Twelve a.m. Every Day, or Maybe it was Four

Putting the night between us
Like a bassinet without
Wheels and obstructing space,

Like the way you never wanted
Me to remember the first,
The end and the last of it.

You want me to remember
You swimming in a closet full
Of low cut evening dresses-- clothes--

Like a sunbather drifting
On the ebb and flow of sand
Washed in by the desert sea.

A place that leaves cemeteries
Lacking chinese food,
Lettuce rows and scars like

The outdoors lacks all of this
Snow that you brought inside.

Any explaination leaves the chemicals
Lacking, placing anotmical biology
On par with the science of phrenology,

Like the theory that gravitation can be held
Responsible for what scientific method
Says about the hearts secret inner workings.

Trying to find a place
Where what is, was and will
Ever be can become whole, coagulated.
Conjoined fingers and toes
Can not be made by touching alone,
Like when seperation fills the gap:

When you diagnose and speak of
Heart problems, attacks, failures and transplants,
Remember that you can't expect to
Be best friends with everyone.


copyright 2006 Samuel Lewis Nelson

I Can Not Wash the Outdoors Out of Your Clothes

Draping clothes within
The confines of a closet,
Where shadows seat themselves
In the metamorphic folds like
Starlings roosted in Hawthornes.

The clothes hang like floor length
Curtains shoved against the casings
Of a single paned window--
Nude and tangled with folding,
Shuttered with hoar frost,

Rattling like ice coated branches--
Beside a window leaking the cold inside.
Watching the shiloettes of yew trees
Shaking off last nights light powdery snow
And convulsing in the wind like mad people.

Red berries spot them-- silent, quiet,
Whispering like well troden, compacted
Snow, like black ice
And beautiful like ornaments
Hung on a living cut conifer.

I imagine them to be like so many
Other fruits made into compotes--
Cooked with snow white sugar
to make their flavor sweet and macerated.
I imagine cashews to be the meat.

My other hand aches so much since
It was touched with that slender epee
Like icicle. The air inside this miniature
Room is so cold since the end of it
Was placed inside the canal of my ear.

The closet enshrouds unfolded
Partially buttoned clothes and polished
Shoes that get arranged neatly inside this
Very small room like things
Guaranteed to be clean.

"When you come back inside
From walking in that semblance
Of salt encrusted earth,
Stop taking off all of your clothes
Because you're angry at the world."

copyright 2006 Samuel Lewis Nelson

Passenger Trains In Early Evening

We watch silver passenger trains
Pull into the antiquated brick station.
You watch me leave under
Nights dawn With one way tickets
And
Reservations.

I speak and tell of you (of love),
Spelling your last name
Letter by letter, one at a time,
Illuminating each with an
Animals name, carefully
Enunciated, Ferret to Rat,
Like spelling out in
Broken English how I am
Making myself
Culpable.

Voices still carry, escaping
Our mouths like spat vinegar.
Turning voices around-- our voices,
Like the precious fulcrum
Of the unknown universe.

I never heard you.

I would die if I ever gazed
Through your cracked telescope lense
To track the movement of Ursa Minor.
I shake like a tooth ache when
I see what you mean

To me.

And yet I still think I am the
The man who loves you.
There's a smell like turpentine
Or bourbon vapors hung
Between the telescope lens
and everything I see.

We played at Apollyon's curse
(A Cure)
Like checkers with each other.
Why did we birth the spectre of blame,
And feel compelled to fill in
The certificate with
Each others names?


copyright 2006 Samuel Lewis Nelson