five poems

by Clay Waters

Will You Be My Perforated Pump?

I hope this finds you.

This is just to say

what I can’t say,

I--your secret nothing,

always yours

a fact as real as zero and one.

Call it Christmas where you are

bring the summer basket

bring the snowman who lasts one day--

How strange to believe we will meet again!

….

Am I not steel and wire--

not some cosmic misfire?

Perhaps I am only receiving myself again and again,

corrupted with spacetime detritus,

sliding into a dying star.

If I am the only I

I shall keep it to myself

for is it not the essence of love,

to meet oneself again, transformed?

Final Descent

With boxed-in breath

I watch the structures and tree tops

gradually right-size, becoming more themselves

a safer and safer plummeting

until contact -- then
the anxious red shift I term excitement

the animal scurry

through that perversely crowded

liminal space

ending at a jarring accent

and orderly queue

The city’s famed cemetery

maps the long leveling of hopes and fears

The old side’s elaborate crypts,

halfway houses to heaven

The new side’s plain markers,

un-encrusted by expectation

as if we were beginning to work out

the awful, dizzying truth…

These days

I yearn not for the exit

but for a pleasant alcove

crouched and quiet,

too low for the scythe

To sit ironically, outside it all

(languorous arm lingering dangerously off the side)

scanning the slim, sleek bodies

taking off coming down

dreaming, leisurely as I dare

how long departure will be delayed

The Lords and Lady of the Lanai

my unsupervised hour

wastes away on a rotting deck

sun pouring over the parapet

into this cage of our choosing

We are similarly

scaly, permanently stuck on pale

though you are not content

to merely bellow and deflate

but pant passionately

for your unreachable other half

the separating aluminum lattice

abstract in thinness

maddening as a mirror

to a baby or drunk

Our little library has you pinned:

Ordinary sorts for your species

your handful of years

draining through the holes

you have been suckered onto

could I

punch a hole for you fated lovers,

stagger up to the screen

clutching a baby-ware blade

as my smocked pursuers close in--

oh let my grave hold some dignity!

Best I fear sometimes

not to get what one wants

(Florida, Delores…)

Best off

to conjure your two-tailed beast

into a Rorschach Romeo and Juliet

than to idly count tiny holes

that shall be filled up

soon enough

*

Solitary sentinel,

could you even conceive

beings so pathetic?

pinned down opposite each other

in this parody of paradise

separated by the thinnest, cruelest chasm,

pulsing upon each other

the tight leash of time

splitting my tail in two….

the difference between heaven and hell

is not the heat

one courageous claw could sever

this separation

but ancient eyes grasp nothing but the lattice.

To be loved is to be changed

but what if you fear both?

Better to be a wretched worm

than a tired god smiling serene

counting holes

yet will not forge a solitary one!

Gift Shop Dog Toy 1962

you were birthed

a blank-eyed stab

at a terrier, maybe schnauzer,

molded by harried hands

in another land

a guilted gift

cheap as childhood

for the last ride home

as the adults explained

a family could be one car

going two ways

your rough bristles raked her soft brows

and your log legs

were crooked timber indeed

did she feel sad for you too?

but on that suddenly black night

when her protector moon

became a stalker

the snug backseat a cell

before you were abandoned or lost,

scattered back into sawdust,

did fragile fingers

squeeze from your careless filling

a fleeting assurance

that 20,000 more troubled moons

could never quite erase?

Who Wrote the Book of Love?

How do ants do it

content, tireless

never alone

sex and death

one dumb unit

listless scrawling in sand

How do dogs do it

still chasing their nose

for that one fragrant hour

(chicken wing corner shrub)

panted for ever after

whimpering returns bringing

snoutfuls of sting

How do we do it

messing up our very first garden,

embarrassments

buried in squared-off corners,

forebears crucified on palm frond,

thorny warnings

writing white on plunging sands

doomed to learn again

how flinty rocks shape majestic waves,

shouting at shadows

kneeling for phantoms

crawling out

to track a dead star

then the age of pretending

no pain without purpose--

starved blue alleys

teary white rooms

paid in full

upon the final unbuckling

the pages blow blank –

Is it shining where you are?

Photo of Clay Waters

BIO: Clay Waters has had poems published in The Metaworker, Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Santa Clara Review, and Poet Lore. He lives in Central Florida, close enough to the theme parks to hear the fireworks. His website is claywaters.org.