Runaway Odysseus: Collected Poems 2008-2012 by James Welsh
your earrings glinted
in constellations which should
have a universe of patience.
Yet you cannot dredge any
strength to wait
for this checkout line
simply to die.
May 31, 2010
Goodbye to the Goodbyes
Goodbye goodbye…may I never
see you again even when the day
grows thick like cold water,
sinking through the soil while
night sticks oily at our shirts.
Goodbye goodbye…may I never
see you again even when the
droughts soak up the lawns
like a sponge gone so thin
its bones bulge through the
skin as I imagine muscles would.
Goodbye goodbye…may I never
see you again even when our
hug grows weak like weeds
at the knees before you cross seas
so deep even the currents
get lost like my voice does at times.
At times like these.
Granite Rain
Rain’s slipping on the shingles – sounds
like shoes crunching broken glass.
I’m hoping for the storm to outlive
the afternoon, because this June sun
soaks through me and pulses against my
egg-raw nerves. I stir my sugar and jet
tea, seeing the heavy drops of water
dig up the sundried garden, curving
the debris of rigor mortis leaves
into soup to soothe the grass.
The rain’s drowning everything into
life and it’s wonderful, yet I’m
waiting for the sun to knife the
granite clouds that somehow
crumble as slick as bread.
Sometimes I wish it wouldn’t.
June 18, 2010
Gypsy Mistress
My Gypsy mistress stands
between me and sunset,
as if I would be able to
see it if she wasn’t there.
Which is often – she’s
always on the walk like prowl,
raveny hair bouncing off her
shoulder like rainwater
diving from storm drains.
She’s old Parisian – a tangle in the
threadfolds cold
with hickory November.
Nothing more than rags
patched together, the
quiltwork world enough to
keep all her sides warm –
the Monday side tired,
the Friday side warmed.
She’s the modern day
from a century back,
squeezed huglove between two
wars that crack sprout like
roots, all liquid in the sticky soil.
She barters for her shoes,
the only expensive in her life –
besides the notepads that
she jots her writes in until
the pages weigh her down like sin.
Sometimes she confuses walk
with talk. It’s then she draws
footprints like ellipsis dipped
in paper snow.
Her glow shadows
her steps – so when
I think I’ve caught her,
I’m left instead
with this nightlight silhouette.
And you know
what? Sometimes such
things are just enough.
May 2, 2010
Harvest Down the Branches
I bit the apple in –
collapsing its crackled
green skin already blotched
by the fall. It bruises black
and blue as easily as I do.
Some say the apple withers
with the bite. They never
stop to think how the apple
stretches, the long spit
of apple juice making its
way down to the grasses.
The appled ocean is enough
to drown worms if it wants.
If I could bottle up the
city-bright sounds that come
with biting down to the core,
I’d sell it by the gallon – to
myself. I would recycle
the apple crunch until
it was a tired grunt. Then
I would pour it in the weeds,
let the autumn sun greed it up.
This is a simple, apple-picker’s
dream – it’s good that this
basket is just Act I, Scene I.
March 26, 2010
Here’s to Sleep
Please, carry me in on a westward wind –
rock me to sleep on your whims
that tock with a pendulum’s tongue,
humming like the rain splatter on drums.
Please, my sleepy muse,
hug me like a blanket,
loving me with the past’s ashes
gift-wrapped, all to breed
new flowers from the ground –
all so I could put a new blue
rose in your hair when the
next hour sounds.
Please, put a smile on my face
as I fall asleep so if
I die, people would believe
I died happy. Hug me and
keep me warm – the night feels cold
against this bold fool’s soul.
Please, close the blinds –
don’t let the sunshine in
and the night unwind
and curl backwards
along time’s own spine.
Just give me five more minutes
in your arms and then, and only
then, can I face the world
ready and alone.
Hold Your Breath
Even cemeteries see need
to breathe at times - although
it's hard, the way the vines
around the tombstones
pulse and wither and squeeze
stones free from the
ground.
So it seems our departed
die twice - even someone's
old sweetheart's heart has
to lie asleep through two wakes
too. It's hard to think
this world has billed them
twice - the bureaucratic
charm of the tree's roots
stretching arms throughout
the soil,
not seeing nor caring
that their late morning
rising is scratching the
bed where someone's
Uncle Ted or Aunt Kelly lies.
Honeysuckles in March
I’d love to love a Norah,
a florist whose floral arrangements
floor you as soon as you walk
through the door to her little
flower shop, her little flower shop
with the mallow plants rotting
through the bottoms of the wooden flower pots.
I’d talk with her, her with that white
lilac – distracted in the tangles
of her hair – purpling with blush
as we’d speak with hushed voices
so as not to wake up the poppies
floppyed over with sleep. I would
dream my dreams then and keep
on talking. I would drawl slow, I would stall.
I’d keep the moment living as long
as I could…stand tall, I would be thinking,
no one likes a slouch.
She would say she wouldn’t have loved
me a year ago, back when she’d
passed her time with
singing, drinking, charades, and other
games with her friends who lived
just around the
to be her stilts, but simply being
her crutches instead. I would be surprised
that she could breathe and see back
then, when one thinks of her friends’
ivy quietly wrapping around her head.
“I’m glad you became a florist,” I would say.
“I’m glad you aren’t allergic to flowers,” she would say.
I would take a rose that bled to death with red
and tuck it into a nook hidden in her
hair. Somewhere, a clock would chime noon –
back to work, it says – but I would forget to care.
how a speed bump destroyed the world
the globe bounced
as our station-wagon conquered a speed bump –
I looked in the backseat
to see the little plastic, little fragile world
spin nauseous, crying over losing gravity.
I watched the world downfall
into a floor splotched with
stains of coffee and oil.
now the USSR is hugging the spare tire
we keep in the back like comrades at the bar
(it’s an old globe, mind you).
the US is on top of the
world at this angle, yet it’s
lying on its back,
looking up at the roof
and making me wonder
if the real world
is as much of a puppet
to whim and chance
as this outdated globe is,
sitting in the back of
my station-wagon.
How an Elephant Forgets
You always had an elephant’s memory,
freely recalling the raindrops falling
on every picnic to which you’ve gone –
all those songs you sang with the church
choir, how your voices still ring to
this day in the bell in the highest
tower – you remember that too,
or so you say.
The walks in the wheat fields,
you remember those too – how the
scarecrow was starving until you stuffed
him with straw. You still remember the
shivers spinning webs and crawling
down your back as he
waved goodbyes with
his scratchy claws. You don’t
remember the wind blowing that day,
and I believe you.
You remember old walks along
the beach, daydreaming your arms
into fins so you can swim and live
in the seas.
Which makes it all the more painful
that you forgot about me.
I am my muse’s own right hand
I am my muse’s own right hand,
dizzied up in a Ferris
freewheel spin as I
scorch words into paper,
my heart rubbed raw enough
to warm the chill in the
December all the fallen
will remember.
I’ll sing a
winter call, though, that rustles
the leaves from the mud like
cattle from the plains – speaking
of which, don’t these fields stumble
rich with frosty brandy?
The world gets drunk on this
last drought and gets caught
up in the moment in which
jack-frosted funerals and lovers’
lost kisses all gather to march.
I Am the British Empire, You Are the Sun
Once, I forgot a bucket
outside for the month
of July – when I found
it hidden in the thicket
behind my house,
sunlight was scurrying around
inside, its rays its legs
while blinding me with
a heart that it
offered up with its hands.
So I’ve been walking around
with this little tin bucket even since,
the sunshine splashing around inside
and washing the sidewalk
behind me – and though
I’ve been walking for miles,
the sunshine is still in there -
I don’t think it minds
the bucket, but I think
it might be riled up by
my wanting the day
to be by my side – see,
I’ve always had this
slight fear of the nighttime,
so no wonder when – for those
rare times when I forget
and leave that bucket behind –
I like you being by my side.
I Am the Smiles You Haven’t Smiled Yet
I am the smiles you haven’t smiled yet.
I am the unseen cove in your favorite bay,
which, if you saw, you could never forget
as you plunge deeper into the vignette
waters to hide from the dying chill of May.
I am the smiles you haven’t smiled yet.
I am your favorite brand of cigarette
laying forgotten by your clay ashtray,
which, if you saw, you could never forget
of the time we’ll speak through smoke, hair wet
with the rain that weighed down that day –
I am the smiles you haven’t smiled yet.
And even though we’ve only met
and you may not believe the things I say –
if you don’t believe me, you will now just forget
of the good times we will have – with that regret
singing in your ear like a widowed blue jay.
I am the smiles you haven’t smiled yet,
which, if you saw, you would never forget.
I am Who You Say I am
To the bell-tower's top
I rise, riding on these
ghostly rumors, pushing
bony schooners across
these seven social
seas. I am whoever I say
I am, although my definition
used to fit the notes
you passed around our
high school classes.
And even when I got older, every
shoulder that I bumped into
knew something about me,
but who am I to judge?
Because a liar who calls
a lie is a fire who calls
a candle shades
too bright. I've been
told it's frowned upon in
many circles not to be at the top
of the bell's curve, but my hours
atop this bell-tower have taught
me this: a bell's top is not what makes
the tolling sounds.
I Stand Three Inches Taller When I’m Sitting
I stand three inches taller
when I’m sitting down. When
I’m walking, I shake like circus
flamingoes on their walking sticks.
When I’m at a chair, I sit with
a swan glare, ruffled as the
pages I turn in my book.
To many, to stand is the turn,
when you could cower the shorter
down even further. I haven’t
learned to be that kind of man,
and I doubt I’ll ever learn that
curve in my spine.
The pen isn’t a sword – it’s
a scythe. And I know how to
harvest the fight with what
I write – sitting down,
drawing a line.
February 6, 2011
If Medusa Could Talk
This professor’s talking is the brooches I
squeeze in my hands
until I draw a painter’s red,
ready to slam the sharp against
the mud in my eyes.
With a smile stretched into a
nothingness that, in turn, dresses up
with a clown’s lipstick (which
itself was once a warpaint), her voice
rises and falls –
a balloon in the wind –
yellow snowballs rolling downhill –
city water mountain-climbing a used napkin.
In An Unchecked Anger
In an unchecked anger,
we waltz like dancers
to the beat of feat
stomped into the earthy
cadence of the soil
and although this
page from the history
books boils, I
can feel this thin-lipped
moment grow colder,
measuring its height
on the kitchen wall
as it stunts shorter and shorter
until it vanishes, leaving
us to imagine a love
between us was as
real as the tear in the
eye of the ghost that
walks a dryrot floor
and sweeps like a broom
through the blushing
doors of our summer cottage
spotted with nail scratches
of hail that reigned during
the first age of
the hurricanes,
hail that still remembers
that beginning, just enough
to see that this is an ending.
In the Trade Winds
You’re the papers
for my writing.
Me, I am your exception –
because your rule
is you can only love poets
from a distance.
Yet we comb our hair
to meet the wind
lingering in between
our palms, filling out
the space our fingers strum.
You’re my lady in red,
the lady from which I read
my words. Your dusky
scarlet hair is pulled back
like low tide, your cheeks’
glow froze in place from
stuttered, december days.
These trade winds raise and
gaze this love between ourselves,
the current sweeping us up
as the time piece runs.