Tag Archives: gabriel gadfly

Go back to the clouds.
They miss you.
You have been too long from them
and they have had no one to interpret them.

Without you,
they have not been allowed
to become rabbits and dragons.
Without you, they are only vapor,
wisping lonely in the heavens.

Go back to the clouds.
Lie on your back and stare up at them.
Gaze at and speak to and transform them
into what you will. Elephants
and the roaring face of God.
Houses and mountains of cloud.

Allow your imagination to breathe.
It ought not wither, it ought not
become vestigial and useless.

Go back to the clouds.
Without you, they are only vapor.

While you sleep and you snooze,
he winds and he screws,
he gnarls and knottles and twists
your hair in his teeth and his fists,
your hair into lots of tight knots.

You wake in the morning a mess,
your hair like a tangled bird’s nest,
and he watches with snickers and giggles
while you snag your hair out of squiggles,
your hair full of lots of tight knots.

You asked your mother
if you could keep your baby teeth
and now you have a jar of them
on a shelf above your dresser,
beside a tin cup full of thistles
and a book of Buddhist prayers.
A red book, and purple thistles.

You told me once
you would like to die and be buried
with a mouthful of seeds, without a box,
out in a field of swaying green grass
so thistle could grow up out of you.
You said it was the closest
you could get to reincarnation,
and when I asked you
what the baby teeth were for,
you said they were for falling out
and for keeping.

I consider creeping out
before you wake, out the door
and into the road and down it,
until this place dwindles.

Do not mistake my meaning:
I do not wish to be rid of you.
I only need some nights to be
elsewhere. I have become
too familiar with these walls,
with the silences and sounds
creaking and speaking between them,
with the shape of my body
between them.

I will go out now.
I will go out and I will stand
in the road and look down its miles
and wonder how many I could wander
before dawn came up and you.

I think you keep secrets under your skin
like trees keep rings and do not know it,
like the sea teems,
like dark and quiet space
keeps every ray of light
the stars whispered to one another
when they were still young
and dying to make love.

I think you keep secrets in you
like the desert keeps sands,
like sleep keeps dreams,
like cities keep sleepless people
and people looking for sleepless people
to fall asleep with.

I think you keep secrets
like secrets like to be kept

I want to learn them all.

Yesterday,
you made the offhand comment
that you would like to learn
how to swallow swords,
maybe to join a circus,
maybe just for a party trick.

This is good,
because I do it every day
and here is how:
stand up straight,
shoulders back,
and tilt the head
to open the throat.

Close the eyes,
breathe out and calm,
concentrate,
whatever you do
don’t waver this time
and just before
everything I have ever
meant to say to you
bursts out, gulp
and swallow it down,
swallow it down.