Cisco Beach
What I know
What I know
Cisco Beach
Last night, I dreamed
of Charles Manson
Cleave
Core
Poetry in Utah
The things that
happened winter quarter
Perception
Warriors
I want to shriek, to fill the valley
with my voice,
wake the sleeping moon, immerse
the world in magic.
I take a deep breath, my lungs come
up empty.
I cannot breathe at 9,000 feet.
I fall back onto my sleeping bag,
dizzy.
My friends engage in the same argument
once a day.
Their words swirl above my head.
Does magic only exist
within words? Has physics destroyed
enchantment?
I say, I do not care. I am declared
a traitor,
the ghost of Shelley is invoked,
the long dead
Ernest and Virginia are conjured
to argue
with Pythagoras and Newton and Einstein.
Their argument oppresses me. I believe
in magic,
but am ashamed to admit it. I stand
and walk
to the waters edge, free myself
of this shame,
I dive off the short, wooden pier.
The water is cold, it would steal
my breath,
if I could breathe at 9,000 feet.
I cleave
the tension of the surface, race
for the other shore.
My hair works free of the braid
it is trapped in,
then wraps itself around my body.
The tips tickle
my back the deeper into the black
I descend.
The deeper I dive, the easier it
is to breathe.
Enchantment enters my blood. My
hair
knows the formula for separating
molecules
of oxygen and hydrogen. I breathe
easily.
Blackness move and shimmers behind
my eyes,
silence roars in my ears, I move
beyond the grasp
of gravity. I move easily in this
world,
twist and turn like a seal. My lungs
fill
by reflex, I roll onto my back and
release
bubbles. They chase one another
to the surface,
greet the blank face of the moon.
My lungs
fill with pure oxygen. Still underwater,
I yell.
The clear vowels rise rapidly, shoot
into the air,
fill the valley scooped out of the
mountain top
with my voice. I surface to watch
sound ricochet
off valley walls. Ripples run away
form me.
I chase the ever-widening circles
to the shore,
pull myself free of the water. I
long for things
that are safe, easily defined. I
fear my magic.
I must break the enchantment, rebaptize
myself in shame.
I walk back to the fire, sit facing
the lake,
again unable to breathe at 9,000
feet.
Lights jerk unevenly on the surface,
sandstone rubs gently away under
my fingertips,
borne across the water with the
echoes of my screams.
On Monday, I will cut my hair.
Uncle Brigham declared, "make all
the streets
in Salt Lake City wide enough to
turn
an oxen team around on."
I learned to drive on roads eight
lanes wide.
So, at sixteen, I learned to go
fast
along boulevards posted 35 miles
per hour,
a perfect grid of blue lines
radiating from the corner of Main
and South Temple.
I could never find the 35 on my
speedometer.
Up Emigration Canyon is This Is The
Place,
a state park dedicated to my uncle
Brigham.
He crested a hill, planted his cane
into the dry ground and stated,
"this is the place
for the saints to rest."
But I ask "is this really the place
for anyone to rest."
Going fast downtown,
I had to slow down for the statue
planted
in the center of the busiest intersection.
A statue
of the ever-present Brigham Young,
surrounded by mountain men, Indians
and pioneers.
Yes, I come from pioneer stock,
people who wanted to rest.
Now, I want to learn to go slow,
but I don’t know if that is possible
on roads eight lanes wide.
Last night, I dreamed of Charles
Manson
And across twenty-five years, fear
tore a small hole in my sleep. And
sleep
always came hard. Last night,
I crouched in my bed,
my skin a rash of raised flesh.
Each night, I wait to sleep
with the pitch and roll of the radio
and the spin and yaw of a book.
I would hold the words before my
eyes,
no look for sleep, but wait for
sleep
to find me. I would try to rest
with words spilling into my eyes.
The light reflected off words
as they slide between my eyelids
and catch in my lashes.
From the beginning, Thomas was mine.
I clasped close
three feet of spontaneous
blue-eyed combustion,
and kissed dimpled hand
of a blond dervish
with fistfuls of Micro Machines.
I rocked him to sleep out
under nighttime skies, pale blue
under barest translucency of skin,
traceries of blood. I watched his
heart
beat through the crown of his head,
breathed wispy scents
of the freshly bathed evening.
Fear stands tall during small, tired
moments,
when silence lurks heavy.
I wait, for the stinging slap of
a sigh,
the harsh shove of words.
I tremble, cringe as words get thrown
at me.
Acid comments smell like tequila.
They burn just below the skin.
My stomach rises and falls
Feet stuck under my ribs,
elbows jabbed in sides,
and a heavy head rests on my bladder.
Pain shudders through me,
cuts away my ability to breathe.
"Utah is as full of metaphors
as mountains,"
Bill Holm says as he signs
my copy of his book.
"What metaphors am I
surrounded by?"
I wondered as I walk
through the bright,
brisk night air.
I drive and look
at the mountains
around the Cache Valley
and think to myself
"There are no metaphors here."
The longer I drive,
the more things I notice
that just don’t fit.
Things I cannot justify.
Wards without patients.
Stakehouses without food.
And people destitute
in the land of Zion.
The things that happened winter
quarter
A class with thirteen texts,
cherry flavored cough drops,
covered sniffles of most of the
students,
scribbled, barely legible notes,
new roommates, who I’m not sure
I like,
a new nephew named Christian,
going to a Jazz game on my 26th
birthday,
writing volumes of senseless poetry,
watching my friends do way too many
drugs,
my uncle dying of cancer that should
have been cured,
having to pay $140.00 to stay in
a hotel,
not seeing any movies at the Sundance
Film Festival,
technological foreplay on the Internet,
spending every Thursday at Alternative
Cinema,
reading far too much Sylvia Plath,
rediscovering the poetry of Allen
Ginsberg,
drinking too much coffee on a regular
basis,
boring fiction by William Dean Howells,
running out of money by mid-term,
bruising the muscle and bone of
my shin,
falling in love with a married man.
We wanted to meet god. The weekend
we spent
in the comforting sand of Venice
Beach,
you caught a glimpse of him,
but it was a 3-story painting of
Jim Morrison.
You shook your head and lit a cigarette.
The weekend we met god, I sat on
a rocky beach
and explored the world within each
pebble
I filled the pockets of my jeans
with stones and watched the sunset.
You sat on driftwood and smoked
a cigarette.
The plump moon lifted over the trees
and gave
the world a color we need to explore.
We tripped
along the beach, listened to the
foreign language
of waves, sang the song we knew
the words to.
You slipped your arm through mine
and smoked a cigarette.
I sat on the floor, made of pebbles
stolen
from the beach. Devotion shimmered
gold
and blue, healing fingers around
my heart.
You stroked my hair and translated
Miles Davis
through another cigarette. I knew
god was there.
