Sounds all register the interior structures of whatever it is that produces them. A violin filled with concrete will not sound like a normal violin. A saxophone sounds differently from a flute: it is structurally different inside. And above all, the human voice comes from inside the human organism which provides the voice's resonances.

-Walter Ong, Some Psychodynamics of Orality

Houses I Have Known II: Taking Stock

My first home after
mom’s womb was
a matchbox apartment
on the beach in San Diego
there were lemon trees,
a bathroom skylight,
and the rushing ocean

the second place was the site
of my first dream
it was there that I crawled
through the clunking
insides of a clock,
all cogs and springs,
and I looked out across
a bulldozed horizon
a yellow machine
blasting piles of dirt
for no apparent reason

once my grandfather
and his wife visited

my mother said
I like your makeup
my grandfather's wife said,
thanks it’s pancake
and I’ve spent over
a decade trying to figure
if I heard correctly

after that we switched
country sides
it was a yellow duplex
near boston
where I think
there was a miserable Christmas

in the spring we
searched for easter eggs
in the early summer
my father found a rotten one
forgotten months before

I had the chicken pox
and scratched for days
examined my tongue
in the mirror
and tried to pass it on
to my brother

this is where the
circuits fail some

oh yes, we went a town
or two over
moved into a house
that smelled like paint
I put my nose
to the walls I loved it so much

my mother described it as
salmon colored

she exercised
on a Stairmaster
and prayed the rosary
at the same time
I’ll never forget those
heaving Hail Mary’s
the rhythmic Our Father’s
in time with
her flexed calves

My sister told me
what pot was,
my mother and father
screamed
I’m not sure
what was wrong
I remember rolling fruit,
apples and oranges

One day my father
got into his beat up Volkswagon bus
and drove away
to Oregon

there was another yellow house
near Boston on Six Park Avenue
my mother mentioned the address
to everyone
I wasn’t sure why it mattered

I read the Secret Garden
I listened to a 60’s box set
my father sent in the mail
my mother gave us a fish
and we had bunk beds

once she wouldn’t let
me sleep up top she said
if you fall off
we’ll be buying you a casket
and that’s that

Houses I Have Known (to be continued)

a worn out farm
lodged on aged
horses’ backs

slow whither,
rainwater spewed
from gutters
choked on past
autumn leaves

shingles curl
at edges,
warp and weather

slick black
in the rain,
a tired cracked
grey beneath
high noon.

all the fallen
houses I have known,
gaping doors
and windows

always the roof
to bear down
on the rot,
witness to all
manner of decay

the estate
overgrown
settles beneath
thick leaves
moulding bound
in brush and vines

dandelions bloom
out of dark gramophones

flies impose on sepian figures
preserved under glass

remembering our respiratory
dissonance, I am lying in bed
it is winter again

I harbored suspicions
that the last might never end
but then there was spring
and everything was dripping
or had dripped

snowdrifts melted
to stationary puddles,
a nice place to keep
one’s reflection

once we stretched
the wee hours and walked
in that eerie blue light
to that terrible part of town
where I lived, it was cast
in morning twilight
but that doesn’t have a name
so far as I know

I tried to screw the cap
back on an orange fire hydrant
and then there was grease
all over my hands

that was inexplicable

there were fake golden flowers
in the saddest planter
I’ve ever seen
I thought I might die at the sight of it

suddenly nothing grew

and we were in bed again
the light shifted upward some,
and rising.

Two in the Wilderness

together 
in waiting,
punctuated 

movements 
(pause)

I am a valley, I
a river
here 
we converge

the scene resists 
landscape,
they wade in pages.

speaking is tongues
words words words

historical recitations
recitatated re-r-
esuscitated mouthof 
mouthfulof
man 
mouth ofaman

shakespeare’s throat
wheezes poetic
death rattle chest
dreams on the
death bed

thou doth pulse
soft,
mouth of a woman

tethered lips
to another’s
neuroses.

historical recitations,
addresses audience
exclamations
(pause)
devastated

here, converge
wading through
pages, 
movements
punctuated,
space (pause)