Arid
5:45 pm, Father’s Day.
Muggy Cambridge street,
partly-cloudy glint off windows, doors.
People choke-drift the sidewalks,
moving, color, moving.
Cramming cafes and bars,
sidetables, window-shops.
These are the familiar, the unfamiliar.
Where am I supposed to be?
My poems were
crammed with images,
like rainbow-Cambridge:
trinkets and trees, melodies and marks--
flashing lights, hard-slam chrome,
the taste of orange, bitter-pull of curling rind
the slapdash blue of fading light--
the yellow sand of Mojave-true,
the red-pink of Hollywood & Vine.
Now language,
ARID
empties itself;
a Sonoran dictionary,
entangled, density of definition.
Empties itself as bones.
Empties itself as syntax.
Empties itself.
Making sentences, arranging boxes.
WHY fragile
foolish, untenable things
I AM NUMBER THREE
so, why expect
anyone
the foolish and untenable, laying waste;
boxes, available, open
WHY the ridiculous wafer of leftover space
WHY language, flat.
I have to let these things go.
They are not for me or from me.
They are not the direction of my direction.
They are not the source of my source.
They are not the sense of my sense.
It is hard, but I will let them go.
I will let them all go.
I will stand and wait,
I will let these things come to me,
(they likely won’t)
but after letting them go, do they return?
Do they return from the aridity of language?
Do they brave the sand, walk barefoot on stone?
Do they cross the street, source of my source?
Do they cross the median, jump the hole?
Do they MOVE?
Chasing and hunting,
I misunderstand.
Huddled, roadside weeds.
I misunderstand.
Obviously, I misunderstand.
In Palmdale,
I’d never guess I’d stand
on a sidewalk in Cambridge…
scalp-burnt by a surprise sun.
In the Mojave,
we rode dirt bikes, jumped rattlesnakes
building forts from wood-pile theft
digging in, the shirtless joy of sand-blown trickery
even as dry-rot and needles overtook everything,
knowing what and when.
Language was FULL.
hot-bursting orange,
lemon-gleam, Highway 138.
My childhood home,
filled with boxes, rooms of boxes.
King Tut’s bust,
sheet-wrapped and quiet,
toy horses and tapes,
bags of animals,
my sister’s books,
boxes left, waiting for my return,
boxes packed and taped,
how I dug and sorted, preserved and primed.
Arranging sentences,
the endless catastrophe.
Arranging the ordinary, shitty leaves.
Arranging moments, collected.
My urban-deserts are full of boxes
Dad never let me retrieve.
I will only be in Cambridge
a few days, forever.
why my heart
-Ren Adams, 2015
5:45 pm, Father’s Day.
Muggy Cambridge street,
partly-cloudy glint off windows, doors.
People choke-drift the sidewalks,
moving, color, moving.
Cramming cafes and bars,
sidetables, window-shops.
These are the familiar, the unfamiliar.
Where am I supposed to be?
My poems were
crammed with images,
like rainbow-Cambridge:
trinkets and trees, melodies and marks--
flashing lights, hard-slam chrome,
the taste of orange, bitter-pull of curling rind
the slapdash blue of fading light--
the yellow sand of Mojave-true,
the red-pink of Hollywood & Vine.
Now language,
ARID
empties itself;
a Sonoran dictionary,
entangled, density of definition.
Empties itself as bones.
Empties itself as syntax.
Empties itself.
Making sentences, arranging boxes.
WHY fragile
foolish, untenable things
I AM NUMBER THREE
so, why expect
anyone
the foolish and untenable, laying waste;
boxes, available, open
WHY the ridiculous wafer of leftover space
WHY language, flat.
I have to let these things go.
They are not for me or from me.
They are not the direction of my direction.
They are not the source of my source.
They are not the sense of my sense.
It is hard, but I will let them go.
I will let them all go.
I will stand and wait,
I will let these things come to me,
(they likely won’t)
but after letting them go, do they return?
Do they return from the aridity of language?
Do they brave the sand, walk barefoot on stone?
Do they cross the street, source of my source?
Do they cross the median, jump the hole?
Do they MOVE?
Chasing and hunting,
I misunderstand.
Huddled, roadside weeds.
I misunderstand.
Obviously, I misunderstand.
In Palmdale,
I’d never guess I’d stand
on a sidewalk in Cambridge…
scalp-burnt by a surprise sun.
In the Mojave,
we rode dirt bikes, jumped rattlesnakes
building forts from wood-pile theft
digging in, the shirtless joy of sand-blown trickery
even as dry-rot and needles overtook everything,
knowing what and when.
Language was FULL.
hot-bursting orange,
lemon-gleam, Highway 138.
My childhood home,
filled with boxes, rooms of boxes.
King Tut’s bust,
sheet-wrapped and quiet,
toy horses and tapes,
bags of animals,
my sister’s books,
boxes left, waiting for my return,
boxes packed and taped,
how I dug and sorted, preserved and primed.
Arranging sentences,
the endless catastrophe.
Arranging the ordinary, shitty leaves.
Arranging moments, collected.
My urban-deserts are full of boxes
Dad never let me retrieve.
I will only be in Cambridge
a few days, forever.
why my heart
-Ren Adams, 2015
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