Amputation

Spinning around like a dog sitting down,

circling, waiting for just the right moment to take me

so I can drop and fold into myself.

Talking like the trained ape that I am,

jaws moving up and down, making sounds that are assigned meaning,

so I can seem to be like 'them'.

Feeling things in the center of my chest,

not physical things at first, but there is a tightening

and I miss her like a limb lopped off.

Walking, like a flesh robot, long forgotten,

left to wander, trying to remember to keep going,

(it's important)

so we can have a reason to come home.

Crying for her, the limb lost, the love now an ache, ghost nerves,

the pain that isn't felt on the flesh, but within every organ.

This, so that we can remember the whole of them.

Tracing names in wet cement, we defied the curse of failure,

circling, waiting for just the right moment to take us,

so we can drop and fold into ourselves.

Train Poem tentatively titled, Train Poem

When I'm on a train

my mind searches to find a metaphor

for itself

somewhere among the images flitting by,

broad glass squares of light streaming,

of life streaming,

by.

Next to me

she sits with hands folded,

eyes closed,

doesn't see the seagulls perched on logs

in ponds

there within the wet landscape

(with robotic tics of their heads, they watch us pass).

'Maybe it's out there,' my mind says, 'the picture of what I am. I am the pond...Or am I the seagull?'

'Be quiet,' I plead, ' I'm trying to write a poem.'

The conductor is young,

his goatee fresh, he is

trying a new look.

Hours in the mirror, posing in his flat-topped cap.

When he speaks to us on the microphone,

it feeds back, echoes.

He sounds as if he is closed into a metal room.

I suppose he is, in a way,

closed within long, metal, rolling rooms

that will hold him for years, his goatee graying...

All train memories arise, connect,

pass each other.

'There's a metaphor there,' says my mind, excitedly, 'something about trains passing...the tracks...'

'Hush,' I say.

I am flawed, it's true

but the train doesn't know this,

pulls me along, moving fast now.

Automobiles on the road appear to be stopped

like time is frozen. We slice through it

on metal strips,

it passes just a bit more slowly for us.

Maybe I will spend the rest of my life on trains,

so I can become a bit younger, day by day,

until I am a child again,

touching the glass.

Dream Alchemy

The song was wrong.

If you dream of me

don’t ‘dream a little dream’,

fill the sky.

If life is indeed a dream,

it is up to you and me.

We shape clouds into thoughts,

then into things that can be touched.

We are alchemists

dreaming sky.

A Walk (in the park)

Chalk drawings on sidewalks stamped “1912”.

Piano lessons vibrate

through old window panes in a white house.

At the park I walk across the crab grass population

that has arisen in the baseball diamond.

A little league football team is far out on the grass sea

sitting in a circle

like sprouted mushrooms in their round, white helmets.

The trees are afire with the dying light of day; God's slow fireworks, evidence of the end.

The bathroom beckons, a lonely shed for waste, waiting.

Its iron door creaks as I open it.

Soon I stand pissing, having done so only five minutes before at my apartment.

I curse God for my small bladder,

then apologize in case he or she is real.

In the corner of the field

is a pile of wood chips.

The trees tremble at it.

She Dreamed Us

(for Chelsea, with love)

Boxes growing, killing sky.

Friends walled in,
time bubble babies,
watching wireless tower trees split the green.

Among the boxes of people, I see turn of the century houses (grand old ladies) and '20s era apartment buildings (dapper male queens),
like where a dear friend lives. I was just with her there, we
sat in the courtyard in a swirl of cats on a picnic bench
that was giving up its split wood ghost, slowly.

She sits in this courtyard often, and writes, shaping the molecular and subatomic structures of novels and poems, whispering her words to herself, and sipping her tea.

Later, she told me, “I dreamed about a pile of mewing cats covering my feet.”

This is her landscape.

The bald apes who build boxes were born to steal the sky.
Boxes fucking, corners groping corners,

buttressed tectonic plates below slipping against each other, teeth grinding.

Earth sleeps, oh tired Ol’ Mother.
She dreamed us. And it's almost morning.

She Plays in a Big River

She plays in a big river,
occasionally looks back at me on the bank
as I sit
in the incredibly wind-swept grass.
When I am here I think of the Celilio Native American people;
ghosts on wooden platforms embedded in the cliffs, netting fish, clubbing them.
But the cliffs are gone, the dam sits inevitably,
the fishermen stand in air now above us. Their descendants live on thin strips of land
pinned between man-blasted cliff faces
of  I-84,
(the road leading to my birth desert,
but I don't think about that)
I look at her
in her brown skirt, brown skin
smiling so slightly, sweetly,
like she does when she is truly happy.
Trees around me shake in the unyielding wind boldly; not afraid
and I am reminded why I love them, why I love her.
She plays in a big river
and I lay on this soil-hair, gently playing with it in my fingers,
smiling back at her
trying to ignore fishermen in the air
and their blood.

