Gabriel Gadfly's Blog, page 24

Train Hopping

On spring days like this,

when the sun is teasing

out from behind the clouds,

I want to get on a train

and fall asleep in the light

warming the window seat.

I want to sleep the whole trip,

so that when the conductor

wakes me up and says, “Son,

time for you to get off,”

I won’t know where I am.

Not because I want to get away

from where I am right now;

because I’d like to see what

adventures await in the place

I might end up.

The post Train Hopping appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Tools

After I asked about your scars,

you sat me down and

showed me the razor blade

you kept for years

in your bedside table.

You showed me

the sewing needle,

the lighter, the alcohol,

the hook — a whole box full

of knives and fire.

You said, “These are the tools

some children use

to pull pain out of themselves

when no one teaches them

a safer way how.”

Your scars are healed over now.

Your scars are healed over and

you have healed beneath them.

When I asked why

you would ever want to keep

this collection of hurtful things,

you closed the box

and put it away.

You said, “I keep them

to remind myself

I know safer ways now.”

The post Tools appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

To The Trophy Buck

You hung for years

on the wall of my grandfather’s house

and as a child I climbed up

to touch your black glass eyes,

to put my small hands on your skin,

your flesh bathed in dust and

stretched over this rigid deer-ghost

of plastic and foam,

so unlike the muscle and bone

you once were worn by.

Your coarse brown hair

sloughed off in clumps

and I couldn’t look at you

anymore, not even when

my grandfather wondered aloud

where the bare patch

on your throat came from.

Not even with my hands

thrust deep in my pockets.

Lately I have been dreaming of you.

Your crown of bare branches rears up

your dead glass eyes peer and peer,

and I am caught between them,

wringing my hands

to unstick you from them

and they never come clean.

Years later, I don’t know

what happened to you.

You must have been thrown out

after my grandfather died,

laid out beside the trash, perhaps,

to stare up at the sky

with its clouds reflecting

in your black glass eyes

until the landfill truck came

to take you away,

to lie beneath the sun

beside refrigerators

and bags of old paper.

The post To The Trophy Buck appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

To The Poet At His Girlfriend’s Office Party

When her coworkers ask

So what is it you do?

Do not tell them the truth.

Say, instead,

I am a firecracker.

I am a time bomb.

I am a hurricane whirling,

an earthquake shaking the earth awake,

a rocket screaming open the bright blue sky,

I am a war cry.

and then, when they know

exactly what it is you do

take a sip of water

and mumble something about

poetry books and publishing them.

The post To The Poet At His Girlfriend’s Office Party appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Thread

From time to time,

when you have wandered

away from a person,

you wander a little further

and feel the slightest tug

at your ankle.

Looking down, you find

a thread, red or maybe

blue, barely seen,

barely there, tied

gently and trailing

as far back as you

can see and you know,

instinctively, where

it leads.

It brings you to a choice:

to take one more step,

snap the thread and

leave it where it lay,

or return from whence

you came.

Sometimes, the one’s

the best choice;

sometimes, it’s the other.

The post Thread appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Dragon’s Egg

You’ll find it after the rain, half-buried

in the mud beside the garden trellis,

a smoking pale oblong orb,

hot to the touch and smelling

pungent of sandalwood and ash.

Wrap it in a towel and take it

into the kitchen, set it on

the linen tablecloth, if you dare,

but be warned: this is not a thing

to undertake lightly.

Do not be surprised if the cat

begins to yowl, if the goldfish

tries to leap out of his bowl.

The television will skip channels

and the radio might scramble

the DJ’s voice and your

mother-in-law will likely call

just to wish you a wonderful day.

This is normal in the presence of dragons.

You may need to remove the rack

to make it fit, but place it in the oven:

425 degrees for three hours

or until golden brown.

Resist the temptation to baste

it with butter, as dragons

take particular offense

to that sort of thing, and you

do not want to offend a dragon,

even one that has not yet hatched.

Feel free to go to bed,

as dragons intend to hatch

only when it is convenient

for them to do so,

and it is most convenient

for them to do so about

an hour after you’ve

finally fallen asleep

on the night before your

busiest day at the office.

You will jolt awake at

the sound of a shriek and

a crash from the kitchen.

The cat will hide behind

the potted plants and

the goldfish will likely

bury himself in the gravel

at the bottom of his bowl,

and you may find yourself

wishing you could join them.

This is normal in the presence of dragons.

Put on a terrycloth robe

and sneak downstairs

to find it gnawing on

the kitchen table’s leg,

a gangly red scaled thing,

wobbly and uncertain on its

newborn sharp-clawed feet.

The stove will be a smoking twist

of metal, and I’m very sorry for that:

I should have warned you that

hatching a dragon is not much

like hatching a chicken or a duck,

and there may be a reasonable

amount of collateral damage involved.

Quiet though you are trying to be,

dragons have remarkable hearing,

and it will look up at you with

large gold eyes and open a healthy

mouth full of bright jagged teeth

and croon happily at you before

scuttling across the floor

to sit at your feet. Stare down at it,

sick with the sudden sinking feeling

that you are not ready to be a father.

This, too, is normal in the presence of dragons.

The post Dragon’s Egg appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

The Clothes Your Father Gave You

You wear your father

like a hand-me-down suit,

threadbare grey and worn.

He clings too snug,

too clenching at the shoulders.

He digs in at the waistband

he rides up at the wrists,

there is no space for you

to move and breathe.

You are larger than your father

could ever have been,

but you keep trying to fit

inside the shape of him.

Now you walk down the street

and see these people comfortable

mingling colors and fabrics

in ways you know your father

would have thought unthinkable.

If only you could take him off,

and one day, maybe, but not yet.

Your father’s pockets are full of holes

but you still fill them and wonder

why you cannot carry change.

The post The Clothes Your Father Gave You appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

The Bones of Neruda and A Red Pomegranate

I read on the news

that they are pulling up Pablo.

His bones, at least, and the coffin dust

and whatever else is in

the bottom of that Chilean box.

You have put on your apron

and are peeling the jewels

out of the last red pomegranate

of the season. The sun sneaks

through the window

to play gold in your hair.

You do not care about dead poets,

only the ones whose hearts

still thump beneath their ribcages,

but I tell you about Neruda’s bones

anyway. His driver says he was poisoned

and they are pulling him up to see

if you can poison the poetry

out of the marrow of a man

swallowed up by it.

I tell you this, but you are not listening,

and you pop a tiny blood aril

into your mouth, a tart-sweet gem

the taste of which you pass in a kiss.

With juice and you on my tongue,

I give up on telling you about Neruda.

You already know what poetry tastes like.

The post The Bones of Neruda and A Red Pomegranate appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

There is an art to tying up a woman.The rope limits moti...

There is an art to tying up a woman.

The rope limits motion, but that is not

its primary purpose. Each arc of movement

stilled – shoulder circle, knee bent or kept

from bending – steers her attention to the

tiny stirrings her body has hidden from her:

heartbeat where her pelvis borders thigh,

the confused nerve that compels her throat

to feel the fingernail her lover whispers

across the bridge of her foot, hot throbs

of breath that spill out from her lips,

the ears that strain to fill up with the

sounds her lover makes in places she

cannot turn her head to see.

For everything the rope subdues,

something else is set free.

The post appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.

Terracotta

After the storm,

pieces of terracotta

washed up on the shore,

cast off from some

ill-fated freighter or

dashed-to-bits potter’s shop.

We walked along the sand,

picked them up in handfuls

and tried to imagine

what shapes

they might have had

before they were broken.

Vases or bowls

or ancient statues

of a Chinese emperor’s

bodyguards?

Whatever, they are broken

now and they have become

something else entirely.

Detritus, but beautiful

among the glistening seaweed

and the water and the sand.

The post Terracotta appeared first on Gabriel Gadfly.