Songs To Say

Songs To Say,

I am planning to release a poem every few days from this book of poems that I wrote while in graduate school. Don’t try to make sense of them. Many are just a journey through images. The following was the opening poem before the section on FIRE.

Are Your Feet Clean?

I sit here watching pictures in the air---
Laughing at visions--rivers of them---grotesque and out of bend,
As my two feet dream away from this dusty floor
To the salty pure ocean floor, where warm waves
Sweep past my feet to cleanse them of their miswalking.

Feeling the ground, the blades, the humps, and the stones are wet…
My hand in water assumes its’ cleansing, Oh God, they’re back---laugh.

I’ve found a pool, cool upon my hands, the lilies’ home,
Shall I walk on? The flowers make blindfolds.
Go away you vision people! Your face is not so sweet.

Thank God, another pool, submerge my foot,
Freeze it---numb it---Oh God, the stones live beneath me,
Cold muscles gleaming between contracted concrete sinews---
I’ve grown to love them, love them all---
And He began to wash their feet.