Revisions

[dyne7]

Revisions

As a boy in Dachau, the memorials of dead
gone for generations were everywhere.

German chocolate dripped off my lips and stained
the walkway like the blood of the dead

once stained the rows of henbane and belladonna
in the fields around us.

But my eyes always drew back to the wall—
the polished marble wall showing the names of bloodlines.

Stein the carpenter. Goldberg the farmer. Eckerman the girl next door.
Kaplan, the young boy who loved to read.

My reflection covered them all. For moments, they lived through me.
The pictures above those names? They envied me.

And so I wiped away the dust darkening their faces,
the pollen of our dying.

That’s what we are after all, doppelgangers of ourselves at every turn,
revisions of each other, word economy of the gods…

Older, we sense this. Nobody to tuck us in, no stools to reach
that colder light in the pantry of us all.

And that wall at the camp? It was razed.
Likewise, the porcelain seraphims lining the entrance,

and the ashes of mourning littering the hills of flowers
whose roots stamp out the faces of the dead.

We are memory over and over.

[dyne7]

Traces

Like the color of flowers in darkness,
so are the traces of the dead,
filtering among their absence like
the roiling veins of the human body,
the marred opals of our being.
The reminder—crumbs on church floors—
flour coating the grainy faces of Christ
like the dust on moth wings,
dispersed among us like your father’s
ashes among the Aegean. But even
your father knew the unspeakable
truths that are voiced among
the dead—the apple juice
you once spilled on his old coat,
the one blank line
you left alone in Sunday’s
crossword puzzle, and
what was it, just what was it
he always said about your hair?
The darkest color of them all.
Try telling that to your mother,
a painter nonetheless, crafting
her unspeakable story
onto the old canvas in her study,
the human condition forced upon its surface,
the linen seemingly hating her for it,
the Golgotha of her hands
crafting the Jerusalem
of her life.

[Delta40]

what a powerful poem!

I was particulary moved by:
My reflection covered them all. For moments, they lived through me.
The pictures above those names? They envied me.

And so I wiped away the dust darkening their faces,
the pollen of our dying.

That’s what we are after all, doppelgangers of ourselves at every turn,
revisions of each other, word economy of the gods…

Older, we sense this. Nobody to tuck us in, no stools to reach
that colder light in the pantry of us all.

You have captured sombre grey and translated it into something beautiful to behold

[Delta40]

Again, like Revisions you have captured the distant pain of the dead. Well done!

[dyne7]

Blood Lilies

The two men burdened with the task of telling
this wife that her husband had been found dead
were never the same afterward,
spoken nightmare released from their lips
like the barb of a wasp, the pooling
of everything that followed.
He had been found by the river,
body turned to the side, white shirt streaked
with blood, reverse of the blood lilies
lining the shore of the water.
They had no more. Nothing more to say,
nothing to offer her for the loss.
The dead do not bargain, do not trade
at any sign of someone capable of joining their own.
And these men kept their distance from the inside
of the house, not wanting to disturb the children,
not wanting to be the filaments of the fallen,
whose power descends through them
like the light of a prism.
They went home, going their separate ways—
one, to a prison to visit his father.
The other, to a bar in the suburbs to drown
out the synapses of his brain firing,
alcohol dulling his breathing,
postponing the return
to what keeps him going—his own family,
his harness from sleep.

[dyne7]

Chemotherapy

Hard work will set you free they would say to you.
God rests here, no motion needed—Lazarus rises
dizzily, to fall again, to rise, to fall. You
would sooner remain here, the former you abandoned
like cicada husks on trees. The incoming hour
encroaches like the dark, sways inside like motion sickness.
That alluring black sky you admire is the coat of God,
ruler of galaxies, promoter of all time.
That mercurial brine below laps at your feet—
recedes—comes back, goes, comes back.
Every finger moved, every lip touched, every thigh
worshiped is the mirage you think you see.
Like freckles on a face, like dark grain
on old film, like those spots that bleach
can’t remove, we’re cindered here, graffiti of the cosmos.
Once, your mother lay with you whispering
I’ll do anything. You’re my whole life.
And the proof—a photograph on the wall
of a young, hairless boy grasping a bucket of broken
shells and sand, and the blue canopy of earth
above him, big enough for all of us.
We, the archived of the living, the footnotes of the dead.

[dyne7]

Control


I had taken her in from the rain.
Driving away from another fight
with my wife, I saw her by the road,
soaked, red dress clinging to her
the way that rose petals will sometimes
cling to the water’s surface, hair tressed
over her cheeks like the flaws of midnight,
groceries in hand.
Just some young lady. And the gentleman
in me just could not stop, felt compelled.
She would not tell me her name,
but she invited me in anyway.
And as I sat across the room from her
as she made us tea, I didn’t say a word.
I let her talk about all the things in her life
that she once had control over.
I learned about the job that let her go
and the mounting bills, her grandmother’s funeral
and the lack of lilies—her grandmother’s
favorite. She told me about her third
miscarriage a few weeks before,
the damp blood that awoke her,
the noise that no human should ever have to make…
I realized then that I had heard enough.
The midday light broke through the curtains
as I moved closer to her,
and the patterns of the fabric
pressed their monograms
of shadow over my body.
And I took her, this stranger,
this woman I did not know
into my arms, and felt her press
her face into my shoulder,
like the pigeons of the city who love each other,
and escape the rain together.

[dyne7]

Recognition


(will repost at a later date)

[dyne7]

The Nameless

On the marble porch
added on after the homes
waltz with Hugo—the lotion of dusk
drenching us, family game night
went off without a hitch.

I was eight, and a real estate
tycoon to boot—with my
lion’s share of every house, hotel and
avenue I’d ever want.

