June 16-22, 2014: Howard Brown and Matthew Abuelo

Better Days

Watching him
through the window of the car
on this cold December Sunday,
I remember better days.

Days when his eyes
had the spark of the sun
on moving water.

Days when his hands
would flutter before his face
as he spoke,
like a covey of rising quail.

But now
he is nothing more
than a tired old man,

Who stands beside
a clap-board house,
chopping kindling
in the drizzling rain.

Gray Dust

1

Did you know our lungs
Yours and mine
sit as otherwise empty vessels
where the air has been evicted
replaced by the gray exhaust and fluid
of staying too long?
It was as if they (our lungs) were vacant rooms
taken over by someone who was just visiting.
In midtown
Forget the medicine
you still have to breathe the air
with its unforgiving skin and metallic weight
that moves across the tongue as I cough up
what the bridge and tunnel crowd leave behind.
How can you make a natural home in the emergency room
after all our fortunes have been spent
and there are no more deals to cheat the gravity that draws us from wasted hours at the movies
where we watch as spectators
who sit silently under drawn shades of the darkened theater
to witness the brutality of a projected life
which ends every two hours
only to start over
until
the next show
when all the mistakes sit as an ever present threat
and the end seems so uncertain
and has curdled?
But when the lights come back on
and the thoughts of the body reform
we lose ourselves in the barracks of our clothing
Which we give no thought when picking out each morning
disappearing all those features of ruin
and freely giving ourselves over to the glare of the silent snow.

2

I will never pass as a ghost into the gray dawn’s early light
Only to return in the afternoon and wait on 8th Ave
For a taxi that never stops.
Nor will my voice only exist in the exhaust of idling cars
but my name will give the gray ash that was your body
the moisture of a life you cried for before you reached
the end of your line
that fateful morning
and the mold that has formed around my tub
will claim a piece my last breath.
Something you should know
My breath is not modern
It is a relic which I keep on a shelf in my bedroom by the air conditioner
Where it is allowed to flow
And form the shape of words
You will never hear.