Her Turquoise Eye Shadow
In a bed of Kleenex under the pink moon
and I miss everything. Rain falls softly
on the wildest gazebo in the park
and gold flakes get caught
in your zipper, like all that time
you spent in the car listening
to whale songs in the garage.
People were really worried.
And the largest purple eyes were
watching over, a gaze like
fear not, candy heart, all will
be revealed in the fullness
of a fleeing javelina through
a residential development.
I buried it at sea. I gave it
all away. I think some
pagan surgeons have it
now. I haven’t thought of it
in ages. It’s at the bottom
of a pond between two
neighborhoods. I’ll take you.
Coyote faces when you aren’t even
looking, and then out rises this synthetic
roar and then it comes at night and
whispers to me at the window of the
grandness of the kingdom below
the municipal park. “It’s like heaven
down there,” in a whisper, “did you ever
wonder what it’s like at the bottom
of that aquarium in the back of that
Chinese food place over by the hospital?
Like heaven. Like every day is opening day
forever. Like layers of multi-colored sand
forever. It’s heaven.”
Sometimes commercials take me there
under night soil and creosote. Nothing
is left but my earthly presence
and its cross with an antler fossil.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Poem
Nothing was open at the airport
all fifteen or so people
early to their flights
just kinda looked through
the slats to the combination
gift shop Dunkin Donuts.
Before he left for Italy, everyone
thought Coleridge would die.
Instead he was just incredibly
strung out on a ship, probably
preferring death, but that isn’t the same.
In my life, when I’ve done
stupid or morally suspect things
I’ve thought that this is at least
a thing a person could write
a poem about, but all those poems
turned out bad. Waiting at the gate
it’s almost 4:30, and I’m on my phone
trying to determine if those videos
of elephants painting trees are
records of animal abuse.
Seems like probably yes.
I wish I could pick times to be charming
and then always be charming
at the right times. But you never
know who you’re going to keep seeing.
Now everyone I know has something
on me. Shit though, Coleridge.
I don’t want to be sentimental, I want to be
a sexy archaeologist in a 90s movie.
Or I want to be sort of in love,
sort of bored by a public fountain.
Or to have a basement, and in it
construct the most accurate model
of the English Lake District from 1800-1802.
Scholars will come from around the world
and be flummoxed, then moved, a thin blue flame
drawn across their life and they finally saw it,
moved to the desert, were never heard from again.