Hierophany

An insomniatic grasshopper
fills the first-fall night
with an insistent, low telephone ring.

I’d like to rip his wings off!

He’s out there humming
like the timpani skin
at the back of the band room
singing, “You have no rhythm.”

His are the ten-thousand hands
that won’t pick up.

This entry posted by J Rand : 10:33

The wild young October-held hibiscus
          called out to the hulking metallic ship keen for the sea;
It extended to the summer-setting sun of horizon—
          the one the ship kept sailing into,
          puffing grey smoke that smelled of burning leaves—
          two well-packed purple buds, luggage left behind at shore.
          In October’s breeze they waved like ungloved fists,
          seeded reminders of construction begun in the spring.
On the sailing ship, its young lover, leaning on the stern railing,
          looking back to shore, thinking about something
          he had said way back in April;
          looking hard, remarking, Yes, he does look like an hibiscus.
          Further, From here it looks as if he’s about to bloom.
But any launch those purple fists considered
          must have been defused by the icy wind,
          or else grew discouraged one autumn night
          by the presence of fewer than forty degrees,
          when they tried but failed to break open at the palm
          and crack their delicate sun-loving knuckles.
And so the buds never sprang to life,
          and from the back of the ship, she said,
          Maybe not an hibiscus after all,
          no purple flowers to show for himself,
          just a couple of limp fists, looking like they’ve been dipped
          in watered-down purple paint, left in the rain too long.
          That or this sunset came with a matted finish,
          or the bay’s caught a fog, or something.
On land its fists indeed shrivelled inward,
          the hibiscus thinking, She can’t even see me anymore.
          And in its frowning, creped fingers atrophied
          absolutely every cell of photosyntheticuriosity,
          cut off from the care of what might happen
          if it opened those purple fists
          and said to the sunset, Take these fists with you to sea,
          let these blooms be the sky,
          let them be the purple in her eyes.

This entry posted by J Rand : 07:17

Born of the uncertain meteor
and unkempt Pleistocene,
still unanswered sirens
cry out from their
motorized crib in the distance,
closing in on Doppler, thinking
maybe he is their daddy.
How hard they have howled
to be heard equally in all directions;
How many knees of time
they have bounced on with tender bottom.
When they pull even with him,
and he has no reaction,
they speed away, hurt for a moment,
but still not swayed from
their evolving search for harmony:
a blood connection, the proper echo:
someone lying beside the road, who
also calls out, also listens: who
hears only one frequency in the turnkey dawn,
his and his and his,
the same as it ever was,
the same as it ever will be.

This entry posted by J Rand : 12:40

1.  Love.
          Tangled in the rain,
          a soaking rain,
          the king’s rain,
          working its way down
               from           the sky’s rafters,
          taking care not to make mud,
          not to be part of the first frost.


2.  Rain.
          Doesn’t want to parent plants;
          Doesn’t want to be sealed away in leaf or stem,
               its plant the earth
               its roots the ocean’s deepest trenches—
                    scars left behind when crusty plates parted ways;
          Doesn’t want to know what tearing feels like—
               not a tear in th’eye
               not a root chopped up
                    to make way for
                    the highway it will hit hard
                    as it plummets back to earth
                         shattering
                         bouncing in all directions at once.


3.  Stars.
          Have so much influence
          making rain jealous
          the way they hang up there
               lookin bright
                    here they are now they are
                    miles and miles ago
                    years and years away
               reaching out with pure, cold light
               always traveling at top speed
               never frozen
               not recordable in inches
               not beholden to any sun
                    (they are the sun)
               unaware of gravity
               worthy of telescopes
          imprisoned only by tiny, black holes rain can’t see
          as rain falls to earth looking back out at space
          about to glaze a world still hot with war
               a world not yet cataclysmic
                    but shaky—
               a world on plates
               five choices on rain’s menu
               meteorolgists looking on
               rain trying to prove them wrong.


4.  Clouds.
          From cirrus above—
               ice crystals, a smear of ice cream, the mare’s tail
               swishing in the breeze, waving to the mackerel sky
               not a bad way to be water, until it gets too heavy, and then—
          to cirrus below—
               not ice crystals
               but a slender appendage
               the sea-star’s foot
               a tube, a sucker
               a way to cling to boats
               to burrow down
                    beneath th’ocean
                    beneath the five sliding continents
               to hack into the main flame
               a suicide run
               a way to be burned
               to lose maidenhood, nationhood—
                    its citizenship in the state of liquid;
               to be launched from the geyser
                    as steam
               to return to heaven a gas.


