head full of snow

'When the wind blows and the rain feels cold 
with a head full of snow 
In the window there's a face you know 
Don't the night pass slow? 

Sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind 
Just another mad, mad day on the road
I am just living to be lying by your side 
But I'm just about a moonlight mile on down the road 

Made a rag pile of my shiny clothes 
Gonna warm my bones, 
I got silence on my radio 
Let the air waves flow, 
For I am sleeping under strange strange skies 
Just another mad, mad day on the road 
My dreams is fading down the railway line 
I'm just about a moonlight mile down the road'

the rolling stones

the leaves of the trees in your yard screech low like cellos; it is too dark to know where the narrow path leads, creeping as it does to the right and then out of sight, but that's where you go

a head full of snow: have you a head full of snow? is this the origin of your ghostly glow, your emaciated smile ?

your hands are warm anyway

a head full of snow. it's a feeling i've known (we were all clean and young before we were grown but the nights are cold, and through the smoke we only seek the heat

that we need for our own)

your face in the half-light, the shadow of your collarbone

of course i can only close my eyes,
remember a song

stirring up the stations of the radio. my vision adjusts to find you moving slow, your eyes ignited by a lighter's adjustable flame, beautiful mouth, a perfect bow, and

a head full of snow

i shall lay back on this table and watch the stars explode. and i shall not cry because i am too high to remember how.

i have a glass of wine a cigarette and the rolling stones
and i peer through frozen eyes, hear through a wall of snow

(as do we all, i know, because we all have felt the pull. along the narrow path, that's where you go)


to calm a feeling that is stronger than your bones, that threatens to grow darker than your immeasurable black pupils know

a piece of carnelian, cellos, a head full of snow

asleep and dreaming

i am asleep and dreaming, like the coyote lying limp on the shoulder of my most beloved
highway 101

a casualty of spring

note my four paws finally come to rest, my full, speckled tail does not wag and
the foolish, rattling pinball machine of my heart stills and ceases those deafening, breathcatching beats

so unruly and reddening to my unsuspecting cheeks!

'how they once plagued me,'
laughs my dreamself

'i was so in love then'

it's a face i want to turn to me with all the warmth of the sun:

despite various ominous sightings,
of hunting birds, a swoop of vultures, a black cat staring
at me through my window,

my own doom all spelled out for me by candles;

despite all that i know that i'm willingly walking
in the direction that tugs constantly
at my limbs

of course i am
have i any choice?

a rhetorical question,
the answer is no.

half my heart

set free by love, like aretha
seventeen
by the cigarette in his mouth
by his mouth as he'd sing


driving north on the 1
to his house
in the heat

glasses secured with dental floss
fingers tuning strings

i miss half my heart
tucked in his glove compartment

half my heart
next to a carton of disintegrating chesterfields

half my heart loyal to our love only for the classic
only for each other
only for the summer

my compass points irreversibly toward
his smile

still the north star, still the sun
still the brightest thing i've ever seen

still my best friend, still my only friend
still mine and
still his

the best thing perhaps ever to happen to me
still half my heart

'he's a rebel, and he'll never ever be
any good.'





inclined to make a sketch of him and not for the first time, it is
most cruel

enigmatic from the start, dark eyes like coals, that conscienceless gaze

(a guiltless gaze, so unconcerned ...!)

i'm nearly inclined to pick up a hairbrush
and start singing

of how he was
partly hidden by shadow

absolutely criminal in his first impression
absolutely criminally
bad

leaned back in his chair, arms limp at each side like a junkie, smiling vaguely
as if transcending

immediately recognizable as a night owl

pale, anemic, thin-wristed and mean

a crown of thorns i wear round my chest
every time i move i bleed a little

he's a rebel

dust

I.

summer found me grateful that the river was stronger than me, it quelled my fear and allowed me not to speak:

adrift on my back for the moment of peace it could bring me

i found seventeen to be more acidic than sweet. now i noticed every snakeskin curling on the highway, the wheeling vultures; my heart felt the pain that the prey feels, the signed

sealed, delivered, and doomed

torn to shreds in clear view and borne away by claws, i was the dirt and gravel road beneath your old trucks' tires

the dust on your dashboard, the dust on your mirrors

my surprise,
that first love should feel like death indeed

it certainly felt like death to me




II.


i would have been his wife if i had been so lucky; more likely i would have been his whore:
sam cooke's paramour

it seems a harmless dream til the needle drops
and the crackling and dust give way to him:

a voice known to bear powers incomparable, as persuasive as the sliest teenage lover, sweet and understanding, only he promises

to soothe my soul
if it takes all night long

time doesn't mean much to him; he never wants to sleep
and there is nowhere he would rather be

conjured from dust to stir up the coals in my chest
some smoke then finally a flickering orange light

only those conjured by dust can do it
and sometimes
it takes all night long





III.


a silly girl would play with her hands in the dust, but a wise girl keeps hers clean
and i know what sort of girl i endeavor to be

a heavy gaze from blue eyes cannot move me
i know that behind it lies nothing but ash and nicotine
i know now how it feels to be impossible to please

and i am not unscathed
but who could be

on the table beneath thin fingers only dust
from behind teeth only words
made of dust

i feel so old, my soul sifting away
borne by the wind, dust

i loved you when i still thought that love was as pure as your heart,
directed like tides by the moon

i loved you when i still thought that you were pure of heart

this theory i now must
disprove:

you are not the boy i was introduced to
years ago, i don't remember by whom
you wore your vietnam vet ensemble

and i began a long history of loving you

now it's all as bitter as the limes
on my grandmother's tree

you're drinking cheap whiskey and
smoking in the heat

only the songs you bring
and not the things you do
are sweet

drudged through the mud and long awoken
from a fleeting reverie

you've always given your love away for free

because the nature of our love was that
it belonged to you and me

exchanged between our lungs like smoke
young pretty things

you gave me smokey robinson

i let myself sing
and so did you

of
the tracks of our tears