CK Tower - Honorable Mention


In A Hospital, Anywhere, With Anne
with apologies to Ginsberg 


What visions I have of you 
 tonight, Anne Sexton, 
I dreamt you again.  You 
 sipping your gin 
at my kitchen table, 
 offering a cigarette 
when I couldn’t find 
 my lithium.

I sit up
 unconvinced of my consciousness, 
 unconvinced there is a difference in being and not. 

 I shuffle to blinds, peek out, 
look for any sign 
 of you, my good muse. 
But only see long slices 
 of silver interrupt shadows 
in the empty parking lot below.

I leave my room, 
 it looks like the one 
next door and next door 
 and next door, only difference 
the occupants, like you Anne, 
 here before on different anti-whatever 
medications. 

 I scuffle down dim lit halls 
in brown hospital-issue 
 gripper-slippers remembering 
your frustrations.

 I walk into the dayroom 
just as you light a cigarette 
 and blow smoke at the
"Thank you for not smoking" sign.  
 The nurses just nod and smile.  

Will you sit with me all night, 
 a companion to my bipolar thoughts?  

 We can sit and share 
a cigarette, dream of life 
 without bent chemistry, of a world 
of metaphors written without
   insanity.

Will you sit with me all night
 Anne Sexton,
here in these long slices of silver?
 I have no gin 
and they’ve taken my cigarettes,
 left me alone with you 
and these brown slippers.

Originally published in Afterthoughts Vol.3 No. 2


The Choler of Light


I  Chanting Matins


6a.m. 
as dark as my eyelids,
shroud over stars,
the stale tongue,
aurora in motion,
gesture after gesture
of insufferable light,
and the rooks chained to the tree tops,
like little monks chanting Matins.
The dog is restless and shifting,
pacing before the door, 
I let him out, watch
as vestments of fog process
across thelawn. 
The dog whines for breakfast,
the day begins to open,
like red-lipped tulips 
that bow and swallow 
wafers of sun.
And I 
devour breakfast 
like a sacrilegious death
that God concocted. 


II  Vespers

Something boiling
in the air,
an aura of magma.
I confess, 
all day I’ve tried to construct
a new identity 
and now the sun sinks 
to wreak it.
The horizon bleeds
sucks on its lip,
those wide red lips,
before disappearing.
And I wonder about 
this blistering season, 
and a reoccurring daydream
of eating the sky
like an over ripe apple.
But first I’d like to find my old sun:
ask it 
why am I still here,
and who is accountable?

Originally published in The Orphic Chronicle (Spring ’98)


Listening From The Earth's Dark Belly


 “I would like to think that no one would die anymore
   if we all believed in daisies.
   if we all believed in daisies.”

          -Anne Sexton
 

Let the flowers make their way 
through one more day of intemperance, 
so tomorrow I might have a dozen violets, 
plum-lipped in a blue vase.  A handful of summer 
on my table, close to the window 
where the feeder hangs, favorite
of the house finch, cherry-head flutterer 
greedy for black oil sunflower seeds.
And close to the flower beds where the robins
pluck worms who struggle blindly,
hoping to slide back into the deep cool
soil, back into the earth’s dark belly.

In the backyard where nothing will grow,
heatsease bloom wild, perhaps a favor 
from God, or a promise to a languid garden.
If all the world saw such promise, picked
baskets full of wild violets, those dark fingers
and sol-bright centers, all would be well.

With the simple offering of a flower,
so gracious and unexpected, like the chance 
to unburden a sorrow, I would like to believe 
no one would want to die anymore.  Perhaps 
if someone had picked violets for Anne… 
But the worms know better.  They slide 
back into the earth into the ear of death, listening
as she unburdens her last great sigh.

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