Photo of FO by Wayne R. Flower 

This Blank Page

This blank page

isn't funny

This blank page

laughs at me

This blank page

aches

This blank page

hates itself

This blank page

stares

This blank page

fucking mocks me

This blank page

smiles with no mouth

This blank page

was once a forest

This blank page

is flat, lifeless

This blank page

is always on my mind

This blank page

loves to taunt

This blank page

turns in my fingers

This blank page

waits for a pen/lover

This blank page

teases

This blank page

looks out a pale window

This blank page

can be made into an instant cat toy

This blank page

ain't so tough

This blank page

is one in a million

waiting to die

Untitled

Clocks are non conformists
They live their lives
so separately.
Not a brothersistermother
among them
to hold in their long,
stiff, uneven arms
that humans call hands.

From the book, 'The Fistless Fistfight', a collection of early poems from age 22 to age 32 (unpublished)

Poem from the 'American Sadness' series

Trace the lines in your face
to tomorrow and tomorrow.

Walk across the empty parking lot
feeling the ghost of the meadow.

Forget where you parked the car,
forever.

Walk away. Walk away.

Lay down
in the grass,
forever.

Even Carnies Fall In Love

Cell phone photo of workers setting up Portland riverside carnival by Wayne R. Flower

By the riverside, they are setting up a carnival.
The rides wait to hold children; the giant plastic bears have
bowls in their bellies
and there are seats within the bowls.
Their upturned paws pay homage to the river while the
plastic mouths of the bears are forever in a grimace; Disney grimace.
The sun is sliding down, seemingly about to burn
houses upon the hills to the West and
the carney’s day is done they
wander between silent rides
and homeless men strewn about the grass like
soldiers in a grimy war.
These carnies are only one step from the homeless men, it seems to me
and the only things distinguishing them from their fallen brothers
are their bright hardhats, awkwardly perched on heads holding blank, hard faces.
One of the carnies takes his hardhat off, kisses a young woman waiting for him in the grass.
Yeah, even carnies fall in love.

Dead Father's Daughters

Rounded old cars
of dead father’s daughters.
Ancestors drive you
through the dotted lines of time.
Heat-cracked stone road,
lazily chasing the horizon as
roadside tree,
unanxious witness
waves goodbye.

Remember You

And then you have run ins
And then you have sleep-overs
And then you have breakfast in your rumpled clothes
You take the knife from their hand before it slits the lifeline
Before you have to clean up
Before you have to not be able to say goodbye

You walk that rope as it bounces, not looking down
You hold your breath for them
You pull them from the street
Before the car coming on fast, ends them
Before the words you said open doors with a crash
And all the wind comes in, that storm of awesome power unleashed
From behind eyes sometimes kind

At some point, you hide away from them
Hold your heart like a frightened child in your arms
Close the windows to the wind and watch your own reflection
There in the glass
And then you remember
You

Ceramic Smile (song)

'Tree Woman' by Wayne R. Flower

Trees are swaying
Ancient pantomime
You are missing
But right here all the time
Roots are are fixed
And cannot tell a lie
But roots are buried
And bark hides scars and lines

(Chorus)
You look at me
Ceramic smile
Waiting to be
Broken

You don’t like me
But cannot help but stare
I am broken
But always in repair
Searching for pieces
Scattered everywhere
The leaves of me
Are floating through the air

(Chorus)

Dogs are smiling
For secrets they all share
Cats are sleeping
Cuz they don’t really care
Spiders spin webs
To capture bugs and thoughts
My head’s full of bugs
The web’s full of not a lot

(Chorus)

Chicago, IL

They were like corpses, slightly bobbing
Mouths open, eyes closed
The fat of their cheeks
Jostling to the
Rhythm of the train
As it sped us like
A metal neuron
To the appendage of O’hare

Sometimes

Sometimes, the world
forces itself upon your eyes,
makes you know it.
A violent rainbow
spewed from the earth and
clouds, stained
with the rosy blood of stars,
boiled to steam by the sun.
I am so small here,
on this round, living thing
that waits to swallow me
and my history.

Bird Memory

Mother where you go, up there? down there? father lost in hospital halls forever.
I remember little.
I made a death star out of a hand operated lawn trimmer blade and threw it into the neighbor's
big old dead tree.
If you were a bird, you would have seen me from up there,
flying through my whole life.

Untitled

Old people whisper trapped air,
dry, spirit voices.
Still youths inside,
lost and dismayed with physical decay.
Death’s a friend so close.

Words words, like dead birds
feathers falling from sky.
Throw me into dark floating night under god and street light,
sitting in the corner waiting for the sun.
There really is such a thing as time. I ain't laughing.
I can’t sleep,
am sentenced to endless electricity,
flitting cells zipping,
memories on skull walls,
dried glue wet with sweat.

Slow Dimension Soldiers (song)

'Man and Tree' by Wayne R. Flower

City eyes are one,
in blood behind bone.
One rhythm beats,
spurting out that fuel.
Trees, fighting us with oxygen,
slow dimension soldiers.
Our death love a fire
called electricity, called emotion.
Photographs steal the soul,
so they say,
but last longer than blinks of our eyes.
City sighs at once,
shits in rivers,
rolls over to sleep.

History of You Til Now

Root beer and wine at the store
Movies and ice-creams
At home we turn the heat to
“The Comfort Zone”
Play Scrabble in bed, with cats under covers
Who lay sleeping, twisted,
Clawing, dreaming
Silly arguments are shattered by
knowing looks, laughs
You sing to the radio when I drive you home
And tell me of your day
To put it to sleep
Later, we try to reclaim hours stolen
by corporations, driving, buses
And wake up still in love

For NEM