5.  Rain, Again.
          It shouldn’t have to explain itself.
          Icebergs and glaciers are packed with explanations
               (that’s why ice floats on water)—
                    icy words take eons to unwind,
                    sinking ships, sucking in the sea,
                    scouring land to carve hill and valley,
                    picking up a rock and setting it down
                    five miles away, five hundred years later.
          Rain doesn’t need that pressure;
          Rain doesn’t wish to keep cities alive;
          Rain says, One drop more, and my storm might be gone,
               this river would cease to be a river
                    instead: just a pebbled path leading nowhere
                    instead: a desert / dryness not my legacy /
                         not my issue when other rain won’t fall.
               I can’t wait around here on the surface
                    when shrinking aquifers gasp for my presence
                    when ocean trenches fall deeper every second
                         taking me down
                         to the underground sea
                         to the crushed, condensed pearl of nickel
                         that blesses my forehead, magnetizes my members
                         and brings me back
                              once every seven million years.

This entry posted by J Rand : 06:03

Sunday!  Sunday!
Every day is Sunday.
I walk into an overgrown
furniture warehouse showroom
with the Sunday paper in hand.
Pointing to an ad, I say, “I want the Sunday price.”
The red-vested salesman looks me
     right between the eyes
before he raises an arizona eyebrow
and responds, “But it’s Tuesday.”
I wad the worthless paper in my hands
and stomp on it.
“It ain’t Tuesday!” I say,
as I reach for
     the slingshot in my backpocket
and place a piece of silver in its strap.
The salesman takes cover
behind this big fluffy beige number
I was looking at, nay,
     ready to buy—
but only at the Sunday price.

This entry posted by J Rand : 08:25

When there is
nowhere left to look,
I look to the sky.
When I cannot look into pawned jewelry boxes,
into vases void of flowers;
when I am looking for echoes,
for the sound of her falling hair
hitting the carpet,
I look up.  Up, up.

One day I looked up
and it was perfectly clear.
Nothing was no clouds, just sun.
The sun:
          my enemy, her keeper;
          the burning, brutal dictator
                    of light and dark;
          holding the patent on sweat;
          running a racket of heat and height.

To whom can I appeal
the sun’s denial of our
otherwise happily dark
and ice-age-cold existence?
Get out of the way,
he says to the clouds,
let me see her; Take
your curls and wisps
          your mare’s tails, congestions, and puffs
          and burn to thinnest ether.
          Zip, zip:
                    there are no shapes left in your chest;
                    diamonds, hearts, and rings
                    are for slot machines
                              not atmospheres.

Like that,
          imposing his particle rule
          through the million miles
                    of sky’s sky,
          he burns away the clouds
          and captures her with light,
          reminding me once again
                    I am human:
          the sky’s not mine,
                    and neither is the earth.

This entry posted by J Rand : 19:36

This is my ship:
its creaking bow
is mine own.

Its hands mine,
the planks of its deck
my ribs.  Its captain
my captain, my heart
spinning like the helm
in his hands.  Check
my conscience for
latitude and longitude,
my throat for the letters
S-O-S.

I feel the rising weather
in my bones
as the waves fondle its breast,
my hull.

This entry posted by J Rand : 07:56

From across the fence
you ask for it:
twenty cents,
you say you need,
     for the bus
          or the gas bill
               (whichever arrives first)
as you water your sharp, green grass
     straighten up your JESUS sign,
          wipe the spider webs
               from your concrete goose’s head.
I’m sorry, I say,
I can’t offer you anything
except what you’ve already got:
     the words of the Savior,
          and his various disciples,
               some dead,
                    some still living.

This entry posted by J Rand : 16:52

Sleep is part
of the underground—
not taxed.  All
these hours, colors,
and people (real and not)
are coming to me for free,
cracking their belts
like whips,
offering me
chests of money.
What code—
what provision
of science—
does this fall under,
this unregulated
carnival of closed eyes?
Is it safe?
Are the funnel cakes
sold here
soaked in trans fats?
I fall asleep at night
on a welcome mat,
in front of the
brick-hard hearth;
keep warm
by throwing one more
log, one more day
on the fire.

This entry posted by J Rand : 09:25

To gather the sun,
          I shot big, green leaves
     out into the canopy.

But they blocked the
          rain
     from my roots below.

So with my soul
          I reached out to catch
     the run-off
          before it trickled
     away.

This entry posted by J Rand : 23:18

It’s not been fifty years
since men landed on the moon,
kicked up and brought home
a bucket of chalky, asteroid-shorn rocks.
Twenty-nineteen is fifty years,
and a lot of cardboard boxes.
The moon could’ve grown some hair
and lost it in that time.  Could’ve
grown some heirs, if we hit it
with a missile, or if an under-the-
influence-of-solar dust comet hit it
head-on.  I couldn’t possibly be happy
if the moon turned fifty, could I?
Fat old cheese-grinned mothball, staring
down and grinning at me, as I tried to sleep
tentless in the backyard at age forty?  I’d
like to take a piece of floss up there and
clean his moldy green teeth, see how he likes it.

This entry posted by J Rand : 07:24

          Everything was fine

because

     the house

               (with the dog

               and the cat)

     welcomed

          the rain-shoed employee



                    home.

This entry posted by J Rand : 22:47