poe,
Tennyson, Shelly
and an inscription on the inside cover leaf
by a woman no-one I know
had ever met.
She had given it to her love
on the occasion of his birthday.
Twenty one he was
and, if I am to believe what is written within,
quite the handsome lad.
She draws his attention to page forty-one,
and a poem by Tennyson about a flower
plucked and examined
during a walk,
ephemeral beauty destroyed by too close a love,
too vulgar a desire
too mean a possession.
Look at you up in the sky
Shining, pulling oceans
Back and forth,
The flow of blood
Through my heart,
Thoughts in my head.
When was it you
Entered my genes,
Became part of me,
Wrapped around my soul,
Filled my veins with liquid
Moonlight?
When did my
Comings and goings,
Ebb and flow
Fall under your gravity?
When did I discover
I saw better by
Moonlight?
Look at you up in the sky
Shining, so bright
Mars hides
In your light,
Blushes at your beauty,
Paralyzed.
For Lee. Be well my dear one. You were the font of all that is good and right in this world, the genesis of all that is beautiful and the wellspring of all that in creation is joy. I will see you later. I will.
On our way
home from the beach
We stop beside the car
For you to change,
Backside to the passenger door,
I hold a blanket in front of you
As you slip off your top
And drop a loose
Dress over your shoulders
Over your belly,
Mid-calf,
Neglecting to button the bodice
So you dry in the air.
And below the blanket
Your bathing suit
Bottom hits the ground.
As I drive the highway home
Still wet,
You place your feet on the dashboard,
Pull open your top just a bit more
Pull up the hem of your dress over your hips
and fan yourself dry
On the car seat
Spread out in the sun.
I almost hit a wall.
I almost hit a tree.
Bless you.
(A poem for Lee)
I believe in you.
You.
Like I believe
The Sun rises each morning and
The moon shades from light to dark then
To light again.
I believe in you
Like I believe in
The laws of Nature.
I am as sure of you as
Water runs downhill,
Cold contracts,
Gasses expand,
An object in motion stays in motion…
I am as sure of you as I am
Spring will come again and again.
I believe in you like light.
I wrote this a long time ago. I won an award for it. I picked it for contests because I don’t like it. never did. But other people seem to. That’s fine. A mystery to me, but I’m ok with that.
But, it occurred to me, today, now… now I get this. How odd is that? To write something but not get it for nearly thirty years?
I want to lay my head
in the curve of someone’s lap.
Down
on someone who isn’t going anywhere.
I want to rest
and close my eyes
and be blest
by the stroking of my hair.
I want to feel the skin
against my cheek and lips
of someone who will let me in,
someone who won’t throw me off.
I don’t care
who or what they are
or how it appears in others’ sight.
I’m not asking for a year
or even a night,
I just want to lay my head
in the curve of a lap
of someone who isn’t going anywhere.
(Published in The Phoenix and the Dragon as well as several anthologies.)
Sunny day on Balcony # 5
Is hanging on my freezer door.
A pencil drawing by my little boy
Of a big sun,
Happy and shining,
Huge smile and rays
All everywhere
Looking at me through a
Picture window.
And behind it,
Frozen steaks,
A bag of catfish nuggets,
Boxed vegetables all ready for heat and serve
And bags of mixed greens,
Some Italian ices
That taste nothing like what I use to buy
On the street corners
With my mother’s spare change
So many hot summers ago,
Under the sun.
At a garage sale last Sunday
I purchased an erector set.
Not an ordinary erector set
but one in a sky blue box
and in it everything I need
to build angels.
It’s an angel building kit.
Not the kind of angels
made of plastic and wire and
glue makes your head hurt
and the world dizzy spin.
Not like a model set.
Not like the kind of angels
who blow a horn
and my living room walls
come tumbling down
or talk in my brain and I go off
to fight the English,
but the kind of angels
who open rain clouds,
tug at grass blades until they’re long,
lift up the corners of a baby’s mouth.
The kind of angels who pull open irises
and make it so you can see
the chest of your loved one
sleeping next to you
rise and fall with each inspiration
even though it’s completely dark,
but you know you see it.
It’s my angel building kit.
So far,
since I took my kit home
and opened it,
It has rained,
my grass grew,
my irises bloomed
and I can see my loved one’s chest
rise and fall in the night
even though I have the shades drawn,
and it’s completely dark.