My mother’s sundress matched the
bruising sky, and like a conductor
in 2/2 time, my father spread
butter on the last of his dinner bread,

hue like the cold light
the chandeliers emitted within
the house.

“Bedtime kiddo.”
I didn’t listen. I kept bargaining
to be with them for just the
next moment longer, and the next,
and the next—

until I drifted off to the
baritone voice of Nat King Cole.

What’s worth knowing slips
between the nameless, and
my fingers curling on the Boardwalk,

my mother, her hair now mussed
from the humid Carolina air,
took me inside the house with the
tenderness only parents know,

and careful not to brush
the porcelain salters within
the house, took me upstairs
and placed me in my bed.

Eyes adjusting to the dark,
artificial stars glowed,
revealing the glass model
of the human circulatory system
on my night stand.
In that moment, I was safe from corruption.

All that before the funeral the week later.

I was born for this I thought.
And careful not to slip around
the muddy edges where the waterlines
crisscross grid would soon cover
her bones, my father and I helped the
pallbearers lower her casket into the ground.

In shock, I ran away as fast as
my young legs would carry me,
past the front gate reading
Let the dead bury their dead,

towards something inhumane,
something rotating us into
the soil of everyone.

[dyne7]

The Difference

It’s mid-afternoon in April,
and Llewellyn and I had been
walking for hours.

He wants the best casket for his mother,
but the shops here don’t quite have
what he’s looking for.

Hunkering down on this bench,
Llew says something about how quiet
it is right now, and I can’t argue that.
This time of day, light precedes the dark,
and the cosmic blood of sky halos over us.

”Cremation”, he says.
I’m confused. But he tells me she hated crowds,
and that death probably wouldn’t change that.

I don’t know if it’s the right time,
if it’s for me to say,
but I tell him anyway. I tell him
there are moments where we find
ourselves in the rawest of places.

Here, the dead swirl around us,
and their briefer selves play
with crayons darker than black.

Sometimes, the most vivid colors
one can know are the ones that
remain nameless, the ones without verbal
fingerprints to deter us from searching further.

It has become awkward, and we both know this.
And like a death’s-head moth taking flight,
he stands and walks a few yards away from me
and lays down, arms and legs spread wide.

I think he gets it now. From here, he’ll reach
that place we all fear to go—the divide where
subtraction has become the only addition
we can ever know.

This is when I recall my old father.
And how a young boy waited for the first
sign of his old man, by the arrival of his
shadow on the porch blinds.

And how wiser now, sees nature
in the most cartoonish of ways—like a
touring rock star shooting heroin, and in this—

becoming his next word, breath, twitch,
processing the next surge he takes like an
antibiotic,

and how smiling grimly, sees his latest
groupie offering herself to him with
a tramp stamp that says Bella Luna
in a blue like the arteries of her body,

everyone else lying around him
like Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’, and he


wonders where he left the prophylactics.

[Delta40]

wow! you write so wonderfully Dyne. I am a poor critic when it comes to telling people how to improve their writing but I don't mind saying I like something!

Keep writing and you may need to create a thread of poems

[Delta40]

your capacity for detail adds so much substance to your poetry.

My mother’s sundress matched the
bruising sky, and like a conductor
in 2/2 time, my father spread
butter on the last of his dinner bread,

It really places one in the room and the loss the following week is like a face slap.

[Delta40]

Very moving. I would consider editing

assignment when only minutes were needed,
the hug you gave your second father when only
a smile was needed,
the amount of shampoo you poured in your spouse’s hair
when only a drop was needed.

on account of all the 'needed' although I am not sure of its meaning in relation to love is recognition. Recognition of how much love is needed?

[Delta40]

I think he gets it now. From here, he’ll reach
that place we all fear to go—the divide where
subtraction has become the only addition
we can ever know.

I especially like this. My father died and the experience has so added to my life!

[Delta40]

Gee. The trail of grief that you write is absolutely absorbing.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Re Revisions: I haven't read the others yet, because this first one is all I can take in at one sitting. It's a remarkable poem, a brilliantly realized poem and


That’s what we are after all, doppelgangers of ourselves at every turn,
revisions of each other, word economy of the gods…

these lines in particular stand out as poetry of the most deeply felt sort!

[PrinceMyshkin]

In this sombre poem, "Traces,"


the Golgotha of her hands
crafting the Jerusalem
of her life.

the many seemingly humblest of remembered details culminate in the above great lines!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Blood Lilies

The two men burdened with the task of telling
this wife that her husband had been found dead
were never the same afterward,
spoken nightmare released from their lips
like the barb of a wasp, the pooling
of everything that followed.
He had been found by the river,
body turned to the side, white shirt streaked
with blood, reverse of the blood lilies
lining the shore of the water.
They had no more. Nothing more to say,
nothing to offer her for the loss.
The dead do not bargain, do not trade
at any sign of someone capable of joining their own.
And these men kept their distance from the inside
of the house, not wanting to disturb the children,
not wanting to be the filaments of the fallen,
whose power descends through them
like the light of a prism.
They went home, going their separate ways—
one, to a prison to visit his father.
The other, to a bar in the suburbs to drown
out the synapses of his brain firing,
alcohol dulling his breathing,
postponing the return
to what keeps him going—his own family,
his harness from sleep.

Once again, an astounding poem! How unexpectedly telling are the seemingly incidental details of the respective activities of the two men who found and reported the death!

I might suggest that you risk the merest hint of dramatic emphasis bt breaking this into several stanzas, to better reproduce the passage of time and the momentousness of the feelings involved.

[jajdude]

Agreed, some very fine writing.