Still Waters

I could make a guitar weep 

Make a violin scream 

A loving voice, a beckon 

To grief 

If I knew how to play them. 

I watch the Orchestra 

Through a screen 

Instead. 

Paint my nails black 

Walk the alley

And seek that pain 

Behind the Jazz club. 

Where the brass band 

Park their dying cars--

And no one finds success. 

Fields of wildflowers 

Could bend in the wind 

For me

Under a stormy sky 

In desperate wait 

For the coming rain--

If I knew how to tell them. 

The sun hurts my eyes 

Dull and irritable. 

Like every day I avoid 

Shrink into the night 

Cast off all my burdens to

The woman in the lobby

Of a hotel, tired and 

Up all night--

Convinced she

Would want to greet me 

As I opened my mouth 

In a certain kindness--

If I knew which one she needed.

I recognize her 

In the lines of her eyes 

She looks nothing 

Like me.

I love her at a distance 

The only distance I

Know how to give people--

And like people do 

She loves me 

At a distance too. 

Reviews

[Vol]

Anna,
Lovely indictment of life in artificial intelligence and people who spend their lives in various verticalities, whose thoughts and poems reach for the skies they cannot see at night because they live in too much light. They hide in alleys and bemoan themselves trying to work out the meaning of steel forests and concrete love, as though their music can fix what's wrong.