dan raphael


five blocks downtown


I stop       you stop       they stop
cars are still going
the lights twinkle in the trees from their transpiration
though leafless       though dormant
the longest night of the year kept at bay with contained fire, concentrated explosions
sourced in the wires running beneath the trees we’ve topped
with our eyes under our hats, over hair uncertain as a committee
I stare at the orange hand. I smile at the silver stick-man
when I put my fingers in the seam of the stuck elevator doors they opened
and people on both sides could go again, out and up, into and away
I come to the corner and go in three directions in different clothes and bodies
a corner becomes round and slowly spinning
I am in the street with cars just wider than people on the sidewalks
ignoring the lights of various colors and shapes—
the blue hand, the golden skeleton, 3 headless snakes waiting to support a table
when the light wants in me, through my mouth not my eyes
as if this door I have passed many times—heard smoke and music
bumping in several rooms away from windows—is like a nostril.
I would know so much about anyone walking into my nose
cookies that can cure a cold, walls that generated such a field
water wouldn’t come through a hole at the top
some stones like getting wet and others don’t notice

as if I feel the weight of the rain on my shoulders
setting up a calcium-electro field to select what accumulates
if I were a tree or a bit of geologic rill
cruising the interface above and below—not a line but a relationship
something solid that compresses when I touch is less dense
pushing against a potential tabletop
paring the wind calluses from my skin and turning them into kindling
a fricative oil that lights when you splash it
setting off the smoke alarms tho smokeless, tho every calorie
transformed to dormant information
knowing trees are busier in the winter, like santa-god
repairing the earth from each year’s damage
bringing us gifts to convince us of a future


Walls of Crumbling Smoke


i can only look so long, turn around so fast,
my timing must be impeccable, anticipation of impact,
my bones are pure reflex, my eyes surround me like protective flies
eavesdropping with x-ray vision coz the walls have crumbled behind the paint,
the sheet rock evaporates in tomorrows unsalted ocean falling from the sky
ready to borrow the rain within me—its been two days since I drank
and still I sweat, though its february, though im 31 per cent out of focus,
ample light but insufficient clarity

for the brain has its own anatomy, what the mind can digest,
from pulses of light to remembered images, a face branded with the brains home brew;
a flexible skeleton allows the brain to plunge from calculus to celebrity gossip,
to swoop from ecstasy to despair in a quick burn of non-linear stimulus

i practice a single action until it is meaningless, until i do it for random reasons,
like making the letter G with my thumb and pointer, engaging the wrist like an injured hinge—
times the door barely moves, times a slight touch will threaten the wall behind
like living with a moody reflection that wants to make the first move
then smolders when I don’t echo. when I stomp the carpet a fountain-splash of smoke arises,
as the floor remembers a fire I forgot, as my foot wants the ground to roll beneath it,
tentacles reaching and retreating like syncopated oarsmen

i am several dark figures walking out of an artificial mist on a street inside a warehouse
in some neutral zone tween industry and decay, decades of evolution reversing only on the inside—
going and coming back are never the same speed, momentum can be stalled for months,
the winter so cold I wait a whole year to emerge.
this months electricity cost me 4 hours and twenty minutes,
plus the 3 espressos before every half hour of pedaling into the grid,
and when you pedal you talk, letting pieces of clothing slip open for visual diagnostics:
five vacant lots in my chest cavity, the ribs in the sky we only see
when they blush across the spectrum, a rainbow spraying from my wrists arterial,
a minor quake causing several pier fisherman to lose their balance means the earth is hungry,
has remembered its internal politics, visualizing what it wants the satellites to record,

as if i could make my skin change color or ripple like islands of partial identity,
names i assumed were mine, stories no one could challenge
giving me somewhere to live with a trained mirror and mind-surrounding videos
as the outside world is all illusion while my inner based on science shakespeare stole from the mediterranean,

when we knew we were scraps from gods table,
when mind-time had so much more topography,
not smoothed by instant knowledge, commercial mantras, a box i can call my own.
for all the tin man, scarecrow and lion needed were satellite dishes,
bridging and blurring the gap between kansas and oz., between my old home town
and who its become, between the oregon of my mind and the mudslides where forests were


          that song always reminds me of
                                        air guitar


coming over the pass between colleges, our thumbs before nintendo & texting
slow motion aniticipasto—      smoked      brined      twisted above a roiling pot
where the oil flows like wine as if a subcutaneous jailbreak
getting saved,      shaved,      rolled hard as dung,      surprised as an egg,
fingers through hair,      some skin tween top and bottom,
                                                   I smell roses cloves and bleu cheese,
its a color i can only see peripherally, where my head will be in three years,
how the dark spot on the moon’s left bottom is a swimming pool inside me
with a defective filter, allergic to chlorine

if I was bald the rain would get closer to my brain, I could learn its language,
as shadows bounce off a river groaning with incandescence neath a meter of mud,
what a life sized granite heron would weigh and how only our minds could make it fly..
since mirrors don’t work for me I remember faces I like, knowing bodies are interchangeable,
pick a number and put it on, try the apartment across the hall,
a view with concussiona, a strong loping drum corrupting CO₂—
flames between hillocks, as if 80 cows merged into a hyperstream, the curds and turds
of drunken exultation, bricks to wall off a time
                                                             get plenty of
                                                             always wear a
                                                             doctor says stop.
I didn’t know you could get this delivered
driving w/ both hands free,      both ears engaged,      split-screen visor

went up the hill in oregon came down in mexico,      the ocean never existed,
death valley an understatement, its too hot for anything to not move—
dust,      metal,      fast food,      hungry asphalt

a night of jamaican & 151, 3 beds in two buildings,   only his sister remembered,
swatting at flies on a flyless winter day,   the bedroom on stilts with an uninsulated floor
the wind kept breathing, the street kept cracking open—
they stitched it with its newly recycled past, a meal exactly like 30 years ago:

cell phones don’t work here & we’re keeping it that way
im smaller than the house expected
eating like I was 3 times zones east
out-of-focus seeping through my pores
cant give it away
cant keep it on the shelves



dan raphael wants to get out in his Northwest world more often. Recent publication of Breath Test has lead to a number of readings. Current poems appear in Skidrow Penthouse, Knock Journal, Broken Word II and 5 trope.


 
 
 
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