I was there when the first pits were dug,
after the trees were cleared; torn, dragged and burned.
My family and I searched for concretions in limey sand
that had not seen the sun
in a span of time that can be measured, but not understood.
Set as coral in the ocean,
became limestone,
became oolite,
Miami Beach,
became my home.
I use to roam and dig under what is now
Aventura Mall
in what was an elegant, high-rise my girl comes three days a week part of Miami,
then Aventura,
now The City of Aventura
which lies engorged between the end of
a double-decked Atlantic Ocean causeway,
named after a State Representative
who owned a Chevrolet dealership,
and a bypass so long, so high
I can no longer see the vast expanse of shrinking ocean.
Only solid walls of perpendicular road
and the mall.
After the palms were greased
and the foundation razed,
one of the first stores to open
was a New Age Giant,
moved from across town,
far from its humble beginnings
as a place to launder cocaine
money through the sale
of health enhancements only slightly less dubious
like vitamin k, brain hemispheric synchronizers,
Angle Cards, singing bowls composed
of cave grown,
high-pressure hose harvested
crystal,
designed to draw the harmony of nature and increase inner-peace and compassionate abide, and
classes teaching the myriad ways to simply life.
It opened after the protests
and the building and the pickets
and the building and the threats
and suits and the building
to sell books about the preciousness of the environment
and bumper stickers exhorting patrons to “Thank Goddess”
customers took home in pastel pink paper bags
printed on each side with delicate seashells.
And they were swamped
along with the Sears and Burdines
and Macy’s where the Cellar had to be on the top floor
because two feet underground,
just below where I use to dig,
was water.
The mall became a focus
for the area
as it drained and dried the commerce and custom from the west
as events were held to
draw crowds like the
“Parade of Whores”
The Cardiologists’ Wives Look-a-like Contest,
The Peach Polo Shirt and Beige Shorts Fashion Show and,
just down the road,
a bit past the beach you don’t dare tread barefoot,
the weekly
“Race to the Floating Bale.”
And so the mall grew,
so much so, soon
it was suggested the East Coast,
should be extended
to allow for its expansion
and, last time I was there,
I swear I saw it breathing.
Where were my poetry tax dollars on inauguration day? I want to know what we’re paying a poet laureate for if we are not going to use him or her on important state occasions such as, but certainly not limited to, presidential inaugurations. If the job of Poet Laureate is “to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry” then it is also his or her job to not allow actions which will decrease the appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry. Therefore, I must suggest it would have been an appropriate action by the poet laureate to have offered Ms. Alexander a stiffly spiked drink before her reading of the inaugural poem, just enough to send her sleeping silently while the poetic moment passed, so we may all have been spared the experience of everything poetry is at its worst and what people who do not like poetry are sure it always is: dreadful, banal, trite, pedestrian, boring and bad. And, in keeping with our expectations, Ms. Alexander read it badly as well. Ms. Ryan, where were you? Why did this happen on your watch? Why did you not protect poetry?
As I listened to her read the inaugural poem, “Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration,” (32 pages), the camera cut away to show the masses leaving in what appeared to be an exodus from tragedy. Within ten minutes this arrived in my email:
God, what an audible THUD to a great speech by Obama when that poet came out and started reading her poem “Deer in the Headlights” from her collection “I Am A Robot: Emotions are for Ethnic People.”
I was asked if I were moved by the poem. I answered, “Yes, indeed I was. I moved to the kitchen.”
The poet laureate is paid $35, 000 a year for his or her services. When I was paid less than that as a teacher, I was busy all the time. When the school needed English taught, which was, strangely, every school day, I was there doing my job. Where was Kay Ryan?
While I agree this is a terribly petty salary to pay a poet (though much more than most poets make as most are paid nothing at all) Ms. Ryan is, nevertheless, a public employee paid with my tax dollars and, on that special occasion I expected the Poet Laureate of the United States to offer her well-crafted professional artistic services. I paid for it. I want it. My tax dollars at work.
But I do not blame Ms. Ryan. I do not know if Mr. Obama chose Elizabeth Alexander or if the chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chose her or if having Alexander read was the result of someone calling in a marker, but surely, someone must take up the gauntlet of repairing the damage she has done to poetry. Someone must pay.
Kay, I’m sorry, but your job just got harder.
Adam Byrn Tritt 