HOTEL ROOMS

In New Orleans

at the International House Hotel

I’m on the edge of the bed.

Your slim body
is plastic sheeting stretched
across the angles and corners

of stones –
your thin elegant legs
in fraying jeans.

The rectangle lenses
of your glasses frame
each autumn leaf shaped eye.

This was before you learned
what feminine clothes
will do for you.

This was when
I was one of the very few
that got to see and touch
everything underneath.

Sprawled out
arms stretched
toward the head board;
the bed still made
underneath us.

Your smile
black ink
painting Chinese glyphs
with a soaked horse hair brush
I just knew when it dried
it would disappear.

Then there was Chicago.
I came in on a long flight –
you came by train.

a 20th century mechanism
on a crash course
with a 19th century machine
that moves by devouring the landscape.

When you opened the door
you were revealed
and we pressed our lips
with the force of feathers –

a bird’s wing

settling against its body.

And there was also
that suite in Mammoth Lakes
without air conditioning

Where I found you in the bathroom
straightening your sheen hair
long, nearly metallic,

black as the belly of a plum.

These hotel rooms
anchored to earth
rotating with our memories

coming to rest on the bed spreads
the carpets, a corner

in an empty bathroom.

Now I travel alone,
see the interiors,

request a wake up call,

and slam the drapes shut.

Too many sheet rock walls,
too many laminated channel guides,
over bleached sheets,
tiny plastic signs
about saving our planet.

The purple sun

setting over mountains in Denver,

the hollow moon

rising behind the St. Louis Arch,

in Alabama

everyone stares at me

while hunched over waffles.

Sitting in these rooms
seeing so clearly
ever key I've ever held
in my palm

every lock I've clicked
or replaced after so many things stolen
or hammered a flat head screw driver into.

I seethe at clocks

airports

distance

depleted bank accounts

work schedules

reports due

the anchors

the call times

the tolls

taxes

taxis

Atlas has dropped the Earth,

stretched out his arms

and shoved us apart.

The hardest
is packing to leave.

It takes convincing

that getting on my feet

lacing my shoes

collecting my tooth brush

will eventually be worth it.

That eventually, if I just outlive

these check ins

the limited view of the peep holes,

the industrial air conditioning,

the twisted blankets

the bad ideas

the meaningless conversations –

I’ll some how

traverse home.

The zipper on my ragged red suitcase
its crooked teeth
barbs that don't fit but hook.

Shoving everything
I've brought with me inside,
flipping over damp towels
to make sure a sock or t-shirt
or novel isn't abandoned.

Shutting down my laptop,
jamming my work into a back pack
downing the rest of
a water downed cocktail
from last night

with the blond from Canada
who invited me into the hot tub
but not her bed.

Filling my pockets with keys
earbuds, a boarding pass
receipts, a tinge of anger, hope
regret and a wrinkled thought of you.

I'm dragging it all behind me
as I kick the door open
yank my suitcase
by the handle
adjust the camera bag
on my arm

take one last look
over my shoulder
into the past

where you sit
smiling on the sofa
eating mushroom pizza
translucent
content
all perfect

white teeth.

It's green outside.

Christmas trees everywhere
over sized rabbits
a sextet of birds
the buzzing of every insect
I've come to know

I scan the empty
mess
make sure nothing
escapes
so I can leave
with most of what
still belongs to me.

AIR TRAVEL

For over seven months

my eyes have seen
the coal-colored tarmacs
of several cities.

Long, hot runways of Los Angeles,
dusty, dry landing strips in Las Vegas
wet, frost laden jet ways in Denver
landing gear shrieking in New York.

All have these things in common:

They've all have seen me

drunk and stupid
lonely and frightened
angry and lost
worried and wishful

twisted and yearning
standing on steel stairs
leading to the door
in the skin puncturing rain
praying to the only deity I know:

the filthy gray-white floor
made by the tops of soft clouds.
This prop plane
glides over it all.

There's a planet down there
uncharted, frightening,

over-paved, uncivilized - 

I'm told I'm from there.

They've assigned me a social security number.
They say I've had a childhood.
They say I've been in love.
They say I have a job, debt, and a mortgage.

An ex-wife, bank accounts –

apparently I enjoy mountain biking.

But I can’t believe any of it

even though they offer undeniable evidence.

According to them

my mother did run over my child hood dog,

I did publish my complaints
on the pages of their bible,

there is a parking spot for my car marked 42,

I once got gut punched by the handle bars

of my banana seat bike from JC Penny.

I gasped for air;

feared for life.

My phone number to my child hood home

was 516 669 7587,

my first crush was

with a blonde named Kristin in the 6th grade.

But all of these memories
are fed to me by fraudulent printing presses.

Safety deposit boxes cannot be opened –

they contain their own keys

The fields have been delineated
by the geometry of
an all too specific
draftsman

Below is a patchwork of rich green disks
rows of wheat in postage stamp shaped fields
strip mall parking lots - 

abysses to the center of the world.

Everything shaped by an unforgiving trowel
invented by the occupants underneath me.

Its atmosphere can't possibly
be safe for breathing.

Of its billions of life forms
of all the happiness squeezed
from their guts

all the wishes
rung from their soaked dreams

the wind of their souls
swirl into the spinning and chewing
centrifuges.

They are all hovering.
Their organs are molded gas.

From up here
none can reach me

none can grasp
and yank the weeds from my gut.

None know
how to drain the acid from my lungs.

None except you
in Albuquerque.

I can't even pronounce it
without feeling my flight
drop through the turbulence –

me grasping the arm rest
knowing the clouds
are not dense enough
to stop my fall.

Landing
would be a fiery explosion
of wreckage

scattered across the surface - 

the embers
first formed on this rock
so many eons ago.