moonlight sonata

as moonlight rolled off my skin

i watched the leaves waltz together like

two sensual snakes alone in the desert

celebrating music

in a life that cannot live up to its own

silence

 

an autumn waltz

a place

unlawful loitering reads the sign

hanging over my head if i turn around

to look at it, but the graffiti, scribbled

across the first word tells me to stay

on these seven steps with seven people

sitting, scattered

like birds perched on electric wires against the sky

like musical notes dancing on line sheets

stains plastered on the pavement

from our egg sandwich breakfast

i see what was once ketchup

but now red hues seeped into the ground

a distant memory of taste, satiation

splashes of our dinner

residues from excessive erasing,

the remnants of pencils that we lose

faster than we can sharpen or scribble

the vanishing ideas of our minds

puddles of brown liquid

once held in ‘caution the contents are hot’ coffee cups,

once aromatic, but now

reduced to blobs of spit and cigarette ashes,

as a medley of all the things we needed, wanted,

and couldn’t resist to indulge in

the last remaining inches of once full cigarettes,

lip-stained, bent, and chewed on

by mouths that once spoke in charming dialogue

but now cover the steps where we sit and

they shuffle past us with the little leaves

on a windy day, that brings with it

the smell of simmering meat from the corner

kiosk we all frequent when we need to devour

pain, increasing stress levels, and uncertainty

sometimes our joys, if were lucky

the steps collect bits of all of us

from saliva to sweat to tears

used papers, empty bottles, half eaten lunches and perhaps,

this, if i were to crumble it and throw it on the ground

mix it with orange peels that have been collected from

here, where we sit

during the schedules that allow us

 time to burn sticks of immediate pleasure

and let them drag

slowly like thick marijuana smoke

before we abandon them with the twist of our feet

  and the pigeons, they too have provided material

to write about, for they have been here longer

than we’ve abused the place

no wonder they rage and flap their filthy feathers

at the sight of our feet, beneath the once in a while

darkened sky that sends down water in attempt to

wash away everything we have left behind

yet, when we return the next day with

coffee and bagels in hand, we sit
next to the stains that were there yesterday
and said no to the rain

but the man we always see, the keeper

of the stairs, beside me

with dust pan and broom in hand, he

nurtures them, sweeping

the yellow butts off the ground with

diligent ease and satisfaction as though he

had to lay his head, to rest here at night,

when we all go home.

witness

looking out at the horizon

its all so hard to take in at times –

like on that beautiful saturday in the middle of  december

when we drove to his house around two in the afternoon

and stood in silence as we took the left of two elevators

alone to the thirteenth floor

where we slowly walked down the hall

holding hands and i stared at the worn persian carpet beneath our feet

while you opened his door and i already knew it was over

he was six feet under but still on the ground

and there was nothing you could have done even though you

tried, tried, tried to give him air

beating his white naked chest as blood painted your hands

and you cried out ‘dad, no’ on your knees

like a child

yet i, suspended, let the seconds evaporate

as if time weren’t a train running on schedule

watching your face disappear as you held your dead father in your arms thinking –

you might have made it in time had you spent a minute less

brushing your teeth or

chewing your breakfast or

walking or

talking or

anything at all and i never thought i would have to watch you do this

as adrenaline ran through your miserable blood like a raging river

i didn’t belong here in this delicate moment

as red became the color of your lips and the only color i could see

while i felt that watching was a sin imposed by 

every second that slipped and contoured the lines of your face

and the pungent smell of death dragged you away

for what could I have said to your sad empty eyes except

‘here, sit, have a sit of water…’?

if at first is sounded like rain inside of here

where only the whites of the eyes

opened and closed as i tried

to believe in god, watching

your hands tremble

hoping the walls could walk away

if memory was something you could plaster on them

and write pain in italics to

describe how silver the silver was

if at first i heard my heart beating

and yet heard nothing at all

between passing hours and streetlights

that flicker then fade

if bullets were malleable and

sunk in the flesh while i laughed

at your sweat drenched face

staining the worn denim that

disguised you as human

on the day it was seventy five and sunny

and people forgot how to cry

if fate wasn’t a shed stuffed with

victims of self depravation who know

nothing of souls like mine that yearn

to watch the leaves change color

and lick salt off my cheeks, sunken

from anguish at the image i see

in the mirror, of a ghost

i always was yet never discovered

if stars could bear witness to

the aging anguish of the world

that made me a statistic of the faces on our evening news

do you know where your kids are right now?

whose darling smiles exist only in pictures

you send out to people who pretend they care

and say they will do their best to find

those silky soiled locks whose

dusty distant laughter was only a sound

heard through the trees, yet still

if i never asked for it,

why then, could i tell you that

living tastes like lying under a naked bulb

begging to die?

what is concrete?

e                        bea                        the                        float

 ven                       ting                      crack                      ing

the                        do                        ing                        sail                       

 ato                        wn                        sym                         ing                       

    mic                        is                         pho                     slip

 rain                        not                            nies                      ping

  in                        loud                        from                      away

the                         e                          your                             like

  sho                        nough                    ach                      pins

    wer                        to                          ing                         and

                           drown                        vo                         nee

                               out                            cal                        dles                                                                                                                           

                                                             chords                        on

                                                                                            the

                                                                                                sea