another poem

The Fog
by Katie Boyden
(5/29/09)

the fog rolls in on the sunniest days
stops us dead in our tracks
‘cause we wanted to play.
makes decisions that we
didn’t know we would make,
and we take credit for those,
that we just shouldn’t take.

I saw your eyes in a traffic sign,
a green, watchful gaze
guiding me from behind.

I tripped on the dirt as I watered the plants,
like Alice and the dandelions
in some silly dance.

the fog is a wine,
the fog is a time,

the fog is a person,
the fog is a line.

I waited and waited and waited that day
I jumped and I shivered,
I sat and I stayed.

but the gloom kept sinking,
while I sat there, drinking
and wondering why,
looking at the white sky
that anyone even cares what I’m thinking.

you finally show,
but you feel like a dream
an imagined, once memory
of past infused steam

I sit and I sit and I wait and I think
look over my shoulder
look down in the sink

if ivy can crawl
and roots can grab hold
and old vines keep fruiting
there’s hope, so I’m told

what is it that flickers
in the light and the shade,
a promise of happiness?
or a dream that will fade

a room full of shadows
a sky full of plans
a wine glass half-empty
the palms of my hands.

yet I just keep hoping
that someone will notice
the mendacity here,
that it will somehow take focus

the edges are blurry
the lines won’t show clear,
and I feel you the most
when you are not here.

On hearing Hungarian Rhapsody at 2am

how did i know? what a silly question, how does anyone know?

how can that freshouttatheegg hatchling know until he takes one wrong grip and slips, swinging his wings till he falls right off the lowest (G) staff line.

bounces off eighth rests (don’t they just look like they’d be elastic and springy?)

downy tufts flying blinking those coal black eyes all pupil

feet up flailing

(air is matter, after all, it will support you if you beat it hard enough)

starts just something

anything

one note in front of the other

bending tendons

letting his feathers shake pleasure resonations

well you can’t just hover in that bass cleft forever, honey

a deep-throated c-sharp is a great start now make it climb

it’s the same way the rain-soaked street cat finds his way to his dish every night

even when dazzled by the eye-stinging stench of rotting eggs and blasts of musty steam from subway vents

and a fat, cawing housewife pouring hot cooking oil (don’t you dare put that down the drain it’ll clog the pipes!) into her neighbor’s plants.

same way Liszt knew c# minor would be the best [ fit ] i guess.

igniting the frank intention given to uncharacteristically big hands

tentative bass (c#-g#-c#) clawing up through moldy caverns

cracked shells glisten.

Listen,

it’s kind of like you’re the yolk and what you used to be—before—is the albumen

you know?

sticky white threads of assurance are the only things connecting you to anything familiar.

And man are they slimy.

But how do you…?

well that’s the tricky part. i guess it’s the spatula, get it?

you really don’t have any way of knowing, until all of a sudden you’re…scrambled.

…fuck. that analogy sounded much better yesterday.

God, it’s like breathing in scalding cooking oil

pop pop sizzle pop POW

catching it on your tongue as it staccatos off the castiron pan.

scarlet dust columns fly

furiously from the keys, explode clouds filling canyons of sharps and flats,

the little bird searches for an odor of memory

only to find amber-trapped ants

who, feeling the scorching shame of anachronism,

try in vain to recede into their segments.

better you, though, than all this sameness.

world spins shameless of the mixing

keeps going, droning, clones seek comfort knowing

that you can never ever

stir things apart.

let’s try a really low C (what is that, five bars below G?)…the lowest C on the board…number 86 if you counted high to low, I believe.

oh but this is c-sharp minor, mind you. it’s very. Very. Different.

hey remember that baby bird? daring to leave his oaken cradle.

fucking around in the baser clefts? look at him now.

trilling

(an entire line endeavor all fits—how??—into just one measure)

reckless

(32^nd notes i should say) around in the ultrahigh 8va.

how did he get up there so fast?

those octaves are way, way too high.

far too dangerous for such a little bird.

but chicks have never been known to listen to reason.

look at him riding those warm, wet updrafts. Ok, so he hasn’t got the fingering (or is it wingering?) right quite yet.

but damn is he trying.

and what about those oversized amber-trapped ants?

struggling with stagnation.

scaling octaves the little bird rolls by shouting words of encouragement.

don’t be sad i know you, your kind and your time. i was a dinosaur once, too, remember?

trust me, there is enough space, for everyone to feel out of place, somewhere.

rolling blackouts

rolling blackouts
by katie boyden
08.17.08

when you kneaded it like dough
and coughed up a week’s worth of not smoking

and the smog and the sheets were no match for
our stubbornness, and we tried to unscrew
meaning from all the toughest jars,
pried our fingernails clean off
and got nothing

we rolled into town
so to speak
and dirtied up the car
just to leave it
maybe someone else will clean it

I took you that morning
steamed you like cooking
made the walls get slicked with your cooling
while you secretly thanked God I have no fingernails

salty sweet and burned my tongue on the finish

when we stopped washing our hair
but kept scrubbing our skin
just so we could say we did something

and we missed the farmer’s market
every fucking Sunday and fucked instead
to make ourselves feel better about it

when our kisses drew blood
and your sharpened knife
sliced effortlessly through even
the softest and most bruised tomatoes

when the power shut off
and our food went bad
and the cat pissed on my bed
and we grappled and tangled and snarled ‘til we discovered
that we were evenly matched

and the credits rolled
and we were told that it was all
I mean all just a trick on the wall
smoke and mirrors

and we were just shadow boxing
and you were fighting you
and I was fighting me

and that made me smile because then
I knew that we could stop and not feel too bad about it
'cause we would